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“You lied the minute you showed up with an offer for this house. Pretending you were a nice person, pretending you were the kind of person who might want to be my friend after all these years alone. But you’re not.”

I couldn’t respond with anything but a gagging sound. The ballcap was choking me

I heard Emily shouting at her, then I felt my body pressed even harder against the floor as Emily tried to pull her off me. I couldn’t make out what Emily was saying. Jordan’s screams and ranting were too loud, and she was too close to my face, her voice penetrating my ear like a sword.

“Get off me or I’ll strangle her!” Jordan shouted. “You don’t know what my life has been like. Trapped in that house since I was born. I finally met a man—the first man I’ve ever been with! But I still knew he was the one. I loved him so much. So much, it hurt. What we had was magic. A man who loved me, who wanted to be with me for the rest of his life. And she destroyed that. She murdered him and tied him up like a piece of meat and tossed him in your swimming pool.”

“Get off her!” Emily yelled.

I cried out as Emily tried again, putting her hands under Jordan’s arms, trying to pull her away from me. I was losing feeling in my legs now, the weight of her sitting on my upper thighs too much to bear. Kicking was impossible, and my arms were completely immobile. All I could do was grunt and turn my head from side to side. When I squirmed too much, trying to throw her off balance, the pain in my spine and shoulder blades, shoved against the unyielding tile, was too much.

“Let her go!” Emily shouted.

“I told you to get away from me or I’ll really hurt her. I need her phone. Unless you’re planning to let me use yours.”

“No. You’re hurting her! You need to calm down so we can talk about this and make a rational decision,” Emily said. “We could all be in a lot of trouble, and⁠—”

“Trouble?! This has nothing to do with being in trouble. You’re disgusting! A man is dead. The man I loved is gone! The man who loved me. My mother murdered him and now I’m starting to wonder if you helped. Why else would you be so desperate to keep me from calling the sheriff?”

I grunted, forcing my teeth into the stiff fabric filling my mouth. I turned my head as far to the side as it would go, hoping I could somehow force the ballcap out. I felt like I was choking to death. Was I going to die from the weight of her crushing my organs, the blood flow to my arms and legs slowing to nothing? Tears filled my eyes and trickled down my cheeks. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

“He’s gone forever! He was so happy here. He loved this house. He used to sit on the back deck and stare into the forest with a look of complete bliss! He deserved to have a beautiful home. And it was mine. But she sold it out from under me. She stole it from him—a place he thought we could be, that he’d dreamed of. This has nothing to do with getting in trouble.”

She let go of one of my arms and shoved her fingers into my pocket again. With my arm free, I tried to pull the ballcap out of my mouth, but I’d lost all feeling and my fingers wouldn’t cooperate. They brushed across the bill of the cap, unable to bend or form a grip. Tears continued spilling out of my eyes. My hand and arm burned as the blood rushed back.

Finally, I managed to yank the hat out of my mouth, coughing as I gasped for air. Jordan’s hand was probing for my pocket, but in pushing me to the floor, she’d twisted my dress and my pocket was near my lower back. She shoved her hand under my hips, trying to find the opening. As she did, she leaned into me, putting more pressure on my legs and the arm that was still pinned to the floor.

It was becoming harder to breathe and I wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t putting any weight on my chest. A panic attack? Or maybe the loss of circulation was affecting my lungs. “Please help me,” I whimpered. “Let me go. Please. I went to your house, I talked to your mother, but you weren’t there. I’m trying to⁠—”

“Shut up!” Jordan yelled.

Emily was quiet. She hadn’t said a word for a minute or more. She was no longer trying to free me from Jordan’s unbelievably strong grip.

Then, Jordan gasped. A cry that sounded like a creature who inhabited a nightmare came out of her. She coughed as blood spilled across her lips, dripping out of her mouth onto my dress. She grunted two more times, then collapsed onto me.

I screamed.

SIXTY-FIVE

EMILY

I pulled the knife from Jordan’s back. She was dead.

At least I was mostly sure she was dead. If she wasn’t, she would be any minute. I didn’t need her suddenly finding some weird, adrenaline-infused ability to get up and grab the knife from me.

Samantha was sobbing, trying to wipe the blood coming out of Jordan’s mouth off her face. “What did you do?!” she cried.

“I saved you!”

“What’s happening? Why is blood coming out of her mouth?!” She coughed, twisting her head to the side. “Did you kill her?”

I shoved Jordan’s body off Samantha. I pulled open the dishwasher drawer and put the knife in the back, just in case Jordan wasn’t dead and she came after us. I closed the door and turned back.

Looking like she was half dead herself, Samantha scrambled backward like a crab, using one arm. “Why did you kill her?”

“She was going to kill you!”

“How? How would she kill me? She didn’t have a knife or anything. She⁠—”