by Sara Shepard
“I’d better get to school,” she mumbled, standing up and tossing her coffee cup into the chrome trash can near their seat.
Chase followed her onto the street, and they parted with a demure hug. “Call you later?” Chase asked eagerly.
“Definitely.” Spencer shot him a shy smile.
She kept the innocent look plastered on her face until he rounded the corner to the back parking lot. Then she pulled out her phone, scrolled to find Fuji’s number, and dialed. Annoyingly, it went to voicemail. Just like her six other calls to Fuji in the past twenty-four hours had.
“It’s Spencer Hastings again,” Spencer said after the beep. “I’m just checking about that extra security detail on my friend Chase—I’m really worried about him. Also, I think my sister might need one, too. And you got the Acura keychain, right? And my letter?”
Yesterday, because e-mailing was far too risky, she’d hand-delivered to Fuji a letter of connections and leads. Like how Ali and/or Helper A had been in New York a few months ago when Spencer, her mom, Mr. Pennythistle, and his son and daughter visited—Spencer had gotten an A note practically the second Mr. Pennythistle walked in on Spencer and his son, Zach, in bed together. Maybe Team A was staying in the Hudson Hotel, too. Perhaps it would be useful to search Amtrak passenger manifests from around that time. There were tons of avenues to investigate.
“Anyway, give me a call back when you can,” Spencer chirped. Then she hung up and turned into Rosewood Day. After parking the car, she trudged through the wet grass to the elementary-school swings, where she and her friends always met to talk—they hadn’t spoken about A in a while, and maybe it was time. Emily dangled languidly from a low swing, her long legs dragging on the ground. Aria pulled the strings on the hood of her bright-green jacket. Hanna checked her reflection in a round Chanel compact. It was one of those beautiful spring mornings where practically the whole senior class was lingering outside before the bell.
“So what’s the news?” Spencer asked her friends when she approached.
“Well, Sean Ackard’s now officially a stalker,” Aria mumbled. She gestured to a clump of kids on the stairs. Both Sean and Klaudia Huusko, the Kahns’ exchange student, were staring at them. When they noticed the girls looking back, they turned away fast.
“Maybe Sean likes you again, Hanna,” Emily teased.
“Or maybe it’s about those suicide rumors.” Aria looked at Hanna. “Sean gave me a pamphlet the other day for a support group at his church. He was looking at me like I was going to slit my wrists right there.”
Hanna rolled her eyes. “I’m getting sick of those rumors.”
Spencer cocked her head. “I wonder if the cops questioned Sean about Kyla.”
Hanna shrugged. “There were cops all over the burn clinic. They probably did.”
Aria scratched her chin. “Maybe Fuji slipped and admitted that Kyla was secretly Ali.”
Spencer twisted her mouth. “I thought Fuji wanted to keep that a secret. Not freak out anyone until they were close to tracking her down.”
“Well, maybe this means they have tracked her down,” Hanna said excitedly.
A dreamy smile spread across Aria’s lips. “Guys, can you imagine it? Ali behind bars. For real this time.”
Everyone paused, the fantasy sinking in. Spencer pictured Ali in a prison jumpsuit, stamping out license plates, guarded twenty-four hours a day. That bitch totally deserved it.
“Once they catch her, we’re going to have to do a lot more interviews,” Aria pointed out.
“Yeah, but cool interviews,” Hanna said. “Like on Oprah. Jimmy Fallon. Not the six-o’clock local crap where they don’t even spring for a makeup artist.”
Emily stopped swinging. “Speaking of the suicide rumors, has anyone told you they’ve gotten anonymous notes about us wanting to hurt ourselves?”
Hanna’s eyes widened, and then she nodded. “Mike did. And so did my dad.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know if it was from Team A, though, or someone just messing with him.”
Emily suddenly looked worried. “My sister got one like that, too. Saying something like we’re all really upset and we might go off the rails. What do you think that’s about?”
Spencer waved her hand dismissively. “It’s all over school that we have some sort of suicide pact going. It’s such a stupid rumor.”
“So you don’t think they’re from A?” Emily asked.
“Even if they are, does it matter?” Spencer asked.
Behind them, sirens blared. Four black SUVs raced up the drive, swerving around the buses.
Everyone on the sidewalk and in the Commons stopped and stared. Elementary-age kids dropped from the climbing domes and gawked. Teachers stepped out of their classrooms, their faces sheet-white. The cars screeched to a stop by the curb.
Spencer reached over and grabbed Aria’s hand. “Guys, maybe this is it. Maybe they found Ali today.”
The first cruiser door opened, and a tall agent who could have been Will Smith’s Men in Black body double stepped out. Spencer leaned forward, expecting to see Ali slumped in the backseat, handcuffs around her wrists, but the seat was empty. A second SUV door opened, and a shorter, chubbier agent, still intimidating in his mirrored sunglasses, got out and slammed it shut.
The agents strode across the lawn toward the girls, their faces grave. Spencer’s heart hammered fast. Whatever news they had, it was big. Serious.
Will Smith Look-alike stared hard at the four of them. “Spencer Hastings? Aria Montgomery? Emily Fields? Hanna Marin?”
“Yes?” Spencer’s voice cracked.
Aria squeezed her hand tight. Hanna’s lips parted. Spencer could feel the stares of her classmates. And at the curb, another figure stood by the SUVs. Agent Fuji. She had her arms crossed over her chest, and there was a proud, satisfied look on her face.
This is it, Spencer thought. They really did find her.
The second agent stepped forward. At first, Spencer thought it was to take her hand, but then he revealed a pair of shiny handcuffs. He quickly and deftly secured them to her wrists with a snap. Then he did the same to Aria. Will Smith cuffed Hanna and Emily.
“W-what the hell?” Aria wailed, jolting away.
“Don’t try to run, girls,” the second agent said in a low voice. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Tabitha Clark.”
“What?” Spencer shrieked.
“Us?” Emily screamed.
The first agent spoke over them. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law . . .”
The men pushed Spencer and the others toward the cars. Spencer’s feet tumbled over each other across the grass and the sidewalk. Fuji’s face loomed before her, her satisfied smile still there. “What are you doing?” Spencer wailed at her. “This is a mistake!”
Fuji sank into one hip. “Is it, Spencer?”
“What about the notes we gave you?” Hanna called out. “Everything we told you? What about A?”
Fuji removed her Ray-Bans. The expression in her eyes was derisive, absolute. “We retrieved IP information on every single text and e-mail sent from A. We dusted every postcard and handwritten note for prints. And you know what we found?”
Spencer blinked. Next to her, Aria shifted. “What?” Emily whispered.
Fuji stepped forward, drawing the girls into a circle. “Every one of those texts came from one of your phones,” she hissed. “Every note, every picture had only your fingerprints on it, no one else’s. The only A in your lives, girls, is the four of you.”
18
PRISON BLUES
Aria sat up like a shot and looked around. She was sprawled out on the floor of a dingy cinder-block cell. The fetid scent of urine and sweat wafted through the air, and she could hear angry shouts and swears through the walls. She was locked up.
“Aria?” It was Spencer, who was in the next cell over.
“Y-yeah?” Aria turned toward the wall.
“You were mumbling really loudly,” Spencer whispered. “Were you sleeping?”
Aria ran her hand through her gnarled hair. She must have passed out from fear and shock. She doubted she’d been out for long, though—light still streamed through the small window at the ceiling.
The past few hours twisted in her head like a tornado. After the bombshell at Rosewood Day, the police had shoved the four of them into separate cars and driven them to holding cells at the Rosewood jail.
It couldn’t be true. A had orchestrated this. Only . . . how? Once again, Aria relived the moment Fuji had told them that every single A note they’d received had been from their phones. It was like those dreams she sometimes had where she tried to dial an emergency phone number again and again, but the buttons kept disintegrating. She felt trapped. Helpless. Voiceless.
Aria glanced at the window near the ceiling of her cell. The light was dimmer; maybe a few hours had passed. Did her parents know about their arrest? Had the news picked up the story; was Aria’s face plastered all over CNN? She pictured Noel watching from his couch, slack-jawed. She imagined Asher the artist paling as he read a Google Alert, and she pictured her artistic future as a drawing on a chalkboard slowly being erased. She envisioned her parents and Mike getting a phone call and sinking to their knees, inconsolable.
Someone rapped at the bars, and Aria shot up. A familiar man in a well-fitting suit stood outside her cell. “Dad?” Spencer’s voice rang out from down the hall.
“Hello, Spencer.” Mr. Hastings sounded very serious.
“What are you doing here?” Spencer called out.
“My firm is going to represent you. All of you.” He looked up and down the cells. “My associate is with me, and he’s working on posting bail for all four of you. You’ll be out of here soon, don’t worry.”
Aria ran her tongue over her teeth. She’d never known Mr. Hastings well—even on weekends, he was always out doing something, whether it was going on marathon bike rides or taking care of the lawn or playing a round of golf—but he’d always seemed friendly and caring. He’d look out for them, right?
Mr. Hastings glanced down the hall, then leaned forward. “But we’d like to speak to you about a few things while we’re here. My associate Mr. Goddard is going to question you—criminal cases are more his area of expertise. But you’re in good hands.”
Criminal cases. Aria almost threw up.
“Anyway, they’ve allowed us a conference room,” Mr. Hastings said, clapping his hands. “We have twenty minutes.”
The door slammed, and there were footsteps and the jingling of keys. The bristly-haired police officer, Gates, appeared, unlocking the girls’ cells one by one. “Conference room’s that way,” he said, jutting a finger to the end of the hall.
Aria struggled to stand. Her legs felt cramped and weak, as though she’d been a prisoner for years instead of hours.
She followed Mr. Hastings into the small, square, cinder-block room she and the others had sat in more than a year ago, not long before Jenna Cavanaugh’s body was found in her backyard. It was very cold inside. A pitcher of water sat in the center of the table, a stack of plastic cups next to it. The room smelled vaguely of vomit.
Spencer walked into the room next, and Emily and Hanna followed. Each looked dazed, terrified, and exhausted. Everyone sat down without looking at one another. Mr. Hastings spoke to someone in the hall, and then a tall man with receding dark hair walked in. “Hello, girls,” he said, extending his hand to each of them. “I’m George Goddard.”
Mr. Hastings shut the door behind him. Goddard pulled out a chair and sat down. A few pregnant seconds passed. “So,” he finally said. “Let’s figure out what’s going on here.”
“How many times can we tell you that those A notes weren’t from us?” Spencer blurted. “They were from Ali and her helper. They set us up.”
Mr. Goddard looked conflicted. “The FBI—and the rest of the world—is pretty sure Alison is dead, girls.”
“But how do they know?” Spencer pressed.
“That I’m not sure,” Goddard said. “They just seem very certain that she’s no longer alive.” He looked back and forth at them as he undid the snap of his briefcase and pulled out some files. “Have you actually seen her? Have you been in touch with her?”
Aria exchanged a glance with the others. “We have her on a surveillance video,” Spencer admitted. “Or someone who looks like her, anyway.”
“Any other evidence she’s alive?” Goddard asked.
Everyone shook their heads. “But what about the note Hanna gave to the cops from the girl pretending to be Kyla?” Aria asked, assuming that Goddard had done his homework and knew who Kyla was. “Didn’t it have Ali’s fingerprints on it? And what about Kyla’s blood samples—didn’t they match Ali’s? Didn’t you find hair, skin, something?”
“Or how about Gayle’s house?” Emily pushed her matted hair off her face.
“Or that Acura key I dropped off?” Spencer pitched in.
Goddard looked through his notes. “According to the information the FBI has released, the only samples at the burn clinic were from the real Kyla, the girl who’d been murdered. As for the Acura key, the only prints on it were yours, Spencer.”
“It just makes no sense,” Aria said shakily. “Why would we send messages about our secrets to ourselves?”
Goddard shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. But their take on it is that you wanted to pretend you were bullied to garner sympathy.”
“Sympathy for what?” Hanna squinted.
“You wanted to make it look like someone was setting you up. Like someone was framing you for killing Tabitha.”
“Someone was framing us!” Emily cried.
Aria nodded fiercely. “We would never do something like that.”
Goddard pressed his lips together. “They have evidence that proves that perhaps you might be someone who would do that. Something about pushing another girl off a ski lift?”
Aria jolted up. The incident with Klaudia rushed back to her. How could Fuji have found out about that? But then it hit her: It had been in an A note. And Aria had handed over every single one of her texts.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
“They have eyewitness reports of how you attacked a girl named Kelsey Pierce at a school party a few months ago, too, Spencer,” Mr. Goddard said glumly, looking at his notes. “Beau Braswell is willing to corroborate this. And now Ms. Pierce is in a mental hospital.”
“Not because of me,” Spencer blurted. Her chin started to wobble.
Then Goddard looked apologetically at Emily. “Someone named Margaret Colbert can attest to your criminal behavior, too.”
Emily blinked. “Isaac’s mother? S-she hates me!”
“She said you tried to sell off your baby.” His voice rose at the end of that last sentence, like a question.
Emily wilted. Her face turned ghost-white.
Again Goddard glanced at his notes. “I’m sure they’re digging up people who think you girls are emotionally unstable.” Then he turned to Hanna. “They found out you stole from your own father’s political campaign to pay someone off.”
Hanna made an eep. “Did my father tell them that?”
“He didn’t need to.” Goddard pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was right there on your phone. That isn’t all they have on you, either. The police did a thorough investigation of the burn clinic after the deaths, including eyewitness reports about who was in and out of Graham Pratt’s room. According to quite a few people, you were the last one in there before he had his fatal seizure.”
Hanna backed up. “I didn’t kill him!”
Goddard nodded. “They think Graham might have seen Aria set off the bomb in the bottom of the ship. You had a lot to lose by keeping him alive.”
“I didn’t bomb that ship!” Aria cried.
“You already admitted you were down there.” Goddard looked tormented. “They’re even trying to c
onnect you to Noel Kahn’s attack. Mr. Kahn was apparently working with Fuji on the Tabitha case. You needed him out of the way.”
Aria pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “Noel didn’t send those e-mails to Fuji about the case—someone hacked into his e-mail account. Did Fuji even talk to Noel, or is she just making all of this up?”
Goddard shrugged. “Probably a little bit of both. And look, this is just the evidence they’ve shared with me. Who knows what else they’re holding closer to the vest, stuff they don’t want me to know.”
Hanna let out a breath. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t kill Tabitha. Someone else did.”
“How are they so certain we did it?” Aria asked in what she hoped was a calmer voice. “We worried that A would have methods of making us look more culpable than we were. And yes, we did push her—Fuji knows that. But by the time we got down to the beach to save Tabitha, she was gone. A dragged her somewhere.”
Goddard laid his hands on the table. “That’s what I really want to talk to you about, girls. A new piece of evidence came to light.”
There was a long pause. Hanna squinted. “What else?”
Goddard pulled a laptop from his briefcase. He lifted the lid and moved the mouse around to wake up the screen. A shaky, black-and-white surveillance image appeared. Waves crashed on a pristine, white beach. A large building with balconies at every window stood in the distance. The angle was different, but it was clear where this was: The Cliffs in Jamaica.
Spencer breathed in sharply. “Where did you get this?”
“This is official video footage from the Lychee Nut, the resort next to The Cliffs. The FBI received it late last night.”
Aria stared at the screen. After a moment, something fell from the sky, hitting the sand with an eerily silent thunk. Aria saw a limp head, a hand.
“Is that . . . ?” she asked, her voice quivering.
“Tabitha,” Goddard answered for her. “This is footage from that night.”
