Sara Shepard - Stunning

She shut her eyes and thought about those terrifying seconds when she’d pulled up the driveway on Mockingbird Lane. A figure had run in front of the car, then darted across the street into the woods. Whoever it was wore all black and had a hood cinched tight—Spencer hadn’t been able to tell if it was a guy or a girl.

Hanna cleared her throat. “But Gayle is Tabitha’s mom. She was out to steal Violet. She was at Princeton when Spencer was, she infiltrated my dad’s campaign, she threatened me at the race. It makes so much sense that she’s A.”

“I agree,” Aria said.

“So why is Gayle dead now?” Spencer demanded.

The door swung open, and everyone jumped. Lowry walked through and made a motion for the girls to stand up. There was a pinched look on his face, and he was holding a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. “Well, none of the prints on the gun matched any of yours.”

Spencer stood up abruptly. “Whose prints were on the gun?”

“Ms. Riggs’s.” Lowry sipped his coffee. “And a set of prints we don’t have on record. They could be her husband’s. He just arrived from New York, and I want all of us to talk together.”

Spencer exchanged a terrified look with the others. Gayle’s husband was Tabitha’s father.

Before they could say a word, a tall, thin man entered the room. Spencer recognized him from the news stories about Tabitha, the mourning father who’d do anything to have his daughter back. His eyes were tinged red, and he had a look on his face as though he’d just been struck by lightning. She folded in her shoulders, terrified that he’d know what they’d done to his daughter, but Mr. Clark seemed too catatonic to notice them.

Lowry curled his hands over the back of an empty chair. “Mr. Clark, I’d like to clear up a story Ms. Fields told us about your wife.” He glanced at Emily, then at Tabitha’s father. “I apologize that we have to do this so soon after her death, but it’s important for our investigation.”

He repeated what Emily had told him about Gayle wanting to adopt her baby this summer, ending in how Emily was worried that Gayle had stolen the baby tonight—they’d heard a baby crying on the back porch. Mr. Clark stared at Emily, looking startled. “She never told me about wanting to adopt a baby last summer,” he said faintly.

Spencer squinted at him, hardly believing what she was hearing. How could Gayle not have told her own husband?

“She said you knew,” Emily said. Spencer was amazed at her ability to speak—if she was the one being questioned right now, she’d probably hide under the table. “She said she was going to put you on the phone, but she never did.”

“Probably because I told her very clearly I didn’t want to adopt.” Mr. Clark rubbed the top of his head. “So what happened? Why didn’t you give her the baby?”

Emily’s throat bobbed. “I chose another family. That’s all.”

Mr. Clark blinked rapidly. “Was it because you never spoke to me? Was it because you thought we weren’t a good match?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Emily mumbled, staring at her high heels.

Mr. Clark’s eyes were vacant and hollow as he stared past the girls at the wall. “Sometimes Gayle gets ideas in her head that she can’t let go of. She can be very determined—even pigheaded—to get what she wants.”

He blew his nose. “I assure you, though, we didn’t kidnap any children. We hadn’t told anyone yet, but Gayle had just taken a pregnancy test last week. It was positive, and she was overjoyed.” He shook his head. “We’d worked so hard to get pregnant. This was our fifth round of fertility treatments. We’d been through so much pain.” His shoulders started to shake. “This can’t be happening. First Tabitha, now Gayle.”

Tabitha . Just hearing her name was torture. Spencer reached over and took Emily’s hand. Hanna and Aria looked like they were going to explode.

Emily shifted her weight. “I’m very sorry about your daughter. That must have been so hard for you two as parents.”

Mr. Clark’s eyebrows lowered as he turned toward them. “Well, Gayle was Tabitha’s stepmother. It was hard on her, of course, especially since they had some . . . problems. Tabitha had behavioral issues. Gayle pushed to have Tabitha sent away, and I finally relented.”

Spencer exchanged a covert, startled look with Emily and the others. Stepmother? That would explain why she was never on the news and had a different last name.

Mr. Clark put his head in his hands. “I shouldn’t have given into Gayle’s pressure to send Tabitha away. And I made so many mistakes with Gayle, too. I shouldn’t have nagged her about all the boards she was on, all the money she spent on parties. I shouldn’t have yelled at her for that money that went missing last summer. I just want her back. I need her back.”

He let out a low moan. Lowry stood and shooed the girls out of the room, following them out. Once they were far enough away, he put his hands in his pockets and jingled loose change. “I don’t think we need to ask him any more questions about whether he kidnapped your baby, Ms. Fields. I just got a text that the police are done with their search of the house, too. They didn’t find any clues, and they certainly didn’t find any children.”

Emily’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Okay,” she said quietly.

Lowry frowned. “Do you know who might have sent you to Ms. Riggs’s house, even as a joke?”

Emily shot a nervous look at the others, then shook her head. “I don’t. But I don’t think whoever sent it meant anything by it—or had anything to do with Gayle’s murder. We’re the Pretty Little Liars. People send us fake notes all the time, and this was all just a terrible coincidence.”

Her lips trembled. Spencer could tell she hated lying. She almost jumped in to tell the cop everything about A, but then restrained herself.

Lowry let out a frustrated, why are you wasting my time sigh. “You girls are free to go. But don’t think you’re off the hook. You were still on someone’s property without permission, and you were still witnesses to a murder. If there’s anything you aren’t telling me—like about who sent this text—you’d better come forward. And those of you who are under eighteen, I’m going to have to call your parents about this.”

Emily flinched. “And tell them what?”

Lowry stared at her. “That you were trespassing. That you witnessed a murder. Personally, Ms. Fields, I think you should tell them the whole truth. But I can’t make that decision for you.”

With that, he opened the front door and let Spencer and the others out. The digital clock outside the bank across the street said it was almost three in the morning. Not a car was on Lancaster Avenue. Spencer pulled her coat around her and stared long and hard at her friends. “Okay. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?”

“I’m having a hard time believing it, too,” Hanna whispered.

“That was why I saw her at Babies “R” Us,” Aria murmured. “I thought it was to get ready for your baby, Em, but she must have been shopping for her own.”

“But she threatened me,” Hanna said in a small voice.

Spencer tapped her lips thoughtfully. “What exactly did she say?”

“That she wanted what she was owed. Meaning the baby.”

“What if Gayle wasn’t talking about the baby? What if she was talking about the money ?” Spencer gestured in the direction of the police station. “Mr. Clark just said he was really hard on Gayle for losing some money over the summer. What if it was the money that she gave to Emily for the baby?”

“I gave that money back,” Hanna protested.