Heartless (23 page)

“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 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.

“Mom,” she said, her voice cracking.

Her mother turned. “Yes?”

Say something,
a voice in Spencer’s head screamed. But her mouth felt welded shut.

“There she is!” Two figures were illuminated by floodlights across the parking lot, waving wildly at them. Mr. Hastings had changed from his work clothes into a blue polo shirt and khakis. Next to him, Melissa smiled primly, wearing a blue tulip-skirt dress and clutching a satin purse under her elbow. “Sorry I didn’t call you back,” her sister said as Spencer approached. “I was afraid if we talked, I’d ruin the surprise!”

“Surprise?” Spencer bleated weakly, distracted. She glanced at the police cars in the lot again.
Say something,
a voice in her head screamed.
Your sister is counting on you.

Mrs. Hastings started toward the door. “Well? Should we go in?”

“Absolutely,” Mr. Hastings agreed.

“Wait!” Spencer cried.

Everyone stopped and turned. Her mother’s hair looked glossy under the lot’s fluorescent floodlights. Her dad’s cheeks were red from the cold. They were both smiling expectantly at her. And suddenly, Spencer realized her mother had no idea what Spencer was about to say. She hadn’t seen the photo of Mrs. DiLaurentis that Spencer was holding. She hadn’t known what Spencer and Ian had been IMing about just seconds before that. For the first time ever, Spencer felt sorry for her parents. She wished she could throw a blanket over them and protect them from this. She wished she’d never found this out in the first place.

But she had.

“Why did you guys do it?” she said quietly.

Mrs. Hastings took a step forward, one of her high heels making a solid
clunk
against the stone walkway. “Why did we do what?”

Spencer noticed then that cops were sitting inside the cars. She lowered her voice, directing her words at her mom. “I know what happened the night Ali died. You found out about dad and Mrs. DiLaurentis’s affair—you saw them at Ali’s house. And you found out how Ali was my . . . was Dad’s—”

Mrs. Hastings head jerked back like she’d been slapped. “
What?
”

“
Spencer!
” Mr. Hastings cried, appalled. “What the hell?”

The words were spilling out now. She barely even noticed that the wind had picked up and was biting into her skin. “Did it start when you were in law school together, Dad? Is this why you never told us that Mr. DiLaurentis was a student at Yale the same time you were—because something between you and Jessica had happened then, too? Is that why you never spoke to Ali’s family?”

Another car pulled into the lot. Her father didn’t respond. He just stood in the middle of the parking lot, bobbing ever so slightly back and forth like a buoy. Melissa dropped her clutch and bent quickly to retrieve it. Her mouth was open and her eyes looked glassy.

Spencer turned to her mother. “How could you have hurt her? She was my
sister.
And, Dad, how could you cover it up when she was your daughter?”

The bones in Mrs. Hastings’s face seemed to turn to ash. She blinked slowly, as if she’d just woken up.

She turned to her husband. “You and . . .
Jessica?
”

Spencer’s father opened his mouth to speak, but only a few unintelligible syllables came out.

“I knew it,” Mrs. Hastings whispered. Her voice was eerily calm and steady. A muscle in her neck twitched. “I asked you a million times, but you always said it wasn’t true.”

And then she lunged for Mr. Hastings and started pummeling him with her Gucci purse. “And you used to go over to her house? How many times did you do that? What the hell is wrong with you?”

It felt like all the air had drained from the parking lot. Spencer’s ears buzzed, and she processed the scene as if in slow motion. Everything was unfolding all wrong. Her mom was acting like she didn’t know. She thought back to Ian’s IMs. Was it possible that her mother hadn’t known
any
of this, that this was the first she’d heard of it . . . ever?

Her mother finally stopped hitting her dad. He wheeled back, gasping. Beads of sweat dripped down his face.

“Just admit it. For once, just tell me the truth,” she gasped.

The next few seconds stretched out forever. “Yes,” her father finally admitted, his head hung low.

Melissa shrieked. Mrs. Hastings let out a shrill wail. Her dad paced nervously.

Spencer closed her eyes for a long minute. When she opened them again, Melissa had disappeared. Mrs. Hastings turned to her husband again. “How long did this go on?” she demanded. Ropy veins stood out at her temples. “And was she
yours?
”

Mr. Hastings’s shoulders shook. A thin, guttural sound escaped from his lips. He covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t know about the kids until later.”

Mrs. Hastings backed up, her teeth bared and her fists clenched. “When I come home tonight, I want you gone,” she roared.

“Veronica—”

“Go!”

After a pregnant pause, her father did as she asked. A moment later, his Jaguar revved to life and he gunned his way out of the parking lot, leaving his family behind.

“Mom.” Spencer reached for her mom’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone,” her mother snapped, collapsing against the stone wall just outside the restaurant. Happy Italian accordion music tinkled out through the outdoor speakers. Inside the restaurant, someone let out a high-pitched laugh.