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.