Killer. (Book Six)

Two: What Goes Around Comes Around.

The following morning, Aria sat at the yellow Formica table in her father's tony kitchen in Old Hollis, the college town next to Rosewood, eating a bowl of Kashi GoLean doused in soy milk and attempting to read the Philadelphia Sentinel. Her father, Byron, had already completed the crossword puzzle and there were inky smudges on the pages.

Meredith, Byron's ex-student and current fiancée, was in the living room, which was right next to the kitchen. She'd lit a few sticks of patchouli incense, making the whole apartment smell like a head shop. The soothing strains of crashing waves and cawing seagulls tinkled from the living room TV. "Take a cleansing breath through your nose at the start of each contraction," a woman's voice instructed. "When you breathe out, chant the sounds hee, hee, hee. Let's try it together."

"Hee, hee, hee," Meredith chanted.

Aria stifled a groan. Meredith was five months pregnant, and she'd been watching Lamaze videos for the last hour, which meant Aria had learned about breathing techniques, birthing balls, and the evils of epidurals by osmosis.

After a mostly sleepless night, Aria had called her father early that morning and asked if she could stay with them for a while. Then, before her mother, Ella, woke up, Aria packed some things in her floral-upholstered duffel from Norway and left. Aria wanted to avoid a confrontation. She knew her mother would be puzzled that Aria was choosing to live with her dad and his marriage-wrecking girlfriend, especially since Ella and Aria had finally repaired their relationship after Mona Vanderwaal (as A) had nearly destroyed it forever. Plus, Aria hated to lie, and it wasn't like she could tell Ella the truth about why she was here. Your new boyfriend is kind of into me, and he's convinced I want him, too, she imagined saying. Ella would probably never speak to her again.

Meredith turned up the TV volume—apparently she couldn't hear over her own hee breathing. More waves crashed. A gong sounded. "You and your partner will learn ways to lessen the pain of natural childbirth and hasten the labor process," the women instructor said. "Some techniques include water immersion, visualization exercises, and letting your partner bring you to orgasm."

"Oh my God," Aria clapped her hands over her ears. It was a wonder she hadn't spontaneously gone deaf.

She looked down at the paper again. A headline was splashed across the front page. Where Is Ian Thomas? it asked.

Good question, Aria thought.

The events of last night throbbed in her mind. How could Ian's dead body in the woods one minute and gone the next? Had someone killed him and dragged his body away when they'd gone inside to find Wilden? Had Ian's killer silenced him because he'd uncovered the huge secret he'd told Spencer about?

Or maybe Wilden was right—Ian was injured, not dead, and had crawled away when they ran back to the house. But of that was what happened, then Ian was still...out there. She shivered. Ian despised Aria and her friends for getting him arrested. He might want revenge.

Aria snapped on the little TV on the kitchen counter, eager for a distraction. Channel 6 was showing the cobbled-together reenactment of Ali's murder—Aria had already seen it twice. She pressed the remote. On the next channel, the Rosewood chief of police was talking to some reporters. He wore a heavy, fur-lined navy blue jacket, and there were pine trees behind him. It looked as if he was giving an interview from the edge of Spencer's woods. There was a big caption at the bottom of the screen that said, Ian Thomas Dead? Aria leaned forward, her heart speeding up.

"There are unsubstantiated reports that Mr. Thomas's dead body was seen in these woods last night," the chief was saying. "We have a great team assembled, and we began searching the woods at ten A.M. this morning. However, with all this snow..."