Page 25 of The Engagement Party

Chapter Nineteen

Book Notes: Emily’s Diary

It’s not often you get to hear from the victim once she’s dead. Emily’s diary provided that insight. Her parents fought to get the writings back. To bury them. Made every argument about privacy and irrelevancy and, when those failed, insisted to the public the diary didn’t exist.

The contents were leaked to the press within four days of her death. The murder of a pretty college graduate in a place where that sort of thing rarely happened, where she should have been safe with her parents right there in the same town, proved too explosive to contain.

The pages of handwritten scrawl expressed a yearning for a change she doesn’t define or explain and has no idea how to make happen. Emily seesawed between wanting her parents’ approval and judging every belief they held. Not really an uncommon occurrence in a young twenty-something. The age called for wonder and exploration, for bucking against trends and the binds of upbringing. For believing you knew so much when you had experienced so little.

In many ways, the diary highlighted how similar Emily was to her peers. She had friends and the usual squabbles. She gossipedand got angry. She daydreamed and hoped for bigger things. None of that helped the investigation. The lack of flowery language or pages about nasty relationship breakups or bad dates left the police floundering . . . until they focused in on what the diary did say.

She mentioned many young men. Those she targeted for herEmily upgrade. They were categorized and described, as if she’d performed surveillance on them. Covert sightings. Ratings. Pro and con lists about choosing one over another. Rumors and histories about each. When she did pick one, pages outlining what they did together in excruciating detail, both sexually and otherwise, followed by plans on how to end each informal relationship on a positive note and move on to a new target.

The game she played made the grown men investigating her death squirm. Male college students engaged in this sort of behavior all the time, keeping scorecards about the women they had sex with and passing the information around for laughs. Doing so might be considered boorish or even disgusting, depending on how secretive the information stayed, but forgivable in aboys will be boysway. Stumbling over a young woman maneuvering the same path horrified every adult who knew.

Despite the moral judgments, all of Emily’s collected intel satisfied law enforcement’s need for a suspect pool. They couldn’t believe she’d played the game so well, with such finesse and experience beyond her years. She picked her playthings with insight, but the police decided she must have failed one time, and that person killed her.

The theory sounded good. It sure played well among internet sleuths. The more prurient the story, whether true or not, the more people talked about Emily. They reasoned that, maybe, shedid deserve it. After all, she wouldn’t be the first woman to act in such a way that the public concluded she’d invited her own murder. White upper-class college students usually didn’t fall into that category, but their logic assumed she could possess a hidden diabolical side. A rancid, rotten core thatasked for it.

Problem was, just as Emily didn’t fit the stereotype, neither did the young men in her diary. Most frustrating, they all could account for their whereabouts and produce witnesses to verify. Two had alibis for each other—Mitch Andersen and Jake Parker, two of Emily’s closest friends. Two from her most personal circle. Two with backgrounds that called out for a second look.

Both had suffered childhood trauma. Both fit the loner personality Emily was drawn to. Both had earned special attention in Emily’s diary. If Emily ever had a genuine crush, it might have been on one or both of these two. And they were with Emily on her final day.

Mitch and Jake became the lead suspects. Then the real investigative work began.

Chapter Twenty

Sierra

They’d stumbled over photos of Emily in a state where none of them lived, in a house they’d never been to. Butstumbleddidn’t really fit. The photos hadn’t been hidden. They’d been strewn around, specifically laid out for them to find. Taunting them until every question they meant to ask became jumbled up in a growing mass of fear and paralyzing stillness that kept them from creating a feasible escape plan.

After rounds of shrieking and shouting about the photos, they all hovered around the great room’s coffee table on the U-shaped sectional. Sitting when they should be swimming or at least running. Instead, they pawed through the pictures and ignored the danger lurking all around them. So methodical. So... practiced.

The rumbling inside Sierra blocked out any rational thought. She tried to make logical connections using the pieces she knew, but her brain kept blanking out. Every nerve ending fired until she was little more than a bundle of unspent energy. She had to hold a throw pillow in front of her and hug it to keep from bolting for the door... but to where?

Six of them trapped on an island. One of them a killer. A sicktwisted piece of garbage who thought killing and forcing them to look at a dead girl’s image was somehow justifiable.

The silence picked and poked until Sierra broke through it. She looked at Ruthie, the only other person in the room not touching the photos. “Were these on the third floor when you and Will got here yesterday?”

Will answered. “Of course not.”

Ruthie’s focus was on Cassie. “Don’t look at Alex like that. Will is telling the truth.”

Cassie stopped spreading out the photos and arranging them in a pattern only she could see. “You expect us to believe you walked the grounds and looked through the house yet somehow missed a running car in the garage and a third floor filled with photos?”

Sierra had the same questions but hearing them come out of Cassie’s mouth twisted them. She had a way of speaking that sounded more like condemning.

Sierra tried to ease the tension because Cassie and Ruthie taking verbal swings at each other would only add more drama to this adrenaline-fueled fire. “Hey, counselor. Ease up.”

Alex finally dropped the photos and leaned back against the sofa cushions. “Okay, but Cas’s question is a fair one.”

“We didn’t go to the third floor yesterday. We were on the second floor and realized how stuffy the house felt and went downstairs to turn on the air.” With each word, Ruthie seemed to crowd closer to Will on their part of the sectional. “I forgot we skipped that floor until Mitch and Sierra came down with all of these photos.”

Cassie shook her head. “Convenient. So was your comment when we first got here.”

“What are you talking about?” Will asked.

“Your fiancée told us that all the bedrooms were on the second floor. We had to pick from there. She specifically apologized to Sierra and Mitch for making them share a room.” Cassie lifted both hands. “Interesting, no?”

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