A/N: I'm so, so sorry that it's taken me this long to get anything done. All I'll say is, real life really got in the way. Like, in a massive way. I'm back now, and if you're still reading this or my other stories, thank you.
Chapter 7
Emily sinks onto her bed, mind putting the pieces together. There's a text from A that's hours old, a very simple Where are they?
She hasn't answered, because she hasn't the foggiest idea. It's been on her mind to pick a random town or city, open an atlas and throw a dart at it, but what if that is the place they have gone to? Logically, she knows it's unlikely. With close to twenty-five thousand towns, cities and counties (and this is just the known ones) she knows they could have disappeared anywhere in the country.
Her chances of picking the one place they went are slim to none, and she still doesn't want to risk a decoy guess.
The phone pings again. Time's ticking down, A tells her, adds a gif of a clock counting from three hours. Emily picks up the phone, weighs it on her palm. If she picks a place, how long before A goes there? Travel alone takes several hours, but what if they have minions there – they seem to have an unlimited line of credit, they could easily wire someone a few thousand for intel and never get their hands dirty.
(not that that was ever a problem, she thinks wryly, remembering a car crashed into her living room)
She wavers back and forth. Even if she picks, Spencer and Hanna could have false identities. They could be presenting themselves as anything. A third message pops up.
College is expensive. Tell me, and there's $25,000 in it for you.
A doesn't even bother signing off nowadays, just writes the messages like they're pretending not to threaten. With two girls left that they can threaten – they discovered days ago that all electronics were left behind, making contact impossible – they go about it in a slightly-less menacing fashion. She supposes it's some kind of psychology trick.
(a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf)
She throws caution to the wind, pecks out I heard Spencer once saying she wanted to go to Memphis and hits Send. Her throat feels tight, hot with bile, and she wonders if she's going to be sick. This doesn't feel like nausea, but sometimes it's hard to tell.
(it's a bitter pill to swallow)
Memphis is populated-enough that it'll take at least a week to comb through the various towns and locales, and she pointedly doesn't think about the odds of her friends being there. Her mind circles back to Aria, Aria who she saw stuffing a packed duffle bag under her bed and looking relieved when Emily pretended not to notice. Her eyes feel wet when she thinks about the implications – they called Aria. She wonders when the girl will disappear, will it be day or night? Where will they bring her? Maybe they will supply a ticket so she doesn't have to buy her own possibly-tracked one.
In the morning, Aria's tyres are punctured, one neat wound in each with an ice pick or similar blade. She calls Emily for a lift, finds the folded note tucked under a windshield wiper and addressed to Emily.
She wonders if Emily tried to sell A information to keep them happy. Wonders if it was good or bad – realizes, it's both, depending on who you are.
They drive to school in silence, neither girl wanting to break the tenuous peace, but she slips the note into Emily's hand once they park. She reads it, rolls it into a fine tube and slides it into her smallest jeans pocket. Don't give me false information again. You're getting off easy this time.
(lesson learned)
People have noticed they're missing half of their usual group. Instead of being a tight-knit clique, they're just two girls cast adrift. People ask where's Spencer, I need her notes or where's Hanna, I haven't seen her around lately. Study girl and party girl go missing, people are bound to notice.
A decides a new tack. Tries Aria, because she's always been a good liar, always knows how to pretend one thing and do just the opposite without ever missing a beat. Tell me where they are pops up on Aria's screen right as she's cracking open her stories notebook. She replies instantly I don't know, neither of us does and hopes it's enough.
It isn't, so she writes it again. I don't KNOW.
I don't know. Neither of us knows.
We don't know.
We weren't told.
She types variations of the theme and sends them all, hoping it will change something. There's no reply.
In the morning there's a box on the doorstep, inexplicably heavy and addressed to her. Aria sticks it in the back of her wardrobe, promises she will deal with it later, and runs out the door. School passes in a blur and she doesn't think she takes in one piece of information all day. Emily is away at lunch, practicing in the pool, so she hides out in the library and stealthily rips corners off a sandwich in a hidden nook people go to when they don't want to be seen.
The box, when she opens it, contains a photo album. She flips through photos of her and her friends hovering around Ali's grave, shovels in hand; her, packing a bag as recently as two days ago; her and Ezra when they were first hooking up – dated, too, so her age can be made all the more apparent.
The rest of the photos cycle through similar themes, the occasional break-in, a minor lifting of some piece of information. Some of them are crimes, and altogether they're definitely enough to be damning. Damning enough to get her expelled from school, to prevent college admissions, to get her on the outs with her family.
She sits back on her heels, knowing there's no point in burning them. A has copies, she's certain, but seeing the last couple of years of her life splayed out like that is jarring. When she's pocketing something that might come in useful to solving the various mysteries, it's never seemed like theft. Never felt like a crime. They were always able to justify and defend the action of snagging a key that didn't belong to them, of sneaking into a cabin that they didn't live in when the residents or owners weren't home.
In the end she feeds each photo into the flames, tosses the empty album with its stupid captions into the rubbish once every page is torn out. Scribbles over the inscribed Bet you don't want this going public with the thickest permanent marker she can find, until her hands reek of black ink and she feels like her nose is burning from the fumes.
Spencer disappeared ten days ago. Hanna followed five days later. Aria calculates that she or Emily should be called soon.
Not much longer now, she tells herself.