Emily stared at him, suddenly recalling Wilden’s first name. Darren. Those Rosewood Day girls had just been talking about someone named Darren who had brutally removed a pig’s intestines. It must’ve been him.
She often forgot that Wilden wasn’t much older than she was—he’d graduated from Rosewood Day the same year as Spencer’s sister and Ian. Wilden hadn’t been a model student like Ian, though, but his antithesis, the type who was sent to detention every other week. It was amazing how they’d turned out: Ian the murderer, Wilden the good cop.
“She knows we’re not supposed to go outside,” Emily said firmly, snapping back to the present. “I’ll go upstairs and check myself. I’m sure she’s up there somewhere.” She lifted up her dress and put one foot on the first step, trying to quell her shaking hands.
“Wait,” Wilden called.
Emily turned. An ornate, elaborate crystal chandelier hung right over Wilden’s head, making his eyes look almost chartreuse. “Did Aria and Spencer tell you they’ve received more notes?”
Emily’s stomach flipped. “Yeah…”
“How about you?” Wilden asked. “Have you gotten any others?”
Emily nodded faintly. “I’ve gotten two, but none since Ian disappeared.”
Something fluttered over Wilden’s face, but it quickly passed. “Emily, I don’t think it was Ian. The guys guarding Ian’s house searched the place. There weren’t any cell phones, and all the computers and fax machines were removed from his house before he was released. So I really don’t see how he could have sent you any messages. We’re still trying to track down where the messages are coming from, but we haven’t found anything yet.”
The room started to spin. The notes weren’t from Ian? That didn’t make sense. And anyway, if Ian had so easily gotten out of the house to visit Spencer, then he could’ve found a way to text them from a secret phone. Maybe he’d planted a disposable somewhere, like in a dead tree or an unused mailbox. Or maybe someone had planted it for him.
Emily stared at Wilden, wondering why he hadn’t considered this. And then it hit her—Spencer hadn’t told him about Ian’s visit. “Well, actually, there is a way it could be Ian,” Emily started, trembling.
The phone inside Wilden’s jacket started to ring, interrupting her. “Hang on.” He held up a finger. “I need to get this.”
He tilted away from her, one hand curled over the edge of the side table. Emily gritted her teeth, annoyed. She looked around the room and saw Hanna and Aria standing next to an enormous abstract painting of a bunch of intersecting circles. Aria was fidgeting nervously with a white stole around her shoulders, and Hanna was running her hands through her hair again and again like she had lice. Emily strode up to them as fast as she could. “Have you seen Spencer?”
Aria shook her head, seeming distracted. Hanna looked just as dazed. “Nope,” she answered in a monotone.
“Wilden can’t find her,” Emily urged. “He checked the house a bunch of times, but she’s gone. And Spencer never told him about Ian, either.”
Hanna wrinkled her nose, her eyes beginning to get wide. “That’s weird.”
“Spencer’s got to be in the house somewhere. She wouldn’t just leave.” Aria stood on her tiptoes, looking around.
Emily glanced back at Wilden. He paused from his phone call, taking a big sip from his water glass. Then he laid the glass on the table and spoke into the mouthpiece again. “No,” he barked, rather forcefully.
She faced the others again, wringing her sweaty palms together. “You guys…do you think there’s any possibility that this new A could be someone else? Like…not Ian?” she sounded out.
Hanna stiffened. “No.”
“It has to be Ian,” Aria said. “It makes perfect sense.”
Emily stared at Wilden’s rigid back. “Wilden just told me they searched Ian’s house but couldn’t find a cell phone or a computer or anything. He doesn’t think Ian’s behind it.”
“But who else could it possibly be?” Aria squeaked. “Who else would want to do this to us? Who else knows where we are and what we’re doing?”
“Yeah, A is apparently from Rosewood,” Hanna blurted out.
Emily shifted her weight, rocking back and forth on the plushy woven rug. “How do you know that?”
Hanna ran her hands along her bare collarbone, staring blankly toward the big picture window in the Hastingses’ living room. “So I got a note or two. I didn’t know they were real at the time. One of them said A grew up in Rosewood, just like we did.”
Emily’s heart thrummed fast. “Did your notes say anything else?”
Hanna squirmed, as if Emily were plunging a needle into her arm. “Just this dumb stuff about my stepsister. Nothing important.”
Emily fiddled with the silver fish-shaped pendant around her neck, her forehead prickling with sweat. What if A wasn’t Ian…but not a copycat, either? When Emily had found out that Mona was the first A, she’d been completely caught off guard. Sure, Ali and the others had been nasty to Mona, but they’d been nasty to a lot of people. People Emily couldn’t even remember. What if someone else—someone close—was just as mad at them as Mona had been? What if it was someone in this very room?
She swept her eyes around the grand living room. Naomi Zeigler and Riley Wolfe emerged from the library, glaring at them. Melissa Hastings cut her eyes away, the corners of her mouth turning down. Scott Chin silently aimed his camera right at Emily, Aria, and Hanna. And Phi Templeton, Mona’s old, yo-yo-obsessed best friend, paused on her way to the library to glance over her shoulder, coolly meeting Emily’s eye.