A/N: I love you guys for the continuous reviews, even the ones containing death threats. Because hey, if you're commenting to chase me down and kill me that means you're still reading even after I've continuously punched you in the feelings. Plus, you know, death threats is kinda how we say "I love you" in my family. So…I feel loved.
Chapter 34:
The Silent Killer
The gurney's wheels wiggled unevenly and squeaked against the floor as it flew down the hallway.
"We lost her pulse. She's crashing."
They turned a sharp corner, one of the wheels leaving a scuff against the ground.
"She's not going to make it…"
Spencer quickly slid out of the way of the EMTs and doctors as they rushed by with an older woman on a cot. After they disappeared around a corner, she turned and walked in the opposite direction. She walked into the waiting room where Aria and Hanna were sitting next to each other. Aria was staring off into the distance, her face stained with tears. She was chewing on her lip. Hanna had her head back against the wall, an exhausted expression on her face. They saw Spencer coming.
"Anything?" Aria asked hopefully.
Spencer shook her head.
"Should we check again?" Hanna asked.
"It's probably a waste of time." Spencer replied. "I doubt she's even still here."
"How do you know?" Aria questioned.
"Because nothing is on fire and the hospital is still standing."
"Did you look in the chapel?" Hanna asked. "Maybe she's back there going all one-woman demolition crew on the pulpit again...making Jesus sad or whatever."
"I've looked everywhere," Spencer sighed. Well, everywhere that wasn't restricted. "She's not answering my texts. And her phone is still going straight to voicemail."
"She probably threw it against a wall in a fit of rage," Hanna muttered, her voice hoarse from crying. She glanced at her own phone, considering doing the same. "If A hadn't crashed that truck into Toby's cruiser…"
"Yeah, well, A did. And now Emily is dead." Spencer snapped, surprising her friends with her heated response. "And Ali is God knows where going off the deep end and we're just running around like a bunch of ants on a hill about to be stomped on."
"We've already been stomped on," Hanna sniffled, tears glistening in her eyes.
Aria rubbed Hanna's arm to try and comfort her. It didn't help much.
"I'm so done with this." Spencer ranted. "I'm done with these threats. I'm done with losing people. I am done feeling like this. I have half a mind to just get in my car and drive until I hit Canada. Hide out among the moose, farm the legal hash. And just become one of those mountain people somewhere A can never find me."
"What about Ali? We can't leave her." Aria frowned.
"She clearly doesn't want our help right now." Spencer glanced around the waiting room. "If she did she'd at least return a freaking text message. Instead she's gone all Houdini on us. Just like high school."
"Spencer!" Aria looked at her in surprise.
Spencer regretted it the minute she'd said it. She knew she was out of line. She knew how much Ali was hurting. She'd seen how much pain Ali was in. The look Ali had on her face in the holding room at the police precinct would haunt Spencer forever.
"She can't die alone."
The words sent a shiver down Spencer's spine. Ali had looked so small and helpless when she'd whimpered about losing Emily. Spencer had never seen her like that. And now Ali was the one alone. Spencer knew that Ali's instincts were to pull away and deal with things by herself. Spencer shook her head, guilt washing over her for even thinking that Ali didn't need them. She hadn't meant it. She was just upset. She looked at her friends apologetically.
"I'm sorry." Spencer sighed. "I'm just…I haven't slept since we got back to this hellhole. And now, with Emily…I…I don't know. I don't know how to handle this." She sat down next to her friends and heaved out a heavy breath. "I don't know if I can handle this." She paused thoughtfully. "My whole life I've been a problem-solver. It's what I do. It's my job. I fix things. But I can't fix this. I can't…" Tears threatened to spill from her eyes. "I can't bring her back. I can't take care of Ali for her. I can't do anything." She angrily wiped her tears away and groaned. Emily had asked her to do one thing. One thing. Take care of the girls. And Spencer felt like she was letting Emily down. "I always thought she'd be here. Even when we left here and we were all off doing our own thing, she was still there." She swallowed hard and leaned forward in her chair. "What are we supposed to do now?"
Hanna took Spencer's hand. Aria gently rubbed her back. They soothed her until she calmed down. Spencer smiled halfheartedly at them, thankful to have them.
"I didn't mean to fly off the handle like that," Spencer said, remorse written all over her face.
"It's okay." Aria assured her. "We're all upset. I mean, losing Em…it's…" She sighed and shook her head.
"It doesn't feel real." Hanna finished for her. "None of this feels real."
"Well, it is," Spencer muttered.
"Let's just concentrate on finding Ali. We'll deal with everything else as it comes," Aria said softly.
Spencer and Hanna nodded in agreement.
"Where would she go?" Hanna asked.
"Maybe Elliott took her home," Aria said.
"So, let's start there." Spencer suggested. "I do not like the idea of Doctor Doom being alone with her. Let's not forgot that a few short hours ago Ali was using him as practice for her boxing skills."
"You don't think he could really be in on this, do you?" Aria asked nervously. "I mean, he seemed pretty stunned when he was giving Ali the news."
"I don't know what to think at this point." Spencer frowned. "Did the guys get a bead on A?"
"Caleb said both places were a bust. They found traces of what looked like a hide-out at the second location, but it had been completely stripped and cleaned out. A must have figured out we were on to them. Mona is expanding the search to look for other locations," Hanna said. "She told the boys to let her handle it. She figured they were needed here."
Hanna looked down at the ground, grateful for Mona's sympathy and everything she was doing for them. She definitely needed Caleb. But she also needed her best friend back, and that's not something Caleb could give her.
"Come on." Spencer stood up, pulling her keys out of her pocket.
"You going to be okay to drive?" Aria asked.
"I mean, I have to be, right?"
They left the hospital in search of Ali, unsure of whether Ali had truly taken off to be alone with her grief or if something more had happened. Other than the photos of Emily in the recovery room, Elliott and Sara had only sent their taunts to Ali. She was the one they were truly after. They knew it would be easy to alienate her from her friends, especially when she was irrationally upset. Elliott had known Ali for years, and Sara had been carefully watching Ali from the shadows ever since she'd returned to Rosewood. They knew that by taunting her about Emily's death, Ali would completely lose it. Their plan had fallen into place perfectly.
It baffled Ali how the man who had been so kind and so sympathetic not only to her, but to Charlotte, and to all of his patients, could be the same man who was responsible for all of the pain in her life. Staring at the void behind his eyes she was now realizing that Elliott could turn it on and off like no other. Her inner voice had tried to warn her about him earlier. She'd even gone at him fists swinging. Deep down, she'd known the truth, but she was in such a state of shock that her body and brain shut down and all she could think about was Emily. Then, when she'd gotten those texts from A when Elliott was with her she'd started to doubt herself entirely.
As she stood at the observation window, Elliott's arm wrapped tightly around her neck, she thought about how dumb she had been. She had walked right in to his trap.
"Getting her out was so easy," Elliott explained. "All Sara had to do was play the role of a temp nurse while I forged some paperwork, and voilà, instant death."
As angry as Ali was, she also felt a wave of relief rolling over her. She could hear the heart monitor through the communication system next to the glass window. Emily was still alive. She still had a chance to save her. She just had to figure out how.
"I know what you're thinking." Elliott leaned forward, his breath tickling her ear, making her squirm. "You'd be dead before you got to her side."
"Why are you doing this?" Ali wheezed out a cough.
"Why do we do anything?" Elliott asked. "Love." He glanced at Emily. "You, of all people, can certainly understand the lengths we go to for the people we love." He muttered something angrily under his breath and then swore. "Charlotte was all I had."
"This won't bring her back." Ali tried to reason with him, even though she knew it was a lost cause.
"You had one job that night, Alison." He jerked her back roughly. "You were supposed to keep her safe!"
"I didn't kill my sister!"
"I don't believe you." He strengthened his hold on her throat.
"It's the truth!" Ali's voice came out strained.
"When have you ever told the truth about anything?"
"I loved Charlotte." Though, she hated herself for loving her. She still didn't understand why she loved her after everything Charlotte had done. Guilt? Some strange sense of family loyalty, maybe? "I never would have hurt her."
"Not even to protect Emily?" Elliott's free hand motioned to Emily in the gurney. "You knew Emily and the others were at the hotel that night. After you followed Charlotte there…"
"I didn't know she was there!" Ali argued. She tried to elbow him in the ribs, but he grabbed her wrist and twisted it roughly. She cried out.
She heard Emily's heart monitor pick up speed and she panicked. She knew that Sara and Elliott were not taking proper care of her, and she knew that unless she got Emily back to the hospital she was going to actually lose her. She was torn between her desire to strangle Elliott and her urge to rush to Emily's side. She tried to pull away from Elliott again. All she wanted to do was hold Emily. Elliott pushed his arm against her windpipe roughly. His other hand shot out towards a tray table. He grabbed a scalpel and pressed the tip of the blade into her back.
"Uh uh. You can look, but you can't touch," Elliott said with a hard laugh.
"Elliott, please…" She was begging before she realized what she was doing. "She needs to be in the hospital. You can't keep her here. She'll die."
"That's the whole point, Alison." He spit her name with venom in his tone. "You really think I would have done it where you couldn't see?" He slipped the hand with the scalpel over her neck and shifted his other hand to the back of her head, grabbing her by the hair. Ali yelped out in surprise. "I want you to watch the life drain from her body." He grinned. She could see his reflection in the glass. He looked demented. "Seeing your face at the hospital was just the icing on the cake for me. It gave me a preview of what I can look forward to when I really finish the job."
"Just let her go. She's been through too much to die like this. Just…let her live. Take me instead. I'm the one you really want, right? You have me. You can do whatever you want to me. Just stop hurting her."
"Don't you get it? I only hurt her to hurt you." Elliott whipped Alison around to face him, pressing the scalpel blade against her neck. "Charlotte always hated how close you were to Emily. Everything that happened to her…" He nodded his head towards Emily, "…in that dollhouse was because of you. Everything that's happening now is because of you."
Ali felt a pang of guilt, because she knew there was a grain of truth to it. She'd always believed that everything that had happened to her friends had been her fault. Emily had been adamant about telling her that wasn't the case. But she still felt a sense of responsibility for everything that went wrong in their lives. She probably always would.
"Why? What did I ever do to you?"
"Because you had everything and she had nothing!" He yelled. "Nothing but me. I was there for her when she had no one else." His gaze drifted off for a brief second. He almost looked like he was in pain. "You were always the golden child. The favorite. The beautiful little girl with all of mommy and daddy's love. And what did Charlotte get? Cast aside. Thrown into a nuthouse. Daddy's hidden shame and mommy's dirty little secret. Meanwhile, you were vacationing in the Poconos and living the perfect little family dream."
"You have no idea what my life has been like." Ali felt a growl building up in her throat.
When she thought about her childhood she thought about how she had been taught to act normal, cocky even, even if everything was falling apart. To her mother, appearances were everything. She and Jason had been groomed to be the picture perfect Stepford family. The reality was that behind closed doors her father and brother were constantly at each other's throats, her mother was manipulating her and teaching her how to lie to her father, and her parents were ripping in to one another. Her family didn't know love. All her family knew was control.
"Oh, I know everything about you." Elliott disagreed. "Charlotte was obsessed with you. Unnaturally so. She wanted everything you had. All she ever wanted was her family. Do you have any idea how hard it was for her to be on the outside looking in, never belonging?"
"If I had known, I would have been there for her!" Ali argued. "I was there for her. I stayed in Rosewood for her. I was at Welby every single day. You know that!"
She was really pissed at herself for not sniffing out Elliott the day she met him at Welby. He had played the role so well. He had seemed so normal. So charming. And smart. Ali wanted to smack herself. He checked all the boxes for a complete sociopath, except for the fact that he seemed to love Charlotte enough to do all of this for her. Then again, maybe that was just his excuse for doing this. She cursed herself in thought. For her, hindsight was less like 20-20 and more like a giant bitch-slap across the face with rhinestone glasses.
"It was because everything your family put her through that she ended up there in the first place."
"No, she ended up there because she spent her free time setting innocent people up for murder and you know, kidnapping my friends." Ali snapped.
"You and your little friends deserved everything you got." Elliott hissed back.
"No one deserves what you put us thorough. You tortured us! You ruined our lives!"
"You ruined hers!" Elliott screamed angrily. "You have no idea what it did to her being in that place."
"Welby helped her. She got better. You said so yourself."
"I'm not talking about Welby. I'm talking about Radley."
"You…were in Radley?" She'd heard him say it, but she'd yet to process the words. "You knew her for that long?"
"She turned out to be the best thing that happened to me during my internship there." He smiled, a weird dreamy grin that had a dark undertone.
"I would have guessed that you were a mental patient." Ali smarted back under her breath.
Thankfully, Elliott was narcissistic enough that he hadn't heard what she'd said because he was still talking about himself.
"Funny thing is, I actually met her outside of Radley, at my mate's frat party. We talked all night long. After we met I knew I had to see more of her, but she'd seemingly just disappeared." He sniggered. "Guess that runs in the family."
Ali glared at him. She did not appreciate the barb.
"I did some searching, and imagine my surprise when I found out the little rebel was a Radley resident. I went to visit her…"
"And that wasn't a giant red flag?" Ali muttered.
"She wasn't crazy. She didn't belong there."
"I meant a red flag for her."
"Watch it." Elliott growled out.
"You had some creepy perverse obsession for some girl you didn't even know…"
"I knew her. I knew her the minute we met. I knew she was special. She told me everything when I went to see her in Radley. Everything. Being with her helped me choose psychiatry as a specialty in med school."
That fit. The insane person guiding mental patients. How ironic. What better way to appear sane than to make everyone around you seem crazy? She fought the urge to ask him if his mommy didn't love him enough as a child. She knew Emily's life was in his hands and she wasn't willing to risk it.
"There's something fascinating about the way the human brain operates. I wanted to find out what made such a beautiful brilliant mind like Charlotte's tick. And then I realized…to truly understand the psyche, you must study it. So that's what I did. And do you want to know what I found out?" He leaned forward, hovering the scalpel blade over her face and stopping at her eye, pointing it directly towards the center of her pupil. Ali couldn't help but flinch and pull back. "It all comes down to you. You're the whole reason your parents threw Charlotte away like garbage. Everything was all about little Alison and protecting their precious baby girl. Jason and Charlotte were just consolation prizes next to you."
He dropped the blade back to her throat.
"So your solution was to just make my life a living hell? Hurt everyone I love?" Ali growled.
"How far would you go for the girl that you love?" Elliott motioned towards Emily. "There is nothing I wouldn't have done for Charlotte."
"I would never hurt people the way you all did." Ali disagreed.
"You let Emily, and the rest of the world, believe you were dead. You let Charlotte believe she'd killed you. You destroyed lives. So yeah, I helped her play the game. I helped her get in and out of Radley. I helped her plan ways to exact her revenge. I even killed dear old mommy when she found out what we were up to."
Ali's body suddenly went cold. She'd received a video back in high school of her mother being buried. It still haunted her dreams.
"You…" Ali's face flashed in a mixture of rage and grief. "You killed my mother?"
"Guilty." He smiled. "Charlotte never knew. She loved your mother, though I'll never understand why. The woman was despicable."
"Don't you EVER talk about my mother!" She tried to pry her hand out of Elliott's grasp so she could hit him, but he shoved her against the window, the back of her head smacking it so hard that she saw stars.
"If you don't shut up you're going to end up exactly like her." Elliott threatened, shoving the scalpel into her pectoral muscle just deep enough to make her shriek in surprise.
The noise echoed loudly in the room where Emily was being kept. Emily flinched and then jerked in her unconsciousness. The machines monitoring her made a weird noise. Ali looked over her shoulder. Then she looked at Elliott again, an angry flare in her eyes.
"Look at that. She doesn't like hearing you cry. I get to hurt two for the price of one." He laughed.
"Stop it." Ali cried. She could see that Emily was unsettled and that cut her deeper than any scalpel blade could.
"Oh, relax. She'll settle down." Elliott shrugged like Emily's suffering was no big deal. "The drugs knocked her for a loop. She probably went on one hell of a trip." He clicked his tongue loudly in his mouth. "I wish I could have seen the look on her face when Sara waltzed in there, back from the dead. I heard it was priceless." He glanced at Emily, then shoved Ali to face the window again. "Sara told me she cried out for you when she thought she was dying. Did you know that?" He asked, almost joyously.
Ali thought about the video she'd been sent of Emily struggling against whatever drugs had been pumped into her system, the image of her in pain enraging Ali. She yanked her fist away from Elliott and this time when she threw her arm back her elbow made contact with his ribs. It barely fazed him. He pushed her face into the glass and snarled at her.
"Careful, Ali." He warned. "It's not just your life at stake here. If you pull something like that again I'll make sure she really suffers."
The machines monitoring Emily were still uneasy, which made Ali uneasy. She had to get Emily out of here. Her brain was in overdrive trying to figure out what to do.
"You've put her through hell." Ali snarled.
"You don't know the half of it." Elliott loosened his grip on Ali just long enough to reach for a drawer on a stand next to the observation window. He kept the scalpel firmly against her back. "Why do you think Emily has only gotten worse since she's been back in town?"
He turned Ali towards him again. Ali watched as he reached into the drawer and pulled out a clear bag filled with prescription bottles and injectable medications. Ali recognized them immediately. They were Emily's medications.
"Elliott, what did you do?" Her stomach churned. She started to feel dizzy.
"What do you think?" He asked. "Being a doctor has its perks. I knew about her heart problems before she even came back to town. I like to keep a very close eye on all of you. It doesn't matter how far you girls run, I have always known how to track you down."
"You knew? You knew this whole time?" Ali stared at him in shock.
"I did more than just observe." He smirked. "The first thing I did was switch out her injections and her arrhythmia prescriptions. That was easy enough. All I had to do was tell her that her little girlfriend needed her. Emily was always a sucker for you. I knew she'd let her guard down for you. And she did. She was so preoccupied with you that I was able to swap out her drugs. You'd be surprised how many medications look the same to the untrained eye." He rolled a prescription bottle around in his fingers and then held it up for Ali to see. "Causes dizziness, heart palpitations…night terrors…" He glanced up at Ali, his eyes hooded, his lips upturned like a psychopathic clown. "Same thing we put in the water in the dollhouse." He put the medications down. "Switching out the rest was easy. A little sneaking around at dinner here. A little bump into one another at the pharmacy there."
"You were poisoning her." Ali's tone came out murderous. He had been screwing with her heart, making Emily sicker this whole time. "You did this to her."
He was more twisted than she ever could have known.
"What better way to make you suffer than by hurting what you love the most? I couldn't have planned for a better revenge than letting you watch this heart thing slowly kill her. I was just hoping she'd gradually deteriorate, but man, it was like a Christmas present when I heard her heart actually stopped…with you by her side. I couldn't have planned it better myself. And it gave us exclusive access to her. No one questions the comings and goings of a doctor or a temp nurse."
Sara. Ali thought to herself. Once she killed Elliott, she was going to go exact a special kind of vengeance on Sara as well. She was already planning out horrible ways to make her suffer.
"You orchestrated this whole thing?" Ali hissed through her teeth.
"You made it so easy for me, Ali." He chuckled darkly. "Loving her the way that you do. I knew that all I needed to do was push you two towards one another and that the sparks would fly, like they always do. She's your soulmate."
The one and only thing she would ever agree with him on.
"You were so naïve." He taunted her. "I mean, come on…what guy is really going to be okay with his ex-girlfriend flaunting her love for someone else?" He rolled the scalpel around in his hand. "Your love for her made you so soft."
There was a noise from behind them and for a split second Ali thought that Toby had somehow busted out of his cell and was coming to help her pummel Elliott. But instead, she saw the other half of the psychotic duo walking towards them.
"Hey," Sara said casually, like nothing out of the ordinary was going on.
"Where have you been?" Elliott snapped. "You were supposed to meet me here."
"I thought I heard the motion sensor alarm go off. I went up to check it out. Turns out it was just a piece of scaffolding that fell."
"God, you are useless." Elliott muttered.
"I have done everything you asked!" Sara retorted, insulted at his lack of appreciation.
"I don't remember asking you to shoot me."
"You wanted me to make it look real." Sara shrugged.
"Just stick to the plan from here on out. Can you do that?" Elliott asked in a condescending tone.
"Yeah. I got it." Sara scowled at him. She walked across the room to a table and grabbed a large syringe with something drawn up inside of it. "You ready?"
"I've been ready," Elliott said in a voice that clearly indicated he was saying 'you're the one who's late.'
Sara nodded and then she walked through a door leading into the room with Emily. She walked over next to the gurney.
"No." Ali shook her head, a sick feeling building up in her stomach. "No. What are you doing?"
"I already told you. You took Charlotte away from me. You took away my heart. I'm going to take away yours." He glanced at Sara, giving her a nod, a signal to go ahead with their plan.
"I told you, I didn't hurt Charlotte! I didn't..."
"Save it." He ignored her.
"Elliott, stop. If you ever cared about me you won't do this!" Ali made a move to try and rush towards the room, but Elliott grabbed her.
"Oh, Ali," he said teasingly, "the only reason you're still alive is because for some reason…Charlotte loved you. You were always untouchable." He dragged her over to the observation window again. "But Charlotte is gone. It's my game now."
"Stop it!" Ali squirmed.
Inside the room, Sara pulled the cap off of the needle and rolled the syringe around with her fingers.
"I like Emily. I really do. She was always strong, even when she was broken. She really has been through a lot." He glanced at Emily through the glass. "That's why I have arranged it so she won't feel a thing." He paused in thought. "She won't ever feel anything again."
Ali struggled against him, suddenly not caring that he had a blade he could cut her throat with that was dangerously close to slicing in to her.
"Leave her alone." Ali threw her head back, trying to catch him in the nose.
He dodged the hit.
"It's simply, really. One little injection and her heart will just…stop," he said. "She'll cease to exist. And then you'll know everything I went through when I lost Charlotte."
"NO!" Ali screamed. She tried begging again. "Take me instead. Just don't hurt her. Please! Elliott, PLEASE!"
"Don't worry. Your time will come. Be patient. But for now, just look on the bright side. Eventually, this heart problem would have killed her anyway. I'm just helping nature take its course."
She watched in horror as Sara jabbed the needle into Emily's IV and pushed the plunger down. Ali felt her heart speed up in her chest. Her veins felt like they were pumping boiling water through her body. And just like she'd felt something snap back in the hospital, she felt the same rage and desire burning deep inside of her chest now.
"I WILL KILL YOU!" Ali yelled, spinning around so suddenly that it caused Elliott to falter and almost lose his balance. "You bastard! I am going to shove that blade into your balls and slice you open from crotch to sternum."
She went at him, nearly feral. She clawed at his face, but he was able to get his hands up in time to prevent her from doing any major damage. He grabbed her wrists, the scalpel cutting in to the side of her palm. She barely felt it. She squirmed against him as he flipped her around so she was facing Emily again, his arm hovering below her chin, the scalpel aimed down at her chest. In the reflection of the glass he could see a look of madness in her eyes. Something flashed across her face. She lowered her head and pulled a Hanna Marin, sinking her teeth into his arm, clamping down until she tasted blood. He screamed out in both anger and surprise, dropping the scalpel to the floor.
"You bitch!" He smacked the side of her face with his other hand, catching the side of her nose and one of her eyes.
Ali felt the sting of the hit. Her nose started burning and automatic tears sprung to her eyes. Before she could react, Elliott had her in a chokehold again. He pushed her back towards the observation window.
The machines hooked up to Emily started beeping erratically. Ali screamed and tried to fight her way out of Elliott's grasp. He roughly yanked her head and shoved her face against the glass. His blood from where she'd bitten him and her tears smudged the window. He wrapped his arms around her tightly. Ali flailed against him, but it was to no avail.
"EMILY!" She screamed. How many times did she have to watch Emily die? She managed to elbow Elliott in his ribs, but he didn't feel it. "No! Get away from her!" She cried. "NO!"
Her screams echoed throughout the hallways, her voice carrying into Toby's cell. Her cries were distant, but he heard them.
"Ali!" He yelled. "Ali, hold on!"
He threw his weight against the bars, trying to bulldoze his way out. He fell to the ground, his shoulder throbbing. He leaned up against the bars, his eyes scanning the room for any means of an escape. His gaze landed on a large patch of spackle in the corner of the room. Someone had sealed something off. He crawled over to it. He used the heel of his foot to throw a powerful kick in to it and a piece jerked loose. He kicked it again and the plaster fell forward, revealing a grate with an industrial sized air duct. Toby went to work trying to get the grate loose. He couldn't hear Ali's screams anymore, and that scared him more than hearing her cry.
Ali's screams were now nothing more than choked gurgles rumbling in her throat. Elliott dragged her into the room with Emily, smiling triumphantly about the fact that the machines were not reading anything from Emily anymore. Ali was still struggling in his arms, trying to get her hands around his neck so she could strangle him. He threw her forward, towards Emily's bed. She fell to the ground on her hands and knees a few feet shy of the gurney.
"It sucks not being able to tell them goodbye, doesn't it?" Elliott said hatefully. "But being that I'm a generous guy, I'll give you two some time." He glanced at Sara. "Watch her. Kill her if she tries anything. I'm going to make sure we're all set."
Ali heard him shift behind her and when she turned around she saw him closing the door and locking it. She stared at the ground, terrified to look up at Emily. After a few seconds she forced herself to look, her eyes level with Emily's hand. She reached up to touch her fingers. They were still warm. Ali pushed herself to her feet and pressed her hands against Emily's face, her body shaking with quiet sobs.
"Emily, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she cried.
"Relax, it was just saline," Sara uttered quietly.
Ali jumped. She'd been so preoccupied with Emily that she'd almost forgotten she wasn't alone in the room.
"What?" Ali tore her gaze away from Emily and looked over the bed at Sara.
"I switched the syringes out. It was basically just sterile water."
There was a beat of silence. Ali didn't understand.
"Sh-she's okay?" Ali asked. "But the monitors…"
"I unhooked them when he wasn't looking." Sara motioned to a wire that had been unplugged.
Ali looked at Sara in confusion. She looked back down at Emily and put her hand against Emily's neck and felt for her pulse. It was slow, but it was there.
"Oh, Em." She breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank God.
Sara was telling the truth. Why would she do that? Why would she save Emily? What kind of game was she playing?
"What are you doing, Sara?" Ali's broken voice was deeper and gruffer than her normal tone. She'd been pushed to her breaking point time and time again, and she was beyond done.
"I thought it was obvious. I'm trying to keep her alive," Sara kept her tone hushed.
"Why?"
"So I can get you both out of here."
"I'm sorry…what?" Ali laughed in disbelief. "You're the one who brought us out here in the first place."
"Like I said earlier, it's complicated."
"And like I said earlier, you better uncomplicate it." Ali snarled. "Before I slit your throat."
Sara scoffed at Ali's death threat, clearly unafraid. That irritated Ali.
"I'm serious. You better start talking, right now." Ali's voice trembled with rage.
"The plan was to lure you out here away from everyone else. He wanted you to watch him kill her and then he was going to kill you," Sara said. "I knew I couldn't let him go through with it. I didn't sign up for murder."
"No. You just signed up for torture." Ali snapped.
"There's more to it than that."
"Not from where I'm standing." And where she was about to be standing was over Sara's dead body.
"I didn't have a choice!" Sara argued.
"You could have just taken him out with the gun and let us go." Ali pointed out.
"I'm not that good of a shot," Sara said.
"Head or chest. How hard is that?" Ali rolled her eyes.
"You don't understand. That shot would have had to kill him. I wasn't that confident."
"You had him locked in a cage!" Ali exclaimed.
"This place is his design. You saw how easy it was for him to get out."
"All the more reason you should have shot him." Ali reiterated.
"Wouldn't have solved our problem."
"Why not?" Ali asked, annoyed and frustrated with the runaround she was getting.
"Because he's insane." Sara raised her voice slightly. She took a calming breath. "He's got this place rigged to blow up and if I had let on at all that I was planning on getting you out he would have hit the detonator."
"With him still inside?" Ali didn't buy it.
"Yes," she said without hesitation. "He's crazy. And I know that's the pot calling the kettle black, but he's like…legitimately socio. Two buckles shy of a strait jacket. He lost it after Charlotte died. I mean LOST it. My only choices were to join him or die by his hand."
"You had other options! You could have walked away. Told someone. Gone to the police." Ali suggested.
"He never would have let me. If I had tried, my murder would have been the real deal instead of the fake out. You have no idea what he's capable of."
"I know perfectly well what he's capable of." Ali slid her palm up Emily's cheek, her sadness weighing heavily upon her heart.
Elliott had pushed Emily to the brink of death more than once. He'd been responsible for hurting innocent children. He'd killed her mother. Calling him a monster would be an insult to monsters. The man was a soulless rotting nothing.
Emily whimpered in her unconsciousness. Her face was tight.
"Hey, shh, I'm here," Ali said softly. "I'm here, sweetie." She stroked Emily's hair and then looked at Sara. "What did you do to her?" she asked, half of her attention focused on Emily, the other half raging at Sara.
"She's got some pretty heavy sedatives in her system," Sara said.
"She's hurting." Ali could see Emily cringing in discomfort. She ran her palm over Emily's forehead.
"He refused to give her anything for the pain." Sara confirmed Ali's statement.
"So, you've just been letting her suffer?" Ali's head snapped up angrily.
"Again, this was not my plan." Sara bit back in irritation.
"Right. You're completely innocent and had nothing to do with it." Just like she'd told the judge when Charlotte was on trial. "Give me a freaking break."
"I never said I was innocent." Sara disagreed. She huffed out a noise that sounded like a mixture of aggravation and sorrow. "Look, I meant what I said to you when I came to see you. Charlotte…she meant a lot to me." There was an undertone in her voice that Ali hadn't missed, but she wasn't quite sure what it meant. "I loved her." What was it about Charlotte attracting such psychopaths? "Our history is complex. I met Charlotte after I ran away from home. She took me under her wing…"
Ali felt a strange feeling of déjà vu thinking of how Charlotte had done the same thing with her. Charlotte loved taking in strays and molding them in her image.
"I didn't think anything of the fact that she was gone for days at a time. I just thought she was out making her mark on the world. I had no idea she was in Radley until later. But even when I found out, I didn't get angry. She told me her story, and I was just…horrified for her. And then, Alexander…Elliott, he came into the picture and everything changed. Charlotte got…" She furrowed her brows. "…darker." She frowned. "We both did." At least she admitted it. "He had this way of controlling us without us knowing. It was this twisted way to make us feel like we were in charge. And in a way it felt good, having that power."
"Whose idea was it to kidnap my friends and torture them in the dollhouse?" Ali asked sharply.
Sara looked away for a brief second, her eyes darting towards the observation window that was smeared with Elliott's blood and Ali's tears.
"We shouldn't be wasting time here. We have a really short window of opportunity to…"
"Who hurt my friends? Who hurt Emily?" Ali cut Sara off, cringing at the images in her head of Emily being electrocuted with the cattle prod. "Who used her as a human lab rat and turned her in to their own personal puppet to torture?" Because she was going to reign hell on that person.
"Charlotte ran the game," Sara said, "but he did all the leg work. He was fascinated with Emily. He took pleasure in her pain. She was the last one to break. She held out the longest."
Ali turned her head and sighed sadly. Of course she did. She was Emily.
"Believe it or not, Spencer cracked first. Then Hanna. Aria made it a little bit longer. That was a surprise to all of us. Mona was in and out. But Emily? She was downright defiant. He hated that he couldn't get to her. And Charlotte was jealous of how much you seemed to care about her. It made for a bad combination. He made it his personal mission to break her, and Charlotte was content to let him."
Ali tensed up at the thought of Elliott and Charlotte using Emily as their own personal punching bag just because of how much Emily loved her.
"He pushed her. He pushed her hard. It finally got to a point where Charlotte told him he needed to cool it with her. Charlotte's intent when she took the girls there was never to hurt them. All she wanted to do was play with them, create a life she missed out on. The torture...it was all him. He manipulated Charlotte. She may have been a genius, but Elliott was the mastermind behind it all. He made Charlotte believe it was her game, but it was his all along. Because that's how he works. And we were naïve enough to believe that we were unstoppable. We thought we were invincible, so when Charlotte got caught it threw us. Alexander went into hiding. I played the victim. And Charlotte? She took the heat."
"Yeah, and you fanned those flames." Ali frowned, trying to kick Sara where it hurt.
"I know that. I think about that every day." Sara's jaw tensed. "Everything I told you was true. I visited her after the trial. I was ashamed of the fact that I threw her under the bus in that courtroom. I got scared and I did what I knew how to do best: I lied. I needed her to know that I was going to make it up to her. I needed her to know she wasn't alone."
"She wasn't alone. She had me." Ali replied bitingly.
"And Elliott. Or at least that's what he was calling himself there." Sara added. "I was surprised when I ran in to him. He said he'd found an 'in'. Later I found out that the 'in' was a doctor who'd just moved to town with the intent to apply at Welby. Alexander killed him and stole his identity."
"Elliott Rollins?"
"He was a real physician. Alexander killed him and buried him under the name Alexander Drake. He didn't want anyone to come looking for him. He said he did it for Charlotte. He said he was going to get her out. And then after she died he snapped. He started talking about how weird you were being. He was convinced that your behavior was more than just grief. He thought it was guilt. Then when he gave you that picture of Aria outside the bar and you didn't turn her in, he became even more suspicious. He thought you knew Aria didn't kill her because you were the one who did it."
"I didn't…"
"I know you didn't kill your sister, Alison." Sara interrupted her, her voice full of a strange confident purpose. "But he's convinced that you did. He's been after you since the day she died. He thought your friends knew and that they were protecting you. He was trying to get them to turn on you. You have to believe me, I never knew he was going to take is this far." She looked at Emily. "I never wanted to hurt Emily like this. Throughout everything she's always been so genuine and kind. I understood how special she was after she took me in. I really did care about her."
"So then why did you do all of this? Why hurt her like this?"
"I told you, I never wanted to hurt her!" Sara exclaimed in frustration. "I tried to get her out of the line of fire. I really did. I tried to get her to leave town so she wouldn't get mixed up in this. But I knew she wouldn't leave you. When I realized that she wasn't going anywhere I started working against Elliott under the guise that I was helping him."
"You were helping him." Ali's hands tightened into fists. She was ready to start pummeling her. "We're here because of you. Emily almost died because of you."
"I wasn't in on that. That was all him. He wanted to torture you. I tried to find ways to lead you to his identity without him knowing," Sara said. "The glove that Emily found? I left it in your house. I knew the girls saw me wearing them at the funeral. I needed Emily to know that the footage she saw of herself in the dollhouse was real. Elliott wanted her to question reality, to make her think she was crazy, add stress to her heart. I wanted her to know it wasn't a dream. I knew she'd follow up on it. I left the video file for Caleb to find, because I knew about the footage at the end of it, the stuff with Charlotte locking her important things away. I knew that once Emily found the key, which I left in a picture frame in a box of Charlotte's things, she'd put two and two together. And she did. I knew she'd be smart enough to find the proof that Alexander Drake existed. But he found out that you knew about A being back and that the girls were closing in on his identity. And so he changed his plans, and I had no choice but to go along with it."
"There's this thing called the truth. You could have just told us." Ali felt her arms shaking, her body begging her to throw a punch.
"I couldn't say anything. He was watching my every move," she said quietly.
"You didn't have to torture her!" Ali raised her voice.
"Do you really want to have this fight right now?" Sara asked in a patronizing tone.
Her demeaning tone of voice was all it took to push Ali over the edge. She couldn't contain her anger any longer. She reached over Emily's bed and grabbed Sara by the shirt collar with one hand and then drew back and threw a punch, her fist connecting with Sara's jaw.
"I deserved that." Sara nodded, wiping blood away from her lip. "I…"
Ali swung again.
"I will bury you for this." Ali's tone was a calm, yet menacing. It was a quiet threat that instilled much more terror than any amount of screaming and yelling ever could. "You put her through hell." Another hit. "You tortured her."
"He had to believe it was real." Sara was not even trying to fight back.
"It WAS real!" Ali snarled as she threw another punch. "You could have killed her. Do you get that?"
"She's tougher than she looks." Sara pulled back, breaking Ali's hold on her. She threw her head to the side and spit a chunk of blood out of her mouth.
"I hate you." Ali snapped.
"I realize that." Sara motioned to her battered face. "But right now I'm all you've got. We can do this later. We need to get moving."
Emily stirred beneath them. She sucked in a deep breath that sounded like a wheeze. Ali's eyes immediately shot down. Seconds later, the same hands that had been beating the crap out of Sara were delicately caressing Emily's cheeks. She felt Emily's pulse, almost collapsing when she couldn't find it at first, but then huffed out the breath she'd been holding in when her fingers found the slow steady rhythm. Ali frowned. It was too slow. She swallowed hard.
"Why is her heart rate so low?" Ali's eyes widened in alarm.
She was so used to feeling Emily's heart beating quickly. It scared her that it had gone in the opposite direction. Sara was rubbing a cut on her cheek. She glanced at Emily and then looked at a tray next to Emily's bed.
"It's the anesthetic in her system," Sara said. "Probably dropped her blood pressure." She grabbed a syringe sitting on the tray and then she reached for Emily's IV port.
"Get away from her." Ali hissed, smacking Sara's hand away from Emily. She leaned over Emily and spread her arms and upper body over her girlfriend, ready to protect her if it came to that.
Sara put her hands up in surrender. Ali looked at her palms and saw that though they were scarred, they didn't look nearly as bad as Sara had made them out to be. And her fingers were completely fine. Sara saw her staring.
"I lost feeling in my palms, but everything else functions just fine," Sara explained.
"Great, I'm so happy to hear you can still diddle yourself." Ali rolled her eyes.
Sara lowered her hands slowly and grabbed a bottle sitting on the tray where she'd gotten the syringe. She offered it to Ali for inspection.
"I need to give her a reversal for the sedative we gave her to get her out of the hospital," Sara explained.
Ali looked at her skeptically, but took the bottle. It had several animals melded together on the label. She read a quick overview of the drug, which was a sedative used in animals that could be reversed for quicker recovery times. Ali took a deep breath and looked at Sara in fury.
"You gave her a goddamn horse tranquilizer?" She clenched her jaw, rubbing her teeth together.
No wonder Emily was thrashing around in pain in the video she'd been sent on her phone. Her mind flashed to seeing Emily struggling to breathe underneath Sara's gloved palm. Sara had put Emily in danger, and that enraged Ali. Her anger started to consume her again. She was going to do more than hit Sara. She was going to annihilate her.
"Why would you do this?"
"No more questions. We have to get her out of here before he comes back." Sara replied.
She reached for a second bottle, showing her that it was exactly what she said it was. She even let Ali peel off the safety cap and inspect it to prove to her that it had not been tampered with. She took the bottle back and drew up another syringe full of liquid.
"If this is some sort of trick I will chain you to the back of a train and let it drag you to your death." Ali threatened.
"I promise you, it's not going to hurt her."
"Yeah, because your promises mean so much." Ali spit hatefully.
Sara gave Emily the injection. After a few seconds Ali saw Emily move her mouth and turn her head slightly to the side, but nothing else happened.
"Come on. We've got to get moving." Sara pushed her foot against the brake release on the bed.
"How? He locked us in." Ali pointed to the door.
"If it's one thing I learned from Charlotte it's to always have an exit strategy. He's got hidden doors all over this place."
Sara walked over to another plexiglass window across the room. She pushed a hidden button on the side and the wall started to slide sideways. Sara walked over to the gurney and pulled up the side rails. Emily grunted under her breath.
"You may want to talk to her. She's been muttering for you for hours," Sara said.
As much as Ali wanted to choke the bitch standing across from her, she knew Emily was more important right now. Sara put her hands against the bars near the head of the gurney. Ali looked down at Emily. She leaned over her, gripping her hand, her thumb brushing the back of her wrist. She bent down and gently swept her lips over Emily's forehead. She was warm and clammy. Emily's lips parted and she tried to say something, but after a few seconds she just let out a sigh.
"You're alright, Em," Ali said quietly, her fingers gently stroking Emily's arm. Emily seemed to relax under her touch.
They wheeled Emily out of the room and into a dimly lit hallway. Sara kept them moving at a slow pace, uncertain of where Elliott was. If he got back to the room and found them gone there was a possibility he'd blow all of them up. Sara and Ali were both so wrapped up in watching where they were going that neither of them realized that Emily was coming out of her sedation.
Emily felt totally disoriented. The last thing she remembered was her father holding her in his arms. It had felt so real. He'd felt real. She'd felt his touch. She'd smelled his aftershave. It's like he'd known she was being enclosed by a darkness and he'd swooped in to be her light. She felt something jostle below her and her body jerked, sending a wave of fresh pain through her muscles.
"Be careful," she heard a familiar voice grumble.
Alison.
She felt Ali's hand on top of hers. Emily's eyes slowly opened. She saw Ali standing over her. She wasn't looking at Emily. She was looking ahead. Were they moving? Emily felt her stomach lurch, nausea overtaking her. She closed her eyes and swallowed the saliva building up in her mouth. After a few seconds the nausea subsided and she opened her eyes again.
"Alison?" Emily croaked out.
Ali nearly tripped over her feet. They stopped moving. She looked down at Emily, her hand automatically going to her face.
"You're awake." Ali heaved out a sigh of relief, unable to contain herself as she pushed her lips against Emily's forehead.
"Are we in the hospital?" Emily's head was throbbing and her chest was sore.
"We have to keep moving!" Someone at the head of Emily's bed ordered.
"God, give her a second, would you?" Ali looked back at whoever it was with a hatred in her eyes that Emily had never seen before. She turned back to Emily, a soft expression on her face. "Just relax, okay, Em?" She brushed her fingers behind Emily's ear.
"What's going on? Did I die?"
"Which time?" Ali couldn't help but give her sass.
Emily reached up, needing to touch her girlfriend's face, needing to feel her. She needed to know this was real. Ali smiled sweetly when Emily's fingers softly swept her cheek.
"You're here," Emily said in relief.
"I'm here." Ali nodded.
"I thought I was never going to see you again." Emily felt a knot forming in her throat.
"I know the feeling."
Emily saw the blood stain on Ali's shirt from where she had been jabbed with the scalpel blade. She traced her fingers over the injury.
"You're hurt." Emily's face contorted in concern.
Ali let out a soft laugh.
"You just had heart surgery. I'd say you've got me beat."
"What happened?" Emily asked.
"You can compare battle scars later. We're running on borrowed time here."
Emily glanced up and saw Sara standing staring down at her. Suddenly she was back in the recovery room with Sara standing over her, taunting her, digging at her incision. She felt pressure on her chest. She felt the lingering effects of whatever poison Sara had put in her IV burning her veins. She choked back a scream. Her heart started racing. Her body started to tremble. She grabbed Ali's hand and squeezed it tightly.
"Em – Emily, take it easy." Ali could see her starting to panic.
"She tried to kill me." Emily's breathing was fast and full of fear. "She's A."
Sara tried to show her she meant her no harm.
"Emily, look, I…"
"Get away from me!"
When Emily saw Sara leaning towards her face, she reacted by throwing up her free hand and striking her in the nose with a solid uppercut. Sara stumbled back, blood oozing out of both nostrils. Ali smiled at Sara with a smarmy look on her face, proud of her girlfriend. Fresh out of heart surgery and she could still kick ass. It turned Ali on in all kinds of ways.
"You two are a regular one-two punch, aren't you?" Sara mumbled, swearing under her breath.
"We have to get out of here." Emily pushed herself to sit up.
"Wait." Ali tried to slow her down. "Sara is a lot of things, but she's not exactly who you think she is. She's the reason you're still alive right now. She's not the one trying to kill us." At least for the moment. "Elliott is."
"Elliott?" Emily asked in surprise.
"He's Alexander Drake."
"But Alexander Drake is dead." Emily frowned in confusion.
"No. Elliott Rollins is dead. Alexander stole his identity."
There was a beat of silence, followed by an irritated breath.
"I'm unconscious for one day and this happens," Emily muttered as she fell back against the gurney.
Ali laughed, so happy to have her snarky woman back.
"Well, this is just a heartwarming reunion," Sara said sarcastically. "But can we save it until we're above ground? I don't have any interest in becoming a human firework."
"What are you talking about?" Emily asked, her voice dripping with disdain.
"I'm talking about the fact that this entire place is rigged with explosives. He's checking the wiring right now. He's very meticulous about his bombs," she uttered caustically. "Could have been a terrorist in another life."
"He is a terrorist." Ali grumbled. Emily rubbed her arm to try and calm her down. Ali looked at her appreciatively.
"Yeah, and you're not much better." Emily huffed at Sara.
"You don't like me – you don't trust me? Fine. Whatever. But I am trying to help you here." Sara's voice almost came out as a whine, like a high pitched dog whistle annoying Emily's sensitive ears.
"You've been helping him this whole time! You are framing Ali for your murder! She's being interrogated because of you!"
"Em…" Ali put her hand on Emily's shoulder, worried that she was getting herself too worked up. It made her nervous that they didn't have her hooked up to any monitors. The wires connected to her chest were just dangling freely on the gurney.
Emily brushed off Ali's warning and continued chewing Sara out.
"You could have ruined her life." Emily berated Sara.
She ranted at her for a good two minutes, Sara standing there silently and taking it. Ali saw something change in Sara's expression. Seconds later, Sara huffed out an aggravated breath.
"Jesus, lay off. I was afraid. Okay?"
"You?" Emily looked at her with skeptical disbelief. "Afraid? Of what? A crucifix and Holy water?"
Ali snorted out a laugh, a "that's my girl" look on her face.
"Look around you." Sara motioned around the hallway. "I didn't want to be on the other end of this. And I was afraid I would be if he found out…" She stopped short, like she hadn't meant to let that slip out.
"Found out what?" Emily continued to grill her. She couldn't figure out why Sara would be so afraid of her partner in crime. They had been torturing the girls together for years. "What could you have possibly done that…" Something registered in Emily's mind. The one thing that might have Sara running scared. The one thing that would give her motive to incriminate the girls in Charlotte's death. "Oh my God. You killed Charlotte."
"What?" Ali asked, her eyes flickering over at Sara in outrage.
Sara looked completely caught off-guard.
"I…" She sounded meek, all the poison in her voice suddenly gone. She didn't go to any great lengths to deny it, and that's when Ali and Emily realized it was the truth. "…it was an accident."
"Oh, you bitch!" Ali spit bitterly.
"I was trying to talk her out of going back to Elliott."
"By killing her?" Ali exclaimed.
"No. This was before she was released. I was trying to convince her to run away with me. I told her we could start over down south. Just the two of us. But she had reservations about leaving Elliott."
Ali tried not to show how much it stung her that Sara didn't mention Charlotte not wanting to leave her after everything she had done for her. Emily caught the expression on her face. She curled her fingers in between Ali's fingers and squeezed her hand gently. Ali smiled sadly at Emily.
"The night she was released I called her…" Sara had been at The Radley that night. "I was desperate to get her away from him. And I was pissed that she was choosing him over me. So I let it slip that Elliott hadn't been entirely faithful to her."
"You told her about me and Elliott?" Ali's nostrils flared.
"I knew it would give her just the push she needed to pull away from him…and come running back into my arms."
Emily wasn't sure whether to throw a punch or just throw up.
"Your mother should have squeezed her legs together and snapped your head off at childbirth." Ali glared at her.
Emily huffed out a laugh.
"That night at the hotel we talked about a lot, and we…connected…" A smile washed across her face, leaving no doubt in Ali's and Emily's minds about what else those two had done in their hotel room. "But then afterwards when we started talking about our plans for the future she pulled away. She started talking about how it wasn't fair to Elliott. We got in to it and I stormed out. I went outside to get some air. I ran in to my driver, who was outside taking a drag from his cigarette. He talked to me for a few minutes to try and settle me down."
So James was apparently a therapist on top of being a P.I.
"I took a walk to cool down. I ended up at the church. I went up to the bell tower and just stared at the town for a while. I was getting ready to leave when Charlotte came storming up the stairs. She was yelling at me about how I was a hypocrite and accused me of sleeping with my driver." Sara scoffed. "As if I don't have standards. Then she told me she never wanted to see me again. She shoved me and I just…I lost control. We struggled and she hit her head." Sara had tears in her eyes. "I didn't even realize she was dead until I saw the blood. I didn't mean to kill her, but I knew no one would believe me, not after everything I'd said about her on the witness stand. So I wiped away any trace that I was there. I laid low, but I knew that Elliott was going to flip out. He did. I knew I had to do everything I could to keep him from finding out, so I convinced him I wanted in on his insane revenge plot. I knew her death would fall back on you and I thought that if I was on the inside I could protect you…"
"Don't even try." Emily cut her off. "You did this for you."
She could feel Ali shaking in rage. Emily held Ali's hand firmly, trying to keep her from killing Sara. They were going to need her alive to prove all of this.
"We need her alive," Emily said, turning to Ali, trying to keep her from becoming an actual murderer, no matter how justified it was.
"She's right." Sara took an automatic step away from them, trying to keep it from coming to blows again.
"Doesn't mean I can't make you bleed." Ali ground her teeth together.
"Can we duke this out later? I'm kind of in the middle of trying to save your asses right now."
"You mean your ass." Emily corrected her.
"Look, just stay here. I'm going to check and see if we're clear." She walked towards a door.
"Hell no." Ali loped after her and grabbed her arm. "You really think I'm going to trust you with our lives?"
"You don't have a choice." Sara yanked her arm away from Ali like her touch burned her. "We need to get out of here." She looked over at Emily. "And she needs to get back to the hospital. We don't have the meds she needs here."
Ali stood in front of the door stubbornly.
"She's still alive, isn't she?" Sara asked. "If I was really with him I could have just let her die back there. I'm just going to make sure we have a clear shot to the exit. Okay? If he runs into all of us he'll turn this place into Hiroshima. But if it's just me and I run into him then I'll just tell him I threw you in the cell with your cop buddy and came to help him set up the explosives."
"Toby is here?" Emily gasped in concern. "Ali, we can't leave him."
"No. We won't," Ali said. "I promise. We just need to get you somewhere safe first and I'll come back for him." She faced Sara and got up in her face. "You better not be lying about this or…"
"Yeah, yeah. You'll murder me horribly." Sara interrupted her. "You're so predictable, Alison."
Ali socked her in the stomach, Sara doubled over and heaved out a cough.
"Don't forget that I follow through on my threats." She frowned at her. She turned away, but then turned and punched her again. "That was for my sister."
Sara pushed herself upright and caught her breath. Ali slowly stepped aside.
"I'll just be a few minutes. Try to stay quiet." Sara reached for the door.
She peered out the door and then walked through it, closing it behind her.
Ali walked over next to Emily. They waited silently for Sara to return. Neither of them fully believed she would actually come back for them, but they didn't have any other choice. If Elliott really did have this place rigged to explode they were sitting ducks. Sara was the only one who knew the way out of here.
"How are you doing, Em?" Ali traced her fingers over Emily's cheek. She was still sweaty.
"Better now that you're here," Emily said without missing a beat. "Where is here, exactly?"
"An old farm and slaughterhouse."
"Hmm, seems fitting." Emily laughed a hard laugh. "Treat us like caged animals, then kill us."
Emily tried to push herself up to get a better look around. She grunted and her face twisted in discomfort.
"How bad is it?" Ali asked with a sigh.
"Nothing like heart surgery to remind you of how deep your pain receptacles are." Emily grit her teeth.
"They haven't been giving you any of the meds you're supposed to be getting." Ali's mouth tightened into a worried frown.
"Of course not. It would interfere with their plans to make me suffer."
"I don't like how clammy you look." Ali wiped away the perspiration on her forehead.
"It's good to see you, too, dear," Emily replied sarcastically. The joking smile on her face turned into a soft genuine one as she reached up and put her hand on Ali's cheek. "You didn't give up on me."
"I never will." Ali smiled back. "Not as long as I'm alive."
"Thank you."
"For what?" Ali asked, almost bashfully.
"For coming here. For putting your life on the line for me."
"It's what we do," Ali said with a shrug. "I would die for you."
And Emily knew exactly how much Ali meant that. She knew Ali would give her her heart. And she loved her so much for that.
"Let's make sure it doesn't come to that, okay?"
Emily pushed herself up, ignoring the aches and pains in her body and pressed her lips against Ali's. They both savored it, each remembering how it had felt when they thought they were never going to see each other again. Ali pushed down, trying to guide Emily back on to the gurney, their lips staying firmly connected on the way. She placed her hand on the side of Emily's head and rubbed her ear, drawing delicate circles on the sensitive flesh. After a few seconds she pulled away. She looked into Emily's eyes, reveling in them. Seeing those passionate eyes made Ali feel alive again. She knew they weren't out of the woods yet, but the most important thing is that they had each other.
A noise startled them out of the moment. Their eyes shot to the door, which sounded like it was being opened. They heard a creak, and then the door slowly started to open. They were so focused on the door that they never saw him coming up behind them. They didn't know he was there until they heard the first gunshot. The door swung open just as the second shot went off. By the time the bullet left the chamber it was too late. The bullet struck his target in her head, painting her blonde locks red. The light in her crystal blue eyes went out, and she fell to the ground, lifeless.
A/N: Gah, I'm just the WORST, aren't I? How many people are running around with their heads on fire and screaming about how horrible of a person I am for leaving you hanging like this? Even my best friend is raging. She sent me a passive-aggressive message, "Now accepting applications for new best friend" to let me know of her displeasure. But trust me, you guys. I'm going somewhere with this. You know how I do.
Two more chapters to go. Feel free to leave your death threats...I mean...reviews.