Sara Shepard - Toxic

“How do you know?”

“Because . . . I just do.”

He set his jaw and stared into the fire. “This isn’t going to work unless you actually talk to me, Spencer.”

She stared at her palms. “We tracked Ali down to a property about an hour from here. She was definitely there—the inside smelled like vanilla soap, which is so utterly her . It was more than that, too. We just felt . . . a presence.”

Greg’s eyes widened. “She’s living in a house?”

“In a pool house in the back of Nick’s family’s property in Ashland. We went inside, but Ali wasn’t there. So we decided to monitor the place with cameras connected to a wireless feed. We made sure to hide them really carefully, so she wouldn’t know.”

Greg’s head shot up.

“There are . . . cameras ?”

Spencer wasn’t sure what to make of his horrified reaction—placing the cameras hadn’t seemed that dangerous. “I camouflaged them with leaves. You can’t see them from the ground at all. And there are no wires—they run on solar batteries. There’s really no way for anyone to tell they’re there unless they’re really looking.”

Greg ran his hand over the top of his head. “I can’t believe you got that past her.”

She hugged her arms to her chest. “Well, I think we did. We’ve been watching it day and night, and so far, Ali hasn’t taken them down or come back. But . . . someone was there.” There was a lump in her throat. “Dominick. I’m almost positive.”

She told him about chasing Dominick down the other night. Greg sat back. His eyes were kind of glazed. “And what do you think Dominick was doing there?”

“I watched the tape again. It looked like he was waiting for someone.” Her mouth twitched. “Maybe Ali.”

Greg nodded faintly, then stared at his phone in his lap. It pinged, and he tapped on it, answering a text as casually as if they’d been talking about the weather. But a muscle twitched in his jaw. Spencer wondered if he was really upset. Maybe he was really angry that she’d taken such crazy risks. Or maybe he was upset she hadn’t told him before.

“Look, I know you don’t want me to handle this on my own, but I have no choice,” she said. “No one is listening to us. No one wants to help. We have to catch her.” She shook her head. “But now with this whole Ali Cat wrinkle, I’m starting to wonder. What if the Ali Cats are the people we need to worry about? What if they’re behind everything, and Ali really is dead?”

“Oh, she’s not dead.”

Spencer flinched. Greg’s face was in profile, lit orange by the fire. “Pardon?” she asked.

He turned to face her. His expression was oddly placid, no longer freaked or worried. “I said, she’s not dead,” he repeated, cracking a smile. “And she’s definitely coming for you.”

Spencer’s heart jumped. She pulled her hand away from Greg’s and shifted back on the couch. “W-what?”

Greg smiled blandly. “I have to thank you, Spencer. I wondered if there were cameras. I was thinking about that when I was there yesterday.”

Spencer blinked hard. Her mind scrambled for a foothold. “What do you mean, yesterday ?”

He draped his arm over the back of the couch. “That wasn’t Dominick you saw at the pool house. Dominick doesn’t even exist.”

Spencer shot to her feet, feeling sick. “O-of course Dominick exists. He’s been sending me emails. I saw him, at the panel discussion in New York.”

Greg just smiled. “That was a friend I asked to help me out for the night. And those emails? I wrote them.” He cast his gaze to the sky. “ You think you’re so awesome, but you’re not. You’re nothing but a poser, and pretty soon, people are going to figure you out .”

Her heart was pounding fast. She took a step away from him. “ You’re Dominick? Why?”

“Because I needed you to trust me, to create a threat so that you would let me in.” He crossed his arms over his chest proudly. “And it totally worked. You’ve told me what I need to know.”

Spencer felt her stomach drop, just like it had the time her car hydroplaned during a rainstorm and she’d nearly crashed into a guardrail. “ You’re the Ali Cat,” she whispered.

He grinned. “She’ll love me so much for this.”

She . Spencer knew it was coming, but she clapped her hand over her mouth all the same.

Greg rose from the couch and stepped toward her, the same weird smile on his face. Spencer darted back, almost bumping into the fireplace. She moved to the right, narrowly avoiding a wooden credenza. Greg followed her, his shoulders squared and his eyes cold. With one lunge, he could tackle her to the ground. What was he capable of? What had Ali ordered him to do?

“You know Ali,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “You’ve actually talked to her.”

Greg shook his head. “Never directly. But yes. And I love her.”

“ Why ?” Spencer almost shrieked.

“Because she’s fascinating. And elusive. And beautiful.”

It was the craziest thing Spencer had ever heard. “And all this time . . . that’s why you wanted to get to know me?” Tears filled her eyes. “Because she asked you to?”

Greg snorted. “She told me you’d get attached like this. She said you were emotional.”

She told me. She said . As if Ali really knew what Spencer was like. But it hurt—because Ali was right. She had gotten attached. All her promises not to trust anyone again, all her vows to be careful, and she’d stepped right into Ali’s wide-open jaws. Ali had known Spencer was lonely. She’d known she was looking for someone to bolster her ego. It was like she’d engineered Greg herself, programmed him so that he’d hit Spencer in all her soft spots.

Then something else hit her. Finally, here was someone who actually knew something. Slowly, carefully, she felt in her pocket for her phone. She had to call the police. Her fingers fumbled. She tried her hardest to dial 911.

The phone rang. Then she heard someone say, “What’s your emergency?”

Spencer looked at Greg. “Tell me how you contacted Alison DiLaurentis. And tell me where she is now.”

Greg burst out laughing. “Spencer, I’m not a fool.” With lightning-quick reflexes, he grabbed her phone from her pocket, ran into the hall, and tossed it into a large fountain. There was a loud splash , and then it sank to the bottom.

“Hey!” Spencer shrieked, plunging her hands into the cold water. Water dripped off the phone as she pulled it to the surface. The screen was dead, the 911 call disconnected.

Someone gasped behind her, and she whipped around. A little boy with a blue balloon that said ROSEWOOD RALLIES! stood in the hall, his eyes wide. “Is your phone dead?”

Spencer looked down the hall, her heart racing. Greg was gone .

“Where did the guy I was talking to go?” she asked the little boy. He just looked at her blankly, then went back to batting his balloon in the air.

This couldn’t be happening. Spencer sprinted down the hall wildly, tripping in her heels. “Greg!” she called out. She ran to the long windows that looked out on the golf course, thinking she’d see him disappearing over a hill.

But he had vanished completely. And taken her secrets with him.

“There’s our final girl of the hour!” a woman in a tweed suit crowed, taking Emily’s hand and leading her farther into the country club’s lobby. “Emily Fields, I’m Sharon Winters! What a pleasure! Come in, my dear! Have some punch!”