Everyone in the library turned and stared at Emma. She ducked back into an aisle and leaned against a stack of books. Madeline was hiding something big, but it wasn’t what Emma thought. There was no faking the reaction Madeline just had. Whatever she’d dealt with the night Sutton went missing was her own issue, something completely divorced from what had happened to Sutton. Madeline was busy that night. Innocent. And now, because they were together, Charlotte likely was, too.

Relief washed over me, hard and fast. I wanted to cheer aloud. My two best friends were actually my best friends—not my murderers.

A series of shrill beeps sounded as the librarian scanned books for a scrawny red head. Emma turned to leave, but her knee caught the corner of a copy of The Riverside Shakespeare and knocked it to the floor. The book splayed open, its paper-thin pages full of highlights and notes from kids who didn’t seem to care that it was a library book. A line from Hamlet caught Emma’s eye, sending a chill up her spine.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

It made me shiver, too. Charlotte and Mads were in the clear, but my killer was still out there—smiling, watching, lurking, waiting.

Chapter 13 - Double the Trouble

Chapter 13
Never Underestimate the Power of Snooping

“She’ll be good, Mom,” Laurel begged. “I promise. Please let her go?”

It was Friday evening, and Emma and Laurel stood in the foyer of the Mercer house. Mrs. Mercer peered at the girls from the doorway of her office. Drake panted beside her, his long tongue looking like a thick slab of ham. Emma edged away from him slightly.

“It’s just a stupid tennis dinner.” Laurel went on in a sweet voice. “It’s going to be totally boring—Nisha’s throwing it. And anyway, didn’t Coach Maggie tell you she was practically going to put an ankle monitor on Sutton once she gets there? You have nothing to worry about.”

“Please?” Emma gave Mrs. Mercer puppy-dog eyes that matched Laurel’s. A week ago she wouldn’t have believed she’d want to go to something at Nisha’s house. But the truth was, being grounded kind of . . . sucked. It wasn’t that she was simply stuck in the house; Mrs. Mercer had taken away Emma’s Internet privileges, disconnected the cable box from Sutton’s room, and confiscated Sutton’s iPhone. After becoming accustomed to Sutton’s shiny, high-tech gear, the outdated, banged-up BlackBerry Emma had brought from Vegas wasn’t exactly cutting it. She had spent the evenings scouring Sutton’s room once more, searching for anything relevant to her murder, but there was nothing. The only thing left to do was homework. Sutton was probably rolling over in her grave.

If I was somewhere as boring as a grave. Which I highly doubted.