“Wrong!” Madeline taunted. “The boob job is true—I made an appointment because I was flirting with the idea of double-Ds. I changed my mind, though, when I found out what the surgery was like. So drink up, Char!”

“So which one was the lie?” Gabby slowed down at the front of the line. “Thayer?”

Madeline shrugged. “I guess you’ll never know now.”

Emma fixed her gaze on Madeline. Could she know where Thayer was? Was she trying to protect him from someone—maybe their dad?

The liquid in the bottle made a swishing noise as Charlotte drank. “Okay. Statement one: I cheated on Garrett. Two: I think my dad’s cheating on my mom. And three: I kissed Freddy Krueger in the haunted house.”

“But your mom’s way too hot to cheat on, Char.” Madeline sounded torn. “I’m not guessing on this one.”

Emma kept her mouth shut, a thought suddenly swimming into her mind. While waiting for Sutton at Sabino Canyon, she’d seen a man she recognized from Sutton’s Facebook page as Charlotte’s father. He’d seemed flustered, and later, Emma found out Charlotte thought he was away on business.

But she didn’t dare say it, instead maneuvering quietly around two rocks.

“Freddy’s the lie!” Gabby whooped finally.

“Drink up, Gabby!” Charlotte crowed. “I was in the haunted house and felt these hands behind me. Someone spun me around and planted one right on my lips. It was totally Freddy—I saw his freaky nails. He wasn’t a bad kisser, Mads.”

Madeline snorted. “You can have him!”

No one asked Charlotte which one the lie was.

After Gabby drank her penalty shot, Madeline said, “Your turn, Sutton.”

Emma took a deep breath and racked her brain for what she could say about Sutton. But then she had another idea. “Okay. One: I worked at a roller coaster in Las Vegas one summer,” she started.

“Lie,” Charlotte said automatically, cutting her off. “You’ve never worked in Vegas.”

“You’re just trying to get drunk, aren’t you, Sutton?” Madeline passed her the bottle. Emma smiled to herself, but didn’t bother correcting them.

They walked on. A lone coyote howled in the distance. A cactus needle scraped Emma’s shin. Then Gabby turned around and looked at them from the front of the line. “Am I next? One: My sister and I cheated to get on the Halloween dance court. Two: Kevin and I made out in the haunted house right by the jar full of fake eyeballs. And three . . .” She paused for effect. Crickets chirped. “I once touched a dead body.”

The wind shrieked in Emma’s ears, and her heart leapt to her throat.

I shivered. Was it my body? More than ever before, I needed Emma—I needed her to nail Gabby and Lili and expose my murder. I needed them to go down for what they’d done.

Laurel sniffed. “A dead body? Yeah, right.”