Toxic

35 THE MASTER PLAN

That morning, Emily sat in her bedroom, the box of Jordan’s possessions in front of her on the mattress. She ran her hands over its smooth cardboard sides, then thought about what she was about to do. After she looked at whatever was inside, she was going to tape the box back up and bury it in the backyard. It was just like how she and her friends had buried things that reminded them of Their Ali.

It wasn’t that Emily wanted to forget Jordan—not at all. There would be a real funeral for Jordan next week, in New Jersey, and Emily planned on attending. But the funeral would be strange and impersonal: Other people would be at the pulpit, giving speeches about who they thought Jordan was. None of Jordan’s family would know Emily; none of them had any idea what Emily and Jordan meant to each other. Emily would merely be another mourner, a stranger. She needed a way to honor Jordan in her own way, right here, all alone, just her. Burying the box just seemed right.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid and removed the Bubble Wrap. A carefully folded T-shirt was on top, followed by a pair of jeans. Emily pulled them out and felt a whoosh of pain, for they still smelled like Jordan, even though it was clear they’d been washed. She pressed them to her nose, inhaling again and again. The fabric felt so soft against her skin, as soft as Jordan had been. She ran her fingers along the hem of the jeans, the button at the waist. It was almost too much to handle.

But she kept going. Underneath the jeans, she found the earrings she feared she’d see, little diamond studs Jordan had worn since the first day Emily met her. They were in a plastic Baggie, and Emily was too choked up to even take them out. Below that was a small pouch containing some money, a key card to a Marriott hotel, and a receipt from McDonald’s for a six-piece chicken nugget meal and a small Diet Coke.

But it was what was at the very bottom of the box that made her heart stop. There, folded several times, the creases worn, the paper wrinkled as though it had been through the washer a few times, was a drawing Emily had given to Jordan when they were on the cruise. She’d done it on cruise ship stationery, penning a picture of herself and Jordan as stick figures, standing on a boat and holding hands. Our trip, she’d written, and then she’d described, in words and pictures, their adventures on the zip line, and the long walk they’d taken on the secluded beach, and the time they’d stolen the boat in Puerto Rico for a joyride around the harbor. Emily had drawn herself and Jordan kissing—their first kiss—adding Amazing! and drawing a little heart around the two of them in red pen.

Emily’s eyes welled. The little drawing had survived the dive into the harbor. It had survived Jordan’s travels south and all her hiding spots. And there was something else, too: a second heart around the red one, a newer one drawn in blue. Jordan must have drawn it after she’d escaped off the boat—the ink didn’t seem as faded. Which meant that even after Jordan thought Emily had betrayed her, she’d drawn the heart and carried the drawing with her anyway, not throwing it out. Maybe she, like Emily, knew that someday they’d work everything out.

The tears ran hot down Emily’s cheeks, blurring her vision. She cried for a long time, the sobs convulsive but also cathartic. Finally, once she felt drained, she placed everything back in the box except for the drawing Jordan had saved. She taped up the top, then hefted it into her arms and started downstairs.

A pang hit her halfway down. How could she say good-bye? How did you let someone like this go? She hated that Ali had done this. But she hoped with all her heart that the cops had actually found some evidence—or Ali herself. And that soon enough, Ali would be behind bars. Somewhere dark. And miserable. And totally hopeless.

Something out the window caught her attention. Aria had pulled up to the curb. Spencer’s car was behind hers, and Hanna drove up in her Prius and parked in the driveway. Slowly, the girls got out and stepped toward Emily’s front door with all the sobriety of government officials coming to a family’s door to tell them that their child had died in an overseas battle.

Emily swallowed hard. None of them had announced they were coming. Had they found out something she hadn’t? Was there news about Ali?

She placed Jordan’s box on the steps and opened the front door before they could ring the bell. “What’s going on?” she hissed, stepping onto the porch and shutting the door behind her. Her parents were in the den; the last thing she needed was for them to listen in. They’d already asked her a ton of questions about all the stuff barricading the doors this morning. “What happened? It’s the pool house, isn’t it? Did they find Ali?”

“Slow down.” Spencer caught Emily’s arm. “We haven’t heard anything. We thought you might have.”

Emily stopped and peered at them. “Nothing?”

“Aside from Greg turning up dead at a creek,” Spencer said. “Which was probably Ali’s doing. He told me he knew her, and that was a big mistake. So she killed him.”

Emily’s stomach swooped. “Do you think it was his blood in the house?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Spencer stared down the street. Emily’s next-door neighbors, an older couple named the Gauls, were hard at work setting up sprinklers on their front lawn. When they saw the girls, they waved. Everyone waved back, though not nearly as enthusiastically.

“But we haven’t heard anything about the pool house investigation,” Aria continued. “I even tried calling the local police station, but when someone asked my name, I hung up.” Then she looked at the plastic bag in her hands. “I don’t know what to do with this.” She opened it a little; Emily could see the crumpled dress they’d pulled out of the house the night before. “Drop it off anonymously at the police station? Burn it?”

“Do you think we should go up there?” Emily asked. “What if they have Ali under arrest? What if she’s caught and they haven’t even told us?” That would be just like Fuji, she thought bitterly.

Spencer shook her head. “The place is probably crawling with cops—us being there would complicate things. We’ll know soon enough. But I feel really positive, you know? I feel like this could be it. And now we can go on with our lives for real.”

Emily bit her lip. Tears rushed to her eyes. She had been about to bury her life. She couldn’t imagine blithely moving forward.

A siren wailed down the street, and everyone looked up. Seconds later, a police car appeared from around the corner and began to roll toward them. It was followed by a second police car, then a third. Emily took a quivering step back, momentarily frozen in the lights. Then she realized who was in the front seat of the first car.

Fuji.

The cop cars rolled up to the curb in front of Emily’s house and came to a stop. Agent Fuji, dressed in a crisp black suit and sunglasses, stepped out of the vehicle and strode toward them. The agent’s face was stern and hard as she approached the girls. She came to a stop and looked around at all of them. A few beats passed. Behind her, Emily heard her front door open. She knew without looking that her mom was standing there, staring.

“We need to speak to you,” Fuji said in a gruff voice.

“Of course,” Spencer said quickly. “Whatever we can do to help.”

“This is about the pool house, right?” Hanna asked excitedly. “What did you find?”

Fuji winced. She reached into her pocket and whipped out a ziplock bag marked EVIDENCE and shoved it in the girls’ faces. “We found this.”

The bag shook before Emily’s eyes. Slowly, her vision adjusted. Something pearly and white and tipped in blood was caught in the bag’s corner. Emily frowned, then backed up. A tooth.

“Whose is that?” Aria cried.

Fuji removed her sunglasses and stared at them hard. There was no kindness in her eyes, which surprised Emily. Fuji should be grateful, shouldn’t she? “I think you know whose it is, girls. What I want to know is: Where’s the rest of the body?”

Everyone flinched. Emily’s heart began to pound. “The rest of what body?” Hanna asked.

“Isn’t Greg’s body by the creek bed?” Spencer piped up.

Fuji pressed her hand to her brow. “We know what you’ve been doing in Ashland, girls. We have witnesses attesting to you skulking around up there. Testimonies about the questions you’ve been asking neighbors and people at the mini-mart. And then we found your surveillance equipment. Saw your shoddy cleanup job for ourselves. Found your prints all over the house.”

Fuji’s words made sense to Emily individually, but not as a whole. She couldn’t even comprehend what the agent was saying. “Wait,” she blurted. “Our cleanup job? What do you mean?”

“You obviously did something last night, and then tried to clean it up. Badly, I might add.” Fuji scowled. “Throwing bleach haphazardly on the floor doesn’t eradicate blood, ladies.”

Bleach? Emily’s heart stopped.

“We didn’t clean that up!” Spencer cried, getting it, too. “Someone else did! We were there, in the house, on the second floor. We heard everything, but we were too afraid to look and see who it was.”

“It’s true,” Emily said. “It was our surveillance equipment—we were spying, but it was in hopes of catching Ali. But we didn’t do anything in that house. We didn’t hurt anyone; we didn’t clean anything. We just happened to be there.”

“Are you sure about that, Emily?” Fuji’s gaze was unblinking. “So then you didn’t go up there yourself and trash the place a few days before, and then make a threat that you were going to kill someone if she ever returned?”

Emily could feel her friends staring at her. Her cheeks started to burn.

“What’s she talking about?” Spencer demanded.

“When did you say that?” Aria hissed.

“Emily, what’s going on?” Emily’s mother said behind her.

“The surveillance cameras store the last seven days of data,” Fuji said, a whisper of a smile on her face. “Three of them we found were smashed, but the fourth—the one that showed the inside of the house—was still intact, though no longer recording. We watched that video of you, Emily. Watched you tear things off the wall, smash anything in sight. Your prints were all over the cameras, too. We knew they were yours before you told us.”

“I . . .” Emily trailed off. She had no idea what to say. She had trashed the house. That awful day, after Jordan died, when she’d gone up there—she’d said all kinds of things. But . . .

She shook her head. “Okay. Okay. But we didn’t . . . kill anyone. It was Alison. I swear.”

“That’s impossible!” Fuji fumed. Her face was bright red. “The neighbors say they heard screams. Then came that call—from you. And what’s this about the boy at the creek bed?” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know about that?”

Spencer’s chin wobbled. “I—I saw it on the news site.”

But Fuji looked furious. Emily’s mind continued to unfurl. What the hell was happening? Why did she suddenly feel so . . . accused?

“And then, girls, we found the diary,” Fuji went on. “Of all the things you did to her. All the torture. We found everything listed there. The knives. The chains. The ropes. The pliers and other tools.” She shook her head, disgusted. “And you thought you were going to get away with this?”

“What are you talking about?” Hanna cried.

Fuji gnashed her teeth together. “Yes, you were right about one thing—Alison was alive. She must have survived the fire in the Poconos, just like you said. But don’t play dumb about everything else. I am sick of it, okay?”

“What do you mean, was alive?” Aria asked in a quavering voice, tears running down her cheeks. And then, slowly, she looked down at the plastic bag she was holding. Fuji followed her gaze. The bag was open just slightly, blood smeared on the plastic. Fuji’s eyes widened.

Aria shut the bag tight, but it was already too late. Fuji had seen. And now, Emily knew, the agent was assuming all kinds of things. Things that weren’t true.

Veins popped out on Fuji’s neck. She glanced over her shoulder, indicating that the other waiting agents close in. “Because that’s her blood all over that pool house. And this is her tooth. And we know you are responsible.”

“Us?” Emily’s jaw trembled. “F-for what?”

She already knew the answer a split second before it came. The methods were clear, the strategy so precise and cunning and subtle it left her breathless. The pool house. The camera loop. Getting them all up to Ashland at that exact moment, waiting until they were upstairs and terrified. Messily cleaning up with the bleach, the bucket, the mop. And then that tooth.

Ali had set them up. Spectacularly.

Fuji rolled her eyes and said just what Emily feared. “You know, Miss Fields. For Alison’s murder.”