Ruthless (19 page)

“We could try Hollis this time.” Mr. Marin stopped the video. “Or maybe Bryn Mawr? Or we could go into the city, try Temple or Drexel.”

Kate raked her hand through her long chestnut hair. “What does the competition think about the flash mobs?” Yet again, she stared straight at Hanna.

Hanna’s skin prickled. “How should I know?”

Kate shrugged. “I wasn’t asking you specifically.”

Biting her lip, Hanna reviewed the various times she’d been with Liam. Had Kate seen them at the church after all? Did she
know
?

Hanna stared at her. Kate stared back as if daring Hanna to blink. Sean tugged on his collar, his gaze ping-ponging between the girls. Mr. Marin shifted his weight, one eyebrow raised. “What’s going on, girls?”

“Nothing,” Hanna said quickly.

“Don’t ask me.” Kate threw up her hands. “
She’s
the one acting weird.”

Suddenly, Hanna felt overwhelmed. She was hiding way too much. “Um, I have to . . .” Hanna jumped up from the couch and ran toward the door. Kate let out a half sniff, half sigh behind her.

She rushed down the hall and paused outside the powder room, noticing a half-unpacked box and something propped on the back of the living room sofa. It was a well-worn stuffed Rottweiler, one of its ears almost missing and a patch of fur on its back worn away. Her father had bought Hanna this stuffed dog after they made up the Cornelius Maximilian dog character, a long-running inside joke between them. Hanna had lost track of the stuffed Cornelius through the years and figured he’d been lost forever. Had her dad really hung on to him this long?

She touched Cornelius’s plush head, guilt and regret surging through her veins. Her dad was trying to make an effort to restore their relationship, and Hanna was paying him back by fraternizing with the enemy. She needed to break it off with Liam now, before she got in deeper. She was juggling too many secrets right now. It was all catching up with her.

She reached into her pocket for her phone. But when she opened a new text message, she stopped. The thought of never seeing Liam again made her stomach tighten and tears well in her eyes.

A hand touched Hanna’s arm, and she squealed and whirled around. Kate stood behind her, hand on one hip. “Everything okay?” she asked in a faux-concerned voice. Her gaze flicked from Hanna’s face to her cell phone.

“Everything’s fine,” Hanna said tightly, covering the screen with her fingers. Thankfully, she hadn’t pulled up Liam’s information yet.

“Uh huh.” Kate narrowed her eyes. “You don’t
look
fine.”

“Why do you care?”

Kate stepped closer, and Hanna could smell her Jo Malone Fig and Cassis body lotion. “You’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

Hanna looked away, trying to remain calm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

A nasty smile wriggled onto Kate’s face. “You heard what Tom said,” she warned, shaking her finger. “If any of us have secrets, the enemy will find them out. You don’t want
that
to happen, do you?”

And then, before Hanna could answer, Kate tossed her long chestnut hair, spun around, and strolled back to the family room. She let out a high, lilting giggle as she walked, a sound that made every cell in Hanna’s body quiver.

It sounded exactly like Ali’s.
A’s.

Chapter 21

SAME BAG, SCARIER CONTENTS

“Let’s take it from the eighth measure.” Amelia’s voice floated out from the den as Spencer walked in the door and dropped her bag by the umbrella stand the following afternoon. A few seconds later, clarinets tooted and violins screeched. The classical piece lumbered forward, sounding like a funereal mess. Then it stopped abruptly. “Maybe we should take a break,” another voice said.

Spencer froze. Kelsey was here. Again.

Part of her wanted to run up to her bedroom and slam the door tight, but she remembered her promise to the others—and herself. If she studied Kelsey carefully enough, maybe she’d be able to figure out what Kelsey knew about last summer—and if she really was A.

Slowly, she crept toward the den. The door was slightly ajar. Inside the room, Amelia fingered her clarinet. Kelsey held her violin in her lap. Then, as if sensing a presence, Kelsey raised her head, saw Spencer, and flinched. Her mouth made a small
O
.

Spencer shot back and pressed her body against the wall. Some spy
she
was. But after taking several deep breaths, she peeked around the doorway and looked again. Kelsey’s head was down now, concentrating on the sheet music. There was a tiny flower tattoo behind her ear—perhaps temporary, or perhaps real. Spencer wondered if she’d gotten it in juvie.

She thought about the night of their arrest. It had begun like any other. Spencer had grabbed her books from her desk and climbed one floor to Kelsey’s room. The dorm was trying out a new keypad system of entry into the rooms instead of keys, and Kelsey had given Spencer her room’s code. She’d typed it in and let herself into the empty room—Kelsey was still at the gym. Spencer decided that she might as well pop an Easy A now so it would kick in when they were starting to cram. But when she rifled through her purse, the pill bottle was empty. She checked inside Kelsey’s Buddha statue, where she always kept her stash. Kelsey was out of pills, too.

Panic overcame her. Their AP exams were in three days, and she was only through chapter seventeen of thirty-one in AP Ancient History. Phineas had warned her that if she went off the pills cold turkey, she’d suffer a major crash. The most logical thing to do was call Phineas for more, but Spencer had no idea where he’d gone. Two days ago, he didn’t show up to class. When Spencer and Kelsey went to his dorm room, it was empty, the sheets stripped from the bed, the clothes removed from the hangers in the closet. Spencer had tried his cell phone, but there was no answer. An automated voice said that his voice mail inbox was full.

A beep of the room’s electronic keypad entry system sounded, and Kelsey let herself in, looking fresh-faced and relaxed. Spencer sprang to her feet. “We’re out of pills,” she blurted. “We need to get more.”

Kelsey frowned. “How?”

Spencer tapped her lips, thinking. Phineas had mentioned reputable dealers in North Philly and given her one of the guy’s cards in case of emergencies. She pulled it out and started dialing the number. Kelsey stared at her. “What are you doing?”

“We need those pills to study,” Spencer said.

Kelsey shifted her weight. “Maybe we can do this without them, Spence.”

But then someone answered on the other end. Spencer straightened up, uttered the code words Phineas said would gain the guy’s trust, and then told him what she wanted. He gave her his address, and they arranged to meet. “We’re set,” she said after a moment, hanging up. “Come on.”

Kelsey remained on the bed, her shoes off. “I think I’ll stay here.”

“I can’t do this alone.” Spencer pulled her car keys out of her pocket. “It’ll take a half hour, tops.”

But Kelsey shook her head. “I’m fine without the pills, Spence.”

Groaning, Spencer stomped over to Kelsey and pulled her to her feet. “You won’t be saying that a few hours from now. Put on your flip-flops. Let’s go.”

Finally, Kelsey relented. They drove through the dark streets into a derelict neighborhood, passing boarded-up windows and graffiti-marred walls. Kids sat on stoops, glaring at everything. A fight broke out on the corner, and Kelsey whimpered. Spencer wondered if she’d been right—maybe this was a bad idea.

But soon enough they were back in the car, pill bottle in hand, heading toward campus once more. Spencer handed Kelsey an Easy A, and they both washed them down with warm Diet Sprite. As they rolled into a safer neighborhood, Kelsey let out a long sigh. “We’re never doing that again.”

“Agreed,” Spencer said.

They were pulling through the Penn gates when two bright lights hit the rear-view mirror. Sirens blared. Kelsey and Spencer turned around to see the campus police bearing down on them. “
Shit
,” Spencer hissed, tossing the bottle of pills out the window.

The police car pulled over and signaled for Spencer to do the same. Kelsey looked at Spencer, her eyes bulging wide. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Spencer stared into Kelsey’s frantic face. Suddenly, a calm feeling washed over her. Everything she’d been through with Ali, all those A notes and near-death experiences she’d had to endure, made this moment seem manageable in comparison. “Listen,” she said forcefully to Kelsey. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“What if they followed us from the deal? What if it was a sting? What if they find the pills?”

“We—” A cop tapped on the window. She rolled it down and gazed innocently into his stern face.

The cop glared hard at the girls. “Can you two get out of the car?”

Kelsey and Spencer looked at each other. Neither said anything. The cop sighed loudly. “Get. Out. Of. The. Car.”

“Kelsey’s right. Let’s take a break, guys,” Amelia said. Spencer looked up, snapping instantly out of the memory. All of the orchestra girls rose from the couches.

Panicked, she stepped backward and slipped into the hall closet, which held winter coats, an old dog gate, and three different vacuum cleaners for various types of dust and pet hair. She waited until everyone filed into the kitchen, praying no one would open the door and find her here. Through a slit in the door, she could see the guests’ bags and coats piled on the wooden bench across the hall. Amid the Burberry trenches, J. Crew puffer coats, and Kate Spade satchels, was a shimmery gold tote that matched hers.

We’re twinsies!
Kelsey had said a few days ago when she’d seen the bag.

Maybe there
was
a way to see if Kelsey knew more. Spencer waited until the break was over, then darted to the front door and grabbed her own Dior bag. Then she scurried to the pile of coats, set down her Dior bag in place of Kelsey’s, and lifted Kelsey’s bag into her arms. It smelled different from hers, like a fruity candle. It would only take her minutes to go through it. Kelsey wouldn’t even know it was gone.

She took the stairs two at a time, slammed her bedroom door shut, and upended Kelsey’s purse on the bed. There was the same snakeskin leather wallet Kelsey had used at Penn last summer and a pair of Tweezerman tweezers—she never went anywhere without them. Out tumbled an extra set of violin strings, a flyer for a band called The Chambermaids with a phone number for someone named Rob scrawled across the top, a tube of lip gloss, and a bunch of different-colored pens.

Spencer sat back. There was nothing incriminating in here. Maybe she was being paranoid.

Then she noticed Kelsey’s iPhone tucked into the front pocket. She yanked it out, scrolling through the sent-texts folder for notes from A. There weren’t any, but that didn’t mean anything—Kelsey could own a second phone, like Mona had. On the main screen was a folder titled “Photos.” Spencer tapped it, and several subfolders appeared. There were shots from prom, a graduation, and Kelsey with a bunch of smiling girls from St. Agnes, none of whom Spencer recognized from orchestra practice. But then she noticed a folder that made her blood run cold.

Jamaica, Spring Break.

Downstairs, the orchestra music ramped up again, clumsy and dissonant. Spencer stared at the folder icon. It was a coincidence, right? Lots of people went to Jamaica during spring break—hadn’t she’d read in
Us Weekly
that it was the number one party location for high school and college students?

With a shaking finger, she pressed the button to access the folder’s contents. When the first photo appeared on the screen, Spencer saw the familiar cliffs that she, Aria, Emily, and Hanna had jumped from their first day at the resort. The next photo featured the rooftop deck where the four of them had dined almost every night. There was a photo of Kelsey posing with Jacques, the Rastafarian bartender who made a mean rum punch.

Her stomach roiled. It was The Cliffs.

She scrolled through more pictures at breakneck speed, revisiting the huge pool, the blue mosaic hallway to the spa, the speckled pygmy goats that wandered outside the resort’s high stucco walls. In a picture of a crowd at the restaurant, a face stuck out among the rest. There, clear as day, looking sunburned and wearing the lacrosse T-shirt he’d had on the day they’d arrived, was Noel Kahn. Mike Montgomery stood next to him, holding a Red Stripe. If a few random guests had moved out of the way, Kelsey would have gotten Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna in the shot, too.

She scrolled to the next photo and almost screamed. Tabitha stared back at her, happy and alive, wearing the golden sundress she’d worn the night Spencer and the others had killed her.

The iPhone slipped from her hands. It felt like something heavy and hard was sitting on her chest, preventing air from reaching her lungs. Details crystallized in her mind. Kelsey had been at The Cliffs the same time as she and her friends were. Perhaps Kelsey knew Tabitha. Perhaps Kelsey saw what Spencer and the others did to her. And then, when she met Spencer again at Penn, she made the connection. And when Spencer framed Kelsey for something
she
was responsible for, Kelsey had decided to exact revenge . . . as the new A.

She had her proof. Kelsey was A. And she wasn’t going to stop until she brought Spencer down once and for all.

Chapter 22

NOTHING LIKE A THREAT TO HELP WITH A DECISION

Later that night, Aria sat on the couch at Byron’s house, rain pounding on the windowpanes. She should have been looking at her art history project—Klaudia had cancelled their second Wordsmith’s meeting and rescheduled for a coffee shop on Friday—but instead she was on a website called BrooklynLofts, which featured gorgeous apartments in the Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Williamsburg, and Red Hook neighborhoods. The more she read about Brooklyn, the more she was convinced that it was where she and Ezra belonged. Practically every writer who mattered lived in Brooklyn. Ezra could probably get his book published just by walking to the local coffee shop.