by Sara Shepard
In April, Ethan (age ten at the time) was seen playing with a neighborhood girl (age eight) in a culvert near their home in San Diego. A city worker who’d been assigned to clear a nearby drainage ditch testified that he witnessed Ethan strangling the girl, but by the time he was able to intervene, the girl had died.
When interviewed by police, Ethan claimed he had only been playing and that he had not intended to kill the girl. Due to his young age he was tried in family court, where he was acquitted of manslaughter. It was felt that Ethan displayed remorse for what he claimed was an accident, and that he hadn’t properly understood his own strength when roughhousing with the victim.
Emma felt like something was clamped down around her lungs, cold and metallic and painful. This wasn’t what Ethan had told her. For a moment she thought it had to be a mistake, or a joke. Maybe Nisha had been trying to get into the Lying Game and had mocked these up to mess with her. But somewhere at the back of her mind Emma knew the records were real. The papers shook in her fingers. She turned the page quickly, her breath short and hard.
Over the course of our sessions, Ethan confided in me that he had considered the deceased to be his “best friend,” but that she’d been playing with another child from the neighborhood just before her death. Again and again, he told me that “you weren’t supposed to have more than one best friend.” Ultimately, Ethan confessed to me that he’d killed Elizabeth Pascal on purpose, then lied to the authorities. Due to the double-jeopardy clause I am unable to make this observation to the court, as Ethan has already been acquitted.
Her mind reeling, Emma shook her head as if someone were reading the notes out loud to her. The shrink had to be wrong. She must have misunderstood what Ethan told him. The little girl’s death had been an accident, a mistake, and Ethan had been carrying this guilt for his entire life. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell Emma the truth. He must have been tormented by the memory. She kept reading, faster this time, looking for the words that would reflect her Ethan, the caring, thoughtful boy she had fallen in love with.
Ethan is incredibly gifted at playing to an audience. I have caught him in dozens of lies in the past six months, all engineered to manipulate my opinion of him. In our first sessions he seemed confused and saddened by what he had done; once he’d made sure I could not do anything to indict him, however, he couldn’t seem to resist telling me the details of what must now be called a murder. He has a need to show off and reveal the depths of his own cleverness, which in this case has led to his confession for a crime he can no longer be charged with. I am of the opinion that Ethan has antisocial personality disorder with obsessive tendencies, possibly bordering on psychopathy. It is likely that he will display violent behavior again.
She whipped through the pages of the report, looking for a note that said obviously this had been a huge mistake, that Ethan Landry couldn’t have hurt a fly. She tried to find the word CURED rubber-stamped across a page in green ink. But the transcripts attached to the report didn’t seem to challenge the doctor’s opinion. “If she wasn’t going to be my friend, she didn’t matter anymore. She deserved what she got,” Ethan said in one session. In another, he boasted: “The police officers in San Diego are stupid. They were really easy to trick. You’re actually pretty stupid too, Dr. White, but that’s okay. I like talking to you anyway.”
The taste of bile filled Emma’s mouth. Even as her brain spun, making frantic excuses and explanations—this wasn’t her Ethan, the shrink was wrong, the reports were fake—in some dark corner of her mind, thoughts were cascading into one another like falling dominoes.
Only Ethan had known she wasn’t Sutton. None of Sutton’s friends or family had figured it out. But Ethan, a boy Sutton barely knew, had confronted Emma that very first week in Tucson. You’re not who you say you are, he’d told her. You’re not Sutton. You’re someone else. She remembered, with a cold, sick dread, that she’d immediately accused him of killing her sister—how else could he have known that Sutton was gone? He’d recoiled as though she’d slapped him, his face gray. Sutton’s dead? he’d repeated, clearly shocked. And Emma—trusting, naive Emma—hadn’t questioned him again. She’d simply broken down and told him the whole story, desperate for an ally.
Another domino fell. Ethan lived across the street from the canyon. Ethan had a telescope that was always angled in that direction. Ethan had been positioned perfectly to watch Sutton on her last night alive—and to watch Emma arrive and leave her duffel bag on a park bench.
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?”
“No, nothing.” She knew as soon as she’d said it that she’d answered too quickly. Her voice was shrill in her ears. He blinked, staring at her strangely. Then he exhaled loudly.
“Whatever Nisha had on Garrett, I guess she hid it really well.” He glanced around the room. For a moment she could have sworn his gaze lingered on the cabinet. Then he looked back at her. “We just have to hope that the stuff in the storage unit is enough to put Garrett away.”
She nodded silently. Her insides felt stripped raw. Ethan stood before her, the same Ethan he’d been ten minutes earlier. The same Ethan who told her he loved her, who covered her face in tender kisses. The same Ethan she’d given her virginity to. But he’d never been that Ethan, not really.
He slid his fingers through hers, as he’d done a thousand times before. But now the touch sent a howl of panic sweeping through her. That hand had killed her sister. She fought to control the tremor of fear running up and down her body. She couldn’t let him sense it.
“Let’s go,” Ethan whispered. “There’s nothing for us here.”
“You’re right,” she said, and let him lead her down the hall.
Agassi crouched over his bowl, eating his kibble with a crunch that seemed loud in the silent kitchen. Ethan pushed the patio door open, then turned back to face her. For a moment her legs refused to budge. She stood frozen in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and staring, her heart hammering in her chest. For a split second she thought she saw Ethan’s expression shift, an uncertain frown flickering over his face. She swallowed hard, then followed him out the door.
Her only hope was to play along like nothing had changed and get to the police station. Once she was there, once she was safe, then she could start to think of a better plan. She forced a smile as they pushed back through the wrought-iron gate to where Ethan had parked his car. “I can’t believe this is almost over,” she whispered.
“Me neither.” He ran his fingertips lightly up her arm. She shivered at the touch, her throat constricting in a wave of revulsion.
Ethan opened the passenger-side door of his Honda. Panic ripped through me as I realized my sister was going to get in with him. I wished I could grab her shirt and pull her back.
Emma seemed to have the same thought—she paused with one sneaker on the footboard. Fear clawed at her stomach, but there was something else churning there too, a softer, sadder emotion. Ethan stood next to her, waiting to close the door for her the way he always did. He gave her a curious look. She reached up to put her hand on his cheek.
“Thank you, Ethan,” she said. And slowly, she stood up on her tiptoes and placed a single, soft kiss on his lips.
She didn’t know whether she had kissed him to lull him into a false sense of security—or to say good-bye.
Ethan gave her a long, tender look, his hand touching her lips. Then he shut the door carefully behind her, walking around the car to get in on the driver’s side. Emma clutched the sides of the seat as they pulled away from the house, her knuckles white and aching.
The scant houses they passed were draped in red and green lights, plastic reindeer perched on roofs or in Xeriscaped yards. One family had hung a giant neon candy cane over their four-car garage. The roads were winding out here, and she felt disoriented in the darkness. Emma’s stomach pitched with every turn, her breath shallow and fast. She watched Ethan from the corner of her eye. He drove with both hands on the wheel, his face washed out by the pale blue dashboard light. It gave him a spooky, alien look. Not quite human.
It only slowly dawned on her that something was not quite right—they should have hit a main road by now. She stared out the window, trying to figure out where they were. When she saw the neon candy cane for a second time, she turned to look at him.
“I think you missed the turn,” she said, her voice tight with anxiety.
Alarm bells started to go off at the back of my mind. I stared silently at Ethan. He didn’t take his eyes off the road.
“I know you found the records, Emma.” His voice was so low she almost thought she was imagining it for a minute. “You know as well as I do that we’re not going to the cops.” The car hummed into gear as he slowly pushed down on the gas pedal.
For a moment Emma’s eyes went out of focus, the world blurring around her. She could feel the car accelerating. Ahead of the car she caught sight of Nisha’s house, and Ethan’s next to it—but they weren’t slowing down. He was heading straight for the desert.
She didn’t think. She groped along the car door, her fingers finally landing on the lock, and wrenched the door open before he could react. Bracing herself, tucking her head against her chin and rolling up into a ball, she jumped out of the moving car.
The impact knocked her teeth against one another, the vibrations resonating through her skull. Gravel and asphalt tore at her skin as she rolled toward the ditch. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, her lungs flat in her chest. She heard the car’s wheels screech to a halt, yards away. There was no time. She scrambled to her feet, gulping for air. Then she started to run, blindly, desperately.
Ethan had circled the block—she would have sensed it if she hadn’t been so terrified. Now his house loomed in front of her. Next door the Banerjee house was dark and silent—but farther down the block there were lights in the windows. Strangers—but her only hope. She put on a burst of speed, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Help! Help!”
With a snarl of the engine, Ethan’s car cut across her path, between her and the houses she’d been running for. She stumbled, bouncing against the passenger-side door before catching her balance. The car idled in front of her, and she could just make out his face, tense and focused. He was inches away—if he wanted, he could jump out and grab her in a heartbeat.
She had no choice.
She bolted away from him—straight toward Sabino Canyon, with Ethan on her heels.
Just as I had the night he killed me.
31
ENDGAME
Emma ran blindly, hurtling into the depths of the canyon. Branches clawed at her ankles and whipped across her face. Ethan’s car door slammed somewhere behind her, but she didn’t turn to look. Adrenaline soared through her blood, and she flew into the trees beyond the parking lot. A crow screamed from the top of a boulder, warning the forest of her coming.
The trail was steep, and her sneakers knocked dirt loose as she climbed. Behind her she could hear Ethan scrambling for purchase, gaining on her. She whimpered, desperation coursing through her. It was like a nightmare—except in a nightmare, you could wake up.
The deeper she got into the canyon, the stronger I could feel its hold on me—the awful, magnetic pull that drew me there. Out here the world seemed sharper and more terrifying. But out here I also felt stronger, the senses that I shared with Emma somehow clearer. This was where my body had been broken. And now my sister was running toward the same fate. “Emma, you have to go back!” I screamed. “You have to get out of here!”
Tucson opened out below as she reached the overlook. Far away she could hear the rush of traffic, the thud of someone’s car stereo. She risked a glance behind her and saw Ethan’s form steadily following her. A strangled sob twisted her lungs, and she bolted again, trying to pick up speed.
Her foot caught on a half-buried root on the trail. For a moment she kept her balance, her legs dancing beneath her. But then Ethan was on top of her, tackling her to the ground. Her head bounced against a rock, and her eyes filled with stars.
When her vision cleared, she was gazing up at Ethan. He knelt over her, his eyes burning, his lips drawn back in a tight grimace. Then she felt metal against her neck, and looked down to see the edge of a knife in his hand.
The world tilted around me, and for a moment I couldn’t tell where my memory ended and Emma’s present began. They were one and the same. And now she was going to die . . . just the way I had.
“Why are you doing this?” she whispered. His hand dug into her shoulder where he pressed her down in the dirt. She wondered if this was how it happened with Sutton, if he’d chased her, pinned her, and thrown her off the cliff. A sob shuddered through her throat.
Ethan frowned and gritted his teeth. “I did everything, everything, for you. God, Emma!” The muscles in his neck tightened as he spat the words out. “I warned you so many times to stop digging. And you wouldn’t. It’s like some kind of sick compulsion with you, isn’t it? Why couldn’t you just be happy with the life I gave you? Why did you have to ruin everything?”
Emma stared pleadingly up at him. At the back of her mind she wondered fleetingly if Laurel was looking for her even now—but Laurel thought she was at the Banerjees’. No one was coming to help her.
“Why did you kill my s
ister?” she asked, desperate to keep him talking, to buy any time she could. “Was it because of the science fair prank?” The Lying Game girls had done something to Ethan in eighth grade that had cost him a scholarship. Was killing Sutton some kind of long-delayed revenge?
Ethan’s derisive snort echoed around the canyon. Nearby some small animal scrabbled away through the brush.
“That? That was years ago. That doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“What, then?”
For a second his expression shifted. His eyes softened, and he looked sad, regretful even. He shook his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen,” he said softly.
“Liar!” I shrieked, an electric rage spiking through me. Emma’s body tensed beneath his, and she closed her eyes, as if trying to hear something far away. I’d been able to communicate with her once before, the night that she met Becky out here. Could I do it again?
Slowly, Ethan pulled the blade away from her throat and sat back, though he kept the knife at his side. Emma could see it clearly now—a leather-handled hunting knife with a long, tapered blade, the moon catching on the polished steel. She tried not to stare at it.
“I loved her,” he said shortly, his lips curling with bitterness. “I came out here to tell her that. I thought I could make her see that we were meant to be together.”
A fresh wave of anguish crashed over Emma. Confusion and betrayal whirled through her head. He’d loved Sutton? Was that all he’d ever seen in Emma? Had he only wanted her as a substitute for the sister he couldn’t have?
Ethan stared down at Emma, but something in his eyes was far away and vague. For a moment she thought about taking her chance, trying to wrench free of him and run, but the sight of the knife kept her still. “I’d been in love with her for years, even though she treated me like garbage. I knew she wasn’t ready yet, that I had to be patient. Then I came out here that night, after everyone else had left her. After everyone had hurt her and lied to her and abandoned her.” His fingers curled into her shoulder as he spoke, digging painfully into her skin. “I thought for sure she’d see that I was the only one who’d been there for her all along. But all she wanted was Thayer Vega.”