Toxic

24 SET ’EM FREE, THEN KILL ’EM OFF

The following morning, Emily sat in her Volvo in the Rosewood Day parking lot before chemistry class, on a conference call with Spencer and the others. Mostly, Spencer was doing all the talking.

“There was someone at the pool house,” Spencer said hurriedly after describing her heckler. “I ran up to catch him.”

“But how could you follow him through the woods?” Hanna shrieked. “You could have gotten really hurt, Spence! You should have called the police!”

Emily murmured in agreement, but she felt guilty—Spencer was getting the lecture she also deserved. Her friends didn’t know about her freak-out the other day at the pool house, and hopefully, they never would. They could, technically: They could rewind the footage themselves and see everything she’d done. Even thinking about it made Emily feel prickly and embarrassed. All those things she’d trashed. All those awful things she’d said.

“Look, I know it was crazy, but I wasn’t thinking straight,” Spencer said. “And anyway, I’m fine. But the guy got away.” She sighed dramatically. “Which sucks, because I’m almost positive it was Dominick. I don’t know who else it could have been.”

“So who is he?” Aria asked.

Spencer briefly described the guy who’d heckled her online and at her panel in New York. “It’s part of the reason why I ran up there—I thought it was him, but the camera image wasn’t clear, and he ran off too quickly for me to get a better look. I even rewound the surveillance tape, but I still couldn’t see his face.”

“So how can we find this Dominick guy?” Hanna asked, her voice high and thin. “Do you know where he lives?”

“All I have is the screen name he used to torment me on my blog. He says he’s from Philly, but who knows if that’s true?”

“What do you think he was looking for?” Aria asked.

“Well, when I watched the surveillance tape again, he seemed to be just standing there,” Spencer said. “So I don’t know. Maybe he was waiting for Ali. Why else would he be there unless she’d been there?”

“So where does this leave us?” Aria asked. “If the Ali Cats are real, and Ali trusts a few of them, does that mean that they’re all after us?”

Emily shut her eyes. For the past few days, after her foolish trashing of the pool house, she’d lived in fear that Ali and Robin Cook would break into her house while she was sleeping and stand over her, laughing, before they smothered her to death. She’d barely slept a wink. “How can we fight something when we don’t even know what the something is?” she said weakly.

“Let’s not panic,” Spencer said firmly. “Maybe I can find Dominick and ask him questions. Or maybe we could report him to the police, saying he was trespassing on the Maxwells’ property.”

“And what if the cops ask us how we knew Dominick was there?” Hanna reminded her. “We’ll have to tell them about our cameras. And then we’ll be in trouble for trespassing, too.”

Everyone was silent for a while. Then Aria sighed heavily. “We’re all meeting at the Rosewood Rallies charity thing tonight?”

Spencer groaned. “I don’t want to.”

“I don’t, either,” Emily said.

“Please come, Em,” Aria said quickly—so quickly, in fact, that it annoyed Emily a little. She’d noticed how tweaky and twitchy her friends had been around her lately. They were probably worried about her—she knew she’d been acting a little unhinged. But on some level, she wished they’d just leave her alone.

After that, there wasn’t really much more to say, and everyone hung up. Emily gripped the steering wheel for a while, a hot feeling welling in her stomach. Several girls crossed the parking lot on the way to class, their ponytails bouncing. For all she knew, they could be Ali Cats, too. The whole school could be.

Then she looked at the box that sat next to her on the passenger seat. It was Jordan’s possessions from the prison—she still hadn’t looked at it, but she also didn’t like the idea of leaving it at home, where her parents could snoop. One of the flaps stuck up slightly, daring her to peek inside. But she feared the pain she’d feel when she did. Chances were, she’d recognize some of the items in that box: a pair of Jordan’s earrings, her driver’s license, the shoes she’d been wearing when they caught her. Other people might think that reuniting with these items might make her feel closer to Jordan, but Emily disagreed. They would only make her feel even more disconnected, so much further away.

When her phone rang again, she let out a yelp. An unfamiliar number popped up on the screen. Emily answered with a nervous hello.

“Miss Fields,” said a gruff voice. “My name is Mark Rhodes, and I’m a detective from the Ulster County PD. Agent Fuji from the Philly FBI branch gave me your number. I’m investigating Jordan Richards’s death.”

Emily sat up straighter. “Investigating?” she repeated. “Robin Cook was charged with that, wasn’t she?”

The detective cleared his throat. “Well, there have been some rumors around prison that Miss Cook was put up to it somehow, or even framed. And this morning, her body was found in the woods outside a shopping mall in New Jersey.”

Emily blinked hard. “She’s dead?”

“We suspect there was more at play here than we first thought. You visited Miss Richards the morning she was killed. Did she say anything to you? Mention she wasn’t getting along with someone?”

“No . . .” Emily’s mind whirled.

“And you don’t know of anyone on the outside who might have, say, tracked Miss Cook down, in revenge for killing Jordan?”

Emily shot up. She hated what the detective was getting at. “Absolutely not,” she almost shouted. “Jordan—or her people—had nothing to do with Robin’s death. Alison DiLaurentis killed her.”

There was a long pause. “Excuse me?” the detective finally said.

Emily knew she couldn’t stop now. “Ali arranged for Robin to kill Jordan—they met the morning of Jordan’s death. Then she broke Robin out of jail and killed her to close the loop.” Her heart thrummed hard. It totally made sense. This was how Ali was going to keep her Ali Cats from talking. She murdered them.

There was static on the line. “I’m sorry. You’re talking about Alison DiLaurentis, the girl who killed her sister and died in that fire?”

“Yes, her,” Emily practically shrieked. “She’s not dead, okay? She’s out there. I saw her.”

“Did Jordan mention Ms. DiLaurentis when you two talked?” the detective asked. “Had she seen her? And I don’t understand—you’re saying that Ms. DiLaurentis was in the Ulster women’s prison?” There were sounds of rustling papers.

Emily made a fist. He so didn’t get it. “Of course Jordan didn’t mention her—Jordan never saw her. And no, Alison wasn’t in the prison. Robin was her contact on the inside, and Ali broke her out somehow. She killed Cook once she was on the outside and they were alone because she couldn’t have her telling anyone what happened.”

“So Ms. Cook was Ms. DiLaurentis’s killing machine.”

Now the detective’s tone wasn’t inquisitive—it was mocking. Emily felt a jolt of frustration. “I know how it sounds,” she said. “But look into it, okay? Look at the log of Ms. Cook’s visitors—I know for a fact that Ali saw her on Tuesday. Check the surveillance cameras. Dust for fingerprints. Do something. Because right now I feel totally unprotected. Just like Jordan was. Do you know I haven’t even seen Agent Fuji or anyone else at the school where I was attacked, trying to figure out who did do it if it wasn’t Alison?”

“Is that so?” The agent sounded worried.

Emily hadn’t even thought of it when she said it, but now she stared at the double doors to the natatorium, realizing it was true. She’d been here every day for chemistry class since her attack, and she hadn’t seen anyone dusting for prints or asking questions once.

And then it hit her. Maybe Fuji didn’t believe her about that, either. Maybe she thought Emily had made up the attack for attention.

A growl rose from the back of Emily’s throat. She tossed her phone into the backseat even though the detective hadn’t hung up. They didn’t believe her. No one believed her. Meanwhile, there could be hundreds of Ali Cats looming around them, watching, knowing everything. And the police didn’t care. Not one bit. No one cared about her anymore—not in the way Jordan had.

And she was pretty sure no one ever would again.