Sara Shepard - Deadly

Mike winced. “You were in a car crash last summer and you didn’t tell me?”

Hanna shrugged. “I couldn’t risk telling anyone . I’m sorry.”

She kept going with the story. When she got to the part where they’d concluded that A was Ali, Mike looked confused. “Are you sure? I thought she didn’t survive that fire.”

“Emily left the door open for her. She got out.” Then she lowered her eyes and explained the Tabitha part of it, too—how they’d feared Ali had followed them to Jamaica and was going to hurt them. “Tabitha followed us to the roof of the resort,” she told Mike. “And then she went after Aria. After that, everything happened so fast—Aria shot forward, there was a scuffle, and suddenly Tabitha was tumbling over the railing. She was alive after the fall, though—we’re sure of it. But when we ran down there, she was gone. We didn’t kill her, but someone is making sure it looks like we did.”

“Jesus,” Mike whispered, his eyes wide. “I was on that trip with you. I saw that girl. How could you have kept this from me?”

“I’m sorry,” Hanna said quietly. “I was just so scared. I wanted to pretend it had never happened at all. But when we started getting new notes . . .” She trailed off and covered her face with her hands.

Mike sat on the stone wall that surrounded Hanna’s house and stared into the distance. After a while, he said, “Let me get this straight. It was Ali—or her helper—who murdered that Gayle woman, too?”

Hanna nodded, thinking of Gayle Riggs, the wealthy woman who had wanted Emily’s baby. A had killed her.

“And it was A who set off that bomb in the boiler room of the ship?” Mike’s voice squeaked. Hanna nodded again, and Mike made a gurgling sound at the back of his throat. “And it was A who really killed Tabitha?”

“We’re almost positive, yes.”

“So, basically, Ali has tried to kill you and my sister, like, six times by now, and she’s framing you for shit that she did. We need to find this bitch. Now .”

Hanna glanced worriedly around the yard. “Spencer and Emily seem to think it’s a bad idea. The last time we looked for Ali, Noel ended up in the hospital.”

Mike kicked at loose gravel in the flower bed. “So we’re just supposed to sit around?”

Hanna peeked through the trees, hating how secluded her mother’s property was. Anybody could spy on them at close range, and they’d never know. “I’m just afraid that if we get any closer to where they are or who her helper is, someone else is going to get hurt. Maybe you. Maybe me .”

Mike’s icy blue eyes narrowed. “I promise you, Hanna, that she will never, ever get you. She’ll have to get through me first. I’ll stand guard outside your bedroom if I have to. Stay by your side at every class. I’ll even come into your dressing room at Otter if you want.”

Hanna gave him a playful shove. “You’d love coming into my dressing room at Otter.”

“Of course I would.” Mike leaned in and gave Hanna a gentle kiss on the nose.

Hanna tilted her head up and kissed his lips. Something broke inside her. Salty tears flooded down her cheeks. “I’m so glad you figured it out,” she whispered in his ear.

“I’m glad, too,” Mike said.

They kissed again, long and deep. Mike moved his hands up and down her back. She took small steps toward the side door, and in seconds, they were inside and lying on her mom’s couch in the den, making out furiously. The only thing Hanna wanted to think about was the feel of Mike’s lips on hers, the warmth of his hands, the weight of his body. She clung to him like he was a life raft, then found herself pulling her shirt over her head.

Goose bumps rose in her skin. Mike pulled off his shirt, too, revealing his strong chest and toned-from-lacrosse abs. He hesitated above her. Hanna knew, suddenly, what was going to happen next. It was something they’d danced around, teased each other about, plotted for weeks . . . but something they hadn’t exactly gotten around to. They would be each other’s firsts, after all, and they both seemed to realize how special the moment needed to be. But maybe here, in this empty house, on this terrible day, was exactly the right time.

Hanna undid the button of her jeans. Mike’s eyes slid down to watch. “Is this okay?” he whispered, his voice stretched taut.

“Yes,” Hanna said, a wave crashing inside her. She grabbed Mike hard and pulled him closer than she ever had before.

The moment Emily Fields burst out of the exit of Rosewood Day from picking up her assignments later that day, the unwelcome jeers began.

“Miss Fields! It’s Alyssa Gaden from the Philadelphia Sentinel! Do you have a moment?”

“Emily! Over here!”

Flashbulbs popped. Reporters shoved microphones at her face. Emily tried to scurry past them, but they followed her.

“Is it true you were the ones who found Noel Kahn in the storage shed behind the school?” the Sentinel woman shouted.

“Can you tell us what led you there?” a man screamed.

“Do you girls have a suicide pact?” another voice bleated. “Is that why you went out on that lifeboat?”

Emily winced. After the cruise ship had been bombed, everyone had evacuated on lifeboats. Emily and her friends had taken their own boat and sailed away from shore to bury Tabitha’s old necklace—A had managed to get it in Aria’s hands, and the girls didn’t want to be connected to it. But the lifeboat punctured out at sea, trapping them. A crew from the boat had rescued them, and the rumors had begun that they’d sailed out alone to die.

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder, forming a barricade between Emily and the reporters. “No comment, no comment, no comment.”

It was Principal Appleton. He draped an arm around Emily and hustled her up the slope to the student parking lot. “I’m so sorry, dear,” he said gently.

“Thanks,” Emily said gratefully.

Appleton left Emily at her car with a nod and a few encouraging words to hang in there. Emily slumped into the driver’s seat of the family’s Volvo wagon. For the past few years, she and her friends had been the target of media scrutiny—they even had a movie made about them called Pretty Little Killer . She was so, so, so sick of it.

If those crows on the telephone pole lift off in the next ten seconds, everything will be fine , Emily thought, staring at the wires by the trees. The birds didn’t move. More crows joined them, hunched, black smears against the gray sky.

Sighing, she pulled out her phone and checked her e-mail. The only one was from Hanna: Will you guys go to Graham’s funeral with me tomorrow? I need moral support .

Aria had agreed. Emily wrote and said she would go, too. She exited out of her e-mail program, then looked longingly at the wallpaper on her home screen. It was a shot of her and her girlfriend, Jordan Richards, on the deck of the cruise ship as it pulled away from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

She shut her eyes, quietly reliving the moment. She and Jordan had connected so quickly and intensely. Emily longed to talk to Jordan now, but Jordan was on the run from the FBI. In fact, they’d made plans to run away together, but A had called the Feds on the Preppy Thief. Now Jordan was hiding out somewhere in the Caribbean to escape arrest. If only Emily could contact her and arrange to meet up with her. What did she have here, after all? It would be the perfect escape from A. But there was no way to get in touch with Jordan.

Or was there?

She tapped the Twitter app. Need to talk , she wrote in a direct message to Jordan’s secret Twitter alias. It’s important .