Deadly

18 PRISON BLUES

Aria sat up like a shot and looked around. She was sprawled out on the floor of a dingy cinder-block cell. The fetid scent of urine and sweat wafted through the air, and she could hear angry shouts and swears through the walls. She was locked up.

“Aria?” It was Spencer, who was in the next cell over.

“Y-yeah?” Aria turned toward the wall.

“You were mumbling really loudly,” Spencer whispered. “Were you sleeping?”

Aria ran her hand through her gnarled hair. She must have passed out from fear and shock. She doubted she’d been out for long, though—light still streamed through the small window at the ceiling.

The past few hours twisted in her head like a tornado. After the bombshell at Rosewood Day, the police had shoved the four of them into separate cars and driven them to holding cells at the Rosewood jail.

It couldn’t be true. A had orchestrated this. Only . . . how? Once again, Aria relived the moment Fuji had told them that every single A note they’d received had been from their phones. It was like those dreams she sometimes had where she tried to dial an emergency phone number again and again, but the buttons kept disintegrating. She felt trapped. Helpless. Voiceless.

Aria glanced at the window near the ceiling of her cell. The light was dimmer; maybe a few hours had passed. Did her parents know about their arrest? Had the news picked up the story; was Aria’s face plastered all over CNN? She pictured Noel watching from his couch, slack-jawed. She imagined Asher the artist paling as he read a Google Alert, and she pictured her artistic future as a drawing on a chalkboard slowly being erased. She envisioned her parents and Mike getting a phone call and sinking to their knees, inconsolable.

Someone rapped at the bars, and Aria shot up. A familiar man in a well-fitting suit stood outside her cell. “Dad?” Spencer’s voice rang out from down the hall.

“Hello, Spencer.” Mr. Hastings sounded very serious.

“What are you doing here?” Spencer called out.

“My firm is going to represent you. All of you.” He looked up and down the cells. “My associate is with me, and he’s working on posting bail for all four of you. You’ll be out of here soon, don’t worry.”

Aria ran her tongue over her teeth. She’d never known Mr. Hastings well—even on weekends, he was always out doing something, whether it was going on marathon bike rides or taking care of the lawn or playing a round of golf—but he’d always seemed friendly and caring. He’d look out for them, right?

Mr. Hastings glanced down the hall, then leaned forward. “But we’d like to speak to you about a few things while we’re here. My associate Mr. Goddard is going to question you—criminal cases are more his area of expertise. But you’re in good hands.”

Criminal cases. Aria almost threw up.

“Anyway, they’ve allowed us a conference room,” Mr. Hastings said, clapping his hands. “We have twenty minutes.”

The door slammed, and there were footsteps and the jingling of keys. The bristly-haired police officer, Gates, appeared, unlocking the girls’ cells one by one. “Conference room’s that way,” he said, jutting a finger to the end of the hall.

Aria struggled to stand. Her legs felt cramped and weak, as though she’d been a prisoner for years instead of hours.

She followed Mr. Hastings into the small, square, cinder-block room she and the others had sat in more than a year ago, not long before Jenna Cavanaugh’s body was found in her backyard. It was very cold inside. A pitcher of water sat in the center of the table, a stack of plastic cups next to it. The room smelled vaguely of vomit.

Spencer walked into the room next, and Emily and Hanna followed. Each looked dazed, terrified, and exhausted. Everyone sat down without looking at one another. Mr. Hastings spoke to someone in the hall, and then a tall man with receding dark hair walked in. “Hello, girls,” he said, extending his hand to each of them. “I’m George Goddard.”

Mr. Hastings shut the door behind him. Goddard pulled out a chair and sat down. A few pregnant seconds passed. “So,” he finally said. “Let’s figure out what’s going on here.”

“How many times can we tell you that those A notes weren’t from us?” Spencer blurted. “They were from Ali and her helper. They set us up.”

Mr. Goddard looked conflicted. “The FBI—and the rest of the world—is pretty sure Alison is dead, girls.”

“But how do they know?” Spencer pressed.

“That I’m not sure,” Goddard said. “They just seem very certain that she’s no longer alive.” He looked back and forth at them as he undid the snap of his briefcase and pulled out some files. “Have you actually seen her? Have you been in touch with her?”

Aria exchanged a glance with the others. “We have her on a surveillance video,” Spencer admitted. “Or someone who looks like her, anyway.”

“Any other evidence she’s alive?” Goddard asked.

Everyone shook their heads. “But what about the note Hanna gave to the cops from the girl pretending to be Kyla?” Aria asked, assuming that Goddard had done his homework and knew who Kyla was. “Didn’t it have Ali’s fingerprints on it? And what about Kyla’s blood samples—didn’t they match Ali’s? Didn’t you find hair, skin, something?”

“Or how about Gayle’s house?” Emily pushed her matted hair off her face.

“Or that Acura key I dropped off?” Spencer pitched in.

Goddard looked through his notes. “According to the information the FBI has released, the only samples at the burn clinic were from the real Kyla, the girl who’d been murdered. As for the Acura key, the only prints on it were yours, Spencer.”

“It just makes no sense,” Aria said shakily. “Why would we send messages about our secrets to ourselves?”

Goddard shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. But their take on it is that you wanted to pretend you were bullied to garner sympathy.”

“Sympathy for what?” Hanna squinted.

“You wanted to make it look like someone was setting you up. Like someone was framing you for killing Tabitha.”

“Someone was framing us!” Emily cried.

Aria nodded fiercely. “We would never do something like that.”

Goddard pressed his lips together. “They have evidence that proves that perhaps you might be someone who would do that. Something about pushing another girl off a ski lift?”

Aria jolted up. The incident with Klaudia rushed back to her. How could Fuji have found out about that? But then it hit her: It had been in an A note. And Aria had handed over every single one of her texts.

She covered her mouth with her hand.

“They have eyewitness reports of how you attacked a girl named Kelsey Pierce at a school party a few months ago, too, Spencer,” Mr. Goddard said glumly, looking at his notes. “Beau Braswell is willing to corroborate this. And now Ms. Pierce is in a mental hospital.”

“Not because of me,” Spencer blurted. Her chin started to wobble.

Then Goddard looked apologetically at Emily. “Someone named Margaret Colbert can attest to your criminal behavior, too.”

Emily blinked. “Isaac’s mother? S-she hates me!”

“She said you tried to sell off your baby.” His voice rose at the end of that last sentence, like a question.

Emily wilted. Her face turned ghost-white.

Again Goddard glanced at his notes. “I’m sure they’re digging up people who think you girls are emotionally unstable.” Then he turned to Hanna. “They found out you stole from your own father’s political campaign to pay someone off.”

Hanna made an eep. “Did my father tell them that?”

“He didn’t need to.” Goddard pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was right there on your phone. That isn’t all they have on you, either. The police did a thorough investigation of the burn clinic after the deaths, including eyewitness reports about who was in and out of Graham Pratt’s room. According to quite a few people, you were the last one in there before he had his fatal seizure.”

Hanna backed up. “I didn’t kill him!”

Goddard nodded. “They think Graham might have seen Aria set off the bomb in the bottom of the ship. You had a lot to lose by keeping him alive.”

“I didn’t bomb that ship!” Aria cried.

“You already admitted you were down there.” Goddard looked tormented. “They’re even trying to connect you to Noel Kahn’s attack. Mr. Kahn was apparently working with Fuji on the Tabitha case. You needed him out of the way.”

Aria pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “Noel didn’t send those e-mails to Fuji about the case—someone hacked into his e-mail account. Did Fuji even talk to Noel, or is she just making all of this up?”

Goddard shrugged. “Probably a little bit of both. And look, this is just the evidence they’ve shared with me. Who knows what else they’re holding closer to the vest, stuff they don’t want me to know.”

Hanna let out a breath. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t kill Tabitha. Someone else did.”

“How are they so certain we did it?” Aria asked in what she hoped was a calmer voice. “We worried that A would have methods of making us look more culpable than we were. And yes, we did push her—Fuji knows that. But by the time we got down to the beach to save Tabitha, she was gone. A dragged her somewhere.”

Goddard laid his hands on the table. “That’s what I really want to talk to you about, girls. A new piece of evidence came to light.”

There was a long pause. Hanna squinted. “What else?”

Goddard pulled a laptop from his briefcase. He lifted the lid and moved the mouse around to wake up the screen. A shaky, black-and-white surveillance image appeared. Waves crashed on a pristine, white beach. A large building with balconies at every window stood in the distance. The angle was different, but it was clear where this was: The Cliffs in Jamaica.

Spencer breathed in sharply. “Where did you get this?”

“This is official video footage from the Lychee Nut, the resort next to The Cliffs. The FBI received it late last night.”

Aria stared at the screen. After a moment, something fell from the sky, hitting the sand with an eerily silent thunk. Aria saw a limp head, a hand.

“Is that . . . ?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“Tabitha,” Goddard answered for her. “This is footage from that night.”

Tabitha’s hand twitched. She raised her head. Her jaw moved up and down, and it looked like she was calling out. “Look!” Emily cried. “See, she survived!”

Tabitha’s mouth opened and closed again, like a fish out of water. Then, four figures appeared from stage right. One was tall with dirty-blond hair and wearing a blue beach dress. Another had strong swimmer’s shoulders and had on a T-shirt that said MERCI BEAUCOUP across the front. The third girl wore a sarong and a white halter. And the fourth girl . . . well, Aria would recognize her own dark hair and tie-dyed maxi anywhere.

Only, it couldn’t be. Because as these four girls gathered around Tabitha, they began to kick her hard. Spencer beat her abdomen with her fists. Emily pummeled her legs. And then Aria raised a piece of driftwood and brought it down over Tabitha’s head.

Aria twisted away, too horrified to look. Emily let out a stifled scream. Hanna dry-heaved. Aria peeked through her fingers to look at the video again. It sure as hell looked like all of them.

“A—Ali—created this,” Aria said. “This is her revenge on us because we got the police involved. She knew she had to step it up, and this was the only ammo she had.”

“It’s a pretty convincing video, ladies.” Goddard sounded grim. “Now look, I honestly think the best course of action is a plea bargain. You’ve been psychologically traumatized from various bullies last year. You clearly didn’t know what you were doing. You could get a drastic reduction in sentence if we go that route. Plus all of you were under eighteen at the time, which means you might not be tried as adults.”

Spencer widened her eyes. “Does my father agree with this strategy?”

“I haven’t spoken with him about it yet, but I have a feeling he will.”

Spencer shook her head. “No plea bargain. No sentence, period. We’re innocent.”

“You believe us, don’t you?” Hanna asked, tears in her eyes. “Will you fight for us?”

Goddard hesitated for a long time, spinning and spinning his wedding ring on his finger. “I believe you,” he said in a defeated voice. “But I’m going to tell you right now—it’s going to be tough.” He stood. “I’m sorry. Bail will be posted soon—you can wait here until they come for you. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

And then, just like that, he was gone.