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Aria took a huge step back, clapping her hand to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Then Spencer shined the light on the person’s face. Even in the darkness, Aria could tell that Ian’s skin was a ghostly, oxygenless blue. One eye was closed and the other was open, as if he were winking. Dried blood pooled at his ear and his lips, and his hair was matted with dirt. There were big purple welts around his neck, as if someone had grabbed him hard and squeezed. There was something about him that seemed very cold and stiff, as if he’d been like this for quite some time.
Aria blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend what she was looking at. She thought about how Ian hadn’t shown up at his trial yesterday. The cops had run out of the room, vowing to find him. Ian could have been here all along.
Emily dry-heaved. Hanna took a huge step back, crying out. It was so quiet out in the woods, it was easy to hear Spencer’s shaky swallow. She shook her head. “He was like this when I got here,” she whimpered. “I swear.”
Aria was afraid to move any closer to Ian, and kept her eyes fixed on his immobile hand, almost certain he was going to spring up and grab her. The air around him was absolutely dead and still. Far off in the distance, she swore she heard someone giggle.
And then Aria’s cell phone, tucked inside her small, clam-shaped clutch, started to ring. She let out a small “eep,” surprised. Then Spencer’s buzzed, and Aria’s chimed. Hanna’s cell phone, which was nestled inside her now-muddy clutch, let out a bleat.
The girls stared at one another in the darkness. “There’s no way,” Spencer whispered.
“It can’t….” Hanna held her phone by the very tips of her fingers, as if afraid to really touch it.
Aria stared at her Treo’s screen in disbelief. One new text message.
She glanced back at Ian, his stiff limbs twisted, his beautiful face vacant and lifeless. With a shudder, she looked down at the screen again and forced herself to read the text.
He had to go.
—A
