Hanna raised her eyebrows. Hailey was a tempestuous, badass, mega–movie star who’d become Hanna’s friend during her brief stint in Burn It Down. Hanna had thought Hailey would drop her after Hanna was unceremoniously let go from her role as herself—and, oh yeah, after she was arrested for murder—but Hailey had been texting her even more lately. This one said: I just saw another report about you on CNN. Your hair looked REALLY GOOD.
Hanna dropped her phone to her lap. Leave it to Hailey to be unfazed by Hanna’s predicament. It was nice that someone in Hollywood still thought she was the bomb. Hank Ross, Burn It Down’s director, who’d said Hanna was “a natural” and “had a bright future,” wouldn’t even return her calls. Neither would Marcella, Hanna’s brand-new agent.
Whenever Hanna thought about her almost-shot at stardom, she burst into tears and couldn’t breathe. It hurt more than when she had realized Mona, her old bestie, was the first A and had tried to kill her. It hurt more than when she had found out Ali had a twin and had never told her. It even hurt more than when her father, whom she’d once loved more than anyone in the world, had dropped Hanna cold, saying she “wasn’t good for his political campaign.” Acting had been all hers . . . and she was actually good at it. She’d thought it could be her future.
But now . . . well. Her only chance at stardom was on America’s Most Wanted.
“Green light,” Emily croaked impatiently from the back.
Hanna pressed the gas, glancing at Emily in the rearview mirror. Her old friend looked thinner, and her eyes bugged out from her head. Hanna was still really worried about Emily—because she’d almost jumped off a bridge in Rosewood, and then because she’d had that freak-out at the pool house where they’d tracked Ali, and didn’t tell them. And lately, Em had seemed sort of . . . twitchy. Like an invisible person was giving her electric shocks. She was also incredibly wired this morning, like she’d drunk a zillion Red Bulls. Hanna wondered if she’d slept last night.
Then again, the rest of them didn’t look so hot, either—Hanna included. Spencer sucked on the straw of her water bottle so forcefully that lines formed around her mouth. Aria wouldn’t stop clanging her bracelets together. Hanna had probably redone her lipstick six times, something she always did when she was upset. Were any of them ready to talk to Nick?
Hanna turned onto a road marked ALLERTON PRISON, NEXT LEFT. The squat, drab, boxy prison buildings appeared in the distance, surrounded by a menacing mess of barbed wire. Hanna pulled through the entrance and parked. Everyone was silent as they walked into the visitor’s gate and handed over their IDs to a woman behind a desk. As the woman took their names and contacted a guard inside, Hanna glanced surreptitiously around, her heart pounding hard. The air smelled of rotting meat. From somewhere inside the walls came a deep, manly bellow that sounded like a cross between a roar and a moan.
A guard poked his head into the waiting room. “Visitors for Maxwell?”
Everyone shot to their feet. The guard motioned for them to follow, and soon enough they were in a long, narrow room. The guard directed them to a private vestibule at the very end, and they shuffled forward. There were no other visitors in the room. A fluorescent light flickered overhead.
A door on the far wall opened. A guard pushed a guy in a prison jumpsuit and handcuffs into the room. Hanna’s stomach twisted. There he was. Nick.
He’d lost a significant amount of weight since she’d last seen him in the basement, and he looked entirely different from when she’d first seen him, when he’d fed her and a new friend, Madison, drink after drink at a dive bar in Philly. Without even peeking around, Hanna could tell that her friends were each having their own struggles with the Nick they’d known—the shape-shifter who’d tricked them into trusting him—and the Nick who loved Ali. It was a thrill to see him in prison garb, though. If only Ali were by his side, behind bars, too.
Nick raised his head and saw them. His eyes narrowed. His mouth set in a straight, angry line. He glanced at the guard and shook his head, murmuring something that looked like no.
Spencer jumped to her feet. “We’re not here to curse you out. We’re on your side.”
Nick peeked at them again. There was a shadow of a bruise by his eye. His chest heaved up and down, as if he’d been running hard. Finally, he lowered his shoulders and slumped toward the seat across the table from the girls. He was so close Hanna could reach out and touch him if she wanted. She stared at his hands. The skin under his fingernails was filthy.
“Look, you know as well as we do that Ali’s not dead,” Spencer started, when no one else spoke. “She’s too smart for that. We heard what she wrote about you in that journal. She lied about us, too. She screwed all of us. We should be on the same side here.”
Nick’s eyes danced. “I don’t know, girls. Maybe you did kill her.” He cocked his head teasingly. “I distinctly recall the rage in your eyes in that basement when we trapped you. I distinctly remember how badly you wanted her gone.”