Sara Shepard - Ruthless

She slipped the phone back into her bag and turned to Liam again. “Anyway, you were talking about South Beach?”

Liam nodded, sliding closer to her. “I want to have you all to myself.”

He bent to kiss her. Hanna kissed back, but A’s message needled her. A was horrific and scary, but Hanna knew better than anyone that A’s information was usually right on. What if Liam had herpes sores all over his mouth in his picture? What if he had a different nose? Or what if—horrors—Liam was freakishly young-looking for his age and was actually in his forties?

She pulled away. “You know, I technically have a rule,” she said shakily. “Before I go on vacay with a guy, I have to see his license first.”

A bemused smile appeared on Liam’s face. “Luckily my license picture is awesome.” He reached into his wallet. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

“Deal.” Hanna grabbed her Louis Vuitton wallet from her bag and handed him the new license she’d gotten only a few months ago. Liam handed Hanna his license in exchange. When Hanna studied his image, relief flooded her. He looked gorgeous. No herpes sores. No altered nose. And he was two years older than she was, not in his forties. Her gaze traveled over the rest of the license. When she noticed the name, her eyes skimmed right past it. But then she stopped and looked again.

Liam Wilkinson.

Hanna’s heart leapt to her throat. No. It couldn’t be.

But when she looked at Liam, the evidence was all there. He had the same brown eyes as Tucker Wilkinson. The same lazy, people-love-me smile. Even his thick eyebrows were identical.

Liam’s head shot up, Hanna’s license in his hands. His face went pale. Hanna could see the connections forming in his mind. “You’re related to Tom Marin,” he said slowly. “That’s why you were at Hyde last night.”

Hanna lowered her eyes, feeling like she was going to vomit all over the velvet couch. “He’s . . . my father,” she admitted, each word filling her with pain as it spilled out of her mouth. “And your father is . . .”

“Tucker Wilkinson,” Liam finished dolefully.

They stared at each other in horror. And then, over the sounds of the frat boys chanting Chug chug chug , the music, and the ice clacking together in the martini shaker, Hanna heard a far-off giggle. She turned and stared at the long glass window that faced the street. There, plastered on the window, was a ripped, neon-green piece of paper. It didn’t take Hanna long to realize it was a piece of a Tom Marin flyer her dad’s aides had passed out at the flash mob last night. The edges were raggedly torn so that only her father’s face and a single letter from his name remained.

A lone, bold A .

The following afternoon, which was gray and cold, Spencer pulled a plaid scarf around her neck, stepped onto the curb on a side street in Old Hollis, and stared at the rambling Victorian house in front of her. Frowning, she checked the address on the drama club call sheet one more time. She was standing in front of the Purple House, aptly named because of the brilliant purple paint that covered every inch of its siding. The house was an institution in Rosewood—when Spencer was in sixth grade, she, Ali, and others used to ride bikes up and down this street, whispering the rumors they’d heard about the people who owned the place. “Someone told me they never bathe,” Ali said. “The place is crawling with bed bugs.”

“Well, I heard they host orgies,” Hanna added. Everyone let out a collective Ew , but then a face had appeared at the window of the Purple House and they’d all quickly biked away.

Murderer.

Spencer paused from climbing up the front steps, her heart shooting into her throat. She stared at the quiet, almost vacant-looking houses on the street. A shadow slipped behind a pair of metal garbage cans in the alley.

She shivered and thought of her most recent note from A. Maybe her friends weren’t convinced that Kelsey could be their new evil text-messager, but it was the most logical answer. Spencer had ruined Kelsey’s life. Now Spencer had to stop her before Kelsey ruined hers—and her friends’, too.

Over the summer, Spencer and Kelsey had become fast friends. Kelsey had confessed that after her parents had gotten divorced, she started acting out and fell in with a wild group of girls. She’d gotten into pot, and then started selling it. During a locker search at school, security found her stash. The only reason she wasn’t expelled from St. Agnes was because her dad had recently donated a science wing, but her parents threatened to send her to a super-strict Catholic school in Canada if she stepped out of line again.

“I decided to turn things around,” Kelsey said one night as she and Spencer lay together on her bed after a night of studying. “My parents refused to pay for it, saying it would be a waste after all the trouble I’d gotten into, but amazingly, a nonprofit I’d never heard of swooped in at the last minute and gave me a scholarship to go to the Penn program. I want to show my parents it was all worth it.”

In turn, Spencer told Kelsey about her troubles, too—well, some of them. Like how she’d been tortured by A. How she’d stolen her sister’s paper and passed it off as her own for the Golden Orchid prize. How she wanted to be the very best all the time.

They’d both been the perfect candidates for Easy A. At first, the pills hadn’t had much effect other than making them both feel really awake even when they’d pulled all-nighters. But as time went on, they both began to notice when they hadn’t taken it. “I can’t keep my eyes open,” Spencer would say during class. “I feel like a zombie,” Kelsey would groan. They watched Phineas across the room, covertly slipping yet another pill under his tongue. If he was okay taking more, maybe they would be, too.

A car with a rattling muffler drove past, breaking Spencer from her thoughts. Straightening up, she climbed the steps to Beau’s front porch, checked herself out in the front sidelight window—she’d dressed in skinny jeans, a soft cashmere sweater, and tall boots, which she thought looked appropriately cute but not like she was trying to impress Beau—and rang the bell.

No one answered. She rang it again. Still no one.

“Hel- lo ?” Spencer said impatiently, rapping hard on the door.

Finally, a light snapped on, and Beau appeared at the window. He whipped open the door. His eyes were sleepy, his dark hair was tousled, and he was shirtless. Spencer nearly swallowed the piece of Trident she was chewing. Where had he been hiding those abs?

“Sorry,” Beau said drowsily. “I was meditating.”

“Of course you were,” Spencer mumbled, trying not to stare at his thousand-sit-ups-a-day torso. This was like the time she and Aria had taken a life-drawing class at Hollis that had nude male models. The models seemed so nonchalant, but Spencer kept wanting to burst into giggles.

She strode into the foyer, noting that the inside of the Purple House was as chaotic-looking as the outside. The hallway walls were filled with an eclectic mix of handwoven tapestries, oil paintings, and metal signs advertising brands of cigarettes and long-defunct diners. Shabby mid-century modern furniture adorned the large living room off to the left, and a rustic maple table covered in hardcover books of all shapes and sizes took up most of the dining room. At the end of the hall was an unrolled blue yoga mat. A small boombox sat nearby playing a soothing harp song, and an incense holder bearing a single lit stick wafted smoke into the air from an end table.