“But I’m her daughter.”
The nurse picked up a phone on her desk. “I’m really sorry about this. But I was told if you came . . .” She lifted the receiver to her ear. “I need security.”
Emily backed away from the desk. Security? For a split second, she didn’t understand . . . and then she did. Her family had asked to keep her away.
She wheeled around, suddenly numb. “I’m leaving,” she said, just as a figure appeared in the doorway of the waiting room. Mr. Fields was upright now, his sparse, graying hair standing in peaks atop his head, his eyes still sleepy. It looked like he’d heard the whole exchange. Emily stared at him plaintively, begging silently that he would set the nurse straight.
Mr. Fields glanced at the nurse, then back at Emily. His gaze was cold and dead but also firm and purposeful. Then he turned and walked back to the waiting room.
Well then. Swallowing a sob, Emily brushed past him for the elevator. She barely recalled the ride down, and she ran with her head lowered toward her bike.
As she unlocked her bike from the rack, her phone beeped. She pulled it out and saw Jordan’s name. A news story had just broken on CNN: Preppy Thief Apprehended in Caribbean.
Emily suddenly couldn’t breathe. She stabbed at the link. There was a picture of Jordan, tanned and beautiful but also looking stunned and upset, being led in handcuffs through a parking lot. Katherine DeLong, on the lam since March, finally caught in a small fishing village in Bonaire. Twitter activity led to her arrest.
Twitter activity. Emily inspected Jordan’s picture again. She was staring straight at the camera, seemingly right into Emily’s eyes. Her expression was rife with fury. I know you did this to me, her eyes seemed to be saying to Emily and only Emily. That photo of you cheating led them right to where I was hiding.
Emily sank into the bike’s seat, feeling like everything was spinning too fast. Suddenly, her phone beeped again. A voicemail had landed in her mailbox, but she hadn’t even heard the phone ring.
She dialed the voicemail access number and punched in her code. When the first and only message played back, the phone almost slipped from Emily’s fingers. A piercing giggle echoed through the receiver. It stopped her heart. She’d know that laugh anywhere. It was mocking. Teasing. Tormenting. Ali’s.
She looked around anxiously, considering heading straight to the FBI office and playing this for Fuji. But Fuji wouldn’t listen. She believed what she wanted to believe. She thought Ali was dead, that the girls were liars.
It explained why Ali was laughing so hard. She knew she had them beat. And to her, it was simply hilarious. Hanna was right. They were just sitting back, letting it happen.
An idea crystallized in Emily’s mind. She composed a text to Spencer, Aria, and Hanna. I’m sick and tired of Anderson Cooper ruining everything, she wrote, using the code name they’d come up with for Ali. I’m back on the hunt. Are you in or out?
She sent the text off and waited, taking steady, even breaths. All she could do now was wait. She hoped and prayed they would say yes.
24
A NEW PLAN
That same day, Aria sat in the waiting room of a lawyer’s office. Well, sort of a lawyer’s office—she’d never known a lawyer to set up his business in a strip mall between a Five Below and a Curves, but whatever. Mike sat next to her, staring at a pamphlet about an ongoing class-action drug suit. “Hey,” he whispered. “Have you ever taken Celebrex? Prozac?”
“No,” Aria mumbled.
“Do you have mesothelioma?” Mike asked.
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Damn.” Mike set down the pamphlet. “If you did, we’d be entitled to a big settlement.”
Aria rolled her eyes, wondering how Mike could be upbeat. She was also beginning to second-guess this meeting—she could hear techno music from Curves thumping through the walls. This morning, Mike had knocked on her door and said, “Get up. We’re talking to Desmond Sturbridge at ten AM. We’ll sneak.” “Who’s that?” Aria had asked, and Mike had explained it was a lawyer who’d called the house yesterday volunteering to take Aria’s case. Aria had tried to tell him that Spencer’s dad was defending them, but Mike just shrugged. “It’s always good to get a second opinion. Besides, we don’t even have to pay this new guy unless we win.”
Now, a door flung open, and a tall, skinny man with a gummy smile and hair so slicked with pomade it actually shone, beamed at them. “Miss Montgomery and friend!” he boomed. “Come in, come in!”