Killer (30 page)

“It could’ve been him,” Emily whispered. “And Ali.”

Spencer shut her eyes. It fit the memory she had of that night, too. After she’d fought with Ali and fallen, Ali had run down the path. Spencer had looked across the yard and had seen Ali talking to someone. Of course she’d assumed it was Ian—so many signs pointed to him. But as she squeezed her eyes shut and thought hard, the picture began to change. The person no longer had Ian’s chiseled jaw and short, wavy hair. His hair was straighter and blonder, his features more delicate. He leaned into Ali intimately, but also protectively. The way a brother would, not a boyfriend.

How could it have happened? Was it a twisted accident? Was Jason overcome with disturbing rage over what his sister was doing with Ian? Had they fought, and had Ali accidentally fallen into the hole? Had Jason and Wilden run off into the woods, petrified by what had happened? Ian wouldn’t have told the cops about seeing anyone in the woods with Ali, because that would’ve put him at the scene—and he’d also have had to explain his and Ali’s secret relationship. But when he came forward with what he really knew after his arrest, the person who’d most likely taken his statement was Wilden…and Wilden obviously wouldn’t pass on Ian’s story to a higher authority. Once Ian got a lawyer and started ranting about how he wasn’t the killer and the truth was still out there, perhaps Wilden threatened him. Which was why Ian had to flee.

Everyone was silent for a long time. There was a neigh of a horse, far off in Spencer’s stables. A swish of wind, rattling the tree branches. Then Emily raised her chin, sniffing the air. A disturbed look crossed her face.

“What?” Hanna asked, concerned.

“I…smell something,” Emily whispered.

They breathed in deeply. There
was
a strange smell in the air, one Spencer couldn’t immediately identify. As it grew stronger and more concentrated, Spencer’s head began to pound. Her eyes fell to one of Ian’s last IMs.
You could get hurt. They probably know already.

Spencer’s heart leapt to her throat. “Oh my God. It’s…gasoline.”

And then they heard the telltale sound of a match being struck.

30

HELL ON EARTH

Aria clambered down the spiral staircase from her loft bedroom in her new house, twice stumbling and clutching the wrought-iron railing for support. She burst out of the front door, sprinted to the Subaru, and turned the ignition. Nothing happened. She gritted her teeth and tried it again. No engine. “Please don’t do this,” Aria begged the car, banging her head on the steering wheel. The horn honked weakly.

Defeated, she climbed out of the car and looked right and left. She’d left her bike at Ella’s, which meant she had to walk to Spencer’s barn. The quickest way was through the thick, coffin-black woods. But Aria hadn’t gone in there at night by herself…well, ever.

A crescent-shaped moon hung in the sky. The night was very still and quiet, without a hint of wind. Aria could see the golden porch light of Spencer’s barn through the trees. Before she started through the woods, she pulled Ali’s flag out of her jacket pocket. The flag was where she’d known it would be, nestled deep in the shoe box. She’d grabbed it without looking at it, frantic to get back to Spencer and the others.

The fabric was still shiny and thick, almost perfectly preserved. It even smelled a little bit like Ali’s vanilla hand soap. Aria beamed the flashlight she’d grabbed from the kitchen, examining the designs Ali had drawn. There was the Chanel logo and the Louis Vuitton design, same as the drawings on Hanna’s flag. There was also a cluster of stars and comets and a doodle of a wishing well. But there wasn’t an anime frog anywhere. Nor was there a cartoon girl playing field hockey. So had Hanna remembered incorrectly…or had Ali?

Aria spread the piece out to its very corners. Off to the left, Ali had drawn a strange symbol she hadn’t noticed before. It looked like a
NO PARKING
sign, the kind that had a letter
P
with a big red line through the center. Only, instead of
P
, Ali had written another initial instead. Aria brought the flag close to her face. At first glance, the letter looked like an
I
. But as she looked closer, she realized it wasn’t. It was a
J
.

For…
Jason?

Heart hammering, Aria shoved the flag back into her pocket and ran into the woods. The snow had melted, and the ground was slick. Aria sprinted over wet leaves and soggy puddles, splashing mud everywhere. When she came to the bottom of a ravine, her boots went out from under her. She hit the ground with a
thwack
, landing hard on her hip. The pain was white and hot, and Aria let out a muffled shriek.

A few quiet seconds passed. The only sound she heard was her own breathing. Slowly, she got up, wiped mud off the side of her face, and looked around.

Across the clearing was a familiar, twisted tree. Aria frowned, realizing. This was where they’d found Ian’s body last week—she was sure of it. Something glinted from underneath a patch of logs and dry leaves. Aria carefully walked over to it and crouched down. It was a platinum class ring, half-caked in mud. She pulled her shirtsleeve over her hand and wiped the ring clean. A blue stone glinted. Around the base of the stone were the words
Rosewood Day
. She shut her eyes, remembering Ian’s body lying among the leaves just one week ago. Her gaze had gone straight to the class ring around his bloated finger. That ring had a blue stone in it too.

She shined the flashlight on the name inscribed on the inside of the band.
Ian Thomas
. Had this fallen off Ian when he escaped? Had someone pried it off him? She looked again at the pile of wet leaves. The ring had been sitting on top of them, barely hidden. How could the cops not have found it?

A twig snapped. Aria whipped her head up. The noise sounded close. More twigs broke. Leaves crunched. Then a figure slithered through the trees. Aria crouched down. The figure took a few steps and stopped. It was too dark to see who was there. Something made a sloshing noise, like liquid hitting the sides of a container. Aria’s eyes watered, an odd smell filling her nose. It was the odor of a gas station, one of her most-hated smells in the world.

When she saw the figure bend down and heard the liquid glugging out of the container and splattering on the muddy ground, Aria realized what was happening. She stood up fast, a scream frozen in her throat. Slowly, the person reached into his pocket and pulled out an object. Aria heard a
flick.

“No,” she whispered.

Time slowed down. The air felt thick and still. Then the forest turned orange. Everything lit up. Aria screamed and sprinted back up the ravine. She careened into trees and stepped in a small ditch, twisting her ankle. For the first few seconds, all she heard was the hideous crackle of the fire building and building, eating everything in its path. But as she rounded a corner, she heard another sound. It was small and pitiful and desperate. A tiny whimper.

Aria stopped. The flames were at the ravine, where she’d been moments ago. To the right was a huddled figure. This person seemed smaller and weaker-looking than the figure that had traipsed through the woods moments before, lighting everything on fire. The person’s leg was caught underneath a heavy tree branch that had fallen, and tiny, fingerlike flames were climbing up the branch, closer and closer to the person’s foot.

“Help!” whoever it was screamed. “Please!”

Aria sprinted up. The person’s face was covered by a huge hood. She assessed the log. It was big and bulky, and she hoped she could move it.

“You’re going to be okay,” she shouted, her face beginning to warm from the flames. Mustering her strength, Aria shoved the log down the hill. It rolled into a pool of gas and exploded. The person shrieked and collapsed against the tree. There was another deafening
crack
behind them, and Aria turned and screamed. The woods were a wall of orange. The fire was climbing the trees now, felling more branches. In seconds, they would be surrounded.

The person was still pressed against the tree trunk, staring at Aria with a shell-shocked look on his or her sooty face. “Come on,” Aria wailed, starting to run. “We have to get out of here before we’re dead!”

31

RISING FROM THE ASHES

Emily, Spencer, and Hanna sprinted out of the barn, running as fast as they could away from the flames that had erupted around them. The air smelled thickly of smoke and burning trees. Emily’s lungs burned as she ran.

They waded through a bunch of thick shrubs, ignoring the burrs that were affixed to their sweaters, skin, and hair. Then Hanna abruptly stopped and pressed her hands to the top of her head. “Oh my God,” she wailed. “
Wilden
. I saw him the other day at Home Depot, loading a bunch of drums of something into his car. It was
propane
.”

Emily felt nauseated and dizzy. She thought of how Jason had stared right at her the other night, after he’d left Jenna’s house. How Wilden had glared at them at the party. They
knew
.

“Come
on
,” Spencer urged, pointing through the trees. They could see the outline of Spencer’s windmill ahead. Safety was close.

The wind kicked up, blowing ashes everywhere. Something flat and square fluttered past Emily, coming to a stop at the foot of a small, knobby tree. It was the picture from the Ali shrine, the one of Ali wearing a Von Dutch T-shirt and the four of them surrounding her, laughing. The corners of the photo were charred from the flames, and half of Spencer’s head had been burnt away. Emily gazed into Ali’s joyful, bright blue eyes. Here they were, running through the very woods where she’d died, with quite possibly the same people who had killed her trying to kill them, too.

They burst into Spencer’s backyard, coughing the noxious smoke out of their lungs. The Hastingses’ windmill was on fire, too. Each of the old, wooden blades broke off and clattered to the ground. The bottom part, which had
LIAR
written across it in bloodred spray paint, was lying flat on the grass, seemingly burning the brightest.

A thin scream emerged from the woods. At first Emily thought it was a fire engine siren—surely they were on their way. Then, she heard another scream, shrill and terrified. She grabbed Spencer’s hand. “What if that’s Aria? Her new house is one neighborhood over. She could’ve cut through the woods to get here.”

Before Spencer could answer, two figures tumbled out from the thick, burning trees.
Aria
. Someone else was behind her, someone dressed in a bulky hooded sweatshirt and jeans.

The girls surrounded Aria. “I’m okay,” she said quickly. She gestured to the person next to her. Whoever it was had curled in the fetal position on the dead grass. “He was trapped under a big branch,” Aria explained. “I had to push it off.”

“Are you hurt?” Emily asked the person. He shook his head, whimpering again. Far off in the distance, a fire engine wailed. Hopefully they’d send an ambulance, too.

“What were you doing in the woods, anyway?” Spencer asked him.

The person let out a violent, hacking cough. “I got a note.”

Emily paused. The person’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but it sounded like a girl’s, not a boy’s. “A…note?” Emily repeated.

The girl covered her face with her hands, shuddering with sobs. “I was told to come into these woods. It was really important. But I think they were trying to kill me.”

“They?”
Spencer asked. She gaped at the others. The flames from the woods danced across her face.

The girl coughed again. “I was sure I was going to die.”

A slithery feeling crawled over Emily’s skin. The girl’s voice was still muffled and scratchy, but it had a tonal quality Emily hadn’t heard for a long, long time.
I’ve inhaled too much smoke
, she told herself.
I’m hearing what I want to hear
. But when she looked at the others, they had startled expressions on their faces too.

“It’s okay. You’re safe now,” Spencer murmured.

The girl tried to nod. When she took her hands away from her face, they were covered in black soot. Then she lifted her head. The soot and smoke had streaked down her cheeks, revealing clear, pink skin. When she looked at the girls for the first time and smiled gratefully, Emily’s heart stopped. The girl had bright blue eyes. A perfect, slightly upturned nose. Bow-shaped lips. As she wiped away more soot, there was her angular, heart-shaped face.

She peered at them blankly, appearing not to recognize them. But they recognized her. Hanna let out a small, pained squeak. Spencer stood very still. Emily felt so dizzy she sank to the muddy grass, clutching her head.

Here was the girl in the pictures on the news. The girl on the screen saver of Emily’s phone. The girl in the photo that had blown through the woods just moments before. The one who’d been wearing the Von Dutch T-shirt in that photo, laughing as if nothing bad would ever happen to her.

This can’t be happening
, Emily thought.
There is no way this can be happening
.

It was…
Ali
.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT…

Ha! Betcha didn’t see that one coming. But you know how it is in Rosewood—one minute you see something, and the next…poof! It’s gone. Which makes it kind of impossible to figure out what’s really going on. Soooooo frustrating, right?

The questions are probably killing you: Is Ian actually dead…or is he sipping mojitos in Mexico, plotting his revenge? Did Spencer’s faux-mommy really steal her cash…or did she simply pay my price? Is Aria’s crush a psychotic murderer…or did my notes just make her think so? Did Emily uncover a dark DiLaurentis family secret…or did yours truly leave the sign book for her to find? Did Hanna’s favorite cop just try to burn her to a crisp…or does someone else want these bitches dead? And what about me? Am I on these girls’ sides, or am I pulling all the strings?