Ruthless (14 page)

“Just a sec,” Hanna murmured, tilting away from Liam and opening the text. Her stomach sank when she realized it was from the person she dreaded most.

Hannakins: Before you two get too comfy, better ask to see his driver’s license. –A

Hanna frowned.
Driver’s license?
What the hell would that tell her? That he wore corrective lenses to drive? That he was a resident of New Jersey, not Pennsylvania?

She slipped the phone back into her bag and turned to Liam again. “Anyway, you were talking about South Beach?”

Liam nodded, sliding closer to her. “I want to have you all to myself.”

He bent to kiss her. Hanna kissed back, but A’s message needled her. A was horrific and scary, but Hanna knew better than anyone that A’s information was usually right on. What if Liam had herpes sores all over his mouth in his picture? What if he had a different nose? Or what if—horrors—Liam was freakishly young-looking for his age and was actually in his forties?

She pulled away. “You know, I technically have a rule,” she said shakily. “Before I go on vacay with a guy, I have to see his license first.”

A bemused smile appeared on Liam’s face. “Luckily my license picture is awesome.” He reached into his wallet. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Deal.” Hanna grabbed her Louis Vuitton wallet from her bag and handed him the new license she’d gotten only a few months ago. Liam handed Hanna his license in exchange. When Hanna studied his image, relief flooded her. He looked gorgeous. No herpes sores. No altered nose. And he was two years older than she was, not in his forties. Her gaze traveled over the rest of the license. When she noticed the name, her eyes skimmed right past it. But then she stopped and looked again.

Liam Wilkinson.

Hanna’s heart leapt to her throat.
No.
It couldn’t be.

But when she looked at Liam, the evidence was all there. He had the same brown eyes as Tucker Wilkinson. The same lazy, people-love-me smile. Even his thick eyebrows were identical.

Liam’s head shot up, Hanna’s license in his hands. His face went pale. Hanna could see the connections forming in his mind. “You’re related to Tom Marin,” he said slowly. “That’s why you were at Hyde last night.”

Hanna lowered her eyes, feeling like she was going to vomit all over the velvet couch. “He’s . . . my father,” she admitted, each word filling her with pain as it spilled out of her mouth. “And your father is . . .”

“Tucker Wilkinson,” Liam finished dolefully.

They stared at each other in horror. And then, over the sounds of the frat boys chanting
Chug chug chug
, the music, and the ice clacking together in the martini shaker, Hanna heard a far-off giggle. She turned and stared at the long glass window that faced the street. There, plastered on the window, was a ripped, neon-green piece of paper. It didn’t take Hanna long to realize it was a piece of a Tom Marin flyer her dad’s aides had passed out at the flash mob last night. The edges were raggedly torn so that only her father’s face and a single letter from his name remained.

A lone, bold
A
.

Chapter 14

SPENCER FREES HER MIND

The following afternoon, which was gray and cold, Spencer pulled a plaid scarf around her neck, stepped onto the curb on a side street in Old Hollis, and stared at the rambling Victorian house in front of her. Frowning, she checked the address on the drama club call sheet one more time. She was standing in front of the Purple House, aptly named because of the brilliant purple paint that covered every inch of its siding. The house was an institution in Rosewood—when Spencer was in sixth grade, she, Ali, and others used to ride bikes up and down this street, whispering the rumors they’d heard about the people who owned the place. “Someone told me they never bathe,” Ali said. “The place is crawling with bed bugs.”

“Well,
I
heard they host orgies,” Hanna added. Everyone let out a collective
Ew
, but then a face had appeared at the window of the Purple House and they’d all quickly biked away.

Murderer.

Spencer paused from climbing up the front steps, her heart shooting into her throat. She stared at the quiet, almost vacant-looking houses on the street. A shadow slipped behind a pair of metal garbage cans in the alley.

She shivered and thought of her most recent note from A. Maybe her friends weren’t convinced that Kelsey could be their new evil text-messager, but it was the most logical answer. Spencer had ruined Kelsey’s life. Now Spencer had to stop her before Kelsey ruined hers—and her friends’, too.

Over the summer, Spencer and Kelsey had become fast friends. Kelsey had confessed that after her parents had gotten divorced, she started acting out and fell in with a wild group of girls. She’d gotten into pot, and then started selling it. During a locker search at school, security found her stash. The only reason she wasn’t expelled from St. Agnes was because her dad had recently donated a science wing, but her parents threatened to send her to a super-strict Catholic school in Canada if she stepped out of line again.

“I decided to turn things around,” Kelsey said one night as she and Spencer lay together on her bed after a night of studying. “My parents refused to pay for it, saying it would be a waste after all the trouble I’d gotten into, but amazingly, a nonprofit I’d never heard of swooped in at the last minute and gave me a scholarship to go to the Penn program. I want to show my parents it was all worth it.”

In turn, Spencer told Kelsey about her troubles, too—well,
some
of them. Like how she’d been tortured by A. How she’d stolen her sister’s paper and passed it off as her own for the Golden Orchid prize. How she wanted to be the very best all the time.

They’d both been the perfect candidates for Easy A. At first, the pills hadn’t had much effect other than making them both feel really awake even when they’d pulled all-nighters. But as time went on, they both began to notice when they
hadn’t
taken it. “I can’t keep my eyes open,” Spencer would say during class. “I feel like a zombie,” Kelsey would groan. They watched Phineas across the room, covertly slipping yet another pill under his tongue. If
he
was okay taking more, maybe they would be, too.

A car with a rattling muffler drove past, breaking Spencer from her thoughts. Straightening up, she climbed the steps to Beau’s front porch, checked herself out in the front sidelight window—she’d dressed in skinny jeans, a soft cashmere sweater, and tall boots, which she thought looked appropriately cute but
not
like she was trying to impress Beau—and rang the bell.

No one answered. She rang it again. Still no one.

“Hel-
lo
?” Spencer said impatiently, rapping hard on the door.

Finally, a light snapped on, and Beau appeared at the window. He whipped open the door. His eyes were sleepy, his dark hair was tousled, and he was shirtless. Spencer nearly swallowed the piece of Trident she was chewing. Where had he been hiding
those
abs?

“Sorry,” Beau said drowsily. “I was meditating.”

“Of course you were,” Spencer mumbled, trying not to stare at his thousand-sit-ups-a-day torso. This was like the time she and Aria had taken a life-drawing class at Hollis that had nude male models. The models seemed so nonchalant, but Spencer kept wanting to burst into giggles.

She strode into the foyer, noting that the inside of the Purple House was as chaotic-looking as the outside. The hallway walls were filled with an eclectic mix of handwoven tapestries, oil paintings, and metal signs advertising brands of cigarettes and long-defunct diners. Shabby mid-century modern furniture adorned the large living room off to the left, and a rustic maple table covered in hardcover books of all shapes and sizes took up most of the dining room. At the end of the hall was an unrolled blue yoga mat. A small boombox sat nearby playing a soothing harp song, and an incense holder bearing a single lit stick wafted smoke into the air from an end table.

“So is your family renting this place?” Spencer asked.

Beau strolled over to the mat, scooped up a white T-shirt from the floor, and pulled it over his head. Spencer was both relieved and oddly disappointed that he was covering up. “No, we’ve owned it for almost twenty years. My parents rented it out to professors, but then my dad got a job in Philly and we decided to move back in.”

“Did your parents paint it purple?”

Beau grinned. “Yep, back in the seventies. It was so everyone knew where the orgies were.”

“Oh, I heard something about that,” Spencer said, trying to sound nonchalant.

Beau snorted. “I’m messing with you. They were both literature professors at Hollis. Their idea of a thrill was reading
The Canterbury Tales
in Old English. But I heard all the rumors.” He glanced at her knowingly. “Rosewood people love to talk, don’t they? I heard some rumors about you, too, Pretty Little Liar.”

Spencer turned away, pretending to be fascinated with a folk art sculpture of a large black rooster. Even though surely everyone in town—in the
country—
had heard about her ordeal with Real Ali, it was strange that someone like Beau had paid attention. “Most of the rumors aren’t true,” she said quietly.

“Of course they aren’t.” Beau strolled toward her. “But it sucks, doesn’t it? Everyone talking. Everyone looking at you.”

“It does suck,” she said, surprised Beau had nailed her struggle so succinctly.

When she looked up, he was staring at her with an enigmatic look on his face. It was almost like he was trying to memorize every inch of her features. Spencer stared back. She hadn’t noticed how green his eyes were before. Or the cute little dimple on his left cheek.

“So, um, should we get started?” she asked after an awkward beat.

Beau broke his gaze, walked across the room, and settled into a leather chair. “Sure. If you want.”

Spencer felt a stab of exasperation. “You told me to come here so you could teach me. So . . . teach me.”

Beau tilted the chair back and pressed a hand to his lips. “Well, I think your problem is that you don’t understand Lady Macbeth. You’re just a high school girl regurgitating her lines.”

Spencer straightened her spine. “Of course I understand her. She’s determined. She’s ambitious. She gets in over her head. And then she’s plagued by guilt for what she did.”

“Where’d you get that from, SparkNotes?” Beau scoffed. “Knowing facts isn’t the same as getting into the character. You have to experience what she experiences and really
feel
her.
That’s
Method acting.”

Spencer resisted the urge to laugh. “That’s bullshit.”

Beau’s eyes flashed. “Maybe you’re scared to really go for it. Method acting can dredge up some demons.”

“I’m not scared.” Spencer crossed her arms over her chest.

Beau rose from the chair and moved a few steps closer to her. “Okay, so you’re not scared. But you
are
doing this to get a four-point-oh, aren’t you? Not because you care about acting. Not because you care about the integrity of the play.”

Heat rushed to Spencer’s face. “You know what, I don’t need this.” She spun on her heel and started out of the room.
Arrogant jerk.

“Wait.” Beau clamped his hand on hers and spun her around. “I’m challenging you. I think you’re good, better than you realize. But I also think you can step it up to the next level.”

The sudden scent of sandalwood incense tickled Spencer’s nose. She looked down at Beau’s large, warm fingers tightly entwined around hers. “Y-you think I’m good?” she asked in a voice barely over a whisper.

“I think you’re very good,” Beau said in a suddenly tender voice. “But you also have to let go of a lot of things first.”

“Let go of what?”

“You need to
become
Lady Macbeth. Go to a special place inside of you to understand her motivations. Feel what she feels. Know what
you
would do, if faced with her predicament.”

“Why does it matter what
I
would do?” Spencer protested. “
She’s
the character Shakespeare wrote about. Her lines are there on the page. She helps kill the king and sits silently by while her husband kills off everyone else in his way. Then she freaks.”

“Well, wouldn’t
you
freak if you killed someone and kept terrible secrets?”

Spencer looked away, a lump rising in her throat. This was a little too close for comfort. “Of course I would. But I’d never
do
that.”

Beau sighed. “You’re taking this too literally. You’re not Spencer Hastings, good girl, straight-A student, teacher’s pet. You’re Lady Macbeth. Sinister. Conniving. Ambitious. You convinced your husband to murder an innocent man. If it hadn’t been for you, he might not have gone off his rocker. What does it
feel
like to be responsible for so much damage?”

Spencer picked at a loose thread on her cashmere sweater, uncomfortable with Beau’s scrutiny. “How do you become one with Macbeth? Where’s the special place you go to?”

Beau looked away. “It doesn’t matter.”

Spencer placed her hands on her hips.

Beau pressed his lips together. “Fine. If you must know, I was bullied a lot when I was younger.” His voice was pinched. “I thought a lot about getting revenge. That’s where I go. I think about . . . them.”

Spencer’s hands went slack at her sides. The words hung heavily in the air. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Beau shrugged. “It was these assholes in my eighth-grade homeroom. I wanted to hurt them so badly. It’s not the same as Macbeth’s ambition, but it gets me in the right head space.”

He walked across the living room and spun a large old globe around and around. With his hunched shoulders and heavy head, he almost looked vulnerable. Spencer shifted her weight. “I’m really sorry that happened to you.”