The Heart of Beacon Heights

Ask Me No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies

A/N: It only took me 732 years to get back to you. Sorry for the delay. These next two (final) chapters were originally one large pot of word soup. But there was too much to digest in one sitting and I didn't want to give anyone indigestion.

Seriously though, there are a lot of complexities that I kept hammering (and hammering and hammering and hammering) out. I just couldn't seem to get the final chapter right (the inner critic was mean). What you're seeing is a product that has been rewritten at least a dozen times. If not more.

The good news is that since it was originally a larger chapter the final chapter will be coming out rather quickly after this one has been posted. Probably a matter of days.

Now, where were we...

Previously on the Beacon Heights shitshow, our Liars and Perfectionists were running around like chickens with their heads cut off from a darkness in the shadows, creepy spying cameras, shifty Hotchkiss drama, Ava got in a bar fight, Emily got stabbed...by her own wife, Mona is smart as hell, someone tried to frame Caitlin and Dylan, the truth about Claire's past came to light, and Alison's dad is a dick...who tried to kill e'ryone.

*****

Chapter 12:

Ask Me No Questions, I'll Tell You No Lies

Alison stared at the cup of water that the detectives had brought to her. She hadn't been arrested, but she didn't trust that the police weren't planning something nefarious. So when they brought her the water as "a courtesy" she just scowled angrily at the cup, like it had wronged her in some way. Or that it might wrong her.

She hadn't touched it, though she was parched. She knew from experience that you should never touch anything the police brought during an interrogation. It could be used to collect DNA, though the idea that they didn't already have her DNA was laughable. She'd been accosted and arrested by police dozens of times in her life. She'd come back from the dead. Her DNA was everywhere. Including, apparently, in Taylor Hotchkiss.

Her DNA felt personal to her. It was hers. After she'd watched her maniac father gunned down by the woman he sexually assaulted she didn't want anyone else to have that piece of her. She wasn't going to give the cops any of her DNA.

Not today, bitches.

She still wasn't sure why Dana Booker had been so hell-bent on pinning Nolan's murder on them, but Alison was ready to square up with the Not-so-good Detective. She wasn't going to let anyone in Beacon Heights push her around. Not after what she'd been through. Not after what her wife and her students had been through. Not after the way Booker had waltzed around and trampled on them.

Alison could take care of herself, but she was not going to settle for the police bullying the people she cared about. She wasn't going to stand for it. They had unleashed something they weren't going to be able to contain.

They can fuck around and find out today.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a throbbing sensation in her temple. She reached up and rubbed her aching head. She touched her fingers against the prickly stitches she'd gotten, a byproduct of her father hitting her with his gun.

That was still strange to think about.

My father. Hit me. With a gun. He hurt Emily. He shot Claire.

She wished she was back in the hospital. She'd had to have four stitches, but she didn't have a concussion. Her shoulder hurt like hell from where the butt of the gun had struck her, but the X-Ray didn't show any broken bones. She'd gotten out of the fight miraculously only slightly injured.