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“You’ve been lying to me. To everyone.”

She’s beenacting. Acting like she didn’t know about Fred and Simone. That she didn’t know about his debts. That she didn’t know about any of it, which means...which means...

“It’s more than that,” Tyler says.

“Youkilled them?” Oliver says. “José and Ken and Shawna?”

Emma blinks slowly and now I do recognize her. It’s what she does when she needs a minute to process. When she’s taking a beat.

“You think I overpowered a two-hundred-pound man and put him in a climbing harness after he was dead? And why would I kill Ken? Or Shawna?”

I hold my face in my hands, my brain whirring, whirring, whirring.

“It wasFredyou wanted to kill,” I say. “If Tyler told you about the cheating after you got engaged. No way you’d just let that go. ‘Trust but verify,’ right?”108

I work it through, the pieces of the puzzle clicking into place like they always do eventually. The solution is there in the things you’ve already experienced. You just have to know where to look.

“After Tyler told you that, you went looking and found his burner phone, didn’t you?”

She says nothing, and this is how I know I’m right.

I think I’m going to be sick.

But I can’t stop now.

“What would you do once you found that? It had those textson it, with Tyler, so you asked him about the money, right? And he told you?”

“Yes,” Tyler says. “I told her about all of it. That he was either broke or hiding assets.”

“And that he’d suggested Emma to play Cecilia?”

“Yes.”

“And then there were the meeting times on the phone. With someone else. You’d want to be sure about that, too. So, you followed him and you saw him with Simone. And it wasn’t innocent. Not someone telling off an ex who he could’ve talked to at any time on set without raising suspicion. And you knew you’d been betrayed. But it was more than that. Something pushed you over the edge. You figured something else out...Something clicked into place for you. What was it?”

I stop to figure it out. It’s so quiet in here you could hear a pin drop, and I hate that I have to break this silence. That I have to fill in the gaps and come to this conclusion but there’s nothing to be done about that.

CLINK.

“The Twitter feed. You found that on his phone, too, right? On his regular phone. He was tweeting gossip about you, making it seem like someone was out to get you. So why would Fred be taking up with you, marrying you, but still be with Simone? Why would he be tweeting about you? Making it look like someone hated you? A man with money problems. A gambler. And the script changes. The script moving away from it all being a scam to get Cecilia’s money to them having a happy ending, you saw what that meant. You figured out that they were planning on killing you.”

Again Emma says nothing.

“Why not just pull out of the film?” Oliver asks. “Break things off and leave?”

“She couldn’t. Not without damaging her career in a way that might be fatal. You can’t show that kind of weakness—especially not if you’re a woman. And it wouldn’t just be the shoot but also the press tour and having to do endless interviews about your love story gone wrong. And then, maybe a sequel...”

“Sounds unpleasant, but—”

“It’s more than that,” I say to Oliver. “I know Emma. It was the betrayal. Emma’s had a crush on Fred since she was a kid. He used that. He usedher. He wanted to killher. No. It was too much. He deserved it.”

“You think that?” Oliver says.

“Emma thinks that.”

Our eyes connect, and that silent communication that’s always been possible between us works as usual. I know this is what she was thinking. I know what she’s done.

“She didn’t kill José. That must’ve been Fred. And hedidtry to electrocute her in the hot tubs. But she knew he was going to do that. She was on her guard.” I pause, rethinking the scene. “She was going to put Harper’s phone in the water to ensure Fred hadn’t done anything to it.”