Time froze as Emma quickly rewound through the last four months, replaying every moment, every conversation with Ethan. How he’d fed her information and encouraged her to pursue different suspects. How he’d tried to keep her away from Thayer, and then Garrett. How desperate he’d been to keep her from Nisha’s house when she’d wanted to look for the evidence. How Ethan had arrived late to dinner at the Mercers’ the night Nisha had died—how he hadn’t been in school that day. And she knew he was an expert hacker.

Her heart froze over in her chest, hard and metallic, heavy with certainty. Ethan had killed Nisha. Ethan had killed her sister.

And now she was alone with him in a dark house.

Footsteps echoed in the kitchen, and she froze.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” came Ethan’s voice. It sounded strangely distorted, like it belonged to a stranger. Emma listened furtively, and then fumbled in her purse for the burner cell.

Her hands were shaking so hard she had to try a few times before she managed to dial the right number. When the line began to ring, she crammed her fist in her mouth to keep from letting out a sob.

“Hello?” Laurel’s voice cut through the dense silence. Emma flinched, covering the speaker with one hand. Down the hall she heard something clatter onto the tile. “Hello? Who is this?”

“It’s me,” she hissed. She cupped her hand around her mouth, her knuckles white around the phone. “Emma.”

“Emma?” Laurel’s voice shot up an octave. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

“Laurel,” Emma gasped, swallowing a frantic sob. “It’s Ethan. He did it, there are these files at Nisha’s house, and it sounds like he’s killed before.”

“Emma, wait, slow down,” Laurel instructed.

But Emma couldn’t stop, the words tumbling from her mouth. “I don’t know what to do. I’m alone in Nisha’s house with him . . .”

Emma trailed off as footsteps echoed down the hall. Her jaw started to shake. She fumbled the phone, then jammed her finger against the power button and shoved it into the depths of her bag. The file was still in her hands. She glanced wildly around the room, looking for somewhere to put it. Just outside the door, a floorboard creaked.

Quickly, she shoved the file back under the sink, back behind the Tampax box. As she stood up again and opened the bathroom door, she came face-to-face with Ethan.

“Were you talking to someone in here?” he asked.

“Just . . . just myself. It helps me think,” she said, clasping her fingers together behind her back so he couldn’t see them shaking. All she could think about was the file, inches from them both. She forced herself not to look toward the sink. “Did you find anything?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. What about you?”