Sara Shepard - Heartless

But then Aria remembered—the cops had confiscated all their phones. If A had sent them a message, they wouldn’t get it.

About thirty minutes later, there was a knock on the holding-cell doors. All the girls jumped. Emily’s heart catapulted to her throat. This was it. They were going to be interrogated . . . and then they were going to jail.

A woman police officer peered into the room. There were purple circles under her eyes and a coffee stain on the chest of her uniform shirt. “Get your things, girls. You’re being released.”

Everyone fell silent, stunned. Then Emily collapsed with relief. “ Really? ”

“Did you find A?” Aria asked.

“What happened?” Hanna said at the same time.

The cop’s expression was stony. “All charges against you are dropped.” But there was an uncomfortable look on her face, like there was something else she wanted to say. “Let’s just say circumstances have changed.”

Emily followed the others out of the room, working the words over in her mind. Circumstances have changed? That could mean only one thing. Her heart leapt.

“That body in the hole wasn’t Ali’s, right?” she cried. “You found her!” So they had been listening when she told them that Wilden was a murderer!

Spencer nudged Emily’s ribs. “Would you shut up about that?”

“No,” Emily snapped. A might have sent them to jail, but Emily’s theory was still right. She knew it at the bottom of her heart. She turned back to the cop, who was walking briskly down the hall. “Is Ali okay? Is she safe?”

“You girls are going home,” the cop answered. Her keys jingled on her belt. “That’s all I can tell you.”

They received their personal items from another officer at the front desk. Emily immediately checked her phone, thinking that perhaps Ali had texted, but there were no new messages. Not even a derisive note from A, laughing that Emily had walked right into the trap.

The female cop hit a buzzer, and double doors opened to the parking lot. It was crammed with police cars and news vans. Emily hadn’t seen so much commotion since the fire in the woods.

“Emily,” a voice said.

Darren Wilden ran at them from across the dark parking lot, his quilted police jacket flapping open. “Good. They let you out. I’m sorry about this.”

Emily recoiled, her heart jumping to her throat. Why was Wilden here? Shouldn’t he be arrested?

“What’s going on?” Aria demanded, stopping near an empty patrol car. “Why did they suddenly set us free?”

Wilden guided them away from the crowd, not answering. “Just be glad you’re out of this mess. We’re getting guys to escort you home.”

Emily planted her feet. “I know what you did,” she said in a low voice. “And I’m going to make sure everyone else knows it too.”

Wilden swiveled around, staring at her. His walkie-talkie made a noise, but he ignored it. Finally, he sighed. “What you think you know isn’t true, Emily. I know you went to Lancaster. And I know what you were led to believe. But I didn’t hurt Leah. I’d never do that.”

The blood drained from Emily’s head. “What? How do you know where I was?”

Wilden stared at the glowing parking space lines in the lot. “You guys were right about your new A. I should have listened.”

Aria stomped her foot. “Oh, now you believe us? Why couldn’t you have listened last week, maybe before we were almost fried alive in a forest fire?”

“And before A sent me to the Preserve at Addison-Stevens!” Hanna wailed. “I was locked up with crazy people!”

Emily shot up. The Preserve at Addison-Stevens. That name was in Ali’s evidence file. It was a mental hospital ?

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you guys,” Wilden was saying, striding past a chain-link fence. Behind it were unused police vehicles and a large white school bus. “It was a mistake. But we know everything now. We have all the notes he sent you.”

The girls stopped dead. “He?” Spencer squeaked.

“Who is he? ” Hanna whispered. “Ian?”

Just then, another police car wailed into the lot. Policemen ran over and started to pull someone out of the backseat. There were shouts, and then a kicking leg, then a flash of teeth. The cops finally managed to get whoever it was out of the car and began marching him toward the station. When there was a break in action, Emily saw a tall, lanky man with greasy blond hair and a moustache. Her stomach curdled.

There was a worried crinkle between Spencer’s eyes. “Why does he look familiar?” she murmured.

“I don’t know,” Emily whispered, her mind frantically searching.

Members of the press rushed to the cops and started snapping pictures. “How long have you been planning this, Mr. Ford?” they screamed. “What made you do it?” And finally, rising above the rest, “Why did you kill Alison?”

Aria grabbed Emily’s hand hard. Emily’s knees went weak. “ What did they say?”

“He killed Alison,” Spencer murmured. “That guy killed Alison.”

“But who is he?” Hanna blurted.

“Come on,” Wilden said gruffly, shoving them away. “You shouldn’t see this.”

None of the girls could move. The man’s untied shoelace dragged along the pavement as the cops shoved him toward the station. His head was hung low, exposing a bald patch. Emily raked her nails up the side of her arms. Ali was . . . dead? What about Leah? What about the girl Emily had seen in the woods?

The reporters kept screaming, their voices blurring incoherently. Then one reporter shouted louder than the others. “And what about the body that was just found? Are you responsible for that murder, too?”

Hanna turned to Wilden. “Another murder?”

“Oh my God.” Emily’s insides turned to mush.

“Girls,” Wilden said sternly. “Come on.”

By now, Ali’s alleged killer was at the front steps, only twenty or so feet away from Emily. He noticed Emily and smiled lewdly, revealing a gold front tooth.

Electricity crackled in Emily’s veins. She knew that smile. Nearly four years ago, workers began pouring concrete into the hole in the DiLaurentises’ backyard the day after Ali went missing. Wilden had been there . . . but so had a lot of other guys, too. After Mrs. DiLaurentis interrogated them, Emily cut through Ali’s backyard to the woods. One of the workers turned and leered at her. He’d been tall and lanky, and when he smiled, he’d had that same horrible gold front tooth.

Emily turned to Spencer, aghast. “That guy was one of the workers who filled in the gazebo hole the day after Ali went missing. I remember him.”

Spencer was very pale. “I saw him a few days ago. On my street. ”

Four junior Rosewood cops arrived to escort Spencer and the others home. Spencer climbed into the back of the cruiser that would drive her back, choking on the smell of fake car leather, vomit, and sweat. A dark-haired cop slid into the front seat, started the engine, and pulled to the exit.

Out the window, the press was clamoring at the police station door, eager for another glimpse of the killer. Spencer stared hard at the windows in front of the police station. All the blinds were shut tight. Could that guy really have done it? He was such a stranger, an outsider. It seemed so out of the blue.

She wrapped her fingers around the metal cage separating the front seat from the back. “Who else did that guy kill?” she called. The cop didn’t answer. “How did you find out he killed Ali?” she tried. He merely turned up his CB radio. Frustrated, Spencer kicked the back of his seat hard. “Are you deaf?”