Pretty Little Liars #15: Toxic (25 page)

“How do you know?”

“Because . . . I just do.”

He set his jaw and stared into the fire. “This isn’t going to work unless you actually
talk
to me, Spencer.”

She stared at her palms. “We tracked Ali down to a property about an hour from here. She was definitely there—the inside smelled like vanilla soap, which is so utterly
her
. It was more than that, too. We just felt . . . a presence.”

Greg’s eyes widened. “She’s living in a house?”

“In a pool house in the back of Nick’s family’s property in Ashland. We went inside, but Ali wasn’t there. So we decided to monitor the place with cameras connected to a wireless feed. We made sure to hide them really carefully, so she wouldn’t know.”

Greg’s head shot up.

“There are . . .
cameras
?”

Spencer wasn’t sure what to make of his horrified reaction—placing the cameras hadn’t seemed
that
dangerous. “I camouflaged them with leaves. You can’t see them from the ground at all. And there are no wires—they run on solar batteries. There’s really no way for anyone to tell they’re there unless they’re really looking.”

Greg ran his hand over the top of his head. “I can’t believe you got that past her.”

She hugged her arms to her chest. “Well, I
think
we did. We’ve been watching it day and night, and so far, Ali hasn’t taken them down or come back. But . . .
someone
was there.” There was a lump in her throat. “Dominick. I’m almost positive.”

She told him about chasing Dominick down the other night. Greg sat back. His eyes were kind of glazed. “And what do you think Dominick was doing there?”

“I watched the tape again. It looked like he was waiting for someone.” Her mouth twitched. “Maybe Ali.”

Greg nodded faintly, then stared at his phone in his lap. It pinged, and he tapped on it, answering a text as casually as if they’d been talking about the weather. But a muscle twitched in his jaw. Spencer wondered if he was really upset. Maybe he was really angry that she’d taken such crazy risks. Or maybe he was upset she hadn’t told him before.

“Look, I know you don’t want me to handle this on my own, but I have no choice,” she said. “No one is listening to us. No one wants to help. We have to catch her.” She shook her head. “But now with this whole Ali Cat wrinkle, I’m starting to wonder. What if the Ali Cats are the people we need to worry about? What if they’re behind everything, and Ali really
is
dead?”

“Oh, she’s not dead.”

Spencer flinched. Greg’s face was in profile, lit orange by the fire. “Pardon?” she asked.

He turned to face her. His expression was oddly placid, no longer freaked or worried. “I said, she’s not dead,” he repeated, cracking a smile. “And she’s definitely coming for you.”

Spencer’s heart jumped. She pulled her hand away from Greg’s and shifted back on the couch. “W-what?”

Greg smiled blandly. “I have to thank you, Spencer. I wondered if there were cameras. I was thinking about that when I was there yesterday.”

Spencer blinked hard. Her mind scrambled for a foothold. “What do you mean,
yesterday
?”

He draped his arm over the back of the couch. “That wasn’t Dominick you saw at the pool house. Dominick doesn’t even exist.”

Spencer shot to her feet, feeling sick. “O-of course Dominick exists. He’s been sending me emails. I
saw
him, at the panel discussion in New York.”

Greg just smiled. “That was a friend I asked to help me out for the night. And those emails? I wrote them.” He cast his gaze to the sky. “
You think you’re so awesome, but you’re not. You’re nothing but a poser, and pretty soon, people are going to figure you out
.”

Her heart was pounding fast. She took a step away from him. “
You’re
Dominick? Why?”

“Because I needed you to trust me, to create a threat so that you would let me in.” He crossed his arms over his chest proudly. “And it totally worked. You’ve told me what I need to know.”

Spencer felt her stomach drop, just like it had the time her car hydroplaned during a rainstorm and she’d nearly crashed into a guardrail. “
You’re
the Ali Cat,” she whispered.

He grinned. “She’ll love me so much for this.”

She
. Spencer knew it was coming, but she clapped her hand over her mouth all the same.

Greg rose from the couch and stepped toward her, the same weird smile on his face. Spencer darted back, almost bumping into the fireplace. She moved to the right, narrowly avoiding a wooden credenza. Greg followed her, his shoulders squared and his eyes cold. With one lunge, he could tackle her to the ground. What was he capable of? What had Ali ordered him to do?

“You
know
Ali,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You’ve actually
talked
to her.”

Greg shook his head. “Never directly. But yes. And I love her.”

“
Why
?” Spencer almost shrieked.

“Because she’s fascinating. And elusive. And beautiful.”

It was the craziest thing Spencer had ever heard. “And all this time . . .
that’s
why you wanted to get to know me?” Tears filled her eyes. “Because she
asked
you to?”

Greg snorted. “She told me you’d get attached like this. She said you were emotional.”

She told me. She said
. As if Ali really knew what Spencer was like. But it hurt—because Ali was right. She
had
gotten attached. All her promises not to trust anyone again, all her vows to be careful, and she’d stepped right into Ali’s wide-open jaws. Ali had known Spencer was lonely. She’d known she was looking for someone to bolster her ego. It was like she’d engineered Greg herself, programmed him so that he’d hit Spencer in all her soft spots.

Then something else hit her. Finally, here was someone who actually knew something. Slowly, carefully, she felt in her pocket for her phone. She had to call the police. Her fingers fumbled. She tried her hardest to dial 911.

The phone rang. Then she heard someone say, “What’s your emergency?”

Spencer looked at Greg. “Tell me how you contacted Alison DiLaurentis. And tell me where she is now.”

Greg burst out laughing. “Spencer, I’m not a fool.” With lightning-quick reflexes, he grabbed her phone from her pocket, ran into the hall, and tossed it into a large fountain. There was a loud
splash
, and then it sank to the bottom.

“Hey!” Spencer shrieked, plunging her hands into the cold water. Water dripped off the phone as she pulled it to the surface. The screen was dead, the 911 call disconnected.

Someone gasped behind her, and she whipped around. A little boy with a blue balloon that said
ROSEWOOD RALLIES!
stood in the hall, his eyes wide. “Is your phone dead?”

Spencer looked down the hall, her heart racing. Greg was
gone
.

“Where did the guy I was talking to go?” she asked the little boy. He just looked at her blankly, then went back to batting his balloon in the air.

This couldn’t be happening. Spencer sprinted down the hall wildly, tripping in her heels. “Greg!” she called out. She ran to the long windows that looked out on the golf course, thinking she’d see him disappearing over a hill.

But he had vanished completely. And taken her secrets with him.

28

LOOP-DE-LOOP

“There’s our final girl of the hour!” a woman in a tweed suit crowed, taking Emily’s hand and leading her farther into the country club’s lobby. “Emily Fields, I’m Sharon Winters! What a pleasure! Come in, my dear! Have some punch!”

Emily glanced nervously over her shoulder at her parents, who’d walked her in, but they were already talking to someone from her mother’s welcome wagon committee. Some support
they
were.

She peeked surreptitiously at her cell phone in her purse. The surveillance feed was up on her screen, the same four shots of the house unchanged except for an occasional leaf pressing up against the windows. It would be just her luck, though, that something would happen there the second she looked away. Spencer had seen someone on the cameras. That same person—or someone else—could come back.

Sharon continued to drag her into the ballroom. Emily looked around. A DJ table had been set up at the far end, and dance music pumped out of gigantic speakers. Tons of kids Emily recognized from high school were waving their arms in the air and grinding on one another. Just looking at their carefree faces made Emily want to turn around and never come back.

But Sharon’s grip was too forceful. “Here’s Hanna!” she chirped, pointing to a long table at the other side of the ballroom. Hanna was the only one sitting at it, punching desperately at her phone’s keyboard.

Emily broke away from the woman and walked over to her friend. Hanna looked up at her miserably, then pushed a plate of cookies toward her. “Sharon brought these for us. But there’s no way
I
can eat.” She gazed forlornly around the room, then at her hands. “Mike’s not speaking to me. Everything is a mess.”

Emily couldn’t think about eating right then, either. “How long have you been here?” she asked Hanna.

“About an hour. I don’t know where Aria went—her date went to look for her.” She sighed. “I tried texting Spencer, but I haven’t heard from her, either.”

Emily checked the surveillance images once more—nothing. Then she looked around the room. She didn’t see any signs of the other two girls anywhere. Her gaze locked on a large banner near the DJ that said
WE LOVE EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IN ROSEWOOD!
There were pictures of places around the town: the shops on Lancaster Avenue, the covered bridge, the fall foliage, the Hollis spire. As Emily looked at the images, she realized she had a negative association with each one of them. She’d received texts from A by the Hollis spire and outside the shops. She remembered kicking through a pile of fallen leaves last fall, still trying to process that Ali, her old friend, had tried to kill them. And she’d tried to
kill herself
by jumping off the covered bridge.

“I
hate
everything and everyone in Rosewood,” she whispered, realizing she pretty much meant it. Aside from her friendships with Spencer, Aria, and Hanna, she would have no warm and fuzzy memories to take with her when she left. Living here, experiencing what she had with A, had ripped away years of her life.

She stared around at all the dancing kids in their Marc Jacobs dresses and Jimmy Choo heels. They didn’t understand what Emily had gone through—not at all. And they probably never would. Why did
they
get to have happy lives? Why did
they
get to love and laugh and enjoy themselves, when all she faced was painful experience after painful experience?

Ali
so
deserved to pay for this.

“Emily!” Mrs. Fields was racing toward her, her cheeks flushed pink. She held a short-haired girl by the wrist. “This is Melodie. Melodie, Emily! I know her mother! And Melodie’s working at the country club this summer as the junior women’s golf coach and the assistant groundskeeper!” Emily’s mom turned to Melodie and smiled hopefully. “I think you guys have some, um, common interests.”

“H-hi?” Emily said uncertainly, annoyed that her mom was forcing her to make a friend right now. Why on earth would her mom think she’d want to meet this girl? But then she noticed how Melodie was checking her out, her eyes grazing the neckline of her dress. Emily’s whole body flushed hot.
Common interests
. Was her mother actually
trying to set her up
?

Emily couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. She stood up awkwardly and backed away. “It’s really nice to meet you, Melodie, but I have to do something right now.”

Melodie’s face drooped. “Emily!” Mrs. Fields called out. But Emily didn’t turn back. She whipped blindly past kids in her class, fumbling for an exit. Across the room, she noticed Spencer in the doorway, a panicked, nervous look on her face. But Emily couldn’t go to her right then. She needed a few minutes alone.

She found a dark hall at the back of the country club and turned down it. Then she leaned against the wall and took heaving breaths.
Get a grip
, she told herself, but her mind felt like it was careening down a long, steep hill into a deep ravine. Even glancing at Melodie’s expectant expression had just made her think,
Why bother? Ali would ruin that, too
.

Then Ali’s red furious face looming above her in the natatorium flooded her thoughts, pumping her with so much anger she whipped around and smacked the wall hard. Why couldn’t they
find
her? Why wouldn’t she just
die
?

Spikes of laughter drifted down the hall, along with the beginning notes of Lorde’s “Royals.” Emily slid to the floor and looked hard at the surveillance feed. There
had
to be something there. But it was the same birds landing on the same branches brushing across the window. The same flicker-and-pop in the fourth-quadrant image, the one that showed the only view of the main room. The same fluttering of leaves.

Until she realized.

The leaves kept fluttering against the window in
exactly
the same way. It was uncanny: One maple leaf would flatten completely against the window for a second, then droop. Was it that windy up there? Did the wind keep gusting in the same direction?

Then she noticed the same fizzle and pop from that same camera angle. There seemed to be a pattern: fizzle-pop, then gust of wind, then flattened leaf, then a long stretch of nothing. Emily looked at her watch. Five minutes passed, but the sequence repeated. She counted off another five minutes again. There was the fizzle-pop and flattened leaf again.

Her hands started to shake. It seemed like the video was on a loop. She’d seen it in movies: Burglars would use loops to fool security guards so they could sneak in unseen and steal the jewels. Had Ali done the same thing? That camera angle showed the
inside
of the house, unlike the others. When had this started?

“Emily!” Spencer ran down the hall, her hair streaming behind her and her breathing hard. “I don’t even know how to say this. The guy I’ve been seeing? He’s an
Ali Cat
. And I told him everything. About the cameras. About how we know where Ali is.” She winced. “So now he knows. Which means Ali knows, too.”