Spencer walked into the room next, and Emily and Hanna followed. Each looked dazed, terrified, and exhausted. Everyone sat down without looking at one another. Mr. Hastings spoke to someone in the hall, and then a tall man with receding dark hair walked in. “Hello, girls,” he said, extending his hand to each of them. “I’m George Goddard.”
Mr. Hastings shut the door behind him. Goddard pulled out a chair and sat down. A few pregnant seconds passed. “So,” he finally said. “Let’s figure out what’s going on here.”
“How many times can we tell you that those A notes weren’t from us?” Spencer blurted. “They were from Ali and her helper. They set us up.”
Mr. Goddard looked conflicted. “The FBI—and the rest of the world—is pretty sure Alison is dead, girls.”
“But how do they know?” Spencer pressed.
“That I’m not sure,” Goddard said. “They just seem very certain that she’s no longer alive.” He looked back and forth at them as he undid the snap of his briefcase and pulled out some files. “Have you actually seen her? Have you been in touch with her?”
Aria exchanged a glance with the others. “We have her on a surveillance video,” Spencer admitted. “Or someone who looks like her, anyway.”
“Any other evidence she’s alive?” Goddard asked.
Everyone shook their heads. “But what about the note Hanna gave to the cops from the girl pretending to be Kyla?” Aria asked, assuming that Goddard had done his homework and knew who Kyla was. “Didn’t it have Ali’s fingerprints on it? And what about Kyla’s blood samples—didn’t they match Ali’s? Didn’t you find hair, skin, something?”
“Or how about Gayle’s house?” Emily pushed her matted hair off her face.
“Or that Acura key I dropped off?” Spencer pitched in.
Goddard looked through his notes. “According to the information the FBI has released, the only samples at the burn clinic were from the real Kyla, the girl who’d been murdered. As for the Acura key, the only prints on it were yours, Spencer.”
“It just makes no sense,” Aria said shakily. “Why would we send messages about our secrets to ourselves?”
Goddard shrugged. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. But their take on it is that you wanted to pretend you were bullied to garner sympathy.”
“Sympathy for what?” Hanna squinted.
“You wanted to make it look like someone was setting you up. Like someone was framing you for killing Tabitha.”
“Someone was framing us!” Emily cried.
Aria nodded fiercely. “We would never do something like that.”
Goddard pressed his lips together. “They have evidence that proves that perhaps you might be someone who would do that. Something about pushing another girl off a ski lift?”
Aria jolted up. The incident with Klaudia rushed back to her. How could Fuji have found out about that? But then it hit her: It had been in an A note. And Aria had handed over every single one of her texts.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
“They have eyewitness reports of how you attacked a girl named Kelsey Pierce at a school party a few months ago, too, Spencer,” Mr. Goddard said glumly, looking at his notes. “Beau Braswell is willing to corroborate this. And now Ms. Pierce is in a mental hospital.”
“Not because of me,” Spencer blurted. Her chin started to wobble.
Then Goddard looked apologetically at Emily. “Someone named Margaret Colbert can attest to your criminal behavior, too.”
Emily blinked. “Isaac’s mother? S-she hates me!”
“She said you tried to sell off your baby.” His voice rose at the end of that last sentence, like a question.
Emily wilted. Her face turned ghost-white.
Again Goddard glanced at his notes. “I’m sure they’re digging up people who think you girls are emotionally unstable.” Then he turned to Hanna. “They found out you stole from your own father’s political campaign to pay someone off.”
Hanna made an eep. “Did my father tell them that?”
“He didn’t need to.” Goddard pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was right there on your phone. That isn’t all they have on you, either. The police did a thorough investigation of the burn clinic after the deaths, including eyewitness reports about who was in and out of Graham Pratt’s room. According to quite a few people, you were the last one in there before he had his fatal seizure.”
Hanna backed up. “I didn’t kill him!”
Goddard nodded. “They think Graham might have seen Aria set off the bomb in the bottom of the ship. You had a lot to lose by keeping him alive.”
“I didn’t bomb that ship!” Aria cried.
“You already admitted you were down there.” Goddard looked tormented. “They’re even trying to connect you to Noel Kahn’s attack. Mr. Kahn was apparently working with Fuji on the Tabitha case. You needed him out of the way.”
Aria pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “Noel didn’t send those e-mails to Fuji about the case—someone hacked into his e-mail account. Did Fuji even talk to Noel, or is she just making all of this up?”
Goddard shrugged. “Probably a little bit of both. And look, this is just the evidence they’ve shared with me. Who knows what else they’re holding closer to the vest, stuff they don’t want me to know.”
Hanna let out a breath. “But it still doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t kill Tabitha. Someone else did.”
“How are they so certain we did it?” Aria asked in what she hoped was a calmer voice. “We worried that A would have methods of making us look more culpable than we were. And yes, we did push her—Fuji knows that. But by the time we got down to the beach to save Tabitha, she was gone. A dragged her somewhere.”
Goddard laid his hands on the table. “That’s what I really want to talk to you about, girls. A new piece of evidence came to light.”
There was a long pause. Hanna squinted. “What else?”
Goddard pulled a laptop from his briefcase. He lifted the lid and moved the mouse around to wake up the screen. A shaky, black-and-white surveillance image appeared. Waves crashed on a pristine, white beach. A large building with balconies at every window stood in the distance. The angle was different, but it was clear where this was: The Cliffs in Jamaica.
Spencer breathed in sharply. “Where did you get this?”
“This is official video footage from the Lychee Nut, the resort next to The Cliffs. The FBI received it late last night.”
Aria stared at the screen. After a moment, something fell from the sky, hitting the sand with an eerily silent thunk. Aria saw a limp head, a hand.
“Is that . . . ?” she asked, her voice quivering.
“Tabitha,” Goddard answered for her. “This is footage from that night.”
Tabitha’s hand twitched. She raised her head. Her jaw moved up and down, and it looked like she was calling out. “Look!” Emily cried. “See, she survived!”
Tabitha’s mouth opened and closed again, like a fish out of water. Then, four figures appeared from stage right. One was tall with dirty-blond hair and wearing a blue beach dress. Another had strong swimmer’s shoulders and had on a T-shirt that said MERCI BEAUCOUP across the front. The third girl wore a sarong and a white halter. And the fourth girl . . . well, Aria would recognize her own dark hair and tie-dyed maxi anywhere.
Only, it couldn’t be. Because as these four girls gathered around Tabitha, they began to kick her hard. Spencer beat her abdomen with her fists. Emily pummeled her legs. And then Aria raised a piece of driftwood and brought it down over Tabitha’s head.
Aria twisted away, too horrified to look. Emily let out a stifled scream. Hanna dry-heaved. Aria peeked through her fingers to look at the video again. It sure as hell looked like all of them.
“A—Ali—created this,” Aria said. “This is her revenge on us because we got the police involved. She knew she had to step it up, and this was the only ammo she had.”
“It’s a pretty convincing video, ladies.” Goddard sounded grim. “Now look, I honestly think the best course of action is a plea bargain. You’ve been psychologically traumatized from various bullies last year. You clearly didn’t know what you were doing. You could get a drastic reduction in sentence if we go that route. Plus all of you were under eighteen at the time, which means you might not be tried as adults.”
Spencer widened her eyes. “Does my father agree with this strategy?”
“I haven’t spoken with him about it yet, but I have a feeling he will.”
Spencer shook her head. “No plea bargain. No sentence, period. We’re innocent.”
“You believe us, don’t you?” Hanna asked, tears in her eyes. “Will you fight for us?”
Goddard hesitated for a long time, spinning and spinning his wedding ring on his finger. “I believe you,” he said in a defeated voice. “But I’m going to tell you right now—it’s going to be tough.” He stood. “I’m sorry. Bail will be posted soon—you can wait here until they come for you. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
And then, just like that, he was gone.
19
NO LOVE
Everyone stared at one another around the conference table after the lawyer left the room. Hanna was trembling so hard, she was making the chair she was sitting on shake. Aria looked like she was going to pass out.
“How can this be happening?” Spencer whispered, looking around helplessly. “I mean, okay, I can buy that Team A routed every note back to our phones. They’re smart. Maybe it’s possible.”
“And we should have taken better precautions about the people in the A notes,” Emily added. “Isaac’s mom has had it out for me from the beginning. Of course Kelsey is going to rat out Spencer.”
Hanna tentatively touched her face. She could feel that her eyes were puffy, her hair was sticking out in a million directions, and she’d sprouted several zits on her chin. When she shifted in the chair, her abdomen pulsed with pain. She hadn’t peed since they’d arrived, too horrified that the police officers could be watching her on a hidden camera.
“But still,” Spencer said. “How did they make that surveillance video?”
There was a pause.
“Do you think Ali roofied us and made us do it?” Aria’s voice rang out.
“Guys, I remember every second of that day,” Hanna said. “We ran downstairs the moment Tabitha fell. I didn’t wake up in a daze a few hours later. Did you?”
“No,” Spencer’s voice called from far away.
“Maybe Helper A hired four girls who looked like us,” Emily suggested. “And then, I don’t know, dug up a Tabitha look-alike blow-up doll, and just . . .”
“. . . staged the whole thing?” Hanna finished. “How would she have gotten girls to do that?”
