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Jason opened his mouth as if to speak, but a shrill ring pierced the air. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I should get this,” he said, glancing at the screen, his tone apologetic. Aria gave him a wave as he turned and walked down the hill into the shadows.
Then she faced Ali’s headstone. Alison Lauren DiLaurentis. Nothing else. Had Ali known the night of the sleepover would be her last on earth, or had it been a spur-of-the-moment, I can’t take it anymore thing? The very last time Aria saw Ali alive, Ali had been about to hypnotize them, but Spencer had jumped up and tried to open the blinds. It’s too dark in here, Spencer said. It has to be dark, Ali argued, whipping the blinds shut. That’s how it works.
Then, when Ali turned, Aria got a peek at her face. She hadn’t seemed manipulative and domineering, but fragile and scared. Seconds later, Spencer told Ali to leave . . . and Ali did. She backed down, something she’d never done before, like her spunk and resolve had evaporated.
Aria knelt down in the grass, touching the cool marble of Ali’s headstone. Hot tears rushed to her eyes. “Ali, I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Whatever was going on, I’m sorry. ”
A jet roared overhead. The fragrant bouquet of roses next to Ali’s grave made Aria’s nose itch. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m so, so sorry. ”
“Aria?” a high-pitched voice called.
Aria jumped. There was a blinding light in her face. Her hands shook, and for a moment, she was sure it was Ali. But then the light shifted. A woman cop in dark-framed glasses and a Rosewood PD ski cap knelt down. “Aria Montgomery?”
“Y-yes?” Aria stammered.
The cop touched Aria’s arm. “You need to come with me. ”
“Why?” Aria laughed nervously, pulling her arm away.
The walkie-talkie on the cop’s belt bleeped. “It would be best if you spoke to the boys downtown. ”
“What’s going on? I didn’t do anything. ”
The cop curled her lips into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “What are you so sorry about, Aria?” She glanced at Ali’s grave, obviously having heard everything Aria had just said. “Is it because you’ve been hiding evidence from us?”
Aria shook her head, not understanding. “Evidence?”
The cop gave her a knowing, condescending look. “A certain ring. ”
Aria’s throat instantly went dry. She clutched her yak-fur bag to her chest. Ian’s ring was still nestled in the inner pocket. She’d been so busy trying to contact Ali, she hadn’t thought about it in days. “I didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Mm-hmm,” the cop murmured, neither interested nor impressed. She unclipped a pair of handcuffs from her belt and glanced at Jason, who was standing just a few feet away. “Thanks for your call, telling us she was here. ”
Aria’s mouth fell open. She whipped around and stared at Jason too. “You told them I was here?” she exclaimed. “Why?”
Jason shook his head, his eyes wide. “What? I didn’t—”
“Mr. DiLaurentis told the officer at the station everything he knew,” the cop interrupted. “He’s just doing his civic duty, Miss Montgomery. ” She wrested Aria’s bag from her hands, then placed her cuffs over Aria’s wrists. “Don’t be angry at him for what you did. What all of you did. ”
The reality of what the cop was saying slowly sank in. Could she really mean what Aria thought she meant? She whipped around to Jason. “You’re making this up!”
“Aria, you don’t understand,” Jason protested. “I didn’t—”
“Come on,” the cop blustered. Aria’s arms were now roughly bent behind her back. She could see Jason’s lips moving but couldn’t make out the words.
“And since when do the police take advice from psychos?” she exploded to the cop. “Don’t you know Jason’s been in and out of mental hospitals for years?”
The cop cocked her head, seemingly perplexed. Jason made a gurgling sound. “Aria . . . ” His voice cracked. “No. You’ve got it all wrong. ”
Aria paused. Jason sounded aghast. “What do you mean?” she asked sharply.
The cop grabbed her arm. “Come on, Miss Montgomery. Let’s go. ”
But Aria’s gaze was still on Jason. “What do I have wrong?” Jason stared, his lips parted. “Tell me!” she pleaded. “What do I have wrong?” But Jason just stood there, watching as the cop pulled Aria down the hill to the flashing cruiser.
Chapter 26
The Evidence doesn’t Lie
The trip from Lancaster to Rosewood was supposed to take two hours at the most, but Emily had made the mistake of getting on a bus that stopped at a couple of authentic Pennsylvania Dutch farms on the way back. It had then deposited her in Philadelphia, meaning she’d had to get on another bus to Rosewood, which sat in the station for an additional forty-five minutes before then getting stuck in jammed traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. By the time the Greyhound sighed into Rosewood, Emily had bit every fingernail to the quick and had torn a giant hole in the vinyl bus seat. It was almost 6 P. M. , and a cold, ugly sleet had begun to fall. The bus opened its doors, and Emily scampered down the steps.
The town was quiet and dead. The traffic lights changed from red to green, but no cars passed through. Ferra’s Cheesesteaks still had an OPEN SIGN in the window, but there wasn’t a single customer inside. The smell of roasted coffee beans wafted from the Unicorn Cafe, but the place was locked up tight.
Emily started to run, skidding down the shiny sidewalk, careful not to slip in her pathetically thin, tractionless Amish boots. The police station was only a few blocks away. There were lights on in the main building, where Emily and the others had gone when they’d figured out Mona Vanderwaal was Old A. The back of the complex, where New A had told her to go, had no windows, making it impossible to tell whether it was occupied. Emily spied a big metal door propped open by a coffee cup and gasped. A had left the door open, as promised.
A long hallway stretched in front of her. The floors smelled like industrial-strength cleaner, and an exit sign glowed at the far end of the corridor. The only sound was a faint, annoying buzz from the overhead fluorescent light, and Emily could hear every breath she took.
She ran her fingers along the edges of the walls as she walked, stopping at each office door to read the names on the plaques. FILING. MAINTENANCE. EMPLOYEES ONLY. Four offices down, her heart leapt. EVIDENCE.
Emily peered through the little window in the metal door. The room was long and dark, with a mess of shelves, folders, file boxes, and metal filing cabinets. She thought of the papers in that photo A had texted. The interview with Ali’s mom. The timeline of when Ali went missing. The weird paper from the Preserve at Something-or-other, which sounded like a swanky housing development. And, last but not least, the DNA report, surely saying the body in the hole wasn’t Ali’s, but Leah’s.
Suddenly, a hand clapped on her shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Emily jumped away from the door and whirled around. A Rosewood cop held her roughly by the upper arm, his eyes aflame. The EXIT sign above him cast eerie red shadows along his cheeks. “I . . . ” she stammered.
His brow furrowed. “You’re not supposed to be down here!” Then he stared at her harder. Recognition flickered across his face. “I know you,” he said.
Emily tried to back away from him, but he held her tight. His jaw dropped. “You’re one of the girls who thought she saw Alison DiLaurentis. ” The corners of his lips curled into a smile and he pressed his face close to hers. His breath smelled like onion rings. “We’ve been looking for you. ”
A streak of fear shot through Emily’s stomach. “It’s Darren Wilden you should be looking for! The body in that hole isn’t Alison DiLaurentis—it’s a girl named Leah Zook! Wilden murdered her and dumped her there! He’s guilty. ”
But the cop just laughed and, to Emily’s horror, began to handcuff her hands behind her back. “Sweetheart,” he said as he led he
r down the hall, “the only guilty one here is you. ”
Chapter 27
That’s Amore!
Mrs. Hastings refused to tell Spencer where they were going, only that it was a surprise. The large, turreted houses on their street swept by, followed by the rambling Springton Farm and then the upscale Gray Horse Inn. Spencer took her money out of her wallet and rearranged her bills by serial number. Her mom had always been a quiet driver, fiercely concentrating on the roads and traffic, but something was different today, and it had Spencer on edge.
They drove for almost a half hour. The sky was pitch-black, all of the stars twinkling brightly, everyone’s porch lights blazing. When Spencer closed her eyes, she saw that awful night Ali went missing. Last week, her foggy memory had conjured an image of Ali standing at the edge of the woods with Jason. But that vision shifted again, and the person she thought was Jason morphed into someone smaller, slighter, more feminine.
When had her mother finally come back to the house? Had she confronted Mr. Hastings about what he’d done—and revealed what she’d done? Maybe that was why he’d wired an exorbitant sum of money into the Alison DiLaurentis Recovery Fund. Surely a family that gave so much cash to the fund to help find Ali couldn’t be responsible for her murder.
Spencer’s cell phone beeped, and she jumped. Swallowing hard, she reached for her phone in her bag. One new text message, the screen said.
Your sister is counting on you to make this right, Spence. Or else the blood will be on your hands too. —A
“Who’s that?” Spencer’s mom eased on the brakes for a red light. She unglued her eyes from the SUV stopped in front of her and glanced over at Spencer.
Spencer clapped her hand over her cell phone’s screen. “No one. ” The light turned green, and Spencer squeezed her eyes shut again.
Your sister. Spencer had spent a lot of time resenting Ali, but that all felt wiped away now. She and Ali had shared the same dad, the same blood. She’d lost more than a friend that summer—she’d lost a family member.
Her mother veered off the main road and pulled the Mercedes into otto, Rosewood’s oldest and nicest Italian restaurant. Golden light shone from inside the building’s grotto dining room, and Spencer could almost smell garlic and olive oil and red wine. “We’re going out to dinner?” she said shakily.
“Not just dinner,” her mom said, pursing her lips. “Come on. ”
The parking lot was clogged with cars. At the far end, Spencer saw two Rosewood police cars. Just beyond that, blond twins climbed out of a black SUV. They looked about thirteen and both were dressed in puffy jackets, wooly white hats, and the matching sweatpants that said KENSINGTON PREP FIELD HOCKEY in collegiate-style letters down the legs. Spencer and Ali sometimes used to wear their field hockey sweats on the same day, too. She wondered if anyone had ever glanced at them and thought they were twins. Spencer’s breath caught in her throat.