Sara Shepard - Killer

A gray Nissan Pathfinder was in front of them, slowly ascending the hill. Wilden revved the engine and veered into the lane of oncoming traffic, speeding to get around. The Pathfinder honked. Two hazy lights appeared in the distance, heading the opposite direction. “What are you doing?” Hanna screamed, growing nervous. Wilden didn’t move back into the right lane. “Stop!” Hanna screamed. All at once, she was catapulted back to the night she’d stood in the Rosewood Day parking lot, Mona’s SUV heading straight for her. By the time she’d realized the SUV wasn’t going to swerve, she couldn’t move, petrified and helpless. It had felt as if there was nothing she could have done to stop what had happened.

Hanna shut her eyes, anxiety overpowering her. There was a loud, blaring horn, and Wilden’s car swerved. When Hanna opened her eyes again, they were back in their own lane.

“What is wrong with you?” Hanna demanded, her whole body trembling.

Wilden glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He looked… amused . “Calm down.”

Calm down? Hanna ran her hand down the length of her face, about to throw up. The incident flashed through her mind again and again, on rapid fast-forward. Ever since her accident, she’d tried very, very hard not to think about that night, and here Wilden was, laughing at her for being scared. Maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to discount A’s texts about Wilden after all.

Hanna was about to tell him to pull over and let her out when she realized Wilden was zooming up her winding driveway. When they reached the top, she quickly unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car, never so grateful to see her house.

She slammed the door anyway, but Wilden didn’t seem to notice. He just sped in reverse down the driveway, not even bothering to make the three-point turn. Some of the snow had fallen off the nose of the car. Hanna could see that it had a pointed end and mean-looking headlights.

A sense of déjà vu suddenly nagged at her. Something about what had just happened had happened before—and not just the night of her accident. She had the same feeling as when she couldn’t remember a vocabulary word in French class, the term on the tip of her tongue. Usually, the word came to her later at the weirdest time, like when she was surfing on iTunes or walking Dot. Soon enough, this would come back to her too.

But she wasn’t exactly looking forward to finding it.

After school on Friday, Spencer’s closest field hockey friend, Kirsten Cullen, pulled up to Spencer’s curb and yanked up the parking brake.

“Thanks so much for the ride,” Spencer said. Just because her parents had taken away her wheels didn’t mean she was about to climb aboard the smelly Rosewood Day school bus.

“No worries,” Kirsten said. “You need a ride on Monday, too?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Spencer mumbled.

She’d tried calling Aria for a ride, since Aria now lived one neighborhood over, but Aria had said she had “something to do” this afternoon, mysteriously not saying what it was. And it wasn’t like she could ask Andrew. All day, she’d thought he was going to apologize—if he had, she would have apologized to him too, and promised they would stay together if she moved. Andrew pointedly didn’t say a word to her in any of their shared classes. That, Spencer figured, was that.

Kirsten gave Spencer a wave and pulled away from the curb one-handed. Turning, Spencer walked up the driveway. The neighborhood was still and silent, and the sky was a drab, purplish-gray. The KILLER graffiti on the garage doors had been painted over, but the new color didn’t quite match, and the word still showed through faintly. Spencer averted her eyes, not wanting to look at it. Who had put it there? A? But…why? To scare her, or to warn her?

The house was empty, smelling like Murphy’s Oil Soap and Windex, meaning the Hastingses’ cleaning lady, Candace, had just left. Spencer ran upstairs, grabbed Olivia’s expandable folder from the desk in her room, and exited the house through the back door. Even though her parents weren’t here, she didn’t want to be in their house when she did this. She needed complete privacy.

She unlocked the barn’s front door and flipped on the kitchen and living room lights. Everything was as she’d left it since the last time she’d been in here, down to the half-filled water glass by the computer. She plopped down on the couch and pulled out her Sidekick. A’s message was the last text she’d received. How does disappearing forever sound?

At first, the note had scared her, but after a while, she’d seen it another way. Disappearing forever sounded fine—disappearing from Rosewood, that was. And Spencer knew just how she could.

She dumped Olivia’s file folder on the coffee table, its contents practically spilling out onto the throw rug. The Realtor’s card was right on top. With shaking hands, Spencer dialed his number. The phone rang once, then twice. “Michael Hutchins,” a man’s voice squawked.

Spencer sat up and cleared her throat. “Hi. My name is Spencer Hastings,” she said, trying to sound older and professional. “My mom is your client. Olivia Caldwell?”

“Of course, of course.” Michael sounded overjoyed. “I didn’t realize she had a daughter. Have you seen their new place yet? It’s going to be photographed for the New York Times Home section next month.”

Spencer wound a piece of hair around her finger. “Not yet. But…I will. Soon.”

“So what can I do for you?”

She crossed and uncrossed her legs. Her heart thudded through her ears. “Well…I’d like an apartment. In New York. Preferably somewhere near Olivia. Is that doable?”

She heard Michael flipping some papers. “I believe so. Hang on. Let me pull up the database of what’s available.”

Spencer bit down hard on her thumbnail. This felt surreal. She stared out the window at the rock-lined pool and hot tub, the tiered back deck, the two dogs frolicking near the fence. Then, she turned and gazed at the windmill. LIAR . It was still there, not yet painted over. Maybe her parents had left it for Spencer as a reminder, the equivalent of the big red A in The Scarlet Letter . Ali’s old house next door no longer had the Do Not Cross tape over the half-dug hole—the new owners had finally had the sense to take it down—but the hole hadn’t been filled yet. Behind the barn were the woods, thick and black and brimming with secrets.

Olivia had told her to take things slow, but moving out of Rosewood was the smartest—and safest—thing she could do.

“You there?” Michael’s voice called. Spencer jumped. “There’s a new listing at two twenty-three Perry Street. It hasn’t even gone on the market yet—the landlord is cleaning and painting—but it’ll probably go up on our Web site on Monday. It’s a one-bedroom on the parlor level of a brownstone. I’m looking at the pictures right now, and the place looks gorgeous. High ceilings, wood floors, crown molding, an eat-in kitchen, a back deck, a claw-foot tub. You’d be near the subway and a block from Marc Jacobs. You sound like you might be a Marc Jacobs girl.”

“You’re right about that.” Spencer smiled.

“You near a computer?” Michael said. “I can e-mail you some pictures of the place right now.”

“Sure,” Spencer said, giving him her e-mail address. She sprang up and walked to Melissa’s laptop, which was sitting closed on the desk. In seconds, a new e-mail appeared in her in-box. The attached photos were of a quaint brownstone with slate stairs. The apartment had wide oak floors, two bay windows, exposed brick, marble countertops, and even a little washer and dryer.