Vicious (Pretty Little Liars 16)

“And what do you think they would have wanted to do to her, if they found her again?”

Nick didn’t take a moment to ponder the question. “Kill her. No doubt.”

Reginald turned. “No further questions.”

There was a shuffling in the crowd. Hanna placed her hands over her face, too humiliated to even look around. She felt Rubens rise from his seat, but it only made her heart plummet lower. What on earth was he going to ask Nick?

Rubens walked up to the witness stand and looked at Nick. “So you’re admitting that Alison was your slave and not your girlfriend.”

Nick didn’t make eye contact. “Uh huh.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He scowled. “I just said I was.”

“So what you told the police at first—that you and Alison worked together—that was a lie, huh?”

“Uh, yeah,” Nick said, rolling his eyes.

“And what really happened was that you brainwashed Ali, right? Forced her into helping her kill her sister? And when she was let out of The Preserve again, you got to her and made her torture the girls, help to kill Ian Thomas, et cetera?”

Nick glanced into the courtroom at the DA, then shrugged yes. Hanna chewed on the inside of her cheek, wondering where Rubens was going with this. Reginald had already asked these questions.

“So you didn’t love Alison at all?” Rubens asked. “You didn’t do all you could for her? As in, hire a private nurse to take care of her burns after the fire in the Poconos, paying for it with your own personal funds?”

A tiny muscle twitched by Nick’s eye.

“I know what burn victims look like, and I did see the surveillance video of Alison at that mini-mart,” Rubens said. “It was clear she had scars on her face, but they looked like they’d been treated. Do you know what burns look like when they aren’t properly cared for? It’s not pretty.”

The DA banged on the desk. “Mr. Maxwell hired that nurse to keep Alison alive so she could help him. It had nothing to do with love.”

“That could be true.” Rubens pressed a finger to his lip thoughtfully. “But then I got to thinking about the pictures of Alison the police found in the basement in Rosewood.” He walked over to the TV monitor and flipped through the various digital evidence files, which included some shots of the Ali shrine Nick had set up. “Most of these are pictures of Alison from before the Poconos fire.” He pointed at the one of Ali at the press conference her parents had held after she’d been let out of The Preserve, then at another of Ali at the Valentine’s dance on the night she’d tried to kill them. “And there are even some pictures of Courtney, from when the girls knew her.” He gestured to the right side of the screen, where there were pictures of seventh-grade Courtney with Hanna and the others. “There are also pictures of Alison before Courtney made the switch and before the girls befriended her. But then I noticed this one.”

He pointed to a picture in the upper-left-hand corner. It showed only Ali’s smiling eyes, the rest of her face hidden by a blanket. “The shape of her brow is a little different, and her hair is a bit darker. I asked the police to run some forensic evidence on the print, and they told me it was done on a machine at a pharmacy sometime in the last year.” He stared at Nick hard. “You used a current picture of Ali, after the Poconos fire. From when she was with you.”

Nick blinked. Again, he glanced at DA in the audience. “Maybe . . . ,” he admitted.

“Look at her eyes.” Rubens stretched his fingers to blow up the image. “How does she look to you?”

“She’s . . . I don’t know. Smiling, I guess,” Nick admitted.

“Smiling.” Rubens looked at the audience. “A genuine smile, I’d say. A loving smile, even. A smile that said she knew exactly what she was doing. Not, in other words, the grimace of a girl who was being tormented.”

“Objection!” Reginald bellowed. “This is conjecture!”

But a smile began to stretch across Hanna’s face. She hadn’t noticed that picture of Current Ali in the shrine. But Rubens had a point—and a good one.

“And let’s talk about that letter that was slipped under the door in the Poconos house,” Rubens went on. “You said you wrote it, yes?”

Nick nodded. “I wrote it as Alison, to the girls.”

“And this was with Alison totally objecting every step of the way, right? Just like she says in her journal?”

“Uh huh.” Beads of sweat appeared on Nick’s brow. Hanna’s heart beat faster and faster.

“As you know, the police found that letter outside the house in the Poconos, the night of the fire,” Rubens said. The letter had been a key piece of evidence in Nick’s trial. Rubens walked over to the laptop, pressed a button, and there was the letter, suddenly, on a big projection screen. “I won’t ask you to read the whole thing, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, since you’re all familiar with it, but it explains what really happened the day Alison’s sister switched places with her. It mentions things like the wishing well Courtney drew on the time capsule flag, and how Courtney stole Alison’s ‘A-for-Alison’ ring. You wrote those things, yes, Mr. Maxwell?”

Nick shrugged. “They’re there in print.”

“I’m just wondering how you knew such specific details,” Rubens said to Nick. “Did Alison tell you willingly?”

“Wait!” The DA stood up. His mouth hung open. He didn’t say anything. He kind of looked bamboozled.