Greg smiled. “Delaware is about as far from Philly as Rosewood. And anyway, thank you. I wasn’t really sure you’d want to after, you know, New York.”
A too-hot sip of coffee slid down Spencer’s throat. She’d thought Greg wouldn’t want to see her. After Ali’s train had whooshed into that dark, obscuring tunnel, Greg had asked what Spencer had been trying to tell him. But by that point, Spencer knew she’d sound insane if she said anything, so she’d kept quiet. But Ali’s face hadn’t left her thoughts. She’d been distant the rest of the night, heading back to Rosewood early.
Now Greg stared at her intently, perhaps waiting. Spencer looked down. “I guess I owe you an explanation, huh?”
“Only if you want to.”
She gazed at the books on the shelves. Did she? She wasn’t sure.
When she tried to get more words out, they wouldn’t come. Greg’s shoulders heaved up and down. He took a long sip of coffee. “You probably have a lot of people nosing around your life right now, wanting to know more about you. But what I saw the other night in the subway station was . . . panic. I want to help. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know. And that’s sweet.” She tried to smile. There were worse things in life than having a gorgeous guy care about her well-being.
“You seem really scared to me. I’ve lived that, Spencer. I know how it feels and what it looks like. So can you tell me what happened?”
Spencer stuck a spoon in her coffee and slowly stirred. She thought again how Greg had been so willing to listen. He seemed completely guileless. She realized that even though she barely knew him, she trusted him.
She shifted forward a little. “Okay. I don’t think Alison’s dead.”
Greg’s eyes widened. “Alison DiLaurentis.” It came out like a statement, not a question. “You’re sure?”
Spencer swallowed hard, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. That was the beauty about this place, though—no one was here. “Yes,” she whispered. “We’re pretty sure.”
She told Greg that Ali had haunted her, Hanna, and even Aria, in a way, and then how she almost drowned Emily. “I had an eerie sense I’d see her in New York somewhere,” she explained. “And then I did—on the subway. I never thought it would be somewhere so public. I started yelling like that because I wanted someone else to see her, too—so we could prove it to the cops. But it was so loud . . . and everyone in New York thinks everyone else is crazy, and no one was paying attention to me. And then the train rolled away. She was gone.”
Greg laced his fingers together. “So she was just . . . riding the subway? And you randomly saw her?”
Spencer shook her head. She’d been pondering that a lot. “I think she got on at Rockefeller Center, like us. She wanted me to see her—getting on at another station and trying to time it doesn’t really make sense. Maybe she was lurking around the Time-Life Building, waiting for us to be done. And then, when we went to the subway, she hid on the uptown platform until she was positive I was looking.”
“But why didn’t she attack you in the subway station? Why merely scare you from across the platform? From what I’ve heard, Alison seems more ruthless than that.”
“Because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. The cops think she’s dead—she doesn’t want anyone else to know it’s her. I guess she didn’t plan on me freaking and trying to point her out.” Spencer pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Ali’s been doing this to all of us—appearing randomly, letting us know she’s still around. Well, except to Emily—Ali actually hurt her. And she killed Emily’s girlfriend.”
Greg’s jaw dropped. “She did?”
“I mean, we don’t know for sure,” Spencer backtracked. “Jordan was in prison. But it’s way too much of a coincidence.” She lowered her eyes, realizing that last part sounded insane. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned it.
Greg fiddled with a little stirring spoon. “Why don’t you tell the cops?” he asked.
She shrugged. “The cops think she’s dead. And I’m the only one who saw her in New York.”
“Well, maybe there are cameras in the subway. Or the station.”
Spencer thought about this. “There could be. But you’d need police permission to get those. And like I said, the police don’t believe Ali’s alive.” It was the same reason they couldn’t go to Jordan’s prison themselves and ask for surveillance records. Besides, Ali was too smart to let anything get on camera. Only, did that mean she was too smart to let herself be seen on the cameras they’d set up around the pool house, too?
“The cops are assholes.” Greg looked angry.
“Yeah.” Spencer pretended to pick lint off her T-shirt.
“Well, I believe you.”