Free Never Have I Ever by Sara Shepard Page B

but eventually I made them more and more complicated until even I couldn’t solve them. I would get lost in those mazes. I imagined that they were a garden labyrinth I could disappear into forever.”
    Suddenly, she felt fluttering kicks underwater. She thrust her hand out, touched skin, and opened her eyes. Ethan was wedged in the corner near the built-in hot tub.
    Before Emma knew what she was doing, she touched a little shaving cut on Ethan’s chin. “Does it hurt?”
    Ethan blushed. “Nah.” Then he grabbed her waist and pulled her closer. Their legs collided and Emma felt the friction between their skin. She stared at Ethan’s dewy lips, the droplets of water on his eyelashes, the smattering of freckles scattered across his shoulders.
    Crickets chirped. The mesquite trees sighed in the wind. Just as Ethan leaned closer, Sutton’s necklace caught the moonlight and sent a glimmer across the surface of the pool.
    The water suddenly felt like ice on Emma’s skin. This was all happening too fast. “Um . . .” she muttered, turning and swimming away.
    Ethan twisted awkwardly, too, wiping water from his face.
    “ Ugh! ” I screamed at them. Talk about frustrating!
    Emma moved to the ladder. “We should probably get out.”
    “Yeah.” Ethan pushed out of the pool. He looked at the flower beds and the cone-shaped bird feeder that hung from a birch tree—anywhere but at Emma.
    They stood wet and shivering and almost naked on the deck. Emma wished she could think of something to dispel the tension, but her mind felt blank and waterlogged.
    A deep groan made her turn. Lights shone through the slats in the fence. A car idled on the street. Emma grabbed Ethan’s arm. “Someone’s here!”
    “Shit.” Ethan tucked his shoes and clothes under his arm and ran barefoot to the back of the block fence. Emma shimmied into her pajama pants, wrung out her camisole, and ran after him. He gave Emma a boost, then climbed over himself. On the other side of the Paulsons’ backyard was a dried-out creek bed filled with random sticks and rocks, tumbleweeds, and overgrown cacti. The Mercer house was to the left, but Ethan veered right.
    “I should get home,” he said.
    “You walked here?” Emma asked, surprised.
    “Jogged, actually. I like jogging at night.”
    The car’s engine idled on the street. Emma squinted in the darkness. The desert went on forever. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
    “I’ll be fine. Catch you later.”
    Emma watched Ethan until she could no longer see the reflective patches on the back of his sneakers. Then she followed the path to Sutton’s backyard, crept close to the edge of the fence, and emerged onto the driveway next to Laurel’s Jetta. When she looked over, she fully expected to see a car in the Paulsons’ driveway, maybe even Mr. Paulson prowling around the property with a baseball bat. But the driveway was empty. The newspapers lay in the exact same spots they’d been an hour before. No lights were on inside the house either.
    A cold, slimy realization washed over Emma’s skin. The car didn’t belong to the Paulsons at all. Whoever had been idling there, watching them, had been someone else entirely.

Chapter 11
Nothing Like a Threat at 2 A.M.
    A few minutes later, Emma scampered up the front walk of the Mercers’ house. The tree outside Sutton’s bedroom window didn’t have a low enough branch to climb back up, so the only way she could get back inside was through the front door.
    The key was under a large rock beneath a desert hackberry tree, just as it had been the first night Emma had entered the Mercer home. She slid it into the lock, praying that the Mercers hadn’t set an alarm tonight. The lock turned. Silence. Score.
    The door swung open easily, and Emma scuttled inside. The AC was on full blast, and goose bumps warped her damp skin. The glass panes over the family portraits glimmered in the pale streetlight. Detective Quinlan’s card sat on the console