Pretty Little Liars #15: Toxic Read online

  She placed Jordan’s box on the steps and opened the front door before they could ring the bell. “What’s going on?” she hissed, stepping onto the porch and shutting the door behind her. Her parents were in the den; the last thing she needed was for them to listen in. They’d already asked her a ton of questions about all the stuff barricading the doors this morning. “What happened? It’s the pool house, isn’t it? Did they find Ali?”

  “Slow down.” Spencer caught Emily’s arm. “We haven’t heard anything. We thought you might have.”

  Emily stopped and peered at them. “Nothing?”

  “Aside from Greg turning up dead at a creek,” Spencer said. “Which was probably Ali’s doing. He told me he knew her, and that was a big mistake. So she killed him.”

  Emily’s stomach swooped. “Do you think it was his blood in the house?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Spencer stared down the street. Emily’s next-door neighbors, an older couple named the Gauls, were hard at work setting up sprinklers on their front lawn. When they saw the girls, they waved. Everyone waved back, though not nearly as enthusiastically.

  “But we haven’t heard anything about the pool house investigation,” Aria continued. “I even tried calling the local police station, but when someone asked my name, I hung up.” Then she looked at the plastic bag in her hands. “I don’t know what to do with this.” She opened it a little; Emily could see the crumpled dress they’d pulled out of the house the night before. “Drop it off anonymously at the police station? Burn it?”

  “Do you think we should go up there?” Emily asked. “What if they have Ali under arrest? What if she’s caught and they haven’t even told us?” That would be just like Fuji, she thought bitterly.

  Spencer shook her head. “The place is probably crawling with cops—us being there would complicate things. We’ll know soon enough. But I feel really positive, you know? I feel like this could be it. And now we can go on with our lives for real.”

  Emily bit her lip. Tears rushed to her eyes. She had been about to bury her life. She couldn’t imagine blithely moving forward.

  A siren wailed down the street, and everyone looked up. Seconds later, a police car appeared from around the corner and began to roll toward them. It was followed by a second police car, then a third. Emily took a quivering step back, momentarily frozen in the lights. Then she realized who was in the front seat of the first car.

  Fuji.

  The cop cars rolled up to the curb in front of Emily’s house and came to a stop. Agent Fuji, dressed in a crisp black suit and sunglasses, stepped out of the vehicle and strode toward them. The agent’s face was stern and hard as she approached the girls. She came to a stop and looked around at all of them. A few beats passed. Behind her, Emily heard her front door open. She knew without looking that her mom was standing there, staring.

  “We need to speak to you,” Fuji said in a gruff voice.

  “Of course,” Spencer said quickly. “Whatever we can do to help.”

  “This is about the pool house, right?” Hanna asked excitedly. “What did you find?”

  Fuji winced. She reached into her pocket and whipped out a ziplock bag marked EVIDENCE and shoved it in the girls’ faces. “We found this.”

  The bag shook before Emily’s eyes. Slowly, her vision adjusted. Something pearly and white and tipped in blood was caught in the bag’s corner. Emily frowned, then backed up. A tooth.

  “Whose is that?” Aria cried.

  Fuji removed her sunglasses and stared at them hard. There was no kindness in her eyes, which surprised Emily. Fuji should be grateful, shouldn’t she? “I think you know whose it is, girls. What I want to know is: Where’s the rest of the body?”

  Everyone flinched. Emily’s heart began to pound. “The rest of what body?” Hanna asked.

  “Isn’t Greg’s body by the creek bed?” Spencer piped up.

  Fuji pressed her hand to her brow. “We know what you’ve been doing in Ashland, girls. We have witnesses attesting to you skulking around up there. Testimonies about the questions you’ve been asking neighbors and people at the mini-mart. And then we found your surveillance equipment. Saw your shoddy cleanup job for ourselves. Found your prints all over the house.”

  Fuji’s words made sense to Emily individually, but not as a whole. She couldn’t even comprehend what the agent was saying. “Wait,” she blurted. “Our cleanup job? What do you mean?”

  “You obviously did something last night, and then tried to clean it up. Badly, I might add.” Fuji scowled. “Throwing bleach haphazardly on the floor doesn’t eradicate blood, ladies.”

  Bleach? Emily’s heart stopped.

  “We didn’t clean that up!” Spencer cried, getting it, too. “Someone else did! We were there, in the house, on the second floor. We heard everything, but we were too afraid to look and see who it was.”

  “It’s true,” Emily said. “It was our surveillance equipment—we were spying, but it was in hopes of catching Ali. But we didn’t do anything in that house. We didn’t hurt anyone; we didn’t clean anything. We just happened to be there.”

  “Are you sure about that, Emily?” Fuji’s gaze was unblinking. “So then you didn’t go up there yourself and trash the place a few days before, and then make a threat that you were going to kill someone if she ever returned?”

  Emily could feel her friends staring at her. Her cheeks started to burn.

  “What’s she talking about?” Spencer demanded.

  “When did you say that?” Aria hissed.

  “Emily, what’s going on?” Emily’s mother said behind her.

  “The surveillance cameras store the last seven days of data,” Fuji said, a whisper of a smile on her face. “Three of them we found were smashed, but the fourth—the one that showed the inside of the house—was still intact, though no longer recording. We watched that video of you, Emily. Watched you tear things off the wall, smash anything in sight. Your prints were all over the cameras, too. We knew they were yours before you told us.”

  “I . . .” Emily trailed off. She had no idea what to say. She had trashed the house. That awful day, after Jordan died, when she’d gone up there—she’d said all kinds of things. But . . .

  She shook her head. “Okay. Okay. But we didn’t . . . kill anyone. It was Alison. I swear.”

  “That’s impossible!” Fuji fumed. Her face was bright red. “The neighbors say they heard screams. Then came that call—from you. And what’s this about the boy at the creek bed?” She narrowed her eyes. “How did you know about that?”

  Spencer’s chin wobbled. “I—I saw it on the news site.”

  But Fuji looked furious. Emily’s mind continued to unfurl. What the hell was happening? Why did she suddenly feel so . . . accused?

  “And then, girls, we found the diary,” Fuji went on. “Of all the things you did to her. All the torture. We found everything listed there. The knives. The chains. The ropes. The pliers and other tools.” She shook her head, disgusted. “And you thought you were going to get away with this?”

  “What are you talking about?” Hanna cried.

  Fuji gnashed her teeth together. “Yes, you were right about one thing—Alison was alive. She must have survived the fire in the Poconos, just like you said. But don’t play dumb about everything else. I am sick of it, okay?”

  “What do you mean, was alive?” Aria asked in a quavering voice, tears running down her cheeks. And then, slowly, she looked down at the plastic bag she was holding. Fuji followed her gaze. The bag was open just slightly, blood smeared on the plastic. Fuji’s eyes widened.

  Aria shut the bag tight, but it was already too late. Fuji had seen. And now, Emily knew, the agent was assuming all kinds of things. Things that weren’t true.

  Veins popped out on Fuji’s neck. She glanced over her shoulder, indicating that the other waiting agents close in. “Because that’s her blood all over that pool house. And this is her tooth. And we know you are responsible.”

&nbs
p; “Us?” Emily’s jaw trembled. “F-for what?”

  She already knew the answer a split second before it came. The methods were clear, the strategy so precise and cunning and subtle it left her breathless. The pool house. The camera loop. Getting them all up to Ashland at that exact moment, waiting until they were upstairs and terrified. Messily cleaning up with the bleach, the bucket, the mop. And then that tooth.

  Ali had set them up. Spectacularly.

  Fuji rolled her eyes and said just what Emily feared. “You know, Miss Fields. For Alison’s murder.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks, as usual, to my stellar team at Alloy, including Josh Bank, Les Morgenstein, Sara Shandler, Lanie Davis, and Katie McGee—without you this book wouldn’t be nearly as compelling (nor would I know what it means to “White Fang” someone). Thanks to Kristin Marang and Theodora Guliadis in Alloy Digital for all their smart ideas to garner even more PLL fans. A huge thank-you to Kari Sutherland, Sarah Landis, and Alice Jerman at Harper for their smart insights and never-ending support. My usual gratitude to the amazing writers, producers, and actors on Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family: I draw inspiration from you guys, and sometimes it is incredibly frustrating NOT to use your plot lines in the books!

  Thanks as well to my parents, Bob and Mindy Shepard; to Ali and Caron, who opened their lovely Upper East Side home to us several times during the brainstorming process for this book (and who wrangled a certain Bumby during meetings!); and love to Michael, for many things including being patient and understanding about ice cream. Thanks to the many fans on Twitter and to all those who answer my random questions when I throw them into the Twitterverse. And of course a big hug to Kristian, who is the best little man ever. Choo choo!

  Also, this book is dedicated to Volvo, my loyal friend. For drooling on me through a cross-country move, a cross-town move, and then a cross-state move; for being my longtime running partner, a reliable vacuum cleaner, and a steady guardian. Always smelly, always sneaking onto a bed, and always the most-loved at parties, you’re the best dog anyone could ask for. Now go outside and catch some squirrels.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Austin Hodges

  SARA SHEPARD is the author of two New York Times bestselling series, Pretty Little Liars and The Lying Game. She graduated from New York University and has an MFA from Brooklyn College. Sara’s Pretty Little Liars novels were inspired by her upbringing in Philadelphia’s Main Line.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors and artists.

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  CREDITS

  HAND LETTERING BY PETER HORRIDGE

  MODEL PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALI SMITH

  DOLL DESIGN BY TINA AMANTULA

  DOLL PHOTOGRAPHY BY HOWARD HUANG

  COPYRIGHT

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  TOXIC. Copyright © 2014 by Alloy Entertainment and Sara Shepard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here in after invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934802

  ISBN 978-0-06-228701-4

  EPub Edition April 2014 ISBN 9780062287038

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