Twisted (21 page)

Hanna stared into the middle distance. Of course her notes reminded her of Ali. “It’s not possible.”

“Yes it is,” Emily insisted, sounding angry. “And you know it. Think about what happened. What we did. What we saw—or
didn’t
see.”

Hanna opened her mouth, then shut it again. If she allowed herself to talk or think about Jamaica, Tabitha’s awful voice would invade her head again.

But it was already too late. Visions swarmed into Hanna’s mind like an invasion of ants at a picnic. That awful night, after Tabitha hinted that she knew Hanna used to be a chubby, ugly loser, Spencer and Emily ran toward her, worry on their faces. “We need to talk,” Spencer said. “That girl that Emily saw on the landing? There’s something weird about her.”

“I know,” Hanna said.

They found Aria alone at the bar. She’d met Tabitha, too, she said, but she still didn’t believe she was Ali. “It has to be a coincidence,” she said.

“It’s not,” Emily urged.

The three of them dragged Aria up to the room she and Emily were sharing and triple-locked the doors. Then, one by one, each of them shared the eerie, Ali-like experience they’d had with Tabitha. With each tale, Hanna’s heart galloped faster and faster.

Aria frowned, still skeptical. “There has to be a logical explanation. How can she know things only Ali knows, say things only Ali says?”

“Because she’s Ali,” Emily insisted. “She’s back. Just . . . different. You saw the scars.”

Aria blinked. “So you’re saying she
didn’t
die in the fire?”

“I guess not.” Emily shut her eyes, guilt washing over her again. She swallowed it down. “I guess she escaped from the house.”

The room went silent. There was a loud
thump
from one of the upper floors; it sounded like kids were wrestling in their rooms. Aria cleared her throat. “But what about her family? Who’s been supporting her? How did she
get
here?”

“Maybe they don’t know she’s alive,” Emily whispered. “Maybe she’s gone rogue.”

“But if this
is
Ali, she had major reconstructive surgery,” Aria pointed out. “You said so yourself, Em. Do you really think she got through
all that
on her own? How did she pay for it?”

“It’s Ali we’re talking about.” Hanna hugged a pillow tight. “I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

Unspoken questions floated almost palpably through the air: What if Ali had deliberately followed them to Jamaica? What if she was planning to finish the job she’d started in the Poconos? What should they do?

A muffled, scratching sound made them turn. There, on the carpet just inside the door, was a folded-up piece of resort stationery. Someone had clearly just slipped it into the room.

Spencer leapt up and grabbed it. The girls gathered around and read it together.
Hey girls! Meet me on the crow’s nest in ten minutes. I want to show you something. Tabitha.

An Amtrak train across Route 30 clanged past, breaking Hanna from the memory. She pinched the bridge of her nose and looked at Emily. “Do you think Wilden would believe us?”

“I heard he isn’t a cop anymore.” Emily rubbed her hands up and down her arms, shivering. “And could you see his face if we told him we were being tortured by a dead girl? And anyway, if we tell anyone, A would tell what we did. And we can’t have that, Hanna. We
can’t.
”

“I know,” Hanna said softly, her heart thudding hard.

The door to the atrium whooshed open, bringing with it a rush of party noise. Jeremiah stepped out, spied Hanna, and stormed toward her, his face twisted into a scowl. “What are you doing out here? And who’s this?” He glared at Emily like she was a spy.

“A friend,” Hanna snapped.

“The friend who wrote
this
?” Jeremiah waved his iPad in Hanna’s face. On the screen was an email message.
Hanna’s gotten into all kinds of trouble lately! Better ask her about it before the reporters do.
The sender’s return address was a nonsensical jumble of letters and numbers.

“Oh my God,” Emily whispered, reading the message over Hanna’s shoulder.

Jeremiah eyed her. “Do you know what this is about?”

“No,” Emily and Hanna stammered together. Which was the truth, at least for Hanna. She didn’t know
which
horrible thing it was about: what happened in Jamaica, or what happened with Patrick.

Jeremiah’s nostrils flared. He stuffed the iPad back into his man-purse. The flap gaped, giving Hanna a glimpse of a pack of Marlboro Lights and the gray pouch that contained the campaign’s petty cash. “Out with it, Hanna. Do you have anything to tell me?”

“I said no,” Hanna answered quickly.

“Are you sure? It’s better I know before anyone else does.”

“For the last time,
no
.”

A roar of laughter rose from the atrium. Jeremiah gave Hanna and Emily another withering glance. “Whatever this is, you’d better clear it up before the press gets wind of it. I
knew
you shouldn’t have set foot anywhere near this campaign. If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be around at all.”

Then he stalked away, marching through the atrium to the elevator at the back of the room. Hanna covered her face with her hands.

Emily touched her shoulder. “Hanna, this is getting worse. If we don’t do anything, A’s going to ruin your dad’s campaign! Not to mention our
lives
! We’ll go to jail!”

“We don’t know if that note’s from A,” Hanna mumbled.

“Who else would it be from?”

Hanna watched Jeremiah get into the elevator. The lighted display above the car stopped on the third floor, where Mr. Marin’s campaign office was. The gray pouch inside his man-purse suddenly flashed through her mind. She peeked at her phone. Mike hadn’t written back. Then she set her jaw grimly. She might not be able to control A, but maybe there was a solution to Patrick.

She smoothed down her hair and looked at Emily. “You should go home. I’ll handle this.”

Emily wrinkled her nose. “
How?
”

“Just go, okay?” Hanna nudged Emily toward the parking lot. “I’ll call you later. Get home safe, okay?”

“But . . .”

Hanna went back into the atrium—she didn’t want to hear any more of Emily’s protests. Ducking her head, she slithered covertly around the edge of the room. People stood at the buffet line, helping themselves to ostrich burgers and caprese salads. Kate flirted with Joseph, one of Mr. Marin’s younger aides. Isabel and Hanna’s father were yukking it up with a big donor who’d promised to back him for the election. No one noticed as Hanna slipped through the heavy door to the stairwell.

She climbed three flights, her spiky heels ringing out on the concrete treads. At her dad’s floor, she pushed open the door to the hall and spotted Jeremiah’s balding head just outside her father’s office. He was talking heatedly to someone on his Droid.
Come on, come on
, Hanna urged silently. Finally, Jeremiah hung up, pressed through the double doors, and stabbed the
DOWN
elevator button.

Hanna flattened herself against the wall and held her breath, praying he wouldn’t see her. As Jeremiah waited, he rummaged through his suit pants pockets, pulling out receipts and other little slips of paper. An object clunked to the carpet, but he didn’t notice.

Ding.
The elevator doors slid open, and Jeremiah stepped inside. As soon as the doors closed, Hanna stepped forward, eyeing the shiny object he’d dropped. It was a silver money clip with the initials
JPO
. Everything was falling into place even better than she’d imagined. She scooped it up with the cuff of her coat sleeve over her fingers and pushed into her father’s office.

The room smelled like Jeremiah’s overpowering cologne. Red, white, and blue posters that said
TOM MARIN, PA SENATOR
lined the walls. Someone had left a half-eaten Italian sub in one of the cubicles, and a copy of the
Philadelphia Sentinel
lay facedown on one of the black leather couches in the corner.

Hanna tiptoed to her father’s separate quarters. The green banker’s lamp was still on. Next to a phone was a Tiffany-framed picture from Mr. Marin and Isabel’s wedding. Kate stood in front of the newlyweds, and Hanna stood slightly off to the side, like they hadn’t intended for her to be in the photo. She wasn’t even looking directly at the camera.

Looking around frantically, she spied a small, gray safe wedged in the corner by the window. She knew she’d seen it the night of the screening; it had to be where Jeremiah deposited the petty cash funds. She darted toward it and crouched down. The safe was the kind used in hotel rooms where you had to punch a four-digit code into a keypad. Looking around, she grabbed a tissue from a box on her dad’s desk so she wouldn’t leave prints. First, she tried November 4th, the date of next year’s election, but two big angry red lights blinked in her face. What about 1-2-3-4? More angry red lights. 1-7-7-6, to be patriotic and Founding Father–esque? Nothing.

Creak.
Hanna shot up, staring crazily at the door. Was it Jeremiah, back for his money clip? There were no shadows through the frosted glass, though. Another
creak
sounded from the opposite direction. She whipped around and stared at her reflection in the darkened window. Her eyes were wide and huge, and her face was pale.

“H-hello?” she called out. “I-is someone here?”

Snow fell lightly on the sidewalk out the window. Across the street, a parked car idled, its headlights blazing. A figure sat in shadows in the driver’s seat. Was Hanna crazy, or was the person’s head arced up toward her father’s office, staring right at her?

Taking a deep breath, she crouched down and assessed the safe again. The combination had to be something she knew. The photo from the wedding on her dad’s desk caught her eye again. With shaking hands, she punched Isabel’s birthday. Red lights. Gulping hard, she typed in her own birthday, December 23. Red lights. She glared at Kate’s smiling photo once more, then keyed 0-6-1-9—June 19, Kate’s birthday.

Click.

The lights turned green. The barrel released and the door swung open. Hanna was filled with a moment of horrible hurt—of
course
he’d set the combination to Kate’s birthday—but she forgot about it when she saw the piles of bills stacked in tall, neat piles. She pulled out a wad and counted it. Three more wads made it ten thousand exactly. There was so much more money in the safe; she wondered if her father would even miss it.

She shoved the cash in her bag and pushed the safe door closed. Then, as the final coup de grace, she dropped Jeremiah’s money clip a few inches away.

Her head spun as she stood. The money felt like it weighed a thousand pounds in her bag. She peered out the window again. The car still idled there, the driver motionless in the front seat. Did the person see her? Was it A?

A moment later, the engine revved. And then, noiselessly, the car pulled away, the tire tracks making crisp indents in the otherwise pure dusting of snow.

Chapter 24

Every guy’s fantasy

A waitress set a mug of hot chocolate on the table in front of Aria and clucked her tongue. “Wow. You look
cold
.”

“You think?” Aria muttered sarcastically, pressing her hands to the warm mug and willing the waitress to go away. Coldness was exactly why Aria was sitting as close to the fire inside the ski lodge as she could—in fact, she’d climb
into
the fire if she could. Outside, as the snow swirled past the huge overhead lights, tons of skiers zoomed down the slopes, not looking chilly in the slightest. Guys slalomed without hats on. Girls snowboarded in Fair Isle sweaters and jeans. Then again, they probably hadn’t spent hours on their butt, the cold snow soaking through their supposedly high-tech ski gear straight to their sensitive, non-skier skin. Aria was pretty sure even her eyelids were frostbitten.

The evening had been miserable. After Klaudia took off up the lift without Aria, Noel shrugged. “Maybe you’re better off getting a lesson from a real instructor anyway.” Then he deposited Aria at the Ski School and disappeared up the same black diamond slope himself.

Honestly, Aria wasn’t sure why she hadn’t just called it a day right then and there, but she’d somehow had this notion that skiing might be easy; maybe she could quickly learn and join Noel on the hill.
Right.
The beginner lesson was filled with seven- and eight-year-old children. The instructor, a good-natured Australian guy named Connor who kept assuming Aria was one of the kids’ nannies, led them to the bunny slope and taught them how to snowplow. Needless to say, every single one of the kids mastered it way before Aria did. The only time she made it down the bunny slope was when she’d slid down on her butt. Occasionally, she saw Noel and Klaudia swooping by, kicking up lots of snow when they stopped at the bottom of the hill. Neither of them looked in the direction of the bunny slope. Why would they? Why would they want to check to see how the
peikko
was doing?

“There you are!”

Aria looked up just as Noel clomped into the lodge, snow and ice caked on his jacket and ski pants. Klaudia followed him, her cheeks pink and her blond hair still perfectly styled. They both looked breathless and happily exhausted, like they’d just had tons of sex. Aria quickly bit the inside of her cheek and turned away.

Noel’s two brothers, Eric and Christopher, staggered in behind them. “You were amazing out there, Klaudia!” Eric cried when he saw her. “How long have you been skiing?”

“Oh, I
hiihto
before I walk!” Klaudia unzipped her coat.

“Did you guys see her on the moguls?” Noel removed his hat and goggles. “She got amazing air. Everyone on the lifts was cheering like we were at the Olympics.”

“It was good mountain.” Klaudia admitted. “A little easy, maybe, but still fun.”

Aria let out a sarcastic snort, which made everyone stop and stare. Noel walked over and sat down in the studded leather chair next to Aria. “Hey.”