Haleb - I never stopped loving you

Chapter Six (Hanna)

I'm at Ali's house with the other girls and we're waiting for Caleb to call us about progress with getting the footage to A.D.

'Guys, there's something I need to tell you. Lorenzo told me this morning that the weapon used to kill Charlotte, if she was killed at all, was most likely a golf club, and that they think they found which one was used. It was next to the church and a dog walker found it a few days ago.' Alison says, staring down at the floor.

'Oh my god Ali why didn't you tell us as soon as you found out?' Emily asks.

'I-I don't know... I guess it took a while to sink in. I may be angry at her now for letting me believe she's dead, but she was still my sister, and it was hard to hear it.' A tear rolls down Alison's cheek and Aria leans in and hugs her. We resume to a nervous, waiting silence when my phone starts to buzz and ring. I answer it and start pacing around the room.

'Caleb?! Where the hell have you been?! Have you sent the flash drive to A.D yet?' I'm just so relieved to hear his voice that I'm finding it hard to be angry.

'I tried to, but when I woke up this morning, it was gone.' He says solemnly. I drop my phone onto the couch and sit down in shock. It's gone?!

'Hanna?! What's happening?' Spencer urges.

'The flash drive is gone.' I say quietly. At that precise moment, there's a forceful knock at the door, and Spence gets up to answer it, struggling to speak. What we hear tops off the entire day and puts us all into a state of panic.

'Spencer Hastings.' Lorenzo's voice echoes through the hallway.

'Y-y-yes...' She stammers.

'You're under arrest for the murder of Charlotte Dilaurentis. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law-'

'I- I didn't do this!' We hear the click of handcuffs and all rush out to the door, where we see Spencer being pushed into a cop car. She looks back and mouths something that I don't catch, because I'm clinging onto Aria and tearing up, just as the other 2 collapse into each other and we all crumble down into a crying mess. I hear my phone buzz in the other room and I get up and stagger over to it.

You're taking too long bitches. Give me Charlotte's killer or I'll send you all to the cops. -A.D.

A few hours later

My phone is sitting on Ali's coffee table on speaker, and Caleb, Ezra, Mona and Toby are now here, so we can all be there for Spencer's only call. We can't see her apparently, but the cops allowed her one phone call, and she needed to tell us everything she knows so far.

'Lorenzo said that a piece of my hair was found wrapped around the murder weapon and that DNA tests confirmed it was mine. I have nothing to defend myself with apart from claims from you guys that I was with you the whole night and that's not exactly going to get me off murder charges!' Spencer cries down the phone.

'Spence, it will be okay.' Toby says, his voice cracking. 'Because we have something that proves you were in the hotel the whole night; The Radley footage.'

'But someone took the flash drive.' Emily points out.

'Yes, but it's still on the computer in Ashley's office. If someone could just go there and-' I cut Toby off.

'Oh no no no no. We are not going down that road again.' I say, looking fiercely at him.

'Hanna, this is the one chance we have at getting me out of this place.' Spencer whimpers. I think about it. And I decide that getting in trouble with my Mom is easier to live with than knowing that I did nothing to help get one of my best friends out of jail.

'Okay.' I give in. 'But I'm doing it. I don't want my Mom knowing that all of you have something to do with this. I'm not getting you all into this mess.'

I suddenly realise that's such a stupid thing to say, because I already have.

Mom's Office

I slip through the door and close it quietly behind me. Stepping silently over to the computer, I feel a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. I'm so nervous. If I get caught, my Mom will totally flip. I sit down at the desk and log onto her user and then click on the security footage. For a second, all seems normal, then the screen turns black and my worst nightmare appears in huge white letters:

   TRY HARDER THAN THAT BITCH

Green numbers and symbols start to crawl up the sides of the screen and I panic. Taking out my phone, I call Caleb and wait anxiously for him to pick up.

'Hey Han, what's up? I thought you were getting the video from your Mom's computer.'

'I am! But some creepy message appeared and all these numbers and stuff are all over the screen and I tried clicking on it but it doesn't change! What do I do?!'

'Okay, don't panic. Send me a picture of the screen.'

I go onto camera and take a picture, then text it to Caleb. He's silent for a while, then he starts again.

'Yeah these are military grade fire wall defences. You need to do exactly how I say and don't click on anything I don't tell you to. There's two ways of getting past this coding. One gets you to the videos and the other sends a message to the hard drive, releasing tabs of acid that Charlotte's obviously planted in there, which burns the disk to dust and destroys the videos. I don't think she wants anyone to know that she was at The Radley.'

'Okay...' I exhale. 'I can do this. I've survived A twice over. What's a bit of technology against that?'

'So you need to open a...' Caleb runs through a list of extremely technical sounding names of things I need to open and keys I need to press, which he has to repeat several times over, very slowly, and explain each step in detail for me to understand. I sit there for what feels like an eternity, hitting keys and biting my previously beautiful, long nails, with the stress of it. I spend ages doing it first two steps, and then I get the hang of which tabs to open and what not to click on, etc...

'Okay I think you've got through the majority of the fire wall's defences. Now this is the hardest bit, and it's so crucial, so listen carefully. Take the MRNA bar and hover it over the password encryption that we used brute force against and-'

'Wait, there's a tab that says I'm creating m- mal- malware by doing this. Shall I click on that?' I'm so confused and nervous I'm shaking.

'NO HANNA. THAT'S A BUG. DON'T YOU DARE EVEN GO NEAR THAT TAB. YOU WILL BURN THAT HARD DISK TO DUST IF YOU DO.' I'm kinda taken back by how loud Caleb can shout. That boy can go from 0 to 100 real frickin quick.

'Okay okay I won't!' I carry on for another century, with moving long bits of scrawly writing over flickering numbers and loads of complicated passwords, which Caleb guides me through very slowly. I don't know how much more of this my head can take, when the screen starts to turn on and off and finally goes white.

'Caleb! I- I didn't do anything and it-'

'Flickered on and off and turned white? You did it Han, you got through it. I'm so proud of you right now!' He is so unbelievably smart and cute and I didn't realise how much I missed Caleb until now.

'OH MY GOD I DID IT!' It sounds so stupid, but I start tearing up.

After Caleb tells me how proud of me he is again, he hangs up and the videos appear on the screen. I plug a new flash drive into the computer and download the video onto it. We're taking this straight to the police, and they'll find out who's really the guilty one.

Hey guys hope you've enjoyed this so far! When I find time to finish it, I will, but I'm really busy atm sorry! Xx