Sara Shepard: Heartless

She felt her friends’ stares, waiting for her answer. “Whoever it was had a hood on,” Aria admitted. “But I’m pretty sure it was . . .”

Then she trailed off at the sound of a loud, long creak. Slowly, the door to Spencer’s hospital room swung open. A figure emerged in the doorway, his body backlit in the bright hall. When Aria saw his face, her heart jumped to her throat. Don’t pass out, she told herself, instantly feeling woozy. It was one of the people A had warned them about. The person Aria was almost certain she’d seen in the woods. One of Ali’s killers.

Officer Darren Wilden.

“Hello, girls.” Wilden strutted through the door. His green eyes were bright, and his handsome, angular face was chapped from the cold. His Rosewood police uniform fit him snugly, showing off how in shape he was.

Then he paused at the edge of Spencer’s bed, finally noticing the girls’ unwelcoming expressions. “What?”

They exchanged terrified glances. Finally, Spencer cleared her throat. “We know what you did.”

Wilden leaned against the bed frame, careful not to bump into Spencer’s IV fluids. “Excuse me?”

“I just called for the nurse,” Spencer said in a louder, more projected voice, the one she often used when she was on stage for the Rosewood Day drama club. “She’ll call security before you can hurt us. We know you set that fire. And we know why. ”

Deep creases etched Wilden’s forehead. A vein bulged in his neck. Aria’s heart beat so loudly it drowned out all the other sounds in the room. No one moved. The longer Wilden glared at them, the tenser Aria felt.

Finally, Wilden shifted his weight. “The fire in the woods? ” He let out a dubious sniff. “Are you serious?”

“I saw you buying propane at Home Depot,” Hanna said shakily, her shoulders rigid. “You were putting three jugs into the car, easily enough to burn those woods. And why weren’t you on the scene after the fire? Every other Rosewood cop was.”

“I saw your car speeding away from Spencer’s house,” Emily piped up, curling her knees into her chest. “Like you were fleeing the scene of the crime.”

Aria sneaked a peek at Emily, uncertain. She hadn’t noticed a cop car leaving Spencer’s house last night.

Wilden leaned against the little metal sink in the corner. “Girls. Why would I set fire to those woods?”

“You were covering up what you did to Ali,” Spencer said. “You and Jason.”

Emily turned to Spencer. “He didn’t do anything to Ali. Ali’s alive.”

Wilden jerked and glanced at Emily for a moment. Then he appraised the other girls, a look of betrayal on his face. “You really believe I tried to hurt you?” he asked them. The girls nodded almost imperceptibly. Wilden shook his head. “But I’m trying to help you!” When there was still no response, he sighed. “Jesus. Fine. I was with my uncle last night when the fire broke out. I lived with him in high school, and he’s really sick.” He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and whipped out a piece of paper. “Here.”

Aria and the others leaned over. It was a receipt from CVS. “I was picking up a prescription for my uncle at nine fifty-seven, and I heard the fire started around ten,” Wilden said. “I’m probably even on the drugstore’s security camera. How could I be in two places at once?”

The room suddenly smelled pungently of Wilden’s musky cologne, making Aria woozy. Was it possible Wilden wasn’t the guy she’d seen in the woods lighting the fire?

“And as for the propane,” Wilden went on, touching the large bouquet of flowers that sat on Spencer’s nightstand, “Jason DiLaurentis asked me to buy it for his lake house in the Poconos. He’s been busy, and we’re old friends, so I said I’d do it for him.”

Aria glanced at the others, taken aback by Wilden’s nonchalance. Last night, finding out that Jason and Wilden were friends had seemed like a huge breakthrough, a secret busted open. Now, in the light of day, with his open admission, it didn’t seem to matter very much at all.

“And as for what Jason and I did to Alison . . .” Wilden trailed off, stopping by a little tray on wheels that held a small pitcher of water and two foam cups. He looked dumbstruck. “It’s crazy to think I’d hurt her. And Jason’s her brother! You really think he’s capable of that?”

Aria opened her mouth to protest. Last night, Emily had found a sign-in ledger from when the Radley was a mental hospital with Jason DiLaurentis’s name all through it. New A had also teased Aria that Jason was hiding something—possibly about issues with Ali—and tipped off Emily that Jenna and Jason were fighting in Jenna’s window. Aria hadn’t wanted to believe that Jason was guilty—she’d gone on a few dates with him the week before, fulfilling a longtime crush—but Jason had flown off the handle when Aria had gone to his apartment in Yarmouth on Friday.

Wilden was shaking his head with utter disbelief. He seemed so blindsided by all this, which made Aria wonder if anything A had led them to believe was even remotely true. She gazed questioningly at her friends. Their faces were laced with doubt, too.

Wilden shut Spencer’s door, then turned around and glared at them. “Let me guess,” he said in a low voice. “Did your New A plant these ideas in your heads?”

“A is real, ” Emily insisted. Time and again, Wilden had insisted that New A was nothing more than a copycat. “A took pictures of you, too,” she went on. She rifled through her pocket, pulled out her phone, and scrolled to the picture message of Wilden going to confession. Aria caught sight of A’s accompanying note: What’s he so guilty about? “See?” Emily dangled it under his nose.

Wilden stared at the screen. His expression didn’t change. “I didn’t know it was a crime to go to church.”

Scowling, Emily stuffed her phone back into her swim bag. A long pause followed. Wilden pinched the flap of skin at the bridge of his long, sloped nose. It seemed like all the air in the room had seeped out the windows. “Look. I need to tell you what I really came in here for.” His irises were so dark they looked black. “You girls have to stop saying you saw Alison.”

Everyone exchanged a startled glance. Spencer looked a bit vindicated, raising a perfectly arched eyebrow as if to say, I told you so. Predictably, Emily was the first to speak. “You want us to lie? ”

“You didn’t see her.” Wilden’s voice was gruff. “If you keep saying you did, it’s going to bring a lot of unwanted attention on you. You think the backlash was bad when you said you saw Ian’s body? This will be ten times worse.”

Aria shifted her weight, fiddling with the cuff of her hooded sweater. Wilden was speaking to them like he was a South Philly cop and they were meth dealers. But what had they done that was so wrong?

“This isn’t fair,” Emily protested. “She needs our help.”

Wilden raised his hands to the white popcorn ceiling in defeat. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing a tattoo of an eight-pointed star. Emily was glancing at the star too. From her narrowed eyes and wrinkled nose, Aria guessed she wasn’t a fan.

“I’m going to tell you something that’s supposed to be top secret,” Wilden said, lowering his voice. “The DNA results for the body the workers found in the hole are at the station. It’s a perfect match for Alison, girls. She’s dead. So do what I say, okay? I really am looking out for your best interest.”

At that, he flipped open his phone, strode out of the room, and slammed the door hard. The foam cups on the food tray wobbled precariously. Aria turned back to her friends. Spencer’s lips were pressed together fretfully. Hanna chewed anxiously on a thumbnail. Emily blinked her round, green eyes, stunned into speechlessness.