Deadly (Pretty Little Liars #14)

“Excuse me?”

Spencer yelped and spun around. A man walking a dog approached them down the sidewalk. He seemed older, a bit stooped. The collie’s tongue lolled out of its mouth. Spencer couldn’t tell if the dog was on a leash or not.

The man gazed from Spencer to Chase. “What are you doing?” he asked sharply.

Spencer’s mind went blank. “Uh, we thought our friend lived here.”

“No one lives there,” the man said, squinting at the house. “That place has been vacant since they built it.”

It didn’t seem like he was lying. It also didn’t seem like he had any idea who they were—he was just an old guy out for a walk with his dog. “Have you ever seen anyone coming and going out of this place?” she dared to ask. “Anyone at all?”

“Nope, not even a light on,” the man said. “But it’s private property. You should move along.” He gave them another long look, and for a moment, Spencer wondered if she’d trusted him too quickly. But then he whistled at his dog, and the dog stood. As they passed, the dog stiffened and turned its head toward the realtor’s office across the street. Spencer sucked in her stomach. Did the dog sense a presence? But then it loped off and lifted its leg on a clump of dandelions. The man and dog disappeared, all footsteps and jingling tags.

Spencer waited until the man was a safe distance away before turning to look at Chase. “This was definitely the unit in the photo.”

“Do you think Ali knew we found it?” Chase whispered, his eyes wide. And then, suddenly, a terrified look crossed his face. “Do you think it was possible that Ali planted that video? Maybe she was never here in the first place. Or maybe she sent us here to hurt us.”

Spencer couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her. She darted off the porch, certain something horrible was about to happen. It didn’t, but for a split second, she swore she could hear someone snickering. She squinted hard at the trees, then peered worriedly at the realtor’s office, desperate to make out Ali’s shape at the window. What if she was close? What if she realized what they’d discovered—and she was furious?

Spencer took Chase’s hand. “Let’s get out of here,” she said hurriedly, darting back to the car. She hoped, suddenly, that they hadn’t made a horrible mistake.

3

HANNA LOSES IT

An hour later, Hanna Marin and her boyfriend, Mike Montgomery, sat in Hanna’s Prius, in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the way from the hospital back to Rosewood. Mike fiddled with the radio, first choosing a rap station, then flipping to sports. He let out a sigh and stared out the window, looking just as exhausted as Hanna felt. He’d hung around for a long time at the hospital last night, partly for Noel and partly for Hanna. Hanna wasn’t even sure when he’d left, but she was pretty certain it had been after midnight, and he’d showed up again shortly after Noel had woken up this morning.

Hanna’s phone, which was connected to the car’s Bluetooth system, bleated loudly. She pressed the ANSWER button on the center console without looking at the caller ID. “Hanna?” a familiar voice rang out. “It’s Kelly Crosby from the burn clinic.”

“Oh.” Hanna’s finger hovered over the HANG UP button on the steering wheel. She could feel Mike staring at her. “Uh, hi.”

“I was just calling to let you know that there’s no need for you to come in next week,” Kelly went on. “The clinic is closed until further notice because of the . . . murder.”

The murder. Hanna swallowed hard.

“I also wanted to let you know that Graham Pratt’s funeral will be tomorrow,” Kelly went on. “You were such good friends, I thought you might be interested.”

“Um, great,” Hanna said loudly to Kelly. “Gotta go!”

She hung up and stared straight through the windshield as though nothing were amiss. The only sound was the clunka-clunka-clunk of the uneven pavement on the off-ramp. Finally, Mike cleared his throat. “I thought you said Graham was the Unabomber, Hanna.”

Hanna gripped the steering wheel hard. Mike had been suspicious about her volunteering stint at the burn clinic, first certain she wanted to reconcile with her ex, Sean Ackard. That was ridiculous, but she couldn’t exactly tell him the whole truth, either—that would mean explaining about A. She’d finally admitted that Aria and Graham had been in the boiler room of the ship when the bomb went off, and she was spying on Graham to see what he knew. But there were a lot of holes in her story, and Mike knew it.

She shrugged. “I had to tell people at the burn clinic that Graham and I were friends. That was the only way they’d let me get close to him.”

“And what’s this about a murder?”

Hanna stared fixedly at a Delaware license plate on the car in front of her. “No clue.”

“Bullshit.”

“I don’t know!” Hanna protested.

But she did. Yesterday, a girl’s body had been found in the woods behind the clinic, and her hospital bracelet read KYLA KENNEDY. The girl had been dead for days, except Hanna had spoken to Kyla—or someone impersonating her—the previous night. Kyla’s bed had been outside Graham’s room. There was only one girl who didn’t want Graham to wake up and say who’d really set off the bomb.

Ali.

Hanna simply hadn’t recognized her under those bandages.

Hanna turned up her mom’s driveway and parked. She was out of the car and almost to the side door when she realized Mike wasn’t with her. He was still standing in the driveway, a strange expression on his face.

“I’m so sick of this,” he said in a quiet voice.

Hanna wilted. “Sick of what?”

“I know you’re lying.”

Hanna cut her gaze to the left. “Mike . . . stop.”

“First, you play detective, ditching prom—where you were queen—to go to the burn clinic and talk to the potential bomber instead of letting the cops deal with it.” Mike listed the items on his fingers. “Then, after you tell me that dude is dead, you disappear with Spencer and the others without telling me. When I find you next, you’re covered in mud.”

Hanna touched her toe to a decorative stone to the right of the welcome mat. The mud on her dress was from when she and her friends had gone to save Aria from Noel at the cemetery.

“And then,” Mike said, his voice rising, “you tell me you just happen to be there when the cops find Noel’s body in that shed. I heard you tell a cop this morning that you’d received a threatening note saying to go there.”

Hanna’s throat felt sandpapery. She’d fudged the story about finding Noel, too—and she still didn’t know what to do about handing over Kyla’s note to the cops.

“You’re not just acting crazy with me, either,” Mike said. “I talked to Naomi about you. You guys were BFFs on the cruise, and suddenly you’re not anymore.”

Rage spiraled through Hanna. “You talked to Naomi about me?” She and Naomi Zeigler had been enemies for years, and to make matters worse, Hanna realized Naomi was related to Madison, a girl she’d hurt last summer.

“I was grasping at straws.” Mike slapped his arms to his sides. “Naomi said you did some weird shit on that cruise. You looked through her e-mails on her computer. There were times when you ran away from her like you were afraid of her.” He set his jaw. “Something tells me that that has to do with all of this other crazy stuff that’s been going on, too. It’s all connected.” He looked at her hard. “It’s A, isn’t it? Ali. She’s back.”

Hanna froze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mike stepped closer. “It’s the only thing that fits. Just tell me. Don’t you trust me?”

Hanna’s jaw wobbled. “Maybe I haven’t told you for a good reason!” she blurted. “It’s because I don’t want you to get hurt, you idiot! I don’t want you to end up like Noel!”

They were face-to-face, Mike’s breath minty on her cheeks. He grabbed her hands. “I want to help. I love you. I don’t care what the risks are.”

She shut her eyes, feeling worn down. There was no way out of this. Mike knew he was right, and the look on her face surely confirmed it. The only thing to do to keep him from knowing more was to break up with him. Not only did Hanna hate the thought of that, it probably wouldn’t keep Mike safe, anyway. He already knew too much.

She took a deep, wobbly breath, and suddenly, the whole story spilled out. She told Mike how the new A notes had started coming, how they’d become more and more sinister, and how, on the cruise, the notes had focused on how Hanna had fled the scene of a car crash, leaving Madison Zeigler, Naomi’s cousin, for dead. “For a little while, I was afraid that Naomi was A,” she said. “That’s why I was looking through her computer. I thought I might find something to prove it. But Naomi told me that the crash wasn’t even my fault, in the end—someone ran me off the road. I remember someone doing it, but I didn’t see their face. That’s who she and Madison were trying to catch.”

Mike winced. “You were in a car crash last summer and you didn’t tell me?”

Hanna shrugged. “I couldn’t risk telling anyone. I’m sorry.”

She kept going with the story. When she got to the part where they’d concluded that A was Ali, Mike looked confused. “Are you sure? I thought she didn’t survive that fire.”

“Emily left the door open for her. She got out.” Then she lowered her eyes and explained the Tabitha part of it, too—how they’d feared Ali had followed them to Jamaica and was going to hurt them. “Tabitha followed us to the roof of the resort,” she told Mike. “And then she went after Aria. After that, everything happened so fast—Aria shot forward, there was a scuffle, and suddenly Tabitha was tumbling over the railing. She was alive after the fall, though—we’re sure of it. But when we ran down there, she was gone. We didn’t kill her, but someone is making sure it looks like we did.”

“Jesus,” Mike whispered, his eyes wide. “I was on that trip with you. I saw that girl. How could you have kept this from me?”

“I’m sorry,” Hanna said quietly. “I was just so scared. I wanted to pretend it had never happened at all. But when we started getting new notes . . .” She trailed off and covered her face with her hands.

Mike sat on the stone wall that surrounded Hanna’s house and stared into the distance. After a while, he said, “Let me get this straight. It was Ali—or her helper—who murdered that Gayle woman, too?”

Hanna nodded, thinking of Gayle Riggs, the wealthy woman who had wanted Emily’s baby. A had killed her.

“And it was A who set off that bomb in the boiler room of the ship?” Mike’s voice squeaked. Hanna nodded again, and Mike made a gurgling sound at the back of his throat. “And it was A who really killed Tabitha?”