Killer

Aria’s stomach churned. She had the same swooping feeling as the time when she was six years old and wanted to go on the big-kid roller coaster at Great Adventure. Her dad strapped her into the seat and pulled the big metal bar down over her chest, but as the ride was about to start, she was gripped with a searing panic. She’d screamed and screamed, making the amusement park technician stop the ride so she could get off.



Her friends blinked at her, waiting. As much as she didn’t want to discuss this, she had to tell them the truth. She took a deep breath. “That day we tried to take Ali’s flag, I cut through the woods to go home. Someone was coming the other way. It was…Jason. And…well…he had Ali’s flag. Before I knew what was happening, he was shoving it at me. He didn’t explain why. I knew I should’ve given it back to Ali, but I thought maybe Jason didn’t want me to. I thought maybe there was a reason Jason took it from her. Like he thought it wasn’t right that she’d found it so easily. Or that he was worried about what Ian said to her a few days before in the courtyard—that he’d kill her to get her piece. Or that maybe he liked me….”



Emily snorted. She held up the ledger from the upstairs office. “Or maybe he took it from her because he had problems.”



“I didn’t know what to think at the time,” Aria protested.



“So you lied to Ali instead?” Emily shot back.



Aria groaned. She’d known Emily was going to react like this. “Ali lied to us too!” she cried. “We’ve all kept secrets from one another. How is this any different?”



Emily shrugged and turned away.



“I meant to give it back to Ali, I really did,” Aria said wearily. “But then we became friends with her. The longer I didn’t say something, the more awkward it would have been. I didn’t know what to do.” She pointed again at Hanna’s flag. “I haven’t looked at Ali’s flag since the day I got it, but I swear there’s no frog on it.”



Hanna raised her head. “Wait. Aria—you still have her flag?”



Aria nodded. “It’s been in an old shoe box for years. When I moved my stuff to my dad’s house, I saw the box again. But I didn’t open it.”



Hanna’s face paled. “I had a dream this morning about the day we tried to steal Ali’s flag. I need to see it.”



Aria began to protest when she felt a buzzing on her hip. Her cell phone was ringing. “Hang on,” she mumbled, glancing at the screen. “I have a new text.”



Emily’s tiny clutch began to hum. “Me too,” she whispered. They stared at each other. Hanna’s iPhone was silent, but she leaned over Emily’s Nokia. Aria looked at her own phone and pressed read.



Don’t you girls hate it when your Manolos start to pinch? Me, I like to soak my toes in my backyard hot tub. Or sit in my cozy barn, snuggled under a blanket. It’s so quiet there, now that the big, protective cops are gone.—A



Aria looked around at the others, puzzled.



“It sounds like A is talking about Spencer’s barn,” Emily whispered. Her mouth fell open. “I talked to Spencer earlier today. She’s out in the barn…all alone.” She pointed at the words now that the big, protective cops are gone. “What if she’s in danger? What if A is warning us that something awful is going to happen?”



Hanna put her iPhone on speaker and dialed Spencer’s number. But the line rang and rang, finally going to voice mail. Aria’s heart pounded hard. “We should go make sure she’s okay,” she whispered.



Then Aria felt someone’s eyes on her from across the room. She looked around and noticed a dark-haired man in a Rosewood Day Police uniform by the door. Wilden. He was glaring at them, his piercing green eyes narrow slits, his mouth turned down. He looked as if he’d heard everything they said…and all of it was true.



Aria grabbed Hanna’s hand and started to pull her toward the side entrance. “Guys, we have to get out of here,” she cried. “Now.”



29



THEY WERE ALL SO WRONG



It was 9 P.M., and Spencer had been rereading the same paragraph in The House of Mirth for an hour and a half. Lily Bart, the scrappy, eager New Yorker, was trying to make her way in high society at the turn of the twentieth century. Like Spencer, all Lily wanted was to find a way to escape from her dreary, uncertain life, but also like Spencer, Lily was getting nowhere fast. Spencer kept waiting for the part in the book where Lily finds out she’s adopted, gets scammed by a wealthy woman claiming to be her mother, and loses the money in her dowry.



She laid the book down and gazed drearily around the barn apartment, which she’d retreated to as soon as she’d returned from New York. The fuchsia accent pillows splayed across the almond-colored couch looked washed-out and drab. The few bites of Asiago cheese Spencer had found in the fridge and eaten over the sink for dinner tasted like dust. In the shower, the water hadn’t felt hot or cold, just lukewarm. All of Spencer’s senses had been ripped away. The world was murky and joyless.



How could she have been so stupid? Andrew had warned her. All the signs that Olivia was scamming her were there. When she’d visited, Olivia hadn’t let them stop in the apartment, not even for a minute. And Olivia had struggled with that big file folder, conveniently forgetting it when she boarded the helicopter. She’d probably snickered once she was airborne, knowing exactly what Spencer would do. And to think Spencer had looked into Olivia’s eyes and thought they looked alike! She’d hugged Olivia tight before she left, finally feeling like she was connecting with a member of her family! Olivia probably wasn’t even her real name. And Morgan Frick, Olivia’s so-called husband, was definitely a fake. How could she have missed that? Morgan Frick was just the names of two New York museums sloppily shoved together.



The barn creaked and buckled. Spencer flipped on the TV. There were tons of shows in her sister’s TiVo, not yet watched. Earlier this evening, Spencer had heard a woman from the Fermata spa leave a message on Melissa’s machine, saying Melissa had missed her appointment for an oxygen facial today, and did she want to reschedule. Why had her sister left in such a hurry? Had that been Melissa in the woods yesterday, searching for something?



Spencer turned the TV off again, not interested. Her gaze wandered to Melissa’s bookshelves. They were piled with old textbooks from high school, among them the book she’d used for AP econ. Next to those was a leaf green Kate Spade boot box marked High School Notes. Spencer mustered up a small, sarcastic snort. Notes, as in the kind you passed back and forth in class? Prissy Melissa didn’t seem the type.



She pulled out the boot box and opened the lid. A blue spiral-bound notebook that said Calculus was on top. Melissa must have meant notebooks. There were smiley faces on the cover, and Melissa’s name and Ian’s name doodled over and over in flowery cursive. Spencer opened the notebook to the first page. It was filled with math problems, diagrams, and proofs. Boring, Spencer thought.



On the next page, a shock of green ink caught her eye. There were notes in the margin written in two different-colored inks. It looked like a conversation between two people, passed back and forth from desk to desk. Spencer recognized Melissa’s handwriting in black, and someone else’s in green.



Guess who I made out with at the party last weekend? said the first message in Melissa’s telltale scrawl. Below that was a bubbly, green question mark. JD, was Melissa’s answer. Then came a green exclamation point. And then, Naughty, naughty! That boy is so in love with you…



Spencer held the page inches from her face, as if studying it closely would make it clear. JD? Her brain scrambled for a logical answer. Could that stand for Jason DiLaurentis? The day they tried to steal Ali’s flag and Jason had stormed out of his house, he’d glowered at Melissa and Ian in Spencer’s backyard. He’ll get over it, Melissa had murmured to Ian later. Could Jason have been jealous that Melissa was dating Ian? Could he have secretly been in love with her?



She pressed her fingers to her temples. It didn’t seem possible.



There was a forceful knock at the door, and the notebook slipped from Spencer’s lap to the rug. Then, another knock. “Spencer!” she heard someone call.



Emily and Hanna stood on the porch, Emily in a long red gown, Hanna in a short lacy black one.



“Are you okay?” Hanna rushed into the barn and clutched Spencer’s forearms. Emily burst in behind her, carrying a large book with a dingy leather cover.



“Yeah,” Spencer said slowly. “What’s going on?”



Emily set the book on the kitchen island. “We just got a note from A. We worried something happened to you. Have you heard any strange noises outside?”



Spencer blinked, stunned. “No…”



The girls looked at each other, breathing sighs of relief. Spencer’s eyes landed on the leather book Emily was carrying. “What’s that?” she asked.



Emily bit her lip. She glanced at Hanna, and they both launched into the explanation of what they’d figured out earlier that day. They also said that Aria had run back to her house to retrieve Ali’s long-lost flag—it might hold a vital clue—and would meet them here. When they finally went quiet, Spencer gaped at them, stunned.



“Jason and Wilden know something,” Hanna whispered. “Something they’re covering up. We need to reach Ian again. All that stuff he IM’ed you about—that he had to run, that they hated him, that they’d found out that he knew—we need to know what Ian knows.”



Spencer bunched up a throw pillow in her hands, feeling uneasy. “What if it’s dangerous? Ian was driven out of town because he knew too much. That could happen to us too.”



Hanna shook her head. “A’s begging us to do this. A might ruin us if we don’t.”



Spencer shut her eyes, thinking of the big red zero on the balance line of her college savings account. A had already ruined her.



She shrugged and walked over to Melissa’s laptop, not sure what else to do. Slowly, she swirled the mouse around, jolting the screen to life. The computer was still signed on to Melissa’s IM account, and there were the online friends in her buddy window. When Spencer saw the familiar screen name, her heart began to pound.



“I can’t believe it. That’s him,” she said, pointing to USCMidfielderRoxx. This was the first time she’d seen him online in a week.



Hanna eyed Spencer. “Talk to him,” she said.



Spencer clicked on Ian’s icon and started to type. Ian, it’s Spencer. Don’t sign off. I’m here with Hanna and Emily. We believe you. We know you’re innocent. We want to help you figure this out. But you have to tell us about the conflicting evidence you hinted at when you were on my porch last week. What happened the night Ali was killed?



The cursor blinked. Spencer’s hands began to tremble.



And then, the IM screen flashed. They leaned forward. Spencer? the message said. The girls clasped hands. Another message popped up right after. We shouldn’t talk about this. If you know, you could be in danger.