“How could Ian have faked his death?” Emily blurted when she reached the circle. “We all saw him. He looked…blue.”
Hanna, bundled in a white wool coat and faux-fur scarf, raised her shoulders. The only color in her face was her red-rimmed eyes; it looked like she hadn’t slept much last night, either. Aria, wearing a thin, trendy-looking gray leather jacket and green fingerless gloves, shook her head, saying nothing. She wasn’t wearing her usual sparkly makeup. Even neat-as-a-pin Spencer looked disheveled—her hair was in a greasy, lumpy ponytail.
“It fits,” Spencer croaked. “Ian pretended to be dead, and he called us to the woods because he knew we’d go to the police and tell them we saw him.”
Aria sank down onto one of the swings. “But why wouldn’t Ian just run? Why would he put on a show for us?”
“When the cops found out he was missing, they started searching for him immediately,” Spencer explained. “But then when we saw his body, they turned their attention to the woods instead. We distracted them for a few days, long enough so Ian could really escape. We probably did exactly what he wanted us to.” She gazed up at the clouds, a helpless expression on her face.
Hanna sank onto her left hip. “What do you think A has to do with this? A lured us into the woods so we’d see Ian. A is obviously working with him.”
“This text makes it pretty obvious that Ian and A were in cahoots,” Spencer said, shoving her phone at them. Emily read the first two lines again. When I said he had to go, I didn’t mean he had to die. Still, there’s something really sketchy in this case…and it’s up to you to figure out what it is. She bit her lip hard, then gazed at the dragon-shaped slide behind them. Years ago, whenever something or someone at school scared her, she would hide inside the dragon’s head at the top until she felt better. She felt an overwhelming urge to do that now.
“It seems like A helped Ian bust out,” Spencer went on. “They worked together—when Ian met me on my back porch last week, A threatened that if I told the cops, I’d get hurt. If I would’ve told them, they would’ve rearrested Ian…and he couldn’t have escaped.”
“A was worried about any of us saying anything,” Emily piped up. “All of my notes said that if I didn’t tell A’s secret, A wouldn’t tell mine.”
Hanna looked at Emily, a curious smile on her lips. “This A knows some secrets about you?”
Emily shrugged. For a while, A was taunting Emily about how she’d kept her sexuality from Isaac. “Not anymore,” she said.
“What if Ian is A?” Aria suggested. “It still makes a lot of sense.”
Emily shook her head. “The texts weren’t from Ian. The cops checked his phone.”
“Just because the A notes weren’t coming from Ian’s phone doesn’t mean they weren’t coming from Ian,” Hanna reminded her. “He could have had someone else send them. Or he could have gotten a disposable cell or a phone in another name.”
Emily put her finger to her lips. She hadn’t thought of that.
“And all those tricks he pulled the night we allegedly saw his body are pretty easy if you know how to use a computer,” Hanna went on. “Ian probably figured out how to delay sending a text so that we’d get it the moment we saw what looked like his dead body. Remember how Mona sent herself an e-mail from A to throw us off? It’s probably not that hard.”
Spencer pointed at the piece of computer paper. It was a printout of the IM exchange between her and Ian. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the lines that said, They hated me. They found out that I knew. That was why I had to run. “Ian signed off before I could ask who ‘they’ were. But what if this is much bigger than Ian planning an escape? What if Ian really did find out something huge about Ali’s murder? What if he thought that if he went on trial, explaining what he knew, he’d be killed? Faking his own death wouldn’t just get the cops off his back, it’d get whoever wanted to hurt him off his back too.”
Aria stopped swinging. “Do you think whoever was after Ian might come after us if we figure out too much?”
“That’s what it sounds like,” Spencer said. “But there’s something else.” She pointed to a few lines of text at the bottom of the computer printout. It was the IP address of where the Instant Messages were from. “It says Ian IM’ed us from somewhere in Rosewood.”
“Rosewood?” Aria shrieked. “You mean he’s still…here?”
Hanna’s face paled. “Why would Ian stay here? Why wouldn’t he skip town?”
“Maybe he’s not done searching for the truth,” Spencer suggested.
“Or maybe he’s not done with us…for turning him in,” Aria said.
Emily heard a whoop behind her and jumped. A crow was slowly circling the playground. When she turned back to her friends, their eyes were wide, and their jaws were tense.
“Aria’s right,” Hanna said, picking back up on the conversation. “If Ian’s alive, we don’t know what he’s up to. He still might be after us. And he still might be guilty.”
“I don’t know,” Spencer protested.
Emily faced Spencer, confused. “But you told the cops it was him! What about that memory you had of seeing Ian with Ali on the night she died?”
Spencer shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “I’m not sure if I really remember that…or if it was just what I wanted to believe.”