“—just don’t understand how this could happen,” the girl was saying, wiping at her eyes. “Emma was my best friend.”

Before she could stop herself, Emma jumped to her feet, banging her knee on the table leg. Vibrations of pain shot up through her hip, but she ignored them.

The girl on the screen was Alex Stokes—Emma’s best friend from Henderson. The one person she’d been in contact with since coming to Tucson. She was standing outside of Sin City Java, where she was a part-time barista.

The Mercers gawked at Emma, alarm plain on their faces. She’d knocked her chair over, and she stood gripping the side of the table, her knuckles white. Her grandfather looked from her to the TV set, and then back to Emma, his eyes round and baffled. “Do you know that girl?”

Emma sat down slowly, shaking her head no, but they still stared. Laurel’s glass hovered halfway to her lips, frozen in midair. Mrs. Mercer gave her a worried look. Emma cleared her throat and forced herself to speak. “It’s just that that girl seemed to care about Emma a lot. No one else seems to miss her. It’s just so sad.”

Emma stared at her friend’s face. Alex was the only person from her old life who actually cared about her; she also happened to be the only person who could blow Emma’s cover.

Since coming to Tucson, Emma had been lying to Alex, just like she’d been lying to everyone. She’d told her friend back home that she and Sutton were getting along perfectly, that the Mercers had welcomed her to stay with them for a while. She’d been texting Alex on and off for the past three months—long after “Emma Paxton” was supposed to have died.

And now Alex could blow all of her lies wide open. All she had to do was mention the texts she’d gotten from her best friend, apparently from beyond the grave, and Emma would be through.

“We were joined at the hip,” Alex said. And then she looked directly into the camera, tears hanging from her long, dark eyelashes. “We used to meet at the rec center and talk for hours.”