Vicious (2 page)

On a balmy Thursday morning in mid-June, Emily Fields sat next to her best friends Hanna Marin, Spencer Hastings, and Aria Montgomery in a large, airy conference room that overlooked the Philadelphia waterfront. The room smelled like coffee and Danishes, and the office bustled with the sounds of ringing phones, whirring printers, and
click-clacking
high heels on female attorneys rushing off to court. When Seth Rubens, their new lawyer, cleared his throat, Emily looked up. By his pained expression, she suspected she wasn't going to like what he had to say.

“Your case doesn't look good.” Rubens stirred his coffee with a thin wooden stick. He had bags under his eyes, and he wore the same cologne as Emily's dad, a summery scent called Royall Bay Rhum. The smell used to cheer Emily up, but not anymore.

“The district attorney has gathered a lot of evidence against you for Alison's murder,” he went on. “You being on the scene when the crime happened. The shoddy cleanup job. Your prints all over the house. The tooth they found at the scene. Emily's, er,
episode
”—here he glanced nervously at Emily—“prior to the event. I'm happy to represent you, and I'll do all I can, but I don't want to give you false hope.”

Emily slumped down. Ever since their arrest for the murder of Alison DiLaurentis—also known as A, their longtime enemy, almost-killer, and diabolical text-messager—Emily had lost ten pounds, couldn't stop crying, and thought she was going crazy. They were all out on bail after only a few hours in jail, but their trial would begin in five days. Emily had been through six lawyers, and her friends had done the same.
None
of the lawyers had given them hope—including Rubens, who'd allegedly gotten mafia bosses out of mass-killing charges.

Aria leaned forward and looked the lawyer square in the eye. “How many times can we explain this? Ali set us up. She knew we were staking out that pool house. She knew we were getting desperate. That blood was on the floor when we got there. And we were upstairs when whoever it was cleaned it up.”

Rubens looked at them tiredly. “But you didn't see who that was, did you?”

Emily picked at her thumbnail. And then, suddenly, she heard a giddy, taunting, crystal-clear voice:
You didn't. You know I've got you right where I want you.

It was Ali's voice, but no one else seemed to hear it. Emily felt another barb of worry. She'd started to hear Ali a few days ago, and her voice was growing louder.

She thought about the lawyer's question. In their hunt for Ali, they'd targeted a house in Ashland, Pennsylvania, the property of Ali's boyfriend Nick Maxwell's parents. At the very back of the property was a dilapidated pool house, the perfect place for Ali to hide out and plot her next move against them. They'd started to monitor the place, but then Spencer unwittingly told her friend Greg that they'd set up surveillance cameras. In a horrible turn of events, Greg ended up being an Ali Cat, one of Ali's online minions. Their camera feed of the cabin was disconnected almost the second Spencer broke the news.

As soon as that happened, Emily and the others drove up to Ashland to see if Ali was at the pool house, dismantling the cameras. But all they found was blood on the floor. They'd gone inside to look around, then heard a
slam
and run upstairs. The smell of bleach had wafted through the air, and someone—surely Ali, though they hadn't seen for certain—stomped around in the kitchen, messily cleaning it up. When they came back downstairs, the house was empty. Then they'd called 911. Little did they know the police would blame
them
.

But that's just what happened: The cops came, swabbed for evidence, and deemed that the blood type matched Ali's. They'd also found a tooth that matched Ali's dental records. Then they accused the
girls
of trying to clean up the crime scene—their prints were all over the place, after all, and they'd been
in
the house. The surveillance cameras had recorded the girls sneaking in the door moments before.

You're totally mine.

There was Ali's voice again. Emily blinked hard. She looked around at her friends, wondering if they heard their own versions of Ali's taunts in
their
heads.

“And the dress?” Aria asked, referring to the dress they'd found in the pool house's upstairs loft. It had also been covered in blood.

The lawyer checked his notes. “Forensics says it only has A-positive blood on it—Ali's blood type. I wouldn't bring it up. It doesn't really help your case.”

Emily sat up straighter. “Couldn't Ali have cut herself, spread her blood around the pool house, and then cleaned it up? She could have pulled and planted that tooth, too. She was in The Preserve for
years.
She's crazy.”

Not as crazy as you!
the Ali in Emily's head tittered. Emily made a face, wanting Ali's voice out. Then she noticed Hanna looking at her curiously.

The lawyer sighed. “If we had evidence of Alison in that pool house—
alive—
at the same time you were there, we might be able to make that case. But all we have is a video of you girls sneaking in through the front door. Ali isn't there.”

“Ali probably snuck in through a window,” Spencer piped up. “In the back, maybe. There were no cameras there.”

The lawyer stared at his palms. “There's no evidence supporting that. I had the police dust for prints on the windowsills around the property, and they found nothing.”

“She could have used gloves,” Hanna tried.

Rubens clicked his pen. “This is all circumstantial evidence, and we have to consider that it's coming from you four girls and that you are somewhat notorious, er, characters.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, your nickname is the
Pretty Little Liars
. You've been caught in lies before—very public lies. You were on trial for killing a girl in Jamaica, and you confessed to at least pushing her off a balcony. And everyone knows what Alison did to you and how much motive you'd have to get rid of her. And like I said, there was Emily's episode . . .”

Everyone turned to look at Emily. She stared down at the table. Okay, so she'd lost it in the hunt for Ali. But that was because Ali had almost drowned Emily in the Rosewood Day Prep pool . . . and then one of her Ali Cats had killed Jordan Richards, the love of Emily's life. She hadn't meant to go to the pool house and freak out. She hadn't
meant
to trash the place and vow loudly that she was going kill Ali, which the surveillance camera had recorded. It had just . . . happened.

“And then there's that journal.”

Rubens reached for a large binder on his right. Inside was a photocopy of the journal Ali had purportedly written and stashed in the woods, in an easy enough hiding place for the cops to find. Emily hadn't wanted to read it, but she'd heard plenty about it. Ali had painted herself as the innocent victim and Spencer, Aria, Emily, and Hanna as her vengeful captors. Entries talked of the girls verbally and physically abusing her. As Rubens opened the binder, Emily caught sight of the words
tied me up.
Then she saw the phrase
they don't understand.

Poor, poor me
, Ali sang in Emily's head. Emily must have groaned, because Spencer looked up at her, eyes wide. Emily's cheeks blazed. She had to be careful. Her friends already thought she was troubled—and that was when she
wasn't
hearing voices.

Aria glanced at the binder, too. “Surely that won't count as evidence, will it?”

“Especially because of what Nick said this morning.” Emily fumbled for her phone and showed the lawyer an article she'd found before the meeting. She pointed to the headline.
Maxwell Says Journal Is All Lies
, it read.
His Love and Loyalty Only Go So Far.
“If Nick says Ali lied about the stuff about him in the journal, it throws the validity of the rest of the thing into question, right?” she asked hopefully.

Rubens shrugged. “We're talking about a confessed murderer's word here. Sometimes judges take journals very seriously. And when someone writes,
I'm scared
, or
I think they're going to kill me
, and then she winds up dead . . .”

“But she's
not
dead,” Emily blurted. “The police found
one tooth
and blood. That's
it
. Won't it be hard for them to convict us of murder without a
body
?”

The lawyer shut the binder with a slap. “That's true. And you have that going for you.” A strange look came over his face. “So let's hope detectives don't find the rest of her.”

Everyone stared at the lawyer, startled. “Are you saying you don't believe us?” Spencer finally sputtered.

The lawyer raised his palms, but didn't confirm or deny it.

Hanna put her head in her hands. Spencer tore her Styrofoam coffee cup into small pieces. Aria laid her palms flat on the table. “Can we give our side of the story in court?”

Rubens tapped his pen against the table. “I'd rather not put you girls on the stand. Then the DA will get to cross-examine you, and he's going to be ruthless—he'll find all sorts of ways to trap you in your story. Let me paint a picture of you girls. I'll bring the right facts to light. But even with all that, I don't know what chance we have. I can try and offer some theories of other people who might have killed Alison. Someone in Jenna Cavanaugh's family, for example. Someone in Ian Thomas's family. Someone else who hated her. But you are still the most compelling and logical suspects.”

Emily glanced at the others. “But she's not
dead
,” Spencer repeated.

“Is there anything that can truly save us?” Aria asked weakly. “Anything that will guarantee we go free?”

Rubens sighed. “The only thing that I can think of is if Alison DiLaurentis herself strolls into that courtroom and turns herself in.”

Like
that
will ever happen
, Ali said loudly in Emily's head.

The lawyer blew air through his cheeks. “Get some sleep, girls. You look exhausted.” He gestured to the plate of Danishes. “And have one, for God's sake. You don't know when you'll get the pleasure of a Danish from Rizolli's again.”

Emily flinched. It was pretty easy to interpret what
that
meant: Prisons didn't serve pastries.

Hanna snatched a bear claw and shoved it into her mouth, but everyone else filed out the door without even looking at the breakfast spread. At the elevator bank, Spencer stabbed the
DOWN
button. Suddenly, she looked at Emily with alarm. “Em,” she hissed, her eyes on Emily's hand.

Emily looked down. A long line of blood dripped from her cuticle down her wrist. She'd picked her skin until it bled and hadn't even felt it. She fumbled for a tissue in her bag, feeling her friends' eyes on her. “I'm fine,” she said preemptively.

But they weren't the only ones concerned about her; Emily's family was acting even stranger. Unlike the other myriad of incidents when Emily had gotten in major trouble and her parents had disowned her, this time, her family continued to let her eat meals with them. They even bought her favorite foods, did her laundry, and checked in on her incessantly, as though she were a newborn. Her mom made stilted, polite conversation with her about TV shows and books and paid rapt attention whenever Emily said
anything
. Last night, Emily's father had leapt up from the chair, saying the TV was all hers and she could watch whatever she wanted and could he get her something? Emily had longed for this sort of attention from her family for so long—basically since the beginning of A. But it felt strange now. They were only doing it because they thought she was crazy.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. The girls shuffled in silently, heads down. Emily could feel the other people in the elevator staring. One girl not much older than them pulled out her iPhone and started typing something on the screen. After a moment, Emily heard the
snap
of the device's camera and noticed that the phone was aimed at her face.

She wheeled around and stared at the girl. “What are you doing?”

The girl's cheeks reddened. She covered the phone's lens with her hand and lowered her eyes.

“Did you take a
picture
of us?” Emily screeched.

She tried to grab the phone, but Spencer caught her arm, pulling her back. The elevator dinged, and the girl darted into the lobby. Spencer stared at Emily. “You have to get a grip.”

“But she was really rude!” Emily protested.

“You can't freak out about it,” Spencer urged. “Everything we do, Em, everything we say—we have to think about how the jury is going to interpret it.”

Emily shut her eyes. “I can't believe we have to appear in front of a jury at
all
.”

“Me, neither,” Hanna whispered. “What a nightmare.”

They walked across the lobby, past a guard's desk. Emily glanced out the revolving doors. Sunlight sparkled on the sidewalk. A group of girls in colorful sundresses and sandals passed, laughing giddily. But then, beyond them, she thought she saw a shadow slip into an alley across the street. The hair rose on the back of her neck. Ali—the
real
Ali—could be anywhere. Watching them. Waiting to strike.

She turned back to her friends. “You know, we could take action,” she said in a low voice. “We can look for her again.”

Spencer's eyes widened. “No way. Absolutely not.”

Aria's throat bobbed. “It's impossible.”

But Hanna nodded. “I
have
wondered where Ali went. And Rubens did say that was the only way we could go free.”