~*GABE AND HANNA'S NY APARTMENT- 9:48 PM*~
"It was him all along. He is 'Big A,' 'Uber A' or whatever you want to call him. It's him!" Emily exclaimed with a horrified look on her face.
Hanna shook her head anxiously.
"You know what, maybe we're just looking at the clues all wrong and-"
"Like hell we are!" Emily said harshly.
"Emily, I know you want to catch 'A', but-"
"But nothing, Hanna! If Lucas is 'A' then that means that he is the one who was behind this entire thing all along!"
Hanna put her face into her hands and sighed deeply. When she took her hands away, she shook her head in disbelief.
"I just...I really thought that he would have gotten over Ali's bullying by now." She smiled sadly. "But I guess I should have known better after he told me that he destroyed Ali's memorial back in high school."
"She also used to call Lucas 'hermy' a lot before she went missing that year," Mona replied. She chuckled lightly. "There used to be a time when even I wanted Alison to die."
Gabe got up from his chair and put his hands into his jacket pockets.
"Look..." he paused. "Whatever Lucas has done in the past, he's your best shot at finally getting back to your lives. But what about Ezra?"
"What about him?" Hanna asked him.
"I thought he was still a suspect for you guys."
"Well, we can suspect both him and Lucas at the same time. It's not that difficult."
Spencer picked up her phone and grasped it tightly.
"I guess there's only one way to find out," she suggested ominously.
She began typing the text with Emily and Hanna looking over her shoulder as she typed.
THE CLUES YOU GAVE
REALLY HELPED US
...LUCAS.
Spencer hit the "send" button.
One minute.
Three minutes.
No response.
~*THE NEXT DAY, NY CAFE - 9:05 AM*~
"Why did he never reply back?" Emily asked of the previous night's events.
"Maybe that means Lucas isn't 'Uber A' after all?" Hanna suggested hopefully before taking a sip of her coffee.
"I'm not so sure about that, Han," Spencer said cautiously. "Don't forget...Lucas's apartment is the same place where Aria got those burns a year before."
Hanna looked down sadly as she remembered the event.
"That's right," she said, defeated. "Aria got those burns...and after Caleb and I discussed our stupid plan to catch 'A' I saw Lucas up on the first floor messing with the controls."
Hanna sighed and put her hands on her neck.
"God, I should have known it was him," she said, disappointed. She removed her hands from her neck, reached for the cup of coffee in front of her and drank some of it to calm her nerves.
"Well if it is him, he doesn't seem to be in an awful hurry to tell us," Spencer told her calmly before taking a sip of her own coffee.
"And that doesn't bother you?" Emily asked her curiously.
Spencer turned her head to look at her; her expression was grim.
"Of course it bothers me," she said in a slightly patronizing tone. Upon noticing the bewildered look on Emily's face, she put down her cup of coffee and pushed it away from her.
"I'm sorry, Em. But it does bother me," she said apologetically. "And I hate waiting around like this. All for some damn reply," she finished angrily.
Afterwards, Spencer leaned forward and molded her hands into a prayer like pose against her nose.
She closed her eyes, and seeing Spencer like that brought Hanna back to when she first received new messages from 'A' and the immediate dread she had felt afterwards.
She reached across the table and grabbed one of Spencer's hands from her face, and held on to it.
Spencer opened her eyes, put the other hand down, and looked gratefully at her as Emily finished eating the last crumb of her coffeecake.
"I love you guys," Hanna said to the both of them.
And it was true. What they all went through, that was something that no one, not Ezra, not Lucas, would ever be able to take away from them.
"We love you too," Emily added with a warmhearted smile.
~*GABE AND HANNA'S NY APARTMENT- 10:25 AM*~
Mona had finally joined their little rebellion shortly after they returned from their breakfast at the cafe, but they had all grown tired of waiting around. To pass the time, they all resorted to doing whatever they could to keep their minds occupied.
Spencer sat at the dining table by herself and scrolled through Facebook on her phone looking at any bits of news that she could find.
Mona stood against the wall as she tried to find recipe ideas from Pinterest on her phone.
Emily and Hanna were both sitting on the couch lost in their own thoughts as they waited for Spencer to get a response.
"I can't believe Lucas might be 'A'...How could this happen again? And what about Aria? WHAT ABOUT US?...Wait a minute..."
Hanna sat up and nearly stepped on Emily's foot as she got up from her seat.
"Sorry, Em!"
"It's okay," Emily said seriously.
Hanna tensed slightly because she knew that Emily was still angry at Lucas, but she dismissed it and pressed on.
She rushed over to Spencer and leaned against the table.
"Spence?"
"What?" She replied in a slightly detached tone as she used her fingers to scroll into social media oblivion.
"Instead of waiting for Lucas to reply back, maybe we could set some sort of trap for him."
Spencer finally looked up from her phone.
"What did you have in mind?"
"Well I..." she paused.
"Damn. How the hell am I supposed to trap 'A'? Of all people!"
Fortunately for Hanna, Mona had begun eavesdropping on them the moment she saw Hanna walk over to Spencer.
"That's easy," she said confidently. "Give Lucas what he wants."
"How the hell are we supposed to know that is?" Emily replied impatiently from the couch.
"We treat him like he's the most important person in the world," Hanna said carefully.
Mona nodded her head in agreement.
"Yeah..." She walked closer to the table and snapped her fingers. "Let me send him a message Spencer," she suggested patiently with her hand open.
Spencer looked up at Mona, then at Hanna and Emily who both seemed to have the same tense expressions on their faces.
She got up from her chair and handed Mona the phone.
Within seconds, Mona began typing away, and they could only watch as she typed and typed.
Losing all patience, Emily got up from the couch, walked over to where they were, and snatched the phone from Mona's hand.
"Hey!" Mona yelled angrily at her for the sudden interruption. She had already finished the message, but it was still rude.
WHAT'S WITH THE WAIT?
ARE YOU LUCAS OR NOT?
WAIT A SECOND...
HOW COULD SOMEONE LIKE HIM BE 'A'?
SOMEONE SO SCRAWNY, WEAK, AND...INFERIOR?
I'M SPENCER DAMN HASTINGS FOR GOD'S SAKE
I SURE AS HELL AM NOT AN IDIOT
NOW QUIT SCREWING AROUND AND TELL US WHO 'A' REALLY IS
"Is this how we're gonna trap 'A'?" Emily asked her skeptically. Mona rolled her eyes and yanked the phone from Emily's hands.
"Yes, it is Emily. As someone who's actually been 'A' at some point in their lives, what I liked the most about it was the feeling of empowerment. I wasn't 'loser Mona' anymore, I was someone that people feared. And I liked that."
Hanna swallowed at the memory. She would never forget the heartbreak she had felt the night she discovered that Mona was 'A'.
"Can I see the message?"
Mona handed the phone to her and she looked over the message. Spencer glanced over her shoulder and took to reading the message as well.
"And you think this will work?" Hanna asked Mona.
"Yeah. Lucas won't like Spencer, or anyone really, calling him inferior. It's bound to bring up bad memories of when Ali used to bully him in high school."
"Well..." Hanna looked at each of them cautiously. "No time like the present, huh?"
She hit the "send" button.
The next minute ticked away slowly, but finally, after what felt like a hundred years to all of them, a reply showed up.
Hanna turned around to look at Spencer, who nodded her approval, and she opened the message.
YOU FICKLE BITCH
NEVER SATISFIED
YES, I AM 'A'
WANT PROOF?
[video chat link]
"Click on it," Emily told Hanna with determination.
And that's exactly what she did.
A/N: Uh-oh. I'm starting to get lazy. Please forgive me. But we're almost done, I promise. Just one or two more chapters to go after this (not counting the timeline bonus chapter).