“Can I swab your cheek?” She frowned, but he persisted. “I don’t want to go into details, but your sister’s body wasn’t in great shape when we found it. We just want to make sure that she is your biological twin. A quick DNA test will resolve the whole thing.”

Emma bit her lip. There was something about it that she didn’t like—Quinlan’s rapid-fire questioning had left her feeling vulnerable and confused. But there was no way a DNA test could incriminate her—she and Sutton would be identical, and refusing would seem suspicious. She nodded.

Quinlan extracted a Q-tip from a clear plastic tube in his briefcase. She opened wide, and he ran it along the inside of her cheek, peering into her mouth like a dentist. Then he briskly slid the swab back in the tube and slammed his briefcase shut.

“Wait right here,” he said. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes.”

With that he turned to the door and was gone.

An uneasy feeling descended on me in the silence left in his wake. I didn’t trust Quinlan. He was almost as crafty as I’d been. And now he was out of sight. But that also meant that Emma was alone—and he’d left the files on the table. It was finally time to see how I’d died.

17 - Body of Evidence

17

BODY OF EVIDENCE

Emma counted to ten, holding her breath so she could hear Quinlan’s movements as he went down the hall. A distant door opened and shut, and then there was silence. When she was sure he was gone, she grabbed the file that listed her own name.

She flipped it open—and immediately dropped it. The file landed on the table in front of her, gaping open. Paper-clipped to the inside of the folder was a photo of a skeleton.

Emma’s throat went dry. She’d known there would probably be post-mortem pictures in the file, but she hadn’t stopped to imagine what they’d look like. She couldn’t swallow; her tongue felt like sandpaper inside her mouth. But she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. What if there were clues the cops hadn’t known to look for? She had to see those pictures.

The body’s empty eye sockets stared straight up at the sky. Brightly colored leaves partially covered it, red and gold and brown. Scraps of skin still clung to the bones, and its long hair spread out behind it, dried out and bleached red by sun and exposure. The skull’s awful grin was a strange contrast to the faded pink hoodie still zipped around the corpse’s torso.