Unbelievable (28 page)

Spencer didn’t realize it at first, but she was falling, too. Then she hit the ground. She heard a scream echo through the gulch, and thought for a moment that it was her own. Her head hit the ground with a crack…and her eyes fluttered shut.

37

SEEING IS BELIEVING

Hanna crammed into the back of Wilden’s squad car next to Aria and Emily. It was where criminals—not that Rosewood had many—typically sat. Even though she could barely see Wilden through the metal grates connected to the front seat, she could tell by his tone of CB radio voice that he was as worried and tense as she was.

“Has anyone found anything yet?” he said into the walkie-talkie. They were idling at a stop sign as Wilden decided which way to go next. They had just driven around the main mouth of Morrell Stream, but they’d only found a couple of public-school kids lying on the grass getting stoned. There weren’t signs of Mona’s Hummer anywhere.

“Nothing,” said the voice on the CB radio.

Aria grabbed Hanna’s hand and squeezed hard. Emily quietly sobbed into her collar. “Maybe she meant another stream,” Hanna volunteered. “Maybe she meant the stream at the Marwyn Trail.” And while she was at it, maybe Spencer and Mona were just hanging out and talking. Maybe Hanna had it wrong, maybe Mona wasn’t A.

Another voice crackled through the CB radio. “We got a call about a disturbance at Floating Man Quarry.”

Hanna dug her nails into Aria’s hand. Emily gasped. “On it,” Wilden said.

“Floating Man…Quarry?” Hanna repeated. But Floating Man was a happy place—not long after their makeovers, Hanna and Mona had met boys from Drury Academy there. They’d performed a swimsuit fashion show for them along the rocks, reasoning that it was much more alluring to
tease
a boy than to actually make out with him. Right after that, they’d painted
HM + MV= BBBBBFF
on the roof of Mona’s garage, swearing they would be close forever.

So was that all a lie? Had Mona planned this from the beginning? Had Mona been waiting for the day she could hit Hanna with her car? Hanna felt an overwhelming urge to ask Wilden to pull over so she could throw up.

When they arrived at the Floating Man Quarry’s entrance, Mona’s bright yellow Hummer glowed like the beacon on top of a lighthouse. Hanna grabbed the door handle, even though the car was still moving. The door lurched open, and she tumbled out. Hanna started running toward the Hummer, her ankles twisting on the uneven gravel.

“Hanna, no!” Wilden cried. “It’s not safe!”

Hanna heard Wilden stop his car, then more doors slammed. Leaves crunched behind her. As she reached the car, she noticed someone curled up in a ball near the front left tire. Hanna saw a flash of blond hair, and her heart lifted.
Mona.

Only, it was Spencer. Dirt and tears streaked her face and hands, and there were gashes up and down her arms. Her silky dress was torn and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Hanna!” Spencer cried raggedly, reaching out for her.

“Are you okay?” Hanna gasped, crouching down and touching Spencer’s shoulder. She felt cold and wet.

Spencer could barely get the words out, she was sobbing so hard. “I’m so sorry, Hanna. I’m so sorry.”

“Why?” Hanna asked, clutching Spencer’s hands.

“Because…” Spencer gestured to the edge of the quarry. “I think she fell.”

Almost instantly, an ambulance screamed behind them, followed by another police car. The rescue team and more cops surrounded Spencer.

Hanna backed away numbly as the paramedics began to ask Spencer if she could move everything, what hurt, and what happened. “Mona was threatening me,” Spencer said over and over. “She was strangling me. I tried to run away from her, but we fought. And then she…” She gestured again toward the quarry’s edge.

Mona was threatening me.
Hanna’s knees buckled. This was
real
.

The cops had fanned out around the quarry with German shepherds, flashlights, and guns. Within minutes, one of them yelled, “We got something!”

Hanna leaped to her feet and sprinted over to the cop. Wilden, who was closer, caught her from behind. “Hanna,” he said into her ear. “No. You shouldn’t.”

“But I have to see!” Hanna screamed.

Wilden wrapped his arms around her. “Just stay here, okay? Just stay with me.”

Hanna watched as a team of cops disappeared over the lip of the quarry, down toward the rushing water. “We need a stretcher!” one of them screamed. More EMS workers emerged with supplies. Wilden kept petting Hanna’s hair, using part of his body to shield her from what was happening. But Hanna could
hear
it. She heard them saying that Mona was caught between two rocks. And that it looked like Mona’s neck was broken. And that they needed to be very, very careful pulling her out. She heard their grunts of encouragement as they lifted Mona to the surface, loaded her onto a stretcher, and tucked her into the ambulance. As they passed, Hanna saw a shock of Mona’s white-blond hair. She twisted free of Wilden and started to run.

“Hanna!” Wilden screamed. “No!”

But Hanna didn’t run toward the ambulance. She ran to the other side of Mona’s Hummer, crouched down, and threw up. She wiped her palms on the grass and curled up into a tiny ball. The ambulance doors shut and the engine roared, but they didn’t turn on the siren. Hanna wondered if that was because Mona was already dead.

She sobbed until it felt like there were no more tears left in her body. Drained, she rolled over on her back. Something hard and square pressed into her thigh. Hanna sat up and wrapped her hands around it. It was a tan suede phone case, one Hanna didn’t recognize. She brought it to her face and breathed in. It smelled like Jean Patou Joy, which had been Mona’s favorite perfume for years.

Only, the phone nestled inside wasn’t the Chanel limited edition Sidekick Mona had begged her father to bring back from Japan, nor did it have
MV
embossed in Swarovski crystals on the back. This phone was a plain and generic BlackBerry, giving nothing away.

Hanna’s heart sank, realizing what this second phone signified. All she needed to do to prove to herself that Mona had really done this to them was turn the phone on and look. The scent of the quarry’s raspberry bushes drifted past her nose, and she suddenly felt like she was back three years ago, she in her Missoni string bikini and Mona in her one-piece Calvin tank. They had made their fashion show a game—if the Drury boys looked only mildly amused, they lost. If the boys salivated like starved dogs, they would buy each other a spa treatment. Afterward, Hanna chose the jasmine seaweed scrub, and Mona had a jasmine, carrot, and sesame body buff.

Hanna heard footsteps approaching behind her. She touched her thumb to the BlackBerry’s blank, innocent screen, then dropped it into her silk purse, stumbling to find the others. People were talking all around her, but all she could hear was a voice in her head screaming, “Mona’s dead.”

38

THE FINAL PIECE

Spencer limped to the back of the squad car with Aria and Wilden’s help. They asked her again and again if she needed an ambulance. Spencer said she was pretty sure she didn’t—nothing felt broken, and luckily, she’d fallen on the grass, knocking herself out for a moment, but not damaging anything. She dangled her legs out the squad car’s back door and Wilden crouched in front of her, holding a notepad and a tape recorder. “Are you sure you want to do this right now?”

Spencer nodded forcefully.

Emily, Aria, and Hanna gathered behind Wilden as he pressed the
RECORD
button. The headlights of another squad car made a halo around him, backlighting his body in red. It reminded Spencer of the way bonfires used to silhouette her friends’ bodies at summer camp. If only she were really at summer camp, right now.

Wilden took a deep breath. “So. You’re
sure
she told you Ian Thomas killed Ali.”

Spencer nodded. “Ali had given him an ultimatum the night she went missing. She wanted them to meet…and she said that if Ian didn’t break up with Melissa by the time she went to Prague, Ali would tell everyone what was going on.” She pushed her greasy, mud-caked hair off her face. “It’s written in Ali’s diary. Mona has it. I don’t know where, but—”

“We’re going to search Mona’s house,” Wilden interrupted, placing a hand on Spencer’s knee. “Don’t worry.” He turned away and spoke into his walkie-talkie, radioing other cops to locate Ian to bring him in for questioning. Spencer listened, staring numbly at the dirt caked under her fingernails.

Her friends stood around for a long time, stunned. “God,” Emily whispered. “Ian
Thomas
? That just sounds…crazy. But I guess it makes sense. He was so much older, and if she ever told anyone, well…”

Spencer pulled her arms around herself, feeling goose bumps rising on her skin. To her, Ian
didn’t
make sense. Spencer believed that Ali had threatened him, and she believed that Ian might’ve gotten angry, but angry enough to
kill
her? It was eerie, too, that in all the time Spencer had spent with him, she hadn’t suspected Ian one bit. He hadn’t seemed nervous or remorseful or pensive whenever Ali’s murder came up.

But perhaps she’d misinterpreted the signs—she’d missed plenty of others. She’d gotten into the car with Mona, after all. Who knew what else was right in front of her face that she didn’t see?

A beep came over Wilden’s walkie-talkie. “The suspect isn’t at his residence,” a female cop’s voice called. “What do you want us to do?”

“Shit.” Wilden looked at Spencer. “Can you think where else Ian might be?”

Spencer shook her head, her brain feeling like it was plodding through a swamp. Wilden threw himself in the front seat. “I’ll drive you home,” he said. “Your parents are on their way home from the country club, too.”

“We want to go to Spencer’s with you.” Aria indicated for Spencer to move over, then she, Hanna, and Emily all crammed into the backseat. “We don’t want to leave her alone.”

“You guys, you don’t have to,” Spencer said softly. “And anyway, Aria, your car.” She motioned to Aria’s Subaru, which looked like it was sinking into the mud.

“I can leave it overnight.” Aria smirked. “Maybe I’ll get lucky and someone will steal it.”

Spencer folded her hands in her lap, too weak to protest. The car was silent as Wilden rolled past the Floating Man Quarry sign, then along the narrow trail that led to the main road. It was hard to believe that just an hour and a half had passed since Spencer left the party. Things were so different now.

“Mona was there the night we hurt Jenna,” Spencer mumbled absently.

Aria nodded. “It’s a long story, but I actually talked to Jenna tonight. Jenna knows what we did. Only, get this—she and Ali set it up together.”

Spencer sat up straighter. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.
“What? Why?”

“She said that she and Ali both had sibling issues or something,” Aria explained, not sounding very confident in the answer.

“I just don’t understand that,” Emily whispered. “I saw Jason DiLaurentis on the news the other day. He said he doesn’t even speak to his parents anymore, and that his family was really messed up. Why would he say that?”

“There’s a lot you can’t tell about people, looking in from the outside,” Hanna murmured tearfully.

Spencer covered her face with her hands. There was so much she didn’t understand, so much that didn’t make sense. She knew that things should at least feel resolved now—A was really gone, Ali’s killer would soon be apprehended—but she felt more lost than ever. She took her hands away, staring at the sliver of moon in the sky. “You guys,” Spencer broke the silence, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Something
else
?” Hanna wailed.

“Something…about the night Ali went missing.” Spencer slid her silver charm bracelet up and down her arm, keeping her voice to a whisper. “You know how I ran out of the barn after Ali? And how I said I didn’t see where she was going? Well…I did see. She went right down the path. I went up to her and…and we fought. It was about Ian. I…I’d kissed Ian not long before, and Ali had told me that he only kissed me because
she
told him to. And she said that she and Ian were really in love, and she teased me for caring.”

Spencer felt her friends’ eyes on her. She gathered up strength to go on.

“I got so mad…I shoved her. She fell against the rocks. There was this awful
crack
noise.” A tear wobbled out of the corner of her eye and spilled down her cheek. She hung her head. “I’m sorry, guys. I should’ve told you. I just…I didn’t remember. And then when I did, I was so scared.”

When she looked up, her friends were aghast. Even Wilden’s head tilted toward the back, as if he were trying to listen. If they wanted to, they could throw the Ian theory out the window. They could make Wilden stop the car and make Spencer repeat exactly what she’d said. Things could go in a horrible direction from here.

Emily was the first to take Spencer’s hand. Then Hanna placed hers on top of Emily’s, and then Aria laid hers on top of Hanna’s. It reminded Spencer of when they used to all touch the photo of the five of them that hung in Ali’s foyer. “We know it wasn’t you,” Emily whispered.

“It was Ian. It all makes sense,” Aria said forcefully, gazing into Spencer’s eyes. It seemed like she believed Spencer wholly and completely.

They reached Spencer’s street, and Wilden pulled into her family’s long, circular driveway. Spencer’s parents weren’t home yet, and the house was dark. “Do you want me to stay with you guys until your folks get home?” Wilden asked as the girls got out.

“It’s okay.” Spencer glanced around at the others, suddenly relieved that they were here.

Wilden backed out of the driveway and turned slowly around the cul-de-sac, first passing the DiLaurentises’ old house, then the Cavanaughs’, and then the Vanderwaals’, the big monstrosity with the detached garage down the street. There was no one home at Mona’s, obviously. Spencer shuddered.

A flash of light in the backyard caught her eye. Spencer cocked her head, her heart speeding up. She walked down the stone path that led to her backyard and curled her hands along the stone wall surrounding their property. There, past the deck, the rock-lined pool, the burbling hot tub, the expansive yard, and even the renovated barn, at the very back of the property near where Ali had fallen, Spencer saw two figures, lit only by moonlight. They reminded her of something.