Sara Shepard: Deadly

She could see everything. The parked car. Roofs of the nearby houses. And under a huge tree in the front yard, those stupid bitches. Spencer wailed. Aria doubled over with coughs. Hanna patted her hair like it was on fire. Melissa was a limp pile on the ground. And Emily looked worriedly at the door through which they’d all escaped, a concerned expression on her face, before covering her eyes with her hands.

Then another figure shot out from deep in the woods. Ali’s gaze moved to him, and her heart lifted. He ran right toward where she’d landed and dropped to his knees next to her body. “Ali,” he said, suddenly so close to her ear. “ Ali . Wake up. You have to wake up.”

The invisible tether extending her into the sky snapped tight, and instantly she was back inside her body. The pain returned immediately. Her charred skin throbbed. Her leg pulsated with her heartbeat. But no matter how hard she screamed, she couldn’t make a sound.

“Please,” he begged, shaking her harder. “Please open your eyes.”

She tried as best she could, wanting to see the boy she’d loved for so long. She wanted to say his name, but her head felt too fuzzy, her throat too ruined. She managed to muster a moan.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said emphatically, as if he was trying to convince himself. “We just have to . . .” Then he gasped. Sirens sounded down the hill. “ Shit,” he whispered.

Ali managed to open her eyes at the sound. “Shit,” she echoed weakly. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. They were supposed to be far away by now.

He tugged her arm. “We have to get out of here. Can you walk?”

“No.” It took all of Ali’s strength to whisper. She was in so much pain, she was afraid she might throw up.

“You have to.” He tried to help her up, but she just crumpled. “It’s not far.”

Ali looked at her useless legs. Even wiggling a toe hurt. “I can’t!”

His eyes met hers. “Everything is in place. You just have to take a couple of steps.”

The sirens grew closer. Ali’s head lolled to the grass. Letting out a frustrated moan, he hefted her over his shoulder, fireman-style, and carried her through the woods. They jostled and bounced. Twigs scraped Ali’s face. Leaves fluttered against her singed arms.

With all her remaining strength, she twisted around and stared through the trees. Those bitches were still huddled together, the lights from the ambulances flashing against their features. It didn’t look like they needed medical attention at all. They didn’t have any broken bones. They hadn’t sustained any burns. But they were the ones who were supposed to suffer. Not her.

She let out a furious shriek. It wasn’t fair.

The boy she’d loved forever followed her gaze, then patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll get them,” he growled in her ear as he carried her to safety. “I promise. We’ll make them pay.”

Ali knew he meant every word. And right then, she made the vow to herself, too: Together, they were going to get Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily if it was the last thing they did. No matter who they took down. No matter who they had to kill to do it.

This time, they were going to do it right.

“Hey.” A voice floated over Aria Montgomery’s head. “Aria. Hey .”

Aria opened her eyes. One of her best friends, Hanna Marin, sat on the coffee table across from her, staring at a steaming cup of coffee in Aria’s hands. Aria had been so out of it, she couldn’t even remember getting coffee before she’d dozed off.

“You were about to spill that in your lap.” Hanna took the coffee from her. “The last thing we need is for you to land in the hospital, too.”

Hospital . Of course. Aria looked around. She was at the Jefferson Intensive Care Unit, in a crowded waiting room on Monday morning. On the walls were winter forest watercolors. A flat-screen TV blared a morning talk show in the corner. Two of her other friends, Emily Fields and Spencer Hastings, were sitting on a loveseat next to her, wrinkled copies of Us Weekly and Glamour and paper cups of coffee in their hands. Noel Kahn’s parents sat across the room, blearily staring at sections from The Philadelphia Inquirer . A horseshoe-shaped nurse’s desk stood in the middle of the room, and a woman behind it talked on the phone. Three doctors in blue scrubs rushed down the hall, surgical masks dangling around their necks.

Aria sat up straighter. “Did I miss anything? Did Noel . . . ?”

Hanna shook her head. “He still hasn’t woken up.”

Just yesterday, a helicopter had brought Noel here from Rosewood, and he hadn’t regained consciousness since. On the one hand, Aria couldn’t wait for Noel to wake up. On the other, she had no idea what she would say when he did. That was because even though she and Noel had been dating for more than a year, Aria had just discovered that Noel had had a secret relationship with Alison DiLaurentis while she was in The Preserve. He knew the truth about the DiLaurentis twin switch, and he hadn’t said a word to Aria—or anyone else. To say that Aria suddenly couldn’t trust Noel was an understatement. She’d even gone so far as to wonder if Noel was Helper A, the secret boyfriend who’d been helping Ali torment the four of them. But then an A note had directed the girls to the storage shed. The girls were sure it was a trap Noel and Ali had set, so they’d called the police. They’d found Noel bound and gagged in a chair, close to death. And then there was a new note from A: Noel wasn’t the helper. A—Ali—had manipulated them once more. Noel was just another victim.

“Miss Montgomery?”

A tall, bristly-haired police officer stood above Aria. “Y-yes?” Aria stammered.

The cop—who had Popeye forearms and a reddish crew cut—stepped closer. “Name’s Kevin Gates. I’m with the Rosewood Police. Do you girls have a minute?”

Aria frowned. “We already told the police everything we know yesterday.”

Gates smiled gently, making his eyes crinkle. There was something teddy-bearish about him. “I know. But I want to make sure my guys asked you the right questions.”

Aria bit down hard on the inside of her cheek. Now that Noel had been hurt, she felt she needed to keep quiet about A again. She couldn’t risk anyone else becoming a victim.

Gates led them to a more secluded part of the waiting room, next to a pot of very fake-looking lilies. After everyone sat down on a new set of scratchy couches, he looked at his notepad. “Am I correct that you received a text message that Noel was in the storage shed?”

Despite their more private location, Aria could still feel everyone in the room staring. Mrs. Kahn peeked up from behind the Food section of the paper. A boy in an Episcopal Academy sweatshirt peered out from under his hood. Mason Byers, one of Noel’s buddies on the lacrosse team, who was sitting at a table across the room, stopped shuffling a deck of cards and cocked his head toward the group.

“I got a handwritten note, not a text,” Hanna clarified. “And it said to go to the shed. I called the cops just in case the threat was real.”

Gates made a mark on his notepad. “It’s good you did. Whoever sent you that note most likely hurt Mr. Kahn—or, at the very least, saw who did it. Do you have the note on you?”

Hanna looked trapped. “It’s at home.”

Gates paused from writing. “Will you bring it to us as soon as possible?”

“Uh, sure.” Hanna rubbed her nose, looking uncomfortable.

Gates turned to Aria. “Mr. and Mrs. Kahn said you called them several times that same morning, asking if Noel had come home. Did you have reason to be worried about him?”