Killer (20 page)

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.

19

SPENCER WHEELS AND DEALS

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.

“It looks awesome,” Spencer breathed, nearly swooning. “I’m in Philadelphia at the moment, but could I come to the city on Monday afternoon and check it out?”

She heard a horn honk outside Michael’s window. “That could work, sure,” he said, the hesitation in his voice practically palpable. “But I’ve gotta warn you. Apartments like this don’t come up very often, and New York City real estate is insane. This is one of the best blocks in the Village, and people are going to jump on it. It’s likely that on Monday morning someone’s going to show up at our office as soon as the place lists with a check, sight unseen. By the time you get here, the place might be gone. But I don’t want to pressure you. There are other places I could show you in that neighborhood, too….”

Spencer tensed her shoulders, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She suddenly felt as if she were running for the ball in field hockey or fighting for a teacher’s approval in class. This was
her
rightful apartment, not someone else’s. She imagined her furniture in the bedroom. She pictured herself wearing her Chanel poncho on Saturday mornings while strolling to Starbucks. She could get a dog and hire one of those dog walkers that walked fifteen dogs at once. Earlier today, she’d looked into private schools in New York City if she didn’t opt to graduate early.

When she glanced down at the blank piece of paper next to the laptop, she realized that she’d doodled 223 Perry Street over and over, in cursive and block letters and calligraphy. No other apartment would do.

“Please don’t list it,” Spencer blurted out. “I want it. I don’t even have to look at it. What if I give you money now? Would that work?”

Michael paused. “We could do that.” He sounded surprised. “Believe me, you won’t be disappointed. It’s a wonderful find.” He clattered on his keyboard. “Okay. We’ll need some cash up front, enough for the first month’s rent, security, and a broker fee. So we should get your mom on the phone. She’s going to be your guarantor for the lease and authorize the transfer of the deposit, right?”

Spencer wiggled her fingers over the laptop keyboard. Olivia had made it clear that her husband, Morgan, was suspicious of people he didn’t know. If she asked Olivia and Morgan for money, she risked losing his trust. She glanced at the screen. There was the folder in the right-hand corner of the desktop.
Spencer, College.

She slowly opened the folder and then the PDF. All the information she needed was there. The account was in her name. Olivia had said that once Morgan met her, he’d love her. He’d probably reimburse this account ten times over.

“We don’t need my mother to be involved,” Spencer said. “I have an account in my name I’d like to use.”

“Okay,” Michael said, not missing a beat. He probably dealt with rich city kids with their own accounts all the time. Spencer read Michael the numbers on the screen, her voice quivering. Michael repeated them back to her, and then told her all he had to do was call the landlord and they’d be set. They made arrangements to meet in front of the building at 4
P.M.
on Monday so Spencer could sign the lease and collect the keys. After that, the apartment would be hers.

“Great,” Spencer said. Then, she hung up her phone and stared blankly at the wall.

She had done it. She had
really done it
. In mere days, she wouldn’t live here anymore. She’d be a New Yorker, away from Rosewood for good. Olivia would come home from Paris, and Spencer would be adjusted to city life. She imagined meeting Olivia and Morgan for casual dinners in their apartment and fancier dinners at the Gotham Bar and Grill and Le Bernardin. She pictured the group of new friends she’d make, people who loved going to art exhibitions and benefits and didn’t give a shit that she had once been pursued by a bunch of jealous losers who called themselves A. When she thought of the boys she’d meet, she felt a twinge of sadness—none of them would be Andrew. But then she thought of how he’d treated her today and shook her head. She couldn’t dwell on him right now. Her life was about to change.

Her head felt soft and hollow, as if she were drunk. Her limbs shook with glee. And it almost seemed like she was hallucinating—when she looked out the back window, she thought she saw sparkling beams of light bouncing off the trees, like a fireworks display just for her.

Wait a minute.

Spencer stood. The beams were from a flashlight, criss-crossing over the tree trunks. A figure crouched and started rummaging in the dirt. Whoever it was tried one spot, stopped, and then crab-walked a few paces to the left and tried another.

Her stomach dropped. It couldn’t be a cop—they’d abandoned these woods days ago. She hefted up the window, curious as to whether the person was making any noise. To her horror, the window made a loud scraping sound against the jamb. Spencer winced, curling away.

The figure stopped, turning toward the barn. The flashlight beamed erratically, first right, then left, and then, for a moment, on the figure’s face. Spencer saw the whites of two blue eyes. The edges of a black hooded sweatshirt. A few pale strands of familiar blond hair.

Spencer wrinkled her nose in disbelief. Was that…
Melissa
?

The figure flinched in the darkness, as if Spencer had spoken out loud. Before Spencer could determine if it really was her sister, the flashlight in the woods snapped off. A few twigs cracked. It appeared that whoever was out there was walking away. The footsteps grew fainter and fainter until Spencer couldn’t distinguish them from the swishing trees.

When Spencer was certain the person was gone, she ran outside and crouched in the dirt. Sure enough, the soil was soft and loose. She felt around for a moment, touching only stones and sticks, but the ground still felt warm, as if someone else’s hands had just been there. As she looked up, she heard a thin sound, far off in the trees. Goose bumps rose on her arms. It almost sounded like…a
giggle.

But as Spencer cocked her head, the noise vanished, and she couldn’t help but wonder if it had just been the wind.

20

ARIA’S FREE FALL

That same afternoon, Aria met Jason outside Rocks and Ropes, an indoor rock-climbing facility a few miles outside Rosewood. “After you,” Jason said, holding the front door.

“Thanks.” Aria swooned. She hitched up the slightly too-big spandex yoga tights she’d stolen from Meredith’s closet, hoping that Jason wouldn’t notice how baggy they were in the butt. Jason, on the other hand, looked comfortable and sexy in a long-sleeved gray T-shirt and Nike warm-up pants, as though he climbed rock walls all the time. Maybe he did.

Once inside, the light was fluorescent and harsh. Aggressive guitar rock blared through the speakers, and the high-ceilinged, rubbery-smelling room had thousands of colorful, plastic-looking outcroppings on the walls. Jason had asked Aria to Rocks and Ropes in a text message this morning, admitting he wasn’t the type of guy to take girls to dinner and a movie. Really, Aria would have stood in line at the DMV with Jason if that was what he considered a date.