Sara Shepard - Deadly

“Aria?” It was Spencer, who was in the next cell over.

“Y-yeah?” Aria turned toward the wall.

“You were mumbling really loudly,” Spencer whispered. “Were you sleeping ?”

Aria ran her hand through her gnarled hair. She must have passed out from fear and shock. She doubted she’d been out for long, though—light still streamed through the small window at the ceiling.

The past few hours twisted in her head like a tornado. After the bombshell at Rosewood Day, the police had shoved the four of them into separate cars and driven them to holding cells at the Rosewood jail.

It couldn’t be true. A had orchestrated this. Only . . . how ? Once again, Aria relived the moment Fuji had told them that every single A note they’d received had been from their phones . It was like those dreams she sometimes had where she tried to dial an emergency phone number again and again, but the buttons kept disintegrating. She felt trapped. Helpless. Voiceless.

Aria glanced at the window near the ceiling of her cell. The light was dimmer; maybe a few hours had passed. Did her parents know about their arrest? Had the news picked up the story; was Aria’s face plastered all over CNN? She pictured Noel watching from his couch, slack-jawed. She imagined Asher the artist paling as he read a Google Alert, and she pictured her artistic future as a drawing on a chalkboard slowly being erased. She envisioned her parents and Mike getting a phone call and sinking to their knees, inconsolable.

Someone rapped at the bars, and Aria shot up. A familiar man in a well-fitting suit stood outside her cell. “Dad?” Spencer’s voice rang out from down the hall.

“Hello, Spencer.” Mr. Hastings sounded very serious.

“What are you doing here?” Spencer called out.

“My firm is going to represent you. All of you.” He looked up and down the cells. “My associate is with me, and he’s working on posting bail for all four of you. You’ll be out of here soon, don’t worry.”

Aria ran her tongue over her teeth. She’d never known Mr. Hastings well—even on weekends, he was always out doing something, whether it was going on marathon bike rides or taking care of the lawn or playing a round of golf—but he’d always seemed friendly and caring. He’d look out for them, right?

Mr. Hastings glanced down the hall, then leaned forward. “But we’d like to speak to you about a few things while we’re here. My associate Mr. Goddard is going to question you—criminal cases are more his area of expertise. But you’re in good hands.”

Criminal cases . Aria almost threw up.

“Anyway, they’ve allowed us a conference room,” Mr. Hastings said, clapping his hands. “We have twenty minutes.”

The door slammed, and there were footsteps and the jingling of keys. The bristly-haired police officer, Gates, appeared, unlocking the girls’ cells one by one. “Conference room’s that way,” he said, jutting a finger to the end of the hall.

Aria struggled to stand. Her legs felt cramped and weak, as though she’d been a prisoner for years instead of hours.

She followed Mr. Hastings into the small, square, cinder-block room she and the others had sat in more than a year ago, not long before Jenna Cavanaugh’s body was found in her backyard. It was very cold inside. A pitcher of water sat in the center of the table, a stack of plastic cups next to it. The room smelled vaguely of vomit.

Spencer walked into the room next, and Emily and Hanna followed. Each looked dazed, terrified, and exhausted. Everyone sat down without looking at one another. Mr. Hastings spoke to someone in the hall, and then a tall man with receding dark hair walked in. “Hello, girls,” he said, extending his hand to each of them. “I’m George Goddard.”

Mr. Hastings shut the door behind him. Goddard pulled out a chair and sat down. A few pregnant seconds passed. “So,” he finally said. “Let’s figure out what’s going on here.”

“How many times can we tell you that those A notes weren’t from us?” Spencer blurted. “They were from Ali and her helper. They set us up.”

Mr. Goddard looked conflicted. “The FBI—and the rest of the world—is pretty sure Alison is dead, girls.”

“But how do they know ?” Spencer pressed.

“That I’m not sure,” Goddard said. “They just seem very certain that she’s no longer alive.” He looked back and forth at them as he undid the snap of his briefcase and pulled out some files. “Have you actually seen her? Have you been in touch with her?”

Aria exchanged a glance with the others. “We have her on a surveillance video,” Spencer admitted. “Or someone who looks like her, anyway.”

“Any other evidence she’s alive?” Goddard asked.

Everyone shook their heads. “But what about the note Hanna gave to the cops from the girl pretending to be Kyla?” Aria asked, assuming that Goddard had done his homework and knew who Kyla was. “Didn’t it have Ali’s fingerprints on it? And what about Kyla’s blood samples—didn’t they match Ali’s? Didn’t you find hair, skin, something?”

“Or how about Gayle’s house?” Emily pushed her matted hair off her face.

“Or that Acura key I dropped off?” Spencer pitched in.

Goddard looked through his notes. “According to the information the FBI has released, the only samples at the burn clinic were from the real Kyla, the girl who’d been murdered. As for the Acura key, the only prints on it were yours, Spencer.”

“It just makes no sense,” Aria said shakily. “Why would we send messages about our secrets to ourselves?”

Goddard shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. But their take on it is that you wanted to pretend you were bullied to garner sympathy.”

“Sympathy for what ?” Hanna squinted.

“You wanted to make it look like someone was setting you up. Like someone was framing you for killing Tabitha.”

“Someone was framing us!” Emily cried.

Aria nodded fiercely. “We would never do something like that.”

Goddard pressed his lips together. “They have evidence that proves that perhaps you might be someone who would do that. Something about pushing another girl off a ski lift?”

Aria jolted up. The incident with Klaudia rushed back to her. How could Fuji have found out about that? But then it hit her: It had been in an A note. And Aria had handed over every single one of her texts.

She covered her mouth with her hand.

“They have eyewitness reports of how you attacked a girl named Kelsey Pierce at a school party a few months ago, too, Spencer,” Mr. Goddard said glumly, looking at his notes. “Beau Braswell is willing to corroborate this. And now Ms. Pierce is in a mental hospital.”

“Not because of me ,” Spencer blurted. Her chin started to wobble.

Then Goddard looked apologetically at Emily. “Someone named Margaret Colbert can attest to your criminal behavior, too.”

Emily blinked. “Isaac’s mother? S-she hates me!”

“She said you tried to sell off your baby.” His voice rose at the end of that last sentence, like a question.

Emily wilted. Her face turned ghost-white.

Again Goddard glanced at his notes. “I’m sure they’re digging up people who think you girls are emotionally unstable.” Then he turned to Hanna. “They found out you stole from your own father’s political campaign to pay someone off.”

Hanna made an eep . “Did my father tell them that?”

“He didn’t need to.” Goddard pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was right there on your phone. That isn’t all they have on you, either. The police did a thorough investigation of the burn clinic after the deaths, including eyewitness reports about who was in and out of Graham Pratt’s room. According to quite a few people, you were the last one in there before he had his fatal seizure.”