Long Way to Fall
The letters on the sign for the Lost Woods Resort flicker on and off, the sound loud in the darkness, like a bug zapper on a summer night. Spencer is wearing her party dress, feeling like a mosquito. She should have said no. She should have refused to go along with the plan. She should have come up with a better one. She should have called Jordan and begged him to buy an island somewhere, whisk Hanna off in his private jet before she could go through with letting herself be the bait.
“Spencer,” Mona Vanderwaal says, waving a well manicured hand in front of her face. “Focus! We need to find Hanna.”
Mona seems like the only person capable of movement. Caleb is staring at the broken boards over the door, the splintered wreckage of his best laid plans. Aria and Ezra are still transfixed by the surveillance video. Emily’s face is a mask of frozen terror as she clutches her phone, and even Toby, with all his years as a cop, seems to have lost any instinct other than to stand around helplessly, his arms at his sides.
Spencer wonders if she looks as lost as the rest of them, as lost as Caleb, who - no, she shouldn’t be looking at him right now. She can’t bear to read the emotions that are written all over his face.
“Emily!” Mona tries, giving up on rousing Spencer out of shock. She shakes the taller girl roughly by her shoulders, and Emily blinks as if she’s surfacing from deep underwater. “We need to move! This person has Hanna! We need to be getting her back, not standing around in the one place we know she’s not!”
“The tunnel,” Emily suggests. “We know that’s how they got her out. We should go down there, see where it leads. Maybe we can find a trail.”
“Or catch up with them,” Ezra agrees. “They might be moving slow, if they’re dragging -”
“She’s not being dragged!” Caleb insists angrily. He takes a deep breath, but doesn’t apologize for the snarl in his voice. “Give me the computer. I can track her phone.”
“That’s good,” Spencer says, finally. She puts a hand on his shoulder without meeting his eyes. She feels his shoulder tense at the touch, and a wave of jealousy sweeps through her stomach, coating the fear that’s already settled in.
“Is it Mrs. D?” Aria asks. “Out for revenge?”
“The where is more important than the who right now,” Mona says. “The where and the why.”
“Whoever this is, they want justice for Charlotte,” Toby offers.
“Not justice,” Spencer corrects him. “This is about vengeance.”
“The signal is heading back towards the center of town,” Caleb announces.
“The church,” Spencer says, grabbing her keys. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Aria says. “What if they’re playing us? What if Hanna’s phone is tied to the back of a semi and ‘A’ wants us to chase it all the way across Pennsylvania?”
“We don’t have time to argue about this,” Caleb says, sliding into the front seat of Spencer’s car.
“She’s right,” Mona says. “We should split up. You guys take the tunnel, we’ll take the church.”
“You’re not coming with us,” Caleb protests.
“You're the one who lost her,” Mona says, rolling her eyes as she and Toby hop into the backseat. "You don't get to pick teams for the search and rescue."
Spencer shares a look with Emily and Aria, then nods. She peels off with a screech of tires back towards town.
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Spencer drives back towards town, her heels scraping against the floor mat as she pushes the speedometer past 100mph. If she drives fast enough, maybe they’ll save Hanna. Or maybe just outpace the awkwardness of their rescue party, she thinks. Toby is leaning forward, his hand on Spencer’s shoulder, but Caleb is too busy glaring at Mona in the rearview mirror to spare them a glance. Spencer leans forward. Toby’s hand falls away.
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She slams on her brakes in front of the church, parking with two tires flung up on the curb, as if the tree lawn and sidewalk are a gentle suggestion - okay to disregard in life or death situations.
Half a second later, Spencer is out of the car, her shoes kicked off, running barefoot for the door with the other three close behind her. She’s only halfway there when the church bell starts to clang, when the windows are lit up with flashes and a burst of gunfire sounds, when a body falls from the top of the bell tower, and everything shifts into a nightmarish slow motion.
It falls to the ground with a dull thud, and Hanna Marin’s face stares blankly towards the sky.