Vicious (5 page)

Aria Montgomery awoke on Saturday to two strong, warm arms wrapped tightly around her. She breathed in deeply, inhaling her boyfriend Noel Kahn's slightly sweet, slightly salty morning smell. He'd slept over the past week, sneaking through her window once her mom had gone to bed, and she had to admit it was bliss spooning him all night.
I could get used to this
, she thought headily, her eyes fluttering closed.

Except she
wasn't
going to get used to it. Because soon everything was going to change.

She sat up straight, reality whooshing back. She'd only recently reunited with Noel, and now that was all going to be taken away. Aria stared at his peaceful face on the pillow, wishing she could perfectly preserve this memory for all her future lonely, horrible nights in a prison cell.
He has serious bedhead
, she chanted silently.
He talks in his sleep about lacrosse plays. He looks so cuddly and adorable.

Noel opened one eye. “Why are you staring at me?”

“Just trying to preserve this moment forever,” Aria said breezily, then winced. The last thing she wanted to do was bring up her impending doom first thing in the morning.

But Noel sat up and looked at her with a serious expression. “Whatever happens, Aria, I'm going to wait for you. I mean it.”

Aria pulled away.
Yeah, right
. It was clear she and Noel were kindred spirits, but she couldn't ask him to wait thirty years for her to
maybe
get parole. “I'll have saggy boobs by the time I get out,” she blurted.

“I like saggy boobs,” Noel answered sleepily. “Especially
your
saggy boobs.”

Aria felt tears come to her eyes. She flopped back on the pillow and stared at the old glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. “I wish I could just run away.”

“Where would you go?” Noel asked.

Aria thought about the fantasy she'd turned over and over in her mind a thousand times: She had the cash now, thanks to the sale of several of her oil paintings. Couldn't she withdraw a huge chunk of change and just . . . leave? If Ali could do it, why couldn't she?

“Not an island,” she said first. Her spring-break trip to Jamaica junior year—and getting into that mess with Tabitha Clark, the girl who had tried to pass herself off as Ali—had ruined her on the Caribbean. So had the senior-year Eco Cruise trip, where Aria had almost been killed by a bomb blast in the boiler room and left at sea to drown.

“What about Norway?” Noel suggested.

Aria stretched. “That would be nice. Holland is cool, too. They're very lenient there, and I love the Anne Frank museum and all the canals.”

Noel laced his hands behind his head. “You could paint in your spare time. Sell a few works, set us up in style.”

Aria punched him playfully. “Us? Who said
you
could come along?”

Noel looked like he was going to say something teasing back when Aria's alarm blared. Suddenly, another reality rushed to the forefront of her mind. She'd told Spencer she'd be waiting outside in a half hour.

She leapt out of bed. “I have to go.”

Noel watched as Aria scuttled around, flinging her closet open, searching for her flip-flops. “You meeting with your lawyer?” he asked.

“Uh . . . no. Just hanging out with the girls.” She tried to smile at him. “I'm sorry. I wanted to make breakfast for you this morning.” Their on-again relationship still felt so new and tenuous. A big stack of pancakes was always the way to Noel's heart. “Rain check?”

“Can I come along?”

“No!”

Noel recoiled, then frowned. She'd said it too quickly, too harshly. All at once, Aria knew that he knew what she was up to.

“Aria.” He shut his eyes. “You're not looking for Ali, are you?”

Aria turned away to her dresser and busied herself by shuffling through a stack of T-shirts. “Of course not.”

“You are.” Noel scuttled out from under the quilt. “It's dangerous.”

It was pointless to lie. Noel was on board with everything Aria told him. He believed Ali had set them up and was still alive. But they both knew how tricky she was.

She shrugged. “It's just a dumb lead. But we're going, okay? Please don't tell anyone.”

Noel looked worried. “Let me come with you, at least.”

Aria dropped the shirt she was holding and grabbed his hands. “Absolutely not.” Ali had hurt Noel once before, leaving him for dead in a sports shed behind the school. Aria wasn't involving him again.

“But I might be in the unique position to help,” Noel said gently.

Aria felt an old, annoying twinge.
A unique position.
A few years back, he'd been Ali's only confidant, visiting her at The Preserve at Addison-Stevens. Noel had kept many secrets for Ali . . . and he hadn't shared any of them with Aria when they'd started dating. It had seemed like Noel would have done
anything
for Ali back then. They even had a secret code for when they wanted to get in touch. Aria didn't like to think about it. It was stupid, she knew, but a teeny part of her still wasn't sure if she held a candle to Ali. That Noel had briefly dated an Ali-look-alike named Scarlett while he and Aria were broken up didn't help, either.

She tried to whisk the thoughts out of her mind. “We probably won't turn up anything, anyway,” she told Noel. “And I'll be back soon.”

Noel still looked conflicted. “Promise me you'll stay safe, okay? Text me this afternoon.” He pulled her close. “I don't want to lose you again.”

Aria kissed the tip of his nose. “You won't lose me,” she breathed, melting into his arms.

But that was the problem. Soon enough, he
was
going to lose her—to jail.

Unless they found what they were looking for.

An hour later, the four girls were flying across the bridge out of Philly. It was an overcast day, but the road was still busy, and a bunch of roadside farmers' stands boasting watermelon, corn, and tomatoes were crowded with families. A huge billboard that read
WELCOME TO NEW JERSEY
swept past, and Aria sat higher in her seat, eager to get the investigation started.

After another hour, they drove down Cape May's quaint Main Street and pulled into the first establishment they found, an old, flesh-colored motel called the Atlantic Lighthouse. A large, inground pool, complete with an old-school blue diving board and a couple of rusty-looking outdoor tables and chairs, spanned the length of the building, and there was a falling-apart, bird-poop-infested, decorative lighthouse fixed to the roof. When Aria pushed the door open into the lobby, an icy blast of AC brought goose bumps to her arms. A bleached-blond woman glanced up from the news on a small TV behind the desk and gave them a strange look.

Aria's heart lurched. Then she looked down and saw something horrifying: There, on the front page of a stack of
USA Today
newspapers, was a huge picture of Ali, a smaller picture of Ali's father, and an even smaller picture of Spencer, Emily, Hanna, and herself.
Trial Starts Tuesday
, the paper said.
DiLaurentis Father Weighs In.

She quickly turned the paper over, her breath coming out in short bursts. Did the clerk recognize them? They were all wearing sunglasses, and Hanna had on a hat to cover up her easily recognizable auburn hair, but maybe that wasn't enough. Aria considered bolting out of the room. But that would look even more suspicious, wouldn't it?

“Um, hi,” Spencer said shakily. “I'm wondering if you could give us directions to Dune Street?” That was where Betty Maxwell's house was.

The woman nodded and pointed to the left. The girls were about to leave when she cleared her throat and gestured to a plaque on the counter.
CAPE MAY WEATHER REPORT
, it read, listing information about the days' temperature and tides. “You hear about the storm?”

Aria relaxed a little. The woman didn't seem to know who they were.

“Supposed to be a big one, rolling in by late tomorrow morning,” the woman said, then rolled her eyes. “I'm sick of this crazy weather.”

Then she went back to watching her TV. The girls scuttled back onto the street and headed in the direction of Dune Street, though not before Aria snatched up a
USA Today.
She skimmed the article. Ali's father was begging for justice to be done for his murdered daughter, saying he would have a front-row seat at their murder trial. Then, she noticed something interesting. “Did you guys know that Ali's mom isn't coming to the trial?” she asked in a low voice, reading as she walked. “It says that Mrs. DiLaurentis is way too traumatized to even be in the same room as us.”

Emily scoffed. “That's proof right there that Ali is still alive. A mother would absolutely be at that trial unless she knew her daughter wasn't really dead.”

Spencer made a face. “Or else she's just a complete basket case and can't go through with it.”

“Personally, I'm glad she's not going to be there,” Aria said quietly. The last thing she wanted was to come face-to-face with Jessica DiLaurentis. Ali's mom had been icy on good days.

She folded up the paper, tossed it into the trash, and trotted to catch up with her friends. The sun was already bright and hot. A bunch of kids on their way to the beach, sand pails, boogie boards, and chairs in hand, brushed past them, calling happily to one another. The air smelled like sunscreen and homemade waffle cones.

Hanna looked around pensively. “My dad used to bring me and Our Ali—Courtney—here.” She kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. “We saw Mona one of the last times. Ali was ruthless to her.”

Emily sniffed bitterly. “No surprise there.” Then Emily's face twisted, like she was in pain.

“You okay?” Aria asked worriedly.

“Uh huh,” Emily said quickly.

Maybe
too
quickly. Aria watched her carefully. Emily had seemed so . . .
troubled
from all of this Ali stuff, and it had been so unlike her to almost jump from that bridge a few weeks ago. But every time Aria asked what was wrong, Emily brushed her off.

“I came here with Courtney once, too,” Aria said. “She made fun of me for using SPF 50 sunscreen. She was like, ‘That's why no guys like you, Aria. Because you look like a pasty freak.' So I used her baby oil instead. I got burned, and it sucked.”

“And Courtney probably laughed, right?” Hanna muttered.

Aria stepped over a crack in the sidewalk. “She did.” Sure, Courtney wasn't as diabolical as the
Real
Ali, but she had still been a manipulative bitch.

They turned onto Dune Street and looked at the numbers on the houses until they reached a two-story, green-shingled house with a front yard full of bleached-white stones. The shutters were closed, there wasn't a car in the driveway, there wasn't any porch furniture out, and it was the only house on the block that didn't have a
FOR RENT
sign out front.

Hanna frowned. “Did anyone check if Betty Maxwell was still alive?”

“It certainly doesn't look like anyone's here,” Spencer agreed.

Emily took a few steps up the front walk. The others followed. Spencer pulled out a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket, slipped them on, and tried the bell. No answer. She turned the doorknob, but it was locked.

Emily pulled her bottom lip into her mouth, then yanked on her own pair of gloves, stepped off the porch, and began trying each of the windows around the house. She disappeared quickly around the side, and suddenly called out, “We're in!”

Everyone ran to find her. Emily had hefted open a side window enough for her to squeeze through. “I'll unlock the front door for you.”

“I don't know, Em.” Aria glanced back at the street. “It's broad daylight. Someone might see.”

Emily scoffed and boosted herself up onto the windowsill. “Isn't this why we came?”

She slipped inside without waiting for an answer. Aria's heart pounded. She waited for an alarm to blare, someone to scream out, a dog to start rabidly barking . . . but there was nothing. A few seconds later, the front door opened, Emily on the other side. Everyone hurried through.

The house was dark and smelled like sand. Aria waited for her eyes to adjust. The room was empty, and the walls bore faded, sea-horse-printed wallpaper. The navy rug was stained and threadbare. A pile of mail sat by the door, all faded circulars from the local grocery store addressed to
Current Resident.

Emily wandered into the kitchen. Aria watched as she opened the fridge and peered inside. It was empty, completely cleaned out. She searched cabinets and drawers, but they were all empty, too. She tried the tap, but no water came out. Spencer opened a linen closet. “Nothing,” she called.

Aria tiptoed down the dark hall and poked her head into each of the bedrooms. In every one, she found a neatly made twin bed and little else. She checked under the beds, but there was nothing hiding there. There were no clothes left behind in the closets, either. She poked her head into the bathroom. There was no shower curtain, and the tub smelled of bleach. And yet, it seemed like a presence lingered there. Maybe the last person who'd stayed in the house. Or maybe a ghost.

Aria stared at a small closet at the back of the bathroom she hadn't noticed at first. Something creaked—maybe from inside. All at once, goose bumps rose on her skin. Was someone
in
that closet?
Ali?

Her hand shook as she reached out for the knob. Her stomach swirled as she slowly turned it. There was a groan as the door opened, and Aria shielded her face with her hand, ready for an onslaught.

Silence. She opened her eyes. The closet was totally empty, the shelves wiped clean.