Then he’s back, looming over me. He’s nothing but a dark shape blocking out the stars behind him. There’s a jagged, pointed rock in his hands. He holds it high overhead.

“If I can’t have you, no one can,” he says.

I close my eyes, but I can still hear it whistling through the air as he brings it down over my head.

Before I can even scream out, the world explodes in light—the grand finale of a summer fireworks display—and then, just as quickly, my world goes suddenly, finally dark.

30 - The Envelope, Please

30

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE

Emma stared down at the records in her hand. Written in black ink across the top form was the patient’s name.

Ethan Landry.

For a moment she thought about stuffing the paperwork back in the envelope, back into the Tampax box under the sink. She’d had the chance to look at this once before, when she’d broken into the hospital about a month earlier. But she had chosen not to invade Ethan’s privacy—and she still didn’t want to.

Ethan had been honest with her about the whole thing. When she’d asked him about the files, he told her the story: how his dad had been beating his mom, and Ethan had intervened, hitting his father over the head with a beer bottle—only to have his mother call the police on him. She’d reported him as “violent” and had him admitted to the psychiatric ward. Emma’s heart ached when she thought about it. In a way, Ethan had been abandoned by his family, just like she had.

But her eyes moved across Nisha’s note again. Sutton, I’m so sorry. She’d been so certain that the evidence Nisha found was some kind of proof that Garrett killed Sutton. But it seemed obvious from her note that Nisha had no idea Sutton had died. What had she called and texted so frantically about, then? Why had Garrett come to kill her if she didn’t have evidence against him? Emma’s fingers clutched the folder sharply. She didn’t understand any of this.

But I did.

“Get out of there!” I screamed, terror churning inside me. The whole world was upside down. My sister was alone in a house with my murderer—and she trusted him. She loved him. She didn’t suspect a thing.

Emma bit her lip. Whatever Nisha had seen in Ethan’s file had clearly freaked her out, even if it had nothing to do with Sutton’s murder. She glanced back into the bedroom. On the other end of the house she could hear movement, drawers opening and closing as Ethan searched Dr. Banerjee’s study. As quietly as she could, she shut and locked the bathroom door, and started to read.