Wanted (5 page)

“Oh my God,” Aria murmured, clapping her hand to her forehead. Emily blinked furiously at the girl, as if she didn’t believe she was real. Hanna latched onto Emily’s arm.

A portion of the crowd spun around and stared at Aria, Emily, Spencer, and Hanna. “Did they
know
?” someone whispered.

Spencer’s heart fluttered hummingbird-fast. She
hadn’t
known. Ali had kept lots of secrets from her—the clandestine relationship with Ian, her secret friendship with Jenna, the mystery of why she’d dumped Naomi and Riley for Spencer and the others in sixth grade—but a secret sister trumped all of those things.

She stared at the girl on the porch. Ali’s twin sister was tall, her hair a little darker and her face a little narrower than Ali’s, but otherwise she was identical to their old best friend. She wore black leggings, black flats, an oversize blue oxford shirt, and a cropped white jacket. A striped scarf was looped around her neck, and her blond hair was bunched into a bun. With her cupid’s bow lips and sapphire blue eyes, she looked just like a French model.

Out of the corner of her eye, Spencer noticed her sister, Melissa, weaving through the crowd. Angling past the police barricades, she walked right up to Jason DiLaurentis and whispered something in his ear. Jason paled, turned toward Melissa, and said something back.

An uneasy feeling bolted through Spencer’s stomach. Why was Melissa here? And what was she doing? She hadn’t seen Melissa and Jason talk since high school.

Then Melissa craned her neck and stared at Courtney. Courtney noticed and flinched. Her smile drooped.

What the
hell
?

“What do you think about William Ford saying he’s innocent?” A voice called out from the crowd, breaking Spencer’s focus. The question came from a tall blond reporter in the front row.

Mrs. DiLaurentis pursed her lips. “I think it’s reprehensible. The evidence against him is staggering.”

Spencer turned back to Courtney. Dizziness overcame her. It was so
bizarre.
Courtney met her gaze, then shifted from Spencer to the other girls. Once she had everyone’s attention, she signaled to the side door of the house.

Emily stiffened. “Does she want us to…?”

“She couldn’t,” Spencer said. “She doesn’t even know us.”

Courtney leaned over and whispered something into her mom’s ear. Mrs. DiLaurentis nodded, then smiled at the crowd. “My daughter is a little overwhelmed. She’s going to go back inside for a while to rest.”

Courtney turned for the door. Before she disappeared into the house, she looked over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

“Should we go?” Hanna said uneasily.

“
No!
” Aria gasped at the same time Emily said, “Yes!”

Spencer chewed on her pinkie. “We should see what she wants.” She grabbed Aria’s arm. “C’mon.”

They sneaked around the side of the house, ducked past an overgrown holly bush, and darted through the red-painted side door.

The huge kitchen smelled of cloves, olive oil, and Febreze. One of the chairs was cocked at an odd angle to the table, as if someone had been sitting there moments before. Spencer recognized the old Delft pottery flour and sugar jars by the microwave from the DiLaurentises’ old kitchen. Someone had started a grocery list and pinned it to the refrigerator.
Jelly
.
Pickles. French bread.

When Courtney appeared from the hallway, a whisper of a smile emerged on her eerily familiar face; Spencer’s legs dissolved into Jell-O. Aria let out a small squeak.

“I promise I won’t bite,” Courtney said. Her voice was exactly like Ali’s, husky and seductive. “I wanted a minute alone with you guys before things got too crazy.”

Spencer nervously shaped her dirty blond hair into a ponytail, unable to take her eyes off the girl. It was like Ali had crawled out of the hole in her old backyard, grown back her skin, and become alive and whole again.

The girls all stared at one another, their eyes wide and unblinking. The clock on the microwave ticked from 3:59 to 4:00.

Courtney plucked a yellow bowl full of pretzels from the island and joined them. “You guys were my sister’s best friends, right? Spencer, Emily, Hanna, Aria?” She pointed to each of them in succession.

“Yeah.” Spencer curled her hands around the caning on her chair, remembering the time in sixth grade when she, Aria, Hanna, and Emily had sneaked into Ali’s backyard, hoping to steal her Time Capsule flag. Ali had come out onto her porch, wearing a pink T-shirt and wedges, and caught them. After telling the girls they were too late—someone had already stolen the flag—she’d pointed at Spencer and said, “You’re Spencer, right?” She then made the others introduce themselves, acting as if she was way too popular to remember their names. It was the first time Ali had ever spoken to any of them. Just one week later, she handpicked them as her new best friends.

“Ali told me about you.” Courtney offered the girls pretzels, but everyone shook their heads. Spencer couldn’t fathom eating right now. Her stomach had inverted itself.

“But she never told you about me, did she?”

“N-no,” Emily croaked. “Not once.”

“Then I guess this is pretty bizarre,” Courtney said.

Spencer fiddled with a cork coaster that said
MARTINI TIME!
in fifties-style lettering.

“So…where were you? At a hospital or something?” Aria asked.

Not that Courtney looked sick. Her skin radiated, as if it was lit from an inside source. Her blond hair shone as if it was deep-conditioned hourly. As Spencer canvassed Courtney’s face, a realization hit her with meteoric force: If Ali was Spencer’s half sister, then this girl was, too. Suddenly she was keenly aware how much Courtney looked like Mr. Hastings…and Melissa…
and
Spencer. Courtney had her dad’s long, slender fingers and button nose, Melissa’s cerulean eyes, and the same dimple Spencer had on her right cheek. Nana Hastings had that dimple, too. It was amazing that Spencer hadn’t noticed these similarities when Ali was alive. Then again, she hadn’t known to look.

Courtney chewed thoughtfully. The crunches echoed through the room. “Kind of. I was at this place called the Radley. And then, after it became a hotel or whatever, I was moved to a place called the Preserve at Addison-Stevens.” She said the name with a haughty British accent, rolling her eyes.

Spencer exchanged a shocked look with the other girls.
Of course.
Jason DiLaurentis wasn’t the patient at the Radley—
Courtney
was. His name was in the logbooks because he’d visited her. And Hanna had said that Iris, her roommate at the Preserve, had drawn a picture of Ali in some secret room. But Iris must have known Courtney, not Ali.

“So…it was for…mental issues?” Aria said tentatively.

Courtney pointed a pretzel at Aria like a dagger. “Those places aren’t
just
for mental patients,” she snapped.

“Oh.” A bloom of red appeared on Aria’s cheeks. “Sorry. I had no idea.”

Courtney gave a shrug and stared into the pretzel bowl. Spencer waited for her to elaborate on why she
had
been in those facilities, but she said nothing.

Finally, Courtney raised her head. “Anyway. I’m sorry I ran away from you the night of the fire. That was probably really…confusing.”

“Oh my God, that
was
you,” Hanna exclaimed.

Spencer ran her fingers along the edge of the blue linen place mat. It made sense, of course, that it was Courtney who had emerged from the woods, not Ali’s ghost or a figment from a weird group hallucination.

Emily leaned forward, her reddish-blond hair falling in her face. “What were you doing there?”

Courtney pulled her chair closer to the table. “I got a note—from Billy I guess—saying there was something in the woods I needed to see.” Courtney’s face twisted with remorse. “I wasn’t supposed to leave the house, but the note said it would help solve Ali’s murder. When I reached the woods, the fire started. I thought I was going to die…but then Aria saved me.” She touched Aria’s wrist. “Thank you, by the way.”

Aria’s mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

“How did you get out of there so quickly?” Emily pressed.

Courtney wiped a stray piece of salt from her lip. “I called my contact at the Rosewood PD. He’s an old family friend.”

The sound of mic feedback filtered in from the press conference outside. Spencer gazed at Aria, Emily, and Hanna. It was obvious who the
family friend
was. It explained why they hadn’t seen him the night of the fire. It also explained why he’d told them to stop saying they saw Ali the very next day: He’d needed to keep Ali’s sister safe.

“Wilden.” Emily’s jaw tensed. “You shouldn’t trust him. He’s not what he seems.”

Courtney leaned back, letting out an easy, amused chuckle. “Settle down, Killer.”

A chilly frisson of fear slithered up Spencer’s back.
Killer?
That was Ali’s nickname for Emily. Had Ali told her?

But before any of them could say anything, Mrs. DiLaurentis appeared in the front hall. When she noticed the group, her face brightened. “Thanks for coming, girls. It means a lot to us.”

Mrs. DiLaurentis walked over to Courtney and put her hand on her arm. Her long, perfect nails were painted classic Chanel red. “I’m sorry, honey, but there’s someone from MSNBC who has a couple of questions. He’s come all the way from New York….”

“Okay,” Courtney groaned, getting up.

“The Rosewood PD wants to speak with you, too,” Mrs. DiLaurentis said. She took her daughter’s face in her hands and began to smooth out Courtney’s eyebrows. “Something about the night of the fire.”

“
Again?
” Courtney sighed dramatically, wrenching away from her mom. “I’d rather talk to the press. They’re more fun.”

She turned back to the girls, who were still sitting motionless at the table. “Come by anytime, guys,” she said, smiling. “Door’s always open. And, oh!” She pulled a brand-new laminated school ID from her jeans pocket.
COURTNEY DILAURENTIS
, it said in big red letters. “I’m going to Rosewood Day!” she exclaimed. “See you at school tomorrow.”

And then, with a final unsettling wink, she was gone.

6

FREAK NO MORE

The following morning, Hanna walked down the path from the student parking lot toward school. Channel 6, Channel 8, and CNN news vans were parked at Rosewood Day’s main entrance. Reporters hunched behind the bushes like lions on the prowl. Smoothing her auburn hair, Hanna braced herself for their barrage of questions.

The reporter closest to her stared for a moment, and then turned to the others. “Never mind,” he shouted. “It’s only that Pretty Little Liar girl.”

Hanna winced.
Only
that Pretty Little Liar girl? What the hell did that mean? Didn’t they want to ask Hanna what she thought about Ali’s secret twin? What about her opinions on Billy trying to prove his innocence? And while she was at it, how about a big, fat apology for all the mud they’d slung at her?

She stuck her nose in the air. Whatever. She didn’t want to be on TV anyway. The camera added ten pounds.

A tubby guy operating the boom microphone squawked into his Nextel walkie-talkie. Another reporter clapped her cell phone closed. “Courtney DiLaurentis is in the back parking lot!”

The reporters and camera people stampeded for the back of the school.

Hanna shuddered.
Courtney.
It hardly seemed real. The first few hours after Hanna left the DiLaurentis kitchen, she kept waiting for people with cameras to pop out of nowhere, announcing that this was all some bizarre prank.

Why hadn’t Ali told them about her sister? All those sleepovers, all those notes between classes, all those trips to the Poconos and Newport. All those times they played Never Have I Ever or Truth or Dare, and Ali hadn’t once spilled the secret. Should Hanna have sensed the truth when Ali wanted to pretend that they were quintuplets who’d been separated at birth? Or when she saw the drawing of Ali—
Courtney
—on the Preserve wall. Had Ali been dropping cryptic hints whenever she looked at Hanna and sighed, “You’re so lucky to be an only child”?

Pushing past a knot of nerdy freshman girls watching a rerun of
Glee
on an iPhone, Hanna kicked open the front door and strutted inside. It looked like a Hallmark factory had thrown up in the lobby. The walls were slathered with white paper cupids, red heart-shaped streamers, and gold foil bunting. Next to the auditorium doors were giant candy-heart fixtures the school put up every year.
FIND LOVE
, said the first heart in wedding invitation–style calligraphy.
AT THE VALENTINE’S BALL
, said the second heart.
THIS SATURDAY
, said the final one. There were little bite marks in the corner of the last heart, probably from a rodent that had gotten into the storage closet where the hearts were kept for the rest of the year. Details about the dance were on pink flyers in a big woven basket, including the mandate that in honor of Valentine’s Day, everyone must wear something red, pink, or white—even the boys. Because of the recent tragedy, ticket proceeds would go toward the newly established Jenna Cavanaugh fund, which would sponsor the training of Seeing Eye dogs. Interestingly, all traces of the Jenna Shrine that had been in the lobby yesterday had vanished. Either the Rosewood Day staff had gotten too many complaints of how depressing and disturbing it was, or now that Courtney was here, Jenna’s death was yesterday’s news.

A fit of giggles arose from Steam. Hanna turned and saw Naomi, Riley, and Kate sitting at one of the tile-topped café tables, nursing aromatic mugs of herbal tea and picking at warm cranberry-bran scones. There was a fourth girl there, too, with a heart-shaped face and huge blue eyes.

The milk steamer on the espresso machine hissed, and Hanna jumped. She felt transported back to sixth grade, when Naomi, Riley, and Ali had been joined at the hip. Of course it wasn’t Ali sitting shoulder to shoulder with Naomi and Riley, looking as though they’d been friends forever. It was Courtney.