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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 her 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.
