Spencer exchanged an uneasy glance with the others. This past fall, Mona Vanderwaal, a classmate and Hanna’s best friend, had sent the girls twisted, torturous messages signed A. Mona had ruined their lives in countless ways, and she’d even plotted to kill them, hitting Hanna with her SUV and almost pushing Spencer off the cliff at Floating Man Quarry. After Mona slipped off the cliff herself, they thought they were safe…but last week they began receiving sinister messages from a new A. Originally, they thought the A notes were from Ian, as they’d started getting them only after he’d been released from prison on temporary bail. But Wilden was skeptical. He kept telling them that was impossible—Ian didn’t have access to a cell phone, nor could he have freely skulked around while under house arrest, watching the girls’ every move.
“A is real,” Emily protested, shaking her head desperately. “What if A is Ian’s killer? And what if A dragged Ian away?”
“Maybe A is Ali’s killer too,” Hanna added, still holding the candlestick tightly.
Wilden licked his lips, looking unsettled. Big flakes of snow were landing on the top of his head, but he didn’t wipe them away. “Girls, you’re getting hysterical. Ian is Ali’s killer. You of all people should know that. We arrested him on the evidence you gave us.”
“What if Ian was framed?” Spencer pressed. “What if A killed Ali and Ian found out?” And what if that’s something the cops are covering up? she almost added. It was a theory Ian had suggested.
Wilden traced his fingers around the Rosewood PD badge embroidered on his coat. “Did Ian feed you that load of crap during his visit to your porch on Thursday, Spencer?”
Spencer’s stomach dropped. “How did you know?”
Wilden glared at her. “I just got a phone call from the station. We got a tip. Someone saw you two talking.”
“Who?”
“It was anonymous.”
Spencer felt dizzy. She looked at her friends—she’d told them and only them that she and Ian had secretly met-but they looked clueless and shocked. There was only one other person who knew she and Ian had met. A.
“Why didn’t you come to us as soon as it happened?” Wilden leaned closer to Spencer. His breath smelled like coffee. “We would’ve dragged Ian back to jail. He never would’ve escaped.”
“A threatened me,” Spencer protested. She searched through her phone’s inbox and showed Wilden that note from A, too. If poor little Miss Not-So-Perfect suddenly vanished, would anyone even care?
Wilden rocked back and forth on his heels. He stared hard at the ground where Ian had been not an hour ago and sighed. “Look, I’ll go back to the house and get a team together. But you can’t blame everything on A.”
Spencer glanced at the walkie on his hip. “Why don’t you radio them from here?” she pressured. “You can have them meet you in the woods and start looking right now.”
An uncomfortable look came over Wilden’s face, as if he hadn’t anticipated this question. “Just let me do my job, girls. We have to follow…procedure.”
“Procedure?” Emily echoed.
“Oh my God,” Aria breathed. “He doesn’t believe us.”
“I believe you, I believe you.” Wilden ducked around a few low-hanging branches. “But the best thing you girls can do is go home and get some rest. I’ll handle this from here.”
The wind gusted, fluttering the ends of the gray wool scarf Spencer had looped around her neck before running out here. A sliver of moon peeked out from the fog. In seconds, none of them could see Wilden’s flashlight anymore. Was it just Spencer’s imagination, or had he seemed eager to get away from them? Was he just worried about Ian’s body being somewhere in the woods…or was it because of something else?
She turned and stared hard at the empty ravine, willing Ian’s body to return from wherever it had gone. She’d never forget how one eye bugged open, and the other seemed glued shut. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. And he’d still been wearing his platinum Rosewood Day class ring on his right hand, its blue stone glinting in the moonlight.
The other girls were looking at the empty space too. Then, there was a crack, far off in the woods. Hanna grabbed Spencer’s arm. Emily let out an eep. They all froze, waiting. Spencer could hear her heart thudding in her ears.
“I want to go home,” Emily cried.
Everyone immediately nodded—they’d all been thinking the same thing. Until the Rosewood police started searching, they weren’t safe out here alone.
They followed their footsteps back to Spencer’s house. Once they were out of the ravine, Spencer spotted the thin golden beam of Wilden’s flashlight far ahead, bouncing off the tree trunks. She stopped, her heart jumping to her throat all over again. “Guys,” she whispered, pointing.
Wilden’s flashlight snapped off fast, as if he sensed they had seen him. His footsteps grew more and more muffled and distant, until the sound vanished altogether. He wasn’t heading back toward Spencer’s house to get a search team, like he’d said he was going to do. No, he was quickly creeping deeper into the woods…in exactly the opposite direction.
2
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
The following morning, Aria sat at the yellow Formica table in her father’s tiny kitchen in Old Hollis, the college town next to Rosewood, eating a bowl of Kashi GoLean doused in soy milk and attempting to read the Philadelphia Sentinel. Her father, Byron, had already completed the crossword puzzle, and there were inky smudges on the pages.