“Me, too,” he said quickly. “I mean, I want to go to college, too. I’ve got early applications in. I’m just waiting to hear back.”
“Early applications?” Emma was impressed. She’d be squeaking by at the last minute with hers, if she got them in this year at all. She bit the end off a strawberry. “Where are you applying?”
He shrugged. “University of Arizona, obviously. UC Davis, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA. Stanford is my long shot. It’ll depend where I get enough financial aid.” He frowned.
“Most of those are so far away,” she said, surprised. She knew she shouldn’t be shocked—Ethan was a good student, and he’d want to go to the best school he could. But she’d never imagined him leaving Tucson. The thought twisted inside her like a knot.
“Emma,” he said firmly, seeming to read her thoughts. “Before I met you, I couldn’t wait to get out of this place. I hated this town. It’s so full of people who watch you, and judge you. But—” He swallowed, fumbling for words, and took her hand. “I’ll go anywhere you want to go. If you want to stay in Tucson, we’ll make it work here. If I do get in somewhere else and can figure out a way to afford it, we’ll have options. And of course we don’t have to move in together if you’re not ready. I just want to stay close to you, no matter what.”
Her head swam. His eyes were so earnest, so full of tenderness, that she couldn’t find her voice. Instead she leaned toward him for another lingering kiss.
“And if the case isn’t solved by then,” he breathed into her ear, “maybe we can just run away. Maybe you could just come with me to school. You could work on applications while I’m in classes, and start the next fall.”
Emma smiled, picturing herself strolling across the main green at Stanford, a to-go coffee mug in her hand. She’d sit on a bench and read Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, waiting to meet Ethan after his philosophy seminar. When class let out, he’d give her a big kiss and introduce her to his professor as “my girlfriend, Emma Paxton.”
“I can keep you safe, Emma,” Ethan went on. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
His words brought her crashing down to earth. She pulled back sadly, shaking her head, the spell suddenly broken. “You know I can’t leave Tucson, not while the person who hurt my sister is still out there.” It was completely dark now, the sky bright with stars and the thin crescent of the moon. She looked out across the black expanse of the desert. “When I first started this, I was just trying to survive. But now … I feel like I know Sutton, Ethan. I know it sounds weird, but I feel like she’s here sometimes, still with me, cheering me on. I love her, and I can’t let her down. She deserves justice.” She shook her head again. “I’m either going to solve this thing, or I’m going to die trying.”
I felt my whole being fall very still. No one had ever made a promise like that for me, risked death for me. For once I was glad that Emma couldn’t hear my thoughts. I wasn’t sure I could find the words to tell her how grateful I was.
In the flickering candlelight, Emma saw that the color had drained from Ethan’s face. “Don’t talk like that,” he whispered. “I don’t want to think about anything bad happening to you. I couldn’t take it.”
His hand trembled in hers, and Emma suddenly realized that he had never really processed the danger she was in, had never really understood that a murderer was watching her. Watching them, she thought, remembering what had happened at the Old Tucson Movie Studios.
“Everything is so complicated right now,” she said soothingly. “Let’s see what happens—when the Mercers find out who I am, when you get all those college acceptance letters, when I figure out if I even have time to apply. We can’t decide anything until then, anyway.”
He nodded slowly. “Are there any new leads?”
She shook her head. “No, but I need to find out more about Becky.” She tried to speak firmly, but her voice caught. “I mean, she can barely brush her hair. Could she really put together a scheme like this—kill one of us, make me take Sutton’s place, break into Charlotte’s house to strangle me, somehow trail me all over the place without my noticing? It’s complicated even if you are all there.”
Ethan spoke hesitantly. “She definitely sounds unpredictable.”