Whispers in the Dark
- Chapter Eleven – Dart for My Sweetheart
"Dad?" Cory called out as she walked into her house and dropped her bags just inside of the door, looking around frantically until she heard her dad call out to her from upstairs.
She took the steps two at a time, hoping he was okay. When Aria had dropped her off after they'd stopped by the park, she'd spotted a police car in the driveway.
"Dad, are you okay?" She yelled, rushing towards his bedroom but stopped when she saw her dad standing in her own bedroom.
Walking inside her forehead lined with confusion as she saw Garret, dressed in his police uniform standing with her dad amongst the contents of her desk drawers, dresser and even some clothes pulled form her closet.
"Cory…" Her dad said as he walked over and said, "It looks like someone broke in today."
"What?" She gasped, her hazel eyes as big as saucers when she looked around her disheveled destroyed room.
Her gaze flicked over to Garret as she asked, "Do you know who it was?"
"No." He answered, then looked around as she said, "The strange thing is the valuables… your computer and other electronics are still here, just out in the open."
She looked over to see her laptop sitting undisturbed on top of her desk, her TV was still in place as well. Walking over to her vanity, she flipped open her jewelry box and saw everything appeared to be there.
"Does anything appear to be missing?" Austin asked his daughter.
"No… I don't think so." She admitted, then asked, "What about your room? What did they take?"
"That's the thing…" Garret explained looking around, "The only room in the house that seems to have been gone through was your room."
"That makes no sense." She breathed, feeling almost the same level of violation she felt when she saw the videos on the flash drive they'd found in Alison's storage unit. Someone had invaded her space, went through her room, rifled through her desk and underwear drawer.
"Your dad also mentioned you've been receiving calls where the individual on the other line keeps hanging up." Garret said, before asking, "Since nothing's missing, it looks like maybe this was just a scare tactic… can you think of anyone who'd do this?"
Cory opened her mouth to say she didn't have a clue, when she gasped, seeing a display of flowers on her bedside table that wasn't there before she left for school that morning.
"What?" Her dad asked looking around.
"I just don't know why anyone would want to do this, is all." She lied, seeing the note sticking out of the flowers wanting her dad and Garret out of the room, so she could read it. Even though she already had a pretty good idea that it was A's doing.
Garret explained that there wasn't much that could be done at this point, but they should consider installing a security system and while Cory cleaned her room she needed to let them know if she did notice anything missing.
Nodding she thanked him and stood still as she waited for them to leave her room. Once she was alone she walked over and picked up the small envelope from it's holder in the flower arrangement. With shaky fingers she opened it see a simple note, typed in elegant font that read, 'Miss Me?'
Dropping to sit down on the side of her bed, she read those two words over and over, growing more confused each time the note didn't end with 'A'. if it wasn't A who broke into her house and destroyed her room, then it was a chance it wasn't A behind the wheel of the car that had been following her –which lead into the huge possibility that it also wasn't A who'd been calling and hanging up.
If it wasn't A… who was it?
Swallowing hard, she flipped the note card over in her hand, but it was blank. She even went as far as to rip open the tiny envelope; looking for any clues, or hidden sign revealing who it was from.
When there wasn't one she walked into her bathroom with the flowers and grabbed the trashcan from under the sink, sitting on the side of her bathtub she pulled the trash over to her and started to pick through the arrangement, removing the flowers one by one and even sifting through the potting soil when she poured it out. But there was no other note, nothing painted on the short, wide mouth vase the arrangement was in.
"Cory?" Austin asked, getting her attention as he stood in the doorway watching her with a concerned expression.
"Yeah, I'm fine." She lied, giving him a wide smile, but he nodded to her dirt covered hands and asked, "Who gave you those flowers?"
"Just a friend." She added on the lie as she shivered and said, "I thought I saw a bug in the flowers so I was throwing them all out."
"Cory, are you sure you don't have any idea who might have done this?
"I honestly don't know, dad. I'm sorry."
"If someone's threatening you… or there's a reason you're afraid to-"
"No." she dismissed, "No one's hassling me or anything. I'm going to start cleaning things up, if I notice anything missing I'll let you know so you can tell the police."
"Want some help?" He offered, still feeling like he wasn't getting the entire story from her.
She declined the offer and waited until he was gone, before she stood up and got to work washing the dirt off of her hands, still no closer to figuring out who was responsible for any of it.
~(The next night)~
Cory rushed out of her house when Spencer texted that she was outside, getting in the passenger seat beside her she said, "Wren knows where Ian is?"
"He's about to find out… we all just need to be ready. Hanna and Aria are at Emily's." Spencer explained as she sped off towards Emily's house.
Once they were all in the car, Spencer explained how she'd gotten Wren to lie to Melissa and say he was concerned that Ian might have a staph infection and refused to give her anymore meds until he could take a look at Ian for himself.
They'd been parked on the side of Spencer's street waiting for word from Wren for several minutes when Spencer's cellphone finally went off. Everyone held their breath as she pulled it from her pocket and looked at it.
"It's him." She said, and everyone ducked down as a car pulled out of Spencer's driveway and Spencer started her own car up to follow them.
"Do we have a plan?" Hanna questioned from the back.
"Working on it." Spencer said.
Emily brought up that maybe they should call Garrett for help, but no one else wanted to involve him anymore than he already was. Cory was only half listening to their conversation when her own phone went off.
"Who is it?" Spencer asked, glancing over for a moment before snapping her gaze back to the road and the car in front of her.
"Uh, just my dad." She lied, as she quickly texted Jason back.
He'd asked her earlier that day if she wanted to get dinner or something, and as much as she wanted to she knew today was the day they were supposed to find Ian. She had to turn him down, only he could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong –which she had to deny, because she couldn't exactly say she was trying to track Ian down.
"I'm just saying maybe it would be a good idea to call Garret." Emily pushed.
"No, it's really not, Em. The last thing he needs is for us to get him involved in another mystery that we can't explain." Aria pointed out, eyeing Cory as she spoke because she had a pretty good idea who'd texted her friend, and doubted it was her dad.
"That's what happens when you're the girls who cried wolf." Hanna sighed, "Don't you guys get it? We're screwed."
Taking a deep breath Cory pushed some of her wavy brunet hair out of her face and was about to tell her friends that the day before someone had broken into her house, but just as she opened her mouth Aria gasped, "They're stopping."
Slowing way down so Melissa wouldn't notice the car following them, Spencer shut the lights off and edged forward as they watched Wren and Melissa get out of the car and climb between two chained gates outside of an old barn that looked like it had been abandoned for thirty years or more.
"There's no turning back now, right?" Spencer breathed as all five friend's exited the car and stood near the gate.
"We've come this far… we need to see it out." Cory nodded, trying to mentally prepare herself for what they might find when they went inside.
They all walked through the trees with low hanging branches until they came to a crossable part of the fence, just out of sight from where Wren and Melissa were outside of the barn.
"I've got 911 on speed-dial." Aria whispered, ducking under a branch as she spoke.
"I've only got one bar." Hanna cautioned, and Cory took her own phone out and admitted, "That's one more than I've got." She frowned.
Hanna started to say something then groaned, "Oh crap, no bars for me either."
"We should take a photo of Ian; prove we haven't been making this all up."
"Yeah, good idea, Spence." Cory nodded, "But I think we shouldn't let him out of our sight until the police get here… he managed to get away once before… I wouldn't put it past him to do it again."
"Yeah well you go ahead and do that… I'm just going to try not to get killed." Hanna groaned, nearly stumbling over a raised tree root.
"I'm just worried about Melissa; we have no idea what Ian's thinking." Spencer expressed her concern for her older sister and Aria fearfully gasped, "What if he has a gun?"
When they all stopped and looked at her she shrugged, "He's the bad guy, right? Don't they always have a gun?"
Nodding Emily said, "And you say I need to lay off the horror movies."
Seconds later a loud, blood curdling scream cut the stillness of the night and Spencer yelled, "Melissa!" as she ducked through the fence with her friends right behind her.
They'd expected to get inside and see Ian trying to hurt her, they never expected to find him dead. His skin, gray and leathery looking with a gun in his hand and note on the ground beside him.
Melissa's loud painful sobs echoed in the old, wooden structure as Wren held onto her until she spotted her sister as Spencer pulled her in for a hug, trying to comfort her.
Cory swallowed hard staring at Ian's body and covering her nose with her sleeve, it was clear Ian had been dead for quite some time with the stench in the air.
"I need to get her outside." Spencer told her friends as she nodded for Wren to help her. Aria choked back her dinner as she covered her nose and mouth as she said, "I'll call the police."
Emily, Hanna and Cory continued to stand in place where they were until Emily whispered, "He's been dead for a while."
"more than a while." Hanna stated, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
When Cory walked closer Emily grabbed her arm and gasped, "What are you doing?"
"I'm taking a picture of that note… once the police get here it's going into evidence and we'll never see it again." She explained, holding her breath as she snapped a few pictures of the note before she and her friends all went outside to find Melissa still crying hysterically as she clutched onto Spencer.
~()~
Cory sat at a table outside of the school with her friends as they looked down to the suicide note picture that Cory had loaded onto her tablet.
"Is this a suicide note or a confession?" Aria breathed, reading it over for the tenth time.
"It's both…" Spencer said.
"It's just weird…" Emily admitted, "Why would Ian kill himself right as he was about to skip town with Melissa?"
"Maybe he knew he was going to get caught… he couldn't hide forever. Even with Melissa and Wren's help." Spencer pointed out, thinking to how her sister had barely said a word since the night they'd found Ian's body.
"He was desperate." Aria whisper yelled at them.
Taking a drink of her coffee, Hanna shrugged, "Who cares, the important thing is that Ali's killer is dead and we're no longer people of interest."
"Right." Cory agreed, "The only decent thing he ever did was write that note admitting what he'd done so it clears us."
"Then why am I not feeling relieved right now?" Emily quietly asked still feeling in her stomach that something was wrong.
Aria sighed, "Oh come on, Em. For months we've been about as welcome in this town as a cold store. Plus people know we were telling the truth, and Ian's out of our lives for good."
"Yes, but A isn't." Emily argued with them and Cory hung her head, wishing her friend would just enjoy the small victory they'd gotten.
"Can we just slay one dragon at a time, please." Spencer breathed, shooting Cory a strange look when she scrambled to grab her tablet from the middle of the table and darken the screen.
She nodded to the side where everyone looked to see Garrett headed for them.
"Hey… what are you doing here?" Spencer questioned him.
"Came to return some evidence we took from the field hockey office." He said looking around the table, his eyes stopping on Cory as she held the tablet close and avoided his eyes, looking back to the rest of the group he said, "Hey, um, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry you all had to be ones who found him."
"Melissa's the one who found him." Spencer corrected.
"I'm sorry, then again could have been worse."
"What do you mean?" Aria questioned, leaning forward to look at him around Spencer.
"Body's decay put him at about a week, he'd been dead for that long at least." He said, before nodding and turning to leave.
Cory tucked the tablet in her purse and remained quiet, she wasn't sure what it was, but she just felt like there was something she couldn't trust about Garrett.
"A week?" Emily gasped.
"No, that's impossible… he was texting Melissa ." Hanna argued and Emily shook her head, thinking this is exactly why she didn't feel any better with Ian being dead, she said, "No, he wasn't. I'm betting it was A."
"But why would A pretend to be Ian and then just lead us there to his body?" Aria asked but no one had an answer for her.
"It doesn't matter, the guy was scum and now he's dead scum. Who cares if A found him first?" Spencer asked.
"Guys, I don't know… I'm sort of with Emily now. Something just isn't right about this, A only gives so they can take twice as much. What does A want here?" Cory quietly said, looking around and thinking back to the car that had been following her and her destroyed room.
"You know what I want? I want to enjoy life again… before A finds another way to ruin it." Hanna said as she grabbed her coffee and stood up, walking away with Aria as Spencer asked, "You guys coming?"
"No." Emily said, deep in thought as she continued, "We now know A is involved, doesn't that make you nervous?"
"Yeah, but not as much as Ian did." Spencer said as she stood up and walked away.
Cory and Emily exchanged looks as they slowly started to gather their own bags to get to class until Emily got a text.
"Oh my god…" She breathed, showing the phone to Cory who gasped when she read the message:
'Hey Em... is it just me or does that suicide note look familiar? -A'
"What does that even mean?" Cory asked and Emily shrugged before she whispered, "Can you email me a copy of Ian's suicide letter?"
"Sure." She agreed.
~()~
"Who was that?" Cory questioned as she walked into the kitchen to see her dad ending a phone call.
"Veronica." He said as he laid the portable phone down on the counter and turned to face her.
"Spencer's mom? What did she want?" Cory questioned opening the refrigerator and trying to figure out what she wanted for a snack during her break from homework.
"Apparently they've decided to give Ian Thomas a funeral… and she was calling to invite us, she thinks it would be good for you girls to be there in support of Spencer." He explained shaking his head like he couldn't believe it.
"We're allowed to talk again?" Cory sarcastically gasped as she grabbed a bag of apple slices off the shelf and walked over to the cabinet to grab a plate.
"I'm sorry." Austin apologized, a look of sincerity in his eyes, "I should have believed you and your friends… I know you well enough to know you'd never make something like that up."
"They say hindsight's 20/20." She muttered, getting the jar of peanut butter down from another cabinet.
Reaching over to the drawer beside him, he got her a spoon and held it out as he said, "I mean it. I never should have gone along with the idea to separate you from your friends. I thought maybe they were coercing you into going along with this Ian story but-"
Taking the spoon from him she sighed, "That's because it's always been easier for you to blame other people for the things I do wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong." He assured her, "I see that now, and Cory I promise I'm going to start trusting you more."
With a smirk she gathered up her dish of apple slices and peanut butter as she said, "That's really good to hear… but something pretty good came out of me spending time apart from my friends."
"Oh yeah? You find a new hobby?"
"No, but you were talking about how I should branch out and make new friends, so I reconnected with someone I hadn't spoken to in a while." She explained, pausing in the doorway to the kitchen as her dad's forehead lined with confusion and he asked, "Who?"
"Jason." She admitted, before quickly walking out into the hallway, but he followed her.
"Jason DiLaurentis?"
"Mhmm." She hummed, walking into the dining room where she had her books for homework out on the large cherry oak table.
"No." He stated.
"You can't just tell me no."
"I can and I am. Cory, I meant branch out and meet new girl friends, hell even start dating a guy at your school –any of that I would be happy about. But this is just unacceptable-" He said, his voice growing louder with every word.
Turning to face him she crossed her arms over her chest as she yelled back, "I thought you said you were going to trust me more, so trust me on this."
"Cory, you made a deal with me when we moved away from Rosewood that you'd never contact him again? Remember the deal; you'd willingly go to rehab and never talk to him again –and in return your mother and I wouldn't call the police on him… he was way too old for you then and he's too old for you now." He reminded her of the deal she'd made when they left Rosewood, a deal she'd only agreed to so that Jason wouldn't get into trouble.
"He's not all that older than me… can you honestly say if it was another guy his age, you'd be freaking out like this?"
"I certainly wouldn't like it." He said through gritted teeth.
"Yeah, but you wouldn't be shouting at me either!" She yelled back causing her dad to sigh heavily as he rubbed his eyes and in a calmer tone said, "I'm not shouting at you."
Cory shook her head, equally angered and stressed out.
"Dad, you don't even know him and he's different now… he's grown up a lot and he's clean-"
"Good for him, but that has nothing to do with you. You're not seeing him and that's final." Austin asserted, giving her a look to show he wasn't going to cave at all on this.
"Dad..." She helplessly breathed with tears stinging her eyes from him not even willing to listen to her at all on this. She'd expected him to be mad, but she'd hoped that after everything –that with as far as she'd come; he'd at least consider letting Jason come over for dinner to see how much he'd changed. But that clearly wasn't going to happen.
Not even willing to stay on the subject he cleared his throat and tried to calm down as he asked, "What should I tell Spencer's parents? Are we going to Ian's funeral… if you don't want to, you don't have to."
"I want to go." She whispered, sitting down at the table and putting her back to him as she pushed her plate of food to the side and grabbed her English book to finish up her assignment.
"Why would you possibly want to?" He questioned, not sure about her reasoning.
"Because he killed Ali. If they'd let me bury the casket I would."
He nodded, hoping maybe seeing her friend's killer lowered into the ground would give her some sort of closure, help her move on from the devastating loss she'd been through.
"I know you're not happy about not being able to see Jason but-"
Rolling her eyes she snapped, "Can you just leave me alone? I need to finish this paper –Aria's mom took over my English class and she's not as lenient with due dates as Mr. Fitz was."
He nodded, pausing in the doorway to watch her for a little longer before disappearing back into the hallway to call Spencer's mom and say they'd be attending Ian's funeral.
A/N- Thanks for reading guys ^_^ I hope you all liked the chapter.
I appreciate all of the follows and favorites so much, and I owe a huge thanks to xxxRena, Cassie-D1. Heartless-Princess33, RHatch89, Momsen-xxxx, SmellYourScentForMiles, EmisonLovr4life, guest, PortiaWhite, Lucy Greenhill, Emmettluver2010, DancingDorisDay, Gleemania123, Guest and kksambo for reviewing chapter 10.