“I’ve seen her with Celeste. I guess they’ve hit it off.” Emma took another sip of water and sighed. “Garrett doesn’t strike me as the mastermind type, though. Whoever did this has had to orchestrate a pretty complicated alibi—hiding Sutton’s body and her car, getting me to come to Tucson, watching me to make sure I was playing along. But Garrett couldn’t even pick a restaurant when we went out. He let me decide everything.” She twisted a lock of hair around her index finger so tightly it cut off the circulation. “Then again, maybe he’s just a really good actor. Isn’t that the thing with psychopaths? They’re manipulative, really good at putting up a front.”

Ethan raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t know my girlfriend was an expert on criminal psychology.”

Her lips twisted into a wry smirk. “If I wasn’t before, I will be by the time this is over.” Another thought popped into her head then, one that made her sit up straight. “You know, I haven’t been able to figure out how the killer got into Charlotte’s house that night he strangled me. But if it was Garrett . . .” She looked at Ethan significantly.

His mouth fell open. “He dated her before he dated Sutton.”

“He might have had the alarm codes,” Emma agreed, then paused. “And then he dated Nisha.”

They looked at each other uncertainly. And then Nisha died, too. The unspoken phrase hovered between them.

Ethan licked his lips. “If it was Garrett, that makes sense. Maybe she saw something while they were dating, and only figured it out two weeks ago.”

Emma sighed. “It’s all speculation, though, isn’t it? We don’t have any evidence putting him at the scene.”

“Yeah, but we definitely have enough reasons to suspect him,” Ethan argued. “In murder cases the cops almost always look at husbands or boyfriends first.”

Emma thought back to homecoming, when Garrett had cornered her in a broom closet to yell at her about their breakup. He’d been drunk, almost violent, twisting her wrist to hold her there against her will. And now she remembered something else—he’d mentioned Thayer. Everyone saw that fight between you guys just before he left. He loved you.

“What if he found out about Sutton and Thayer?” Her throat went dry at the thought. “He could have followed her to the canyon that night and caught them together.”

“That would be a real motive,” Ethan said.