Ruthless (5 page)

“Hey,” Noel said. He smelled like orange soap and pepper, an unlikely combination Aria couldn’t get enough of. When Aria glanced at his Manhattan Portage messenger bag, she noticed that the party hat–wearing rhinoceros button Aria had bought for him at a local craft show was still nestled between his pins for Rosewood Day lacrosse and the Philadelphia Phillies. Rhino pin had to be a good sign, right?

“Hey,” Aria answered softly. “I’ve missed you.”

“Oh.” Noel pretended to be fascinated with the square face of his Omega watch. “Yeah, I’ve been really busy.”

“Tending to Klaudia?” Aria couldn’t help but snap.

Noel’s features hardened, as though he was about to launch into his “She’s in a foreign country and you should be more sensitive” speech again. But then he just shrugged. “Um, we need to talk.”

A rock-sized lump formed in Aria’s throat. “A-about what?” she stammered, even though she had a horrible feeling she knew what Noel was about to say.

Noel pushed his yellow lacrosse bracelet, which all the players wore in some über-masculine show of brotherhood, around his wrist. He wouldn’t look at Aria, not even at her feet. “I don’t think it’s working between us,” he said. His voice cracked a little.

It felt like a karate kick to Aria’s stomach. “W-why?”

Noel shrugged. His normally calm, easygoing face was all scrunched up, and his flawlessly smooth skin looked blotchy. “I don’t know. I mean, we don’t have that much in common, do we?”

The world suddenly went red. When Aria was pseudo-friends with Klaudia for a nanosecond, Klaudia had brought up how mismatched Aria and Noel were. Okay, so Aria wasn’t like the lacrosse-playing, Ralph Lauren Polo–wearing clones Noel usually dated, but Noel said he
liked
that. Then again, how could she compare to an ice-blond Finnish sex goddess?

The all-natural cleanser the custodial staff used to mop the floors swirled in Aria’s nose, making her queasy. A large guy on the basketball team bumped into her, knocking her into Noel, but Aria pulled away fast, suddenly uncomfortable with touching him. “So that’s . . .
it
? All the time we spent together . . . it just doesn’t matter?”

Noel shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry, Aria.” He caught her eye, and for a split second, he really
did
look sorry. But there was something closed-off about him, too, like he’d already said good-bye to her long ago.

Tears wet the corners of Aria’s eyes. She thought of all the weekends she’d spent with Noel. All the lacrosse games she’d watched, even though she didn’t really understand the nuances of the game. All the secrets she’d confessed, like how she and Their Ali caught her father making out with his student, Meredith, near Hollis College in seventh grade. How when Real Ali returned last year and hit on Noel, Aria was sure Noel would dump her. How after Real Ali nearly killed them in the Poconos, she’d slept with the light on and kept a samurai knife her father had bought on a trip to Japan under her pillow. And how even though Aria had lost her virginity to a boy in Iceland in tenth grade, she’d wanted the second time she had sex to be really, truly special. Maybe it was a good thing she’d held out with Noel, considering what was happening now.

But there were some secrets Aria hadn’t shared with Noel. Like what she’d done to Tabitha or what had really happened on their trip to Iceland. The Iceland incident alone would have made Noel dump Aria long ago. Maybe, in a twisted, karmic way, she deserved this.

She heard a snicker and peered into the open classroom door. Klaudia sat in the front row, her injured foot propped up on a spare chair. Kate Randall, Naomi Zeigler, and Riley Wolfe sat next to her—of course they’d all become fast friends with the equally devious and gossipy Klaudia. All four girls stared at her and Noel, big grins on their faces. They had front-row seats to the breakup. The news would be all over school in minutes.
Pretty Little Loser was just Pretty Little Dumped!

Aria spun on her heel and marched toward the bathroom before the tears started to fall. She peeked over her shoulder, longing for Noel to call out her name, but he’d turned and was walking in the opposite direction. When he saw Mason Byers, one of his good friends, he stopped and gave him a high five. Like he was carefree. Happy. Thrilled to be rid of kooky Aria Montgomery once and for all.

Chapter 4

HANNA MARIN, CAMPAIGN STRATEGIST

On Thursday evening, as the sun was sinking into the trees and dyeing the sky orange, Hanna Marin pressed her iPhone to her ear and waited for the voice mail message to beep. “Mike, it’s me again. Are you ever going to pick up? How many times can I say I’m sorry?”

She pressed
END
. She’d left him sixteen voice mail messages, eleven texts, tons of Twitter posts, and a bunch of emails in the past two weeks, but her ex-boyfriend, Mike Montgomery, hadn’t returned a single one. She knew how rash it had been to break up with him when he’d warned her about skeevy Patrick Lake, the photographer who told Hanna that she could be a model in New York. But how was she supposed to know Patrick would take compromising photos of Hanna and threaten to post them online if she didn’t pay him off?

Hanna missed Mike. She missed watching
American Idol
with him and making fun of the singers. She’d heard he’d taken a small role in the school’s production of
Macbeth
. When they were dating, they consulted one another before joining activities—Hanna would definitely have put the kibosh on the play.

And she especially missed Mike in light of what was happening with A and Tabitha. Hanna wouldn’t have told Mike what she and the others had done, but to have someone around who cared about her would be so comforting right now. Instead, she felt alone and scared. She so wanted to believe that what they’d done to Tabitha was in self-defense. They’d
thought
Tabitha was Real Ali, who was hell-bent on murdering them. But no matter how many ways Hanna rationalized it, everything boiled down to one devastating fact: They had killed an innocent girl. They were all guilty. They knew it. And A knew it, too.

Hanna stepped out of her Toyota Prius and looked around. The circular driveway of her father’s new house, a six-bedroom redbrick McMansion in Chesterbridge, two towns away from Rosewood, was edged with a few fledgling saplings, tethered by feeble-looking ropes. White Grecian columns supported the porch, a large fountain in the front yard burbled peacefully, and rows of perfectly manicured shrubs that looked like upside-down ice cream cones lined either side of the front entrance. Such a grand abode seemed excessive for three people—her father, his new wife, Isabel, and Isabel’s daughter, Kate—but it
did
seem like a fitting house for a man who was running for United States senator. Mr. Marin’s campaign had kicked off a few weeks ago, and he had a great shot at winning. Unless, of course, A spilled Hanna’s secret about Tabitha.

Hanna rang the doorbell, and Isabel whipped the door open almost immediately. She was dressed in a Tiffany-blue cashmere sweater, a black pencil skirt, and sensible low heels. The perfect dowdy wife of a senator-to-be.

“Hello, Hanna.” The pinched look on Isabel’s face said that she didn’t quite approve of Hanna’s boho Anthropologie dress and gray suede boots. “Everyone’s in Tom’s office.”

Hanna swished down the hall, which was adorned with silver-framed photos of Isabel and her father’s wedding last summer. She scowled at the picture of herself dressed in the ugliest bridesmaid gown Isabel could have selected: a mint-green, floor-sweeping number that made Hanna’s hips look huge and her skin look sickly. She turned the frame around so that it faced the wall.

Her father and his campaign staff were sitting around the walnut desk in his office. Her stepsister, Kate, was perched on a Victorian sofa, fiddling with her iPhone. Mr. Marin’s eyes lit up when he saw Hanna. “There she is!”

Hanna smiled. A few weeks ago, when his campaign consultants told him that she’d tested well with the voting public, she’d suddenly become her dad’s favorite daughter.

Isabel slipped into the room after Hanna and shut the French doors. “This is why I called you here.” Mr. Marin pushed a series of flyers and website screen grabs across the table. The pages said things like
The Truth About Tom Marin
and
Don’t Believe the Lies
and
Not a Man You Can Trust
.

“These are all paid for by Tucker Wilkinson’s committee,” Mr. Marin explained.

Hanna clucked her tongue. Tucker Wilkinson was her father’s biggest rival for the party nomination. He’d served as state senator for years and had oodles of campaign funds and tons of friends in high places.

She scootched forward to look at his photo. Tucker Wilkinson was a tall, handsome, dark-haired man who looked vaguely like Hugh Jackman. He had that slightly unnerving, ultra-white politician smile, the kind that tried so hard to say
Trust me.

Sam, a senior staff member who had droopy eyes and a penchant for wearing bow ties, shook his head. “I heard Wilkinson bribed a Harvard admissions officer to let in his oldest son, even though he had a two-point-oh GPA.”

Vincent, who managed Mr. Marin’s website, stuffed a piece of Trident gum in his mouth before saying, “He does everything he can to dig up the skeletons in everyone’s closets during campaigns, too.”

“Luckily, he hasn’t found anything on us.” Mr. Marin looked around at his staff. “And he
won’t
—unless there’s something I need to know. What Jeremiah did was a shock. I don’t want to be blindsided again.”

Hanna flinched at the mention of Jeremiah, her father’s aide who’d recently been dismissed for stealing $10,000 from the campaign’s petty cash fund. The thing was, Jeremiah hadn’t stolen the money . . . Hanna had. But she’d
had
to. It was the only way to keep Patrick quiet about the photos he’d taken.

Kate’s phone chimed. She read the screen and giggled.

“Kate?” Mr. Marin sounded impatient. “Maybe you could put that away?”

“Sorry.” Kate turned the iPhone facedown and glanced pointedly at Hanna. “Sean just texted me the
funniest
thing.”

Hanna bristled inside, but she tried not to let it show. Kate had recently started dating Sean Ackard, Hanna’s ex. Hanna didn’t miss Sean in the slightest, but it did hurt that he’d chosen to date the girl she hated most.

Mr. Marin stacked the printouts in a neat pile. “So. Is there anything anyone would like to come clean with?”

Hanna’s insides churned. Would Wilkinson’s people find out about Tabitha? She glanced out the window. A car rolled slowly down the road. She squinted toward the silhouetted trees that served as a barrier between her dad’s property and the neighbor’s. For a split second, it looked like a shadow darted between the trees.

Her cell phone beeped.

Hanna pulled it out of the bag and hit the
SILENT
button, but then, glancing around to make sure her dad wasn’t looking, she peeked at the screen. When she saw the garbled letters and numbers of the return center, a cold, rigid feeling seeped into her bones. She pressed
READ
.

What would Daddy say if he knew his new favorite daughter was a thief? —A

Hanna tried her hardest to keep a composed look on her face. Who could be doing this to her? How did A know where Hanna was right this second? She glanced at Kate—she
had
been fiddling on her own phone seconds ago. Kate gave her an annoyed glare back.

She shut her eyes and rifled through the other possibilities of who New A might be. At first, Real Ali had made so much sense. She must have somehow survived the fire
and
the fall from the crow’s nest and come back to haunt them. But now that Hanna knew the girl they’d killed was Tabitha, she realized how crazy it was to think Ali had made it out of the Poconos house. But who else had they hurt? Who had seen what had happened in Jamaica,
and
the mess Hanna had made with Patrick,
and
God knows what else?

“Hanna?”

Hanna looked up dazedly. Everyone was standing and leaving the room. Her father stood over her, a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay? You look kind of . . . pale.”

Hanna glanced out the French doors. Kate and Isabel wandered off toward the kitchen. The other staff members had vanished. “Actually, do you have a second?” Hanna asked.

“Sure. What’s up?”

Hanna cleared her throat. She could never tell her dad about Tabitha, but there was one thing she could come clean about before A confessed for her. “Well, you know how you said we should come to you about skeletons in our closets?”

A crease formed on Mr. Marin’s brow. “Yes . . .”

“Well, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Hanna turned away from her father and let the whole story spill out. About Patrick. How sure she’d been that he really believed in her. How he’d leered at her when he’d showed her the incriminating photos. “I was so afraid he was really going to post them online,” she said, her eyes trained on a bunch of rolled-up campaign posters in the corner. “I was afraid he was going to ruin you. So I took the money from the safe. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to destroy your campaign.”

After she finished, there was a punishingly long silence. Mr. Marin’s cell phone beeped, but he didn’t move to check it. Hanna didn’t dare look at him. She felt filled with shame and hatred. This was even worse than the time Their Ali had caught Hanna vomiting at her dad’s house in Annapolis after a massive binge.

All at once, the pain was just too much. She let out a pathetic puppy-whimper of a sob. Her shoulders shook silently. After a moment, she heard him sigh.

“Hey.” He placed his hands on her shoulders. “Hanna. Don’t cry. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Hanna blubbered. “I ruined everything. And now you hate me again.”

“Again?” Mr. Marin drew back, frowning. “I never hated you.”