“Yeah, we could even come in with you, you know, for moral support,” Gabby added.
“I’ll be fine.” Emma slid out of the backseat and slammed the door. “Thanks for the ride!”
Emma and I didn’t need to turn back around to know that Gabby and Lili were watching her as she walked through
the
doors
marked TUCSON POLICE
DEPARTMENT.
6
LITTLE EMMA IN THE BIG
WOODS
The inside of the station was the same as the past two times Emma had been there: first to report that Sutton was missing, then after she’d stolen the bag from Clique. It still had that rancid smell of old takeout. The telephones bleated loudly and jarringly. An old HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?
flyer with Thayer Vega’s face and information hung on a bulletin board in the corner, next to a document listing Tucson’s most wanted. Emma stepped forward and gave her name to an emaciated woman with a helmet-perm who sat at the front desk.
“S-U-T-T-O-N M-E-R-C-E-R,” the woman repeated, her purple acrylic nails tapping each letter on an ancient-looking keyboard. “Have a seat and Detective Quinlan will be right with you.”
Emma sat on a hard yellow plastic chair and looked at the bulletin board again. The calendar was still on August.
Emma guessed it was the receptionist who had chosen the picture of a kitten chasing a tattered ball of red yarn. Next she scanned the MOST WANTED poster. It looked like the majority of the guys on it had outstanding warrants for drug possession. Finally, she let her eyes graze the MISSING
poster. Thayer’s hazel eyes stared directly at her, the hint of a smile playing across his lips. For a moment, Emma swore the boy in the photo actually winked at her, but that was impossible. She ran her hands over the back of her neck, trying to get a grip. But Thayer was somewhere in neck, trying to get a grip. But Thayer was somewhere in this building. Just his proximity made her shudder.
“Miss Mercer.” Quinlan appeared in the doorway wearing dark brown pants and a tan button-down. At six feet tall, he cut an imposing figure. “C’mon back.” Emma stood and followed him down the tiled hallway.
Quinlan opened the door to the same cinderblock interrogation room he’d stuck Emma in the week before, when he’d questioned her about shoplifting from Clique. As soon as the door whooshed open, Emma was enveloped in lavender Febreze. She pressed her hand to her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth.
Quinlan scraped back a chair and gestured for Emma to sit. She lowered herself into it slowly, and Quinlan sat across from her. He leveled a look at her over the table, as if he expected her to just start talking. Emma studied the gun at his waist. How many times had he used it?
“I called you in about your car,” Quinlan finally said. He steepled his hands and stared at Emma over his fingertips.
“We found it. But first—is there anything you want to tell me about?”
Emma tensed, her mind drawing a blank. She knew very little about Sutton’s car—that she had used it in a cruel prank against her friends a few months ago, pretending to stal the vehicle on the train tracks when an Amtrak commuter was barreling down on them. That she had signed it out of the impound lot the night she died. That it had since vanished, along with Sutton.
I wished I remembered what I’d done with the car that day. But I didn’t.
Still, Emma’s heart quickened with excitement, too.
Sutton was driving that car the day she died. Maybe the car held a clue inside of it. Maybe there was some sort of evidence in there. Or maybe—she cringed—maybe it contained Sutton’s body.
I hoped not. But suddenly, a flash of memory sparked in my mind. I felt my feet pounding over rocks and my ankles scratching against tree branches and cactus needles as I sprinted across a dark path. Fear pulsed through me as I ran. Then I heard footsteps hammering the earth behind me, but I didn’t stop to turn around to see who was following me. In the distance, I was able to make out the outline of my car waiting in a clearing beyond the brush.
But just before I could reach it, the memory popped like a soap bubble.
Quinlan cleared his throat. “Sutton? Can you answer my question?”
Emma swallowed hard, wrenched from her spinning thoughts. “Um, no. I don’t have anything to tell you about the car.”
The detective sighed loudly, raking his hands through his dark hair. “Fine. Well, the car was abandoned in the desert a few miles away from Sabino Canyon.” He sat back, crossed his arms over his chest, and looked at Emma meaningfully, as if waiting for some sort of reaction.
“Want to explain how it got there?”
Emma blinked, her nerve endings firing rapidly. “Um…
it was stolen?”
Quinlan smirked. “Of course it was.” The corners of his mouth lifted. “So then I’m guessing you don’t know anything about the blood we found on it?”
Emma’s entire body shot to life. “Blood? Whose?”
“We don’t know yet. We’re still testing the evidence.” Emma pushed her hands to her lap so Quinlan wouldn’t see them shake. The blood had to be Sutton’s.
Had someone run down her sister then stashed the car and Sutton’s body in the desert? Who?
Quinlan leaned forward, perhaps sensing Emma’s fear. “I know you’re hiding something. Something big.” Emma shook her head slowly, not trusting her voice to work.
Then Quinlan reached behind him and pulled a plastic bag from a rusted metal shelf. He emptied the contents onto the table in front of Emma. An ikat-print silk scarf fluttered across the table, along with a stainless-steel water bottle, a duplicate of the sign-out sheet from the impound lot with Sutton’s signature on it in big, bold letters, and a copy of Little House in the Big Woods.
“We found these items inside the car,” he explained, pushing them across the table.
Emma’s fingers traced a line across the silk scarf. It smelled exactly like Sutton’s room—like fresh flowers, chocolate mint, and that organic, Suttony essence she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“And as for the car, we’re holding it—along with these items—until we figure out whose blood is on the hood.” Quinlan leaned forward and eyed Emma sternly. “Unless you’re going to change your mind and enlighten us.” Emma stared at the detective, the air heavy and stale between them. For a moment, she considered telling him that it was Sutton’s blood. That someone had killed her twin sister and was after her, too. But Quinlan wouldn’t believe her any more now than he had a month ago. If he did believe her, he might presume what Ethan had warned her about—that Emma had killed Sutton, all because she wanted to ditch her foster-kid persona and take over Sutton’s charmed life.
“I don’t know anything,” Emma whispered.
Quinlan shook his head and slapped his hand on the table. “You’re just making this more difficult for all of us,” he grumbled. Then he turned as the door to the interrogation room opened. Another cop stuck his head in and mouthed something Emma didn’t catch. Quinlan stood and moved for the door. “Don’t go anywhere,” he warned Emma. “I’ll be right back.”
He slammed the door hard. Emma waited until he padded down the hall, then gazed down at the items he’d left on the table. The scarf, heavily perfumed with eau de Sutton. The sign-out sheet, Sutton’s signature in loopy swirls at the bottom. Then she stared hard at the cover of Little House in the Big Woods. A young girl in a red dress clutched a brunette doll. Emma had loved the books when she was younger, spending hours getting lost in the hardships of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s characters—for all of Emma’s shitty home situations, at least she didn’t have to live in a mud hut like the pioneers. But what was Sutton doing with a copy of this book in her car? Emma doubted it was something she would read at eighteen—if at all.
I had to agree. Just looking at the cover made me want to yawn.
Emma picked up the book and rifled through the pages. It smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been opened in a while. When she reached the middle, a postcard fell to the floor. She bent down and turned it over. The front was printed with a generic image of a sun setting over two multiarmed saguaro cacti. WELCOME TO TUCSON, it said in hot-pink bubble letters on the top.
Emma flipped it over to read the black ink printed on the back: Downtown bus station. 9:30 PM. 8/31. Meet me.
—T.
Her heart began to pound. August thirty-first. That was the night Sutton died. And … T. There was only one person in Sutton’s life with that initial: Thayer. So was Thayer with Sutton the night she died? Wasn’t he supposed to be out of town?
Emma ran her fingers along the card. There was no postage stamp on it, meaning no date to signify when the postcard had been mailed—or from where. Perhaps Thayer had sent it in an envelope. Perhaps he’d slipped it under Sutton’s bedroom door or under her windshield wiper.
Footsteps pounded down the hallway. Emma froze, looking at the postcard in her hands. At first, she considered shoving it back into the book—it was probably wrong to tamper with evidence—but at the last minute she dropped it into her bag instead.
Quinlan walked through the door, and a second person followed. At first, Emma thought it was just going to be another cop, but then her eyes widened. It was Thayer. She gasped. His hazel eyes were lowered to the ground. His high cheekbones jutted as though he’d lost weight rapidly.
Handcuffs circled his wrists, clasping his hands together like he was praying. A dingy rope bracelet was pushed up his forearm. It was so tight that it cut into his skin.
I stared at him, too. Just seeing him again made a strange tingle shoot through me. Those deep-set eyes. That dark, messy hair. That permanent smirk. There was something sexy and dangerous about him. Maybe I had fall en for him.
Quinlan made a grunting noise from behind Thayer and pushed him toward the table. “Sit,” he commanded.
But Thayer just stood there. Even though he wasn’t looking at Emma, she scooted her chair away, afraid he might lunge for her.
“I suppose you both are wondering why I brought you in here for a little reunion,” Quinlan said in an oily voice. “I thought that if I spoke to you both at the same time, we could clear some things up.”
He pulled another plastic bag from his pocket and held it in front of Thayer’s face. A long rectangular piece of paper was lodged within the plastic. “I believe this is yours, Thayer,” he said, shaking the bag under Thayer’s nose. “I found it in Miss Mercer’s car. Care to explain?” Thayer glanced at it. He didn’t flinch—didn’t even blink.
Quinlan yanked the paper from the bag. “Don’t play dumb, kid. There’s your name, right there.” He slammed the plastic bag on the table and pointed to the piece of paper. Emma leaned forward. It was a bus ticket with a Greyhound logo in the corner. The point of departure was Seattle, WA, and the destination was Tucson, AZ. The date was August thirty-first. And there, printed in small, neat letters at the bottom, was the passenger’s name: THAYER VEGA.
I drew in a breath the same time Emma did. So Thayer was in my car the night I died.
