“When?” Emily cried in a loud, somewhat aggressive voice.
The woman flinched. “I—I don’t know. Isn’t she their daughter?”
“When did you last see her?” Emily pressed.
The woman suddenly looked trapped. Aria grabbed Emily’s arm and pulled her away. “We should go.” She smiled politely at the woman. “Sorry.”
The woman drew her dog closer to her. Two deep parentheses formed at the corners of her mouth, and then she started down the road. “You should be,” Aria thought she heard her mumble.
When they got back to the car, Aria saw that Spencer’s face was bright red. “Em, what’s gotten into you?” Spencer cried. “You can’t assault people!”
“She knew something!” Emily cried. “What if she’s hiding Ali? What if she’s bringing her food? She could be an Ali Cat!”
Emily tried to break free and run after the woman again, but Spencer grabbed her tighter. “Em, come on. You have to calm down.”
Emily’s tense form slackened. She laid her head on Spencer’s shoulder and started to sob. “I can’t take this,” she blubbered, barely able to get the words out. “I just want to find her and end this.”
Aria stepped forward and caressed Emily’s back, trying to understand how awful it must be to lose someone that important. Of course Emily was beside herself. Of course she wanted answers. “We know,” Aria said gently. “And we’re here for you.”
“And we’re going to find Ali,” Spencer insisted. “We’re going to put up those cameras, and we’re going to catch her. Okay?”
“Okay,” Emily blubbered.
Gently, Spencer took the keys from Emily’s hand and settled her into the passenger seat. Then she moved into the driver’s seat herself. Aria thought it was a good move—Emily was way too distraught to drive. Spencer slowly pulled away from the curb, passing the woman and her dog down the road. Aria turned her head away, too embarrassed to make eye contact.
In thirty minutes, they’d reached the Best Buy outside Rosewood. They walked into the store, which smelled like rubber and had Miley Cyrus blasting loudly over the speakers. “So we’ll buy four cameras,” Spencer was saying as they walked through the aisles. “They’ll be in four quadrants on the screen. And we’ll have a server so that we can watch even when we’re in the car, or in class—whatever. We don’t even have to find a wireless signal.”
“That sounds good,” Aria said, nearly colliding with a turning rack of headphones in order to keep up. “And I think . . .” She trailed off and stopped short. A familiar figure stood a few feet from her, staring at the selection of computer mice. A thin girl with long blond hair and expensive-looking wedge sandals stood next to him, her arm slung around his waist. Aria’s heart froze in her chest.
It was Noel.
A small sound escaped from the back of Aria’s throat. Noel turned and saw her, his features tensing, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“H-hi,” Aria blurted. Her cheeks reddened. She stared at the girl’s thin, tanned arm around Noel’s waist. She couldn’t help it.
Noel glanced at the blond girl, too. “Oh. Scarlett, this is Aria.”
The girl smiled tightly, a territorial look flashing across her face. After a beat, she extended her hand. “Scarlett Lorie. Nice to meet you.”
Aria nodded, her mind scattering in a zillion directions. She didn’t know that name or recognize this Scarlett person at all. Was she Noel’s girlfriend? For how long? Why were they shopping for computer mice together? Why did Noel look so happy?
Spencer swept up to Aria with a cart full of boxes. “We’re all good,” she said in a perfunctory voice, then noticed Noel and Scarlett, still standing there, their arms entwined. “Oh. Hi, Noel.” She grabbed Aria’s hand and pulled her away. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Aria turned and gave Noel a parting glance, but he didn’t wave. He just . . . stared at her, and Scarlett wrapped her arm around him tighter, leaning forward to whisper something into his ear. Aria bit down hard on the inside of her cheek as the cashier rang Spencer up and she handed over a stack of twenty-dollar bills—it was better to pay in cash, they’d decided, so no one could track them down later.
When the transaction was finished, she peeked at Noel once more. Now the two of them were laughing flirtatiously. Maybe at her.
Aria jerked away, facing the front of the store. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Noel could date anyone he wanted.
Even a ditzy blond idiot who looked, disturbingly, like Ali.
19
SPENCER’S GOT A FAN. . . .
“More coffee, miss?”
Spencer jumped and hid her iPad with a napkin. A petite Asian girl wearing a pink apron that said SUE’S held a carafe of coffee.
Spencer shook her head. “I’m okay for now, thanks.”
She waited until the waitress drifted away before looking at the iPad again. She’d been so lost in concentration on the video surveillance they’d set up yesterday, she’d forgotten that she was watching from this little café in Philly and not in her bedroom.
Not that the surveillance cameras had yielded any activity yet. It had been hard to conceal the cameras in the trees, first of all, so only one view really showed the inside of the house. The other three angles showed the porch, the side yard, and an angle facing the big house—they might be able to catch someone on their approach. There hadn’t been the slightest movement on any of the cameras, though. Only a few deer drifting past, some leaves blowing. Her friends hadn’t seen anything during their shifts, either.