Toxic

by Sara Shepard

  Spencer dropped down beside her. “Aria!” she hissed. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Maxine Preptwill,” Aria repeated in a whisper as the room started to spin. She knew that name. It was the secret code name Noel and Ali had used to communicate when Ali was in The Preserve.

  Ali had been behind Aria’s success all along. And now she was behind her downfall.

  27

  MEOW MEOW MEOW!

  Spencer picked Aria up off the floor and helped her out of the bathroom. For a few minutes, Aria was unable to talk, so they sat on a bench away from the noise while Spencer rubbed her back. Finally, Aria told her everything.

  “It was Ali,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “She was the assistant on the line with my mom that day in the gallery—well, either her or an Ali Cat, in case she thought Ella would recognize her voice. And the money came from her account. Nick has so much money. He must have left her some.”

  Spencer swallowed hard. It didn’t seem fair that Ali had a hundred thousand dollars to throw around willy-nilly. “Maybe we could trace the bank account,” she said. “That could lead us back to her, right?”

  “Or it will lead us to another Ali Cat who won’t talk,” Aria grumbled.

  Spencer thought about Dominick again. Maybe he’d been the assistant on the line.

  “Hey.”

  Greg stood above them, dressed in a crisp blue oxford and dark khakis. “Hi!” Spencer cried, jumping up. “Y-you’re here!”

  His gaze fell to Aria, who now was bent over, head in her hands. “Am I interrupting?” he asked softly.

  Spencer smoothed down her skirt. “Greg, this is my friend Aria. Aria, Greg. We met at the anti-bullying taping.”

  Aria raised her head and shook his hand limply. Then she slumped back on the seat, saying nothing. An awkward few seconds passed, and then Spencer said, “Aria, why don’t we get food.”

  “No,” Aria answered in monotone, staring straight ahead. “Go. Have fun. Enjoy life while you can.”

  Spencer pulled her bottom lip into her mouth. After a moment, she turned to Greg. “I’ll be right back.”

  She took Aria by the arm and walked her through the crowd toward the girls-of-honor table at the front—Hanna was still there, talking to a tall guy in an expensive-looking blazer who must have been Aria’s blogger date. But Aria shook her head. “Do you know where my dad is?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Of course,” Spencer said, putting an arm around Aria’s shoulder and guiding her to Byron and Meredith’s table at the back. Meredith looked worried when she saw Aria’s stricken face. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Boy troubles,” Spencer said, patting Aria on the shoulder and gently sitting her down. It was the perfect excuse.

  Once Aria was safely surrounded by her family, Spencer returned to Greg, who was still waiting in the hall. “Let’s grab something to eat,” she said, leading him toward the buffet room. The line for food was about twenty people long. At the front, a woman dripping in diamonds sloppily spooned pasta sauce on her plate. One of her mom’s friends, heavily Botoxed and looking rigid in a Chanel suit, plucked a canapé from a silver tray with her fingers. Sometimes, Spencer thought, rich people could be awfully uncivilized.

  Greg took his place behind Spencer, but his gaze quickly found Aria at her dad’s table. “Is she really okay?”

  “Sure,” Spencer answered hurriedly, grabbing a plate and silverware from the stack. She didn’t want to go into any more Ali stuff right now. “So how was traffic? You have any trouble finding the place?”

  “I had GPS.” Greg craned his neck, seemingly still searching for Aria in the hall. “Does she think Ali’s after you guys, too?”

  Spencer winced at the mention of Ali’s name. She pointed at a large tureen, desperate to change the subject. “Ooh, their French onion soup is amazing. You have to try some.”

  She handed Greg a bowl, but he kept his arms at his sides. “I’m not an idiot, Spencer. Something happened, didn’t it?” He moved closer. “What is it? I want to help.”

  Spencer shut her eyes. It felt so good to hear someone else offer their help, but she didn’t want to involve Greg more than she had to. What if Ali came after him? “It’s nothing,” she whispered.

  “It’s not nothing. It’s something with Ali, right?”

  Spencer looked around carefully, but all the glammed-up moms and golfer dads were too busy loading their plates with honey-glazed ham and salmon to notice the conversation she was having. All she’d wanted were a few Ali-free hours. But she could tell by the way Greg was looking at her that he wasn’t going to let this drop.

  She placed the empty soup bowl back on the stack and took his hand. “I can’t talk here.”

  She led Greg down a maze of halls and into a quiet bar with a fireplace, where she and Ali used to come after long summer days at the pool. There was an old bartender named Bert who’d leave his post for long stretches of time to use the bathroom across the hall; they would sneak themselves secret nips of vodka or white wine while he was gone. Today, not a single soul was inside except for an unfamiliar, younger bartender toweling off some martini glasses. He nodded at Spencer and Greg, then returned his gaze to the baseball game on the TV screen.

  She sat on the leather couch in front of a roaring fire—a little unnecessary, given how warm it was outside—and Greg sat, too. Spencer looked at him for a long time. “Ali is closing in on us,” she finally admitted in a low voice.

  Greg blinked. “What do you mean?”

  She told him about the prison murder and Aria’s painting scandal. “Maxine Preptwill was a secret name Ali used to use,” she said. “She knew that we’d recognize it but no one else would. It’s, like, a code.”

  Greg nodded, the worried creases on his forehead growing deeper. “Maybe you can trace the account?”

  “That’s what I suggested.” Spencer shrugged. “I guess we could try.”

  Greg took her hand and held it tight. “That’s not all, though. Is it?”

  Outside the room, a bunch of kids thundered past, balloons that said ROSEWOOD RALLIES! trailing behind them. The chlorine smell of the indoor pool at the very end of the building suddenly wafted into her nostrils. Spencer sighed deeply. “It’s about Dominick,” she whispered. “He’s an Ali Cat. I’m sure of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because . . . I just do.”

  He set his jaw and stared into the fire. “This isn’t going to work unless you actually talk to me, Spencer.”

  She stared at her palms. “We tracked Ali down to a property about an hour from here. She was definitely there—the inside smelled like vanilla soap, which is so utterly her. It was more than that, too. We just felt . . . a presence.”

  Greg’s eyes widened. “She’s living in a house?”

  “In a pool house in the back of Nick’s family’s property in Ashland. We went inside, but Ali wasn’t there. So we decided to monitor the place with cameras connected to a wireless feed. We made sure to hide them really carefully, so she wouldn’t know.”

  Greg’s head shot up.

  “There are . . . cameras?”

  Spencer wasn’t sure what to make of his horrified reaction—placing the cameras hadn’t seemed that dangerous. “I camouflaged them with leaves. You can’t see them from the ground at all. And there are no wires—they run on solar batteries. There’s really no way for anyone to tell they’re there unless they’re really looking.”

  Greg ran his hand over the top of his head. “I can’t believe you got that past her.”

  She hugged her arms to her chest. “Well, I think we did. We’ve been watching it day and night, and so far, Ali hasn’t taken them down or come back. But . . . someone was there.” There was a lump in her throat. “Dominick. I’m almost positive.”

  She told him about chasing Dominick down the other night. Greg sat back. His eyes were kind of glazed. “And what do you think Dominick was doing there?”

  “I w
atched the tape again. It looked like he was waiting for someone.” Her mouth twitched. “Maybe Ali.”

  Greg nodded faintly, then stared at his phone in his lap. It pinged, and he tapped on it, answering a text as casually as if they’d been talking about the weather. But a muscle twitched in his jaw. Spencer wondered if he was really upset. Maybe he was really angry that she’d taken such crazy risks. Or maybe he was upset she hadn’t told him before.

  “Look, I know you don’t want me to handle this on my own, but I have no choice,” she said. “No one is listening to us. No one wants to help. We have to catch her.” She shook her head. “But now with this whole Ali Cat wrinkle, I’m starting to wonder. What if the Ali Cats are the people we need to worry about? What if they’re behind everything, and Ali really is dead?”

  “Oh, she’s not dead.”

  Spencer flinched. Greg’s face was in profile, lit orange by the fire. “Pardon?” she asked.

  He turned to face her. His expression was oddly placid, no longer freaked or worried. “I said, she’s not dead,” he repeated, cracking a smile. “And she’s definitely coming for you.”

  Spencer’s heart jumped. She pulled her hand away from Greg’s and shifted back on the couch. “W-what?”

  Greg smiled blandly. “I have to thank you, Spencer. I wondered if there were cameras. I was thinking about that when I was there yesterday.”

  Spencer blinked hard. Her mind scrambled for a foothold. “What do you mean, yesterday?”

  He draped his arm over the back of the couch. “That wasn’t Dominick you saw at the pool house. Dominick doesn’t even exist.”

  Spencer shot to her feet, feeling sick. “O-of course Dominick exists. He’s been sending me emails. I saw him, at the panel discussion in New York.”

  Greg just smiled. “That was a friend I asked to help me out for the night. And those emails? I wrote them.” He cast his gaze to the sky. “You think you’re so awesome, but you’re not. You’re nothing but a poser, and pretty soon, people are going to figure you out.”

  Her heart was pounding fast. She took a step away from him. “You’re Dominick? Why?”

  “Because I needed you to trust me, to create a threat so that you would let me in.” He crossed his arms over his chest proudly. “And it totally worked. You’ve told me what I need to know.”

  Spencer felt her stomach drop, just like it had the time her car hydroplaned during a rainstorm and she’d nearly crashed into a guardrail. “You’re the Ali Cat,” she whispered.

  He grinned. “She’ll love me so much for this.”

  She. Spencer knew it was coming, but she clapped her hand over her mouth all the same.

  Greg rose from the couch and stepped toward her, the same weird smile on his face. Spencer darted back, almost bumping into the fireplace. She moved to the right, narrowly avoiding a wooden credenza. Greg followed her, his shoulders squared and his eyes cold. With one lunge, he could tackle her to the ground. What was he capable of? What had Ali ordered him to do?

  “You know Ali,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You’ve actually talked to her.”

  Greg shook his head. “Never directly. But yes. And I love her.”

  “Why?” Spencer almost shrieked.

  “Because she’s fascinating. And elusive. And beautiful.”

  It was the craziest thing Spencer had ever heard. “And all this time . . . that’s why you wanted to get to know me?” Tears filled her eyes. “Because she asked you to?”

  Greg snorted. “She told me you’d get attached like this. She said you were emotional.”

  She told me. She said. As if Ali really knew what Spencer was like. But it hurt—because Ali was right. She had gotten attached. All her promises not to trust anyone again, all her vows to be careful, and she’d stepped right into Ali’s wide-open jaws. Ali had known Spencer was lonely. She’d known she was looking for someone to bolster her ego. It was like she’d engineered Greg herself, programmed him so that he’d hit Spencer in all her soft spots.

  Then something else hit her. Finally, here was someone who actually knew something. Slowly, carefully, she felt in her pocket for her phone. She had to call the police. Her fingers fumbled. She tried her hardest to dial 911.

  The phone rang. Then she heard someone say, “What’s your emergency?”

  Spencer looked at Greg. “Tell me how you contacted Alison DiLaurentis. And tell me where she is now.”

  Greg burst out laughing. “Spencer, I’m not a fool.” With lightning-quick reflexes, he grabbed her phone from her pocket, ran into the hall, and tossed it into a large fountain. There was a loud splash, and then it sank to the bottom.

  “Hey!” Spencer shrieked, plunging her hands into the cold water. Water dripped off the phone as she pulled it to the surface. The screen was dead, the 911 call disconnected.

  Someone gasped behind her, and she whipped around. A little boy with a blue balloon that said ROSEWOOD RALLIES! stood in the hall, his eyes wide. “Is your phone dead?”

  Spencer looked down the hall, her heart racing. Greg was gone.

  “Where did the guy I was talking to go?” she asked the little boy. He just looked at her blankly, then went back to batting his balloon in the air.

  This couldn’t be happening. Spencer sprinted down the hall wildly, tripping in her heels. “Greg!” she called out. She ran to the long windows that looked out on the golf course, thinking she’d see him disappearing over a hill.

  But he had vanished completely. And taken her secrets with him.

  28

  LOOP-DE-LOOP

  “There’s our final girl of the hour!” a woman in a tweed suit crowed, taking Emily’s hand and leading her farther into the country club’s lobby. “Emily Fields, I’m Sharon Winters! What a pleasure! Come in, my dear! Have some punch!”

  Emily glanced nervously over her shoulder at her parents, who’d walked her in, but they were already talking to someone from her mother’s welcome wagon committee. Some support they were.

  She peeked surreptitiously at her cell phone in her purse. The surveillance feed was up on her screen, the same four shots of the house unchanged except for an occasional leaf pressing up against the windows. It would be just her luck, though, that something would happen there the second she looked away. Spencer had seen someone on the cameras. That same person—or someone else—could come back.

  Sharon continued to drag her into the ballroom. Emily looked around. A DJ table had been set up at the far end, and dance music pumped out of gigantic speakers. Tons of kids Emily recognized from high school were waving their arms in the air and grinding on one another. Just looking at their carefree faces made Emily want to turn around and never come back.

  But Sharon’s grip was too forceful. “Here’s Hanna!” she chirped, pointing to a long table at the other side of the ballroom. Hanna was the only one sitting at it, punching desperately at her phone’s keyboard.

  Emily broke away from the woman and walked over to her friend. Hanna looked up at her miserably, then pushed a plate of cookies toward her. “Sharon brought these for us. But there’s no way I can eat.” She gazed forlornly around the room, then at her hands. “Mike’s not speaking to me. Everything is a mess.”

  Emily couldn’t think about eating right then, either. “How long have you been here?” she asked Hanna.

  “About an hour. I don’t know where Aria went—her date went to look for her.” She sighed. “I tried texting Spencer, but I haven’t heard from her, either.”

  Emily checked the surveillance images once more—nothing. Then she looked around the room. She didn’t see any signs of the other two girls anywhere. Her gaze locked on a large banner near the DJ that said WE LOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN ROSEWOOD! There were pictures of places around the town: the shops on Lancaster Avenue, the covered bridge, the fall foliage, the Hollis spire. As Emily looked at the images, she realized she had a negative association with each one of them. She’d received texts from A by the Hollis spire and outsid
e the shops. She remembered kicking through a pile of fallen leaves last fall, still trying to process that Ali, her old friend, had tried to kill them. And she’d tried to kill herself by jumping off the covered bridge.

  “I hate everything and everyone in Rosewood,” she whispered, realizing she pretty much meant it. Aside from her friendships with Spencer, Aria, and Hanna, she would have no warm and fuzzy memories to take with her when she left. Living here, experiencing what she had with A, had ripped away years of her life.

  She stared around at all the dancing kids in their Marc Jacobs dresses and Jimmy Choo heels. They didn’t understand what Emily had gone through—not at all. And they probably never would. Why did they get to have happy lives? Why did they get to love and laugh and enjoy themselves, when all she faced was painful experience after painful experience?

  Ali so deserved to pay for this.

  “Emily!” Mrs. Fields was racing toward her, her cheeks flushed pink. She held a short-haired girl by the wrist. “This is Melodie. Melodie, Emily! I know her mother! And Melodie’s working at the country club this summer as the junior women’s golf coach and the assistant groundskeeper!” Emily’s mom turned to Melodie and smiled hopefully. “I think you guys have some, um, common interests.”

  “H-hi?” Emily said uncertainly, annoyed that her mom was forcing her to make a friend right now. Why on earth would her mom think she’d want to meet this girl? But then she noticed how Melodie was checking her out, her eyes grazing the neckline of her dress. Emily’s whole body flushed hot. Common interests. Was her mother actually trying to set her up?

  Emily couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. She stood up awkwardly and backed away. “It’s really nice to meet you, Melodie, but I have to do something right now.”

  Melodie’s face drooped. “Emily!” Mrs. Fields called out. But Emily didn’t turn back. She whipped blindly past kids in her class, fumbling for an exit. Across the room, she noticed Spencer in the doorway, a panicked, nervous look on her face. But Emily couldn’t go to her right then. She needed a few minutes alone.