Only a couple more chapters after this! I'm sure there will be spelling mistakes in this, but I'm honestly so tired no matter how many times I check I think I'll have missed one. Thanks for the reviews of the last chapter, please do keep them coming.
"Seriously though," Hanna laughed. "Remember 17 year old Spencer and Toby in this truck. Everybody in Rosewood saw it at some point. You're probably sat on sacred ground right now!"
"Hanna, this may not be the time," Caleb warned, his eyes trained on the laptop he'd been studying for the last hour. Emily turned round to look at the blonde.
"At least you didn't walk in on them," she shuddered theatrically. "If there was ever any doubt about my sexuality- well that was gone at the sight of them going at it on Spencer couch." Hanna smiled gratefully at her friend. They both dealt with situations in the same way: with humour. Whilst Aria was staring darkly out the window, probably torturing herself with thoughts of Spencer's whereabouts, the other two girls had spent the last half hour laughing away their concerns.
"Okay seriously Em?" Toby demanded, as Hanna cackled mischievously in the back seat. The five friends were packed into Toby's truck and en route to Rosewood. Aria's small stance allowed room for Caleb, Hanna herself and the sleeping Adrianne to squeeze in the backseat, whilst Emily had won the front seat on ground of self diagnosed 'travel sickness'. Toby was driving, and had remained mostly silent for the duration of the journey, his mind unable to move away from the worry for his girlfriend. "Aria can you check on Adrianne please?"
"Yep, she's fine. Sleeping like a baby." Aria touched the toddler's hair affectionately. "She seems to be taking this in her stride, doesn't she?"
"She's a good kid," Caleb said. "Not that you and Spencer could ever raise anything but."
"I can't believe she already counts in French," Hanna grumbled. "Seriously, I managed that in like tenth grade."
"I really hope this hasn't screwed her up too much," Toby muttered quietly, so softly that only Emily could hear him. She touched his forearm gently.
"None of this is your fault," she promised him. "You're the best Dad I've ever seen, Toby."
"Guys, I've got to the bit with Melissa and Mrs DiLaurentis. Do you… do you want to watch it?" Caleb had been studying the footage since before they decided to leave their New York flat, but like Spencer was yet to see anything new or useful.
"Yes." "No," Hanna and Aria said simultaneously. The former sighed exaggeratedly. "Come on Aria. We need to know what we're dealing with. There might be something in there we can use as a clue."
"You watch it, I'm not. She was our best friend's Mom, Hanna."
"Whatever," the blonde muttered, taking a headphone from her fiancé and watching the footage in silence, wincing as she watched the older Hastings girl literally squeezing the life from Jessica DiLaurentis. "I can't believe it. I mean it's one thing to bury somebody that's already dead, but to actually…"
"But who filmed it," Caleb breathed. "Because that could be who we're really dealing with." Aria felt Adrianne stirring against her.
"Mommy?"
"Hey, Ady," the petite girl whispered, smoothing her niece's curls from her eyes. "It's Auntie Aria!" The child's face crumpled.
"I want to know where Mommy is," she wailed as Aria leant across to comfort her. Hanna leaned into Caleb.
"So do I," she sighed.
"Woah," he uttered, turning the screen away from Adrianne. Hanna leant further across.
"It's Melissa," she murmured. The brunette was laughing, half-heartedly batting at the camera.
"You're turning into Ian," she giggled to the camera man. "What is it with all the men I knows obsession with filming me?"
"For once, Ian had the right idea." Hanna gasped, jumping back so the headphone fell out of her ear.
"Oh my God," she choked. That voice, that unmistakable accent. A man with a funny voice Adrianne had described. "Wren."
"What?" Aria spun round, Ady still weeping softly in her arms. Emily too twisted her head round to look at Hanna and Caleb, her jaw slack in surprise.
"It-it's Wren. He's the one who's filming." Toby grip tightening on the steering wheel, his knuckles a painful white colour, but his eyes remained fixed on the road. He couldn't lose it in front of his daughter.
"So Wren's the one who's got Spencer?" Emily wondered. "But why?"
"He's always wanted her," Toby said between gritted teeth. "The minute I turned my back from her, he'd always be there. He used to… to watch us together." He shuddered.
"But it's a pretty big step to go from watching to taking," Aria said. Caleb's eyes remained trained on the screen.
"He's filmed himself setting up cameras all over town," the man said slowly. "There's one at Rosewood high, one in church, one in… Spencer's room," he finished uneasily.
"Toby I think we should pull over," Emily said quickly, picking up on Toby's growing anger. The man shook his head, his foot nudging against the accelerator.
"I need to get to her quickly, Em. Who knows what he could do to her."
III
The two Hastings women looked up at the blonde girl standing at the top of the staircase. Spencer swallowed, taking a tentative step towards the steps. "Alison? I thought you were… are you…" The girl smirked.
"You weren't really fooled by that call were you, Spencer? I barely had to act at all."
"You made it up then?" Spencer expressed incredulously. Alison raised an eyebrow. "You made me take my three year old away from our apartment and… and uproot her across state away from some imaginary threat? Is this some kind of sick game to you?" Her voice was rising, her eyes blazing with angry tears.
"This isn't a game Spencer," Ali warned. "I needed to figure out where you were, so I called you and while we talked I had somebody tracking your location. I would have been happy to just break in and take the tapes, but somebody wanted some revenge." Spencer's head whipped round to look at her sister, her lip curling in disgust.
"Melissa?" The older sibling shook her head, fixing her with pleading eyes.
"Don't let's come onto your morals Melissa," scorned Alison. "But no, it wasn't her this time."
"CeCe," Spencer breathed, glancing up at the trapdoor, almost expecting the older DiLaurentis to appear. Ali sighed exaggeratedly, walking down the staircase.
"Having a kid sure made you thick, Spencer. CeCe never really made any sense, did she? Sure, her being –A may have been easy and painless for you to believe, but you never actually stopped and thought about it?" At the mention of her child, fresh anger flushed across Spencer's body. She stared coolly at the girl before her.
"You took Adrianne."
"I borrowed Adrianne." The blonde's bored tone only fuelled her fury, and she lunged forward, pushing her out the way and racing up the stairs. Ali gasped, falling sideways onto a bookshelf and was left sprawling. Her heart pumping painfully against her ribcage, Spencer stumbled up the staircase and practically fell out of the trapdoor. She immediately recognised the room as one in the DiLaurentis household. She was mere metres away from her own family home. Her parents could be just across the lawn. Pushing herself up, she sprinted towards the front door and wrenched it open, only to be met with a larger figure.
"Spencer! I was just on my way to see you." Spencer froze, her skin crawling at the sound of the familiar English accent. The man stepped forward, fastening a tight fist around her wrist and, before she had time to react, pulling her back into the living room.
"Wren," she wheezed, trying with all her strength to break free from his clutches. "Wren please, what are you doing?" The two women appeared from the basement, a thin trickle of blood coming from the corner of Ali's mouth.
"Wren," she said breathily. "It was all… under control."
"Clearly," he intoned, shoving Spencer down onto the sofa and casually sliding a small gun from his pocket. He pointed it at her playfully, before returning it to his side. "Enough running, Spencer. The tapes."
"I don't have them!" she protested, her eyes wild with fear. "They're back in that motel you got me from. Whichever of these two you charged with kidnapping me didn't do a very thorough job."
"Careful, Spencer," Melissa whispered, flinching as her former fiancé glanced in her direction. Wren laughed.
"No matter," the gun was out again. He traced it along her jaw and it snaked slowly around her ear. "Because we'll just kill you, and everybody else who you could have shown it to. Toby. Hanna and Caleb. Adrianne." Her breath hitched as his other hand massaged through her long, brunette locks.
"I'll destroy it," she promised shakily. "It will never get out, just leave Toby and Ady alone." He clearly wasn't listening, his thumb tracing the area of skin the gun had just left.
"Why you would chose the carpenter over be, Miss Hastings, I will never understand."
"Is that what this has all been about?" she rasped, too scared to move away from his touch. "Revenge? For Toby?"
"Mona gave me the idea," he whispered. "Talking to her in Radley, listening to everything she'd done to you all was… fascinating. Ian was a sort of muse as well, his thing with the cameras was… inspired. How else did you think I could always be one more step ahead of you and you're little gang? Granted, this whole thing started with you but it became so, so much more."
"So it was you the entire time." Spencer's mind was racing, barely aware of the cold press of metal against her temple. "And CeCe? Was she the fourth person in my apartment?"
"Yes, CeCe fitted the –A profile well didn't she? I knew she would. It had to be somebody that none of you would ever question." Her mind flickered back to images of CeCe on the roof, the desperate madness in her eyes. She pictured her sat in one of the beds at Radley, perhaps the same bed she'd sat in. Then, she imagined Dr. Wren Kingston walking through the halls of the institution in a crisp, white coat.
"She was your patient at Radley," Spencer intoned slowly and deliberately. "She was mentally unwell, so vulnerable that you could persuade her to own up to it all?"
"Very good," the Briton drawled. "I knew you'd be the one to work it out." He pulled back the hammer of the gun.
"That's sick," she spat, flinching away from his hand. "She's your patient, you completely abused your position. You made her believe that… what that she hated us? That we were against her? Was she even your sister, Ali?"
"She was born my brother, but yes she was," Alison said, moving to stand beside the doctor. Melissa remained hovering in the background, clearly less involved in the scheming than the other two.
"So, did CeCe try to drown you as a baby? Or was it all a lie?"
"CeCe, or Charles as she then was, ran away when I was almost too young to remember her. She'd had enough of my transphobic father and my powerless Mom. I never heard from her again, until she tried to kill me in my backyard. That part was true. But she never sent a single –A text in her life."
"And she was the perfect scapegoat," Wren finished in a satisfied tone. "Three, four counselling sessions and she was convinced that Alison and you four girls were the reason she was in Radley."
"But why?" Spencer felt like crying. All she had been sure about for the last six years, her safety net of knowledge and understanding, was ripped from beneath her feet. "You broke me and Toby up. You sent me to Radley. Why did you carry on? And you!" she turned to Alison. "Why would you get involved?"
"Wren promised me I could see my sister again," Alison said simply. "But after a while… I enjoyed it. I liked watching you all get hurt, and scared. It's how I got to my position of power at high school, so I figured I could use it from 'beyond the grave'. And then after a while, it was fun. It was fun watching you in Radley, causing harm is addictive. You know all about addiction right, Spence?"
"And why now?" Spencer asked, desperately seeking time to avoid the inevitable conclusion of this conversation. The conclusion directly relating to the weapon pressed against her skull. "It's been years, and we've heard nothing. Why did you want the tape back all of a sudden?"
"I'm bored now," Wren sighed, dropping to his knees in front of the girl and stroking a finger gently along the trigger of the gun. "And if you don't have the tapes, and you know everything I just don't see the point in keeping you alive."
"I'm sorry!" The words tumbled from her lips as she clutched desperately at the air. "I'm sorry I chose Toby over you! I'm sorry you feel like I abandoned you! Just… just please don't let Adrianne grow up without a mother like Toby had to!"
"Wren," Melissa whispered. "Wren you don't have to-" He laughed, a horrible, deranged laugh Spencer had never heard before.
"Oh but Melissa, I do."
Cliffhanger! Next instalment coming soon!