Heartless. (Book Seven)

Twenty-Six: The Evidence Doesn't Lie.

The trip from Lancaster to Rosewood was supposed to take two hours at the most, but Emily had made the mistake of getting on a bus that stopped at a couple of authentic Pennsylvania Dutch farms on the way back. It had then deposited her in Philadelphia, meaning she'd had to get on another bus to Rosewood, which sat in the station for an additional forty-five minutes before then getting stuck in jammed traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway. By the time the Greyhound sighed into Rosewood, Emily had bit every fingernail to the quick and had torn a giant hole in the vinyl bus seat. It was almost 6 P.M., and a cold, ugly sleet had begun to fall. The bus opened its doors, and Emily scampered down the steps.

The town was quiet and dead. The traffic lights changed from red to green, but no cars passed through. Ferra's Cheesesteaks still had an Open sign in the window, but there wasn't a single customer inside. The smell of roasted coffee beans wafted from the Unicorn Cafe, but the place was locked up right.

Emily started to run, skidding down the shiny sidewalk, careful not to slip her pathetically thin, tractionless Amish boots. The police station was only a few blocks away. There were lights on in the main building, where Emily and the others had gone when they'd figured out Mona Vanderwaal was Old A. The back of the complex, where New A had told her to go, had no windows, making it impossible to tell whether it was occupied. Emily spied a big metal door propped open by a coffee cup and gasped. A had left the door open, as promised.

A long hallway stretched in front of her. The floors smelled like industrial-strength cleaner, and an exit sign glowed at the far end of the corridor. The only sound was a faint, annoying buzz from the overhead fluorescent light, and Emily could hear every breath she took.

She ran her fingers along the edges of the walls as she walked, stopping at each office door to read the names on the plaques. Filing. Maintenance. Employees Only. Four offices down, her heart leapt. Evidence.

Emily peered through the little window in the metal door. The room was long and dark, with a mess of shelves, folders, file boxes, and metal filing cabinets. She thought of the papers in the photo A had texted. The interview with Ali's mom. The timeline of what Ali went missing. The weird paper from the Preserve at Something-or-other, which sounded like a swanky housing development. And, last but not least, the DNA report, surely saying the body in the hole wasn't Ali's, but Leah's.

Suddenly, a hand clapped on her shoulder. "What do you think you're doing?"

Emily jumped away from the door and whirled around. A Rosewood cop held her roughly by the upper arm, his eyes aflame. The Exit sign above him cast eerie red shadows along his cheeks. "I..." she stammered.

His brow furrowed. "You're not supposed to be down here!" Then he stared at her harder. Recognition flickered across his face. "I know you," he said.

Emily tried to back away from him, but he held her tight. His jaw dropped. "You're one of the girls who thought she saw Alison DiLaurentis." The corners of his lips curled into a smile and he pressed his face close to hers. His breath smelled like onion rings. "We've been looking for you."

A streak of fear shot through Emily's stomach. "It's Darren Wilden you should be looking for! The body in that hole isn't Alison DiLaurentis—it's a girl named Leah Zook! Wilden murdered her and dumped her there! He's guilty."

But the cop just laughed and, to Emily's horror, began to handcuff her hands behind her back. "Sweetheart," he said as he led her down the hall, "the only guilty one here is you."