True Lies: A Lying Game Novella (9 page)

A video slowly loaded. A handheld camera panned over a clearing. No sound escaped from the speakers, as if the microphone had been muted. The camera whipped around to show a figure sitting in a chair with a black blindfold covering half her face. A round silver locket on a thick chain clung to a bony, feminine collarbone.

The girl thrashed her head frantically back and forth, the locket bouncing wildly. The picture went dark for a moment, and suddenly someone slipped behind her and pulled the necklace chain back so that it pressed up against the girl’s throat. The girl’s head arched back. She flailed her arms and kicked her legs.

“Oh my God.” Clarice’s hand flew to her mouth.

“What
is
this?” Emma whispered.

The strangler pulled the chain harder and harder. Whoever it was had a mask over his head, so Emma couldn’t see his face. After about thirty seconds, the girl in the video stopped struggling and went limp.

Emma backed away from the screen. Had they just watched someone
die
? What the hell? And what did this have to do with her?

The camera remained fixed on the blindfolded girl. She wasn’t moving. Then the picture went momentarily dark again. When an image snapped back on the screen, the camera was tilted over, fallen on the ground. Emma could still see a sideways shot of the figure in the chair. Someone walked up to the girl and pulled the blindfold off her head. After a long pause, the girl coughed. Tears dotted her eyes. The corners of her mouth pulled down. She blinked slowly. For a split second before the screen went dark, she stared half consciously into the lens.

Emma’s jaw dropped to her worn Converse sneakers.

Clarice gasped loudly.

“Ha,” Travis said triumphantly. “I
told
you.”

Emma stared at the girl’s huge, blue eyes, slightly upturned nose, and round face. She looked
exactly
like her.

That was because the girl in the video was me.

About the Author

SARA SHEPARD
is the author of the #1
New York Times
bestselling series Pretty Little Liars. She graduated from NYU and has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Sara has lived in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Arizona, where the Lying Game series is set.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

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Copyright

Copyright © 2013 by Alloy Entertainment and Sara Shepard

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © 2013

ISBN 978-0-06-224015-6

EPUB Edition MAY 2013 ISBN 9780062240156

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FIRST EDITION