“Isn’t Greg’s body by the creek bed?” Spencer piped up.
Fuji pressed her hand to her brow. “We know what you’ve been doing in Ashland, girls. We have witnesses attesting to you skulking around up there. Testimonies about the questions you’ve been asking neighbors and people at the mini-mart. And then we found your surveillance equipment. Saw your shoddy cleanup job for ourselves. Found your prints all over the house.”
Fuji’s words made sense to Emily individually, but not as a whole. She couldn’t even comprehend what the agent was saying. “Wait,” she blurted. “Our cleanup job? What do you mean?”
“You obviously did something last night, and then tried to clean it up. Badly, I might add.” Fuji scowled. “Throwing bleach haphazardly on the floor doesn’t eradicate blood, ladies.”
Bleach? Emily’s heart stopped.
“We didn’t clean that up!” Spencer cried, getting it, too. “Someone else did! We were there, in the house, on the second floor. We heard everything, but we were too afraid to look and see who it was.”
“It’s true,” Emily said. “It was our surveillance equipment—we were spying, but it was in hopes of catching Ali. But we didn’t do anything in that house. We didn’t hurt anyone; we didn’t clean anything. We just happened to be there.”
“Are you sure about that, Emily?” Fuji’s gaze was unblinking. “So then you didn’t go up there yourself and trash the place a few days before, and then make a threat that you were going to kill someone if she ever returned?”
Emily could feel her friends staring at her. Her cheeks started to burn.
“What’s she talking about?” Spencer demanded.
“When did you say that?” Aria hissed.
“Emily, what’s going on?” Emily’s mother said behind her.
“The surveillance cameras store the last seven days of data,” Fuji said, a whisper of a smile on her face. “Three of them we found were smashed, but the fourth—the one that showed the inside of the house—was still intact, though no longer recording. We watched that video of you, Emily. Watched you tear things off the wall, smash anything in sight. Your prints were all over the cameras, too. We knew they were yours before you told us.”
“I . . .” Emily trailed off. She had no idea what to say. She had trashed the house. That awful day, after Jordan died, when she’d gone up there—she’d said all kinds of things. But . . .
She shook her head. “Okay. Okay. But we didn’t . . . kill anyone. It was Alison. I swear.”
“That’s impossible!” Fuji fumed. Her face was bright red. “The neighbors say they heard screams. Then came that call—from you. And what’s this about the boy at the creek bed?” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know about that?”
Spencer’s chin wobbled. “I—I saw it on the news site.”
But Fuji looked furious. Emily’s mind continued to unfurl. What the hell was happening? Why did she suddenly feel so . . . accused?
“And then, girls, we found the diary,” Fuji went on. “Of all the things you did to her. All the torture. We found everything listed there. The knives. The chains. The ropes. The pliers and other tools.” She shook her head, disgusted. “And you thought you were going to get away with this?”
“What are you talking about?” Hanna cried.
Fuji gnashed her teeth together. “Yes, you were right about one thing—Alison was alive. She must have survived the fire in the Poconos, just like you said. But don’t play dumb about everything else. I am sick of it, okay?”
“What do you mean, was alive?” Aria asked in a quavering voice, tears running down her cheeks. And then, slowly, she looked down at the plastic bag she was holding. Fuji followed her gaze. The bag was open just slightly, blood smeared on the plastic. Fuji’s eyes widened.
Aria shut the bag tight, but it was already too late. Fuji had seen. And now, Emily knew, the agent was assuming all kinds of things. Things that weren’t true.
Veins popped out on Fuji’s neck. She glanced over her shoulder, indicating that the other waiting agents close in. “Because that’s her blood all over that pool house. And this is her tooth. And we know you are responsible.”
“Us?” Emily’s jaw trembled. “F-for what?”
She already knew the answer a split second before it came. The methods were clear, the strategy so precise and cunning and subtle it left her breathless. The pool house. The camera loop. Getting them all up to Ashland at that exact moment, waiting until they were upstairs and terrified. Messily cleaning up with the bleach, the bucket, the mop. And then that tooth.
Ali had set them up. Spectacularly.
Fuji rolled her eyes and said just what Emily feared. “You know, Miss Fields. For Alison’s murder.”