Matters of the Heart

Chapter 13: The Art of Communication

Chapter 13:

The Art of Communication

Hanna explained everything to her. How Toby and the others had been on their way to the loft to tell them the news about the new evidence before they had run across Alison and Emily, and how the investigation had been turned over to Linda Tanner, a detective they were all too familiar with. She had overseen their arrest after Alison's trial, and subsequently, had inadvertently fallen into Charlotte's web...making it easy for Charlotte to capture the girls and kidnap them.

Though Tanner had worked tirelessly to try and save them, she'd never fully believed the girls were innocent of all wrongdoing. Now that she was in charge of Charlotte's murder, she was suddenly very interested in what they'd been doing the night Charlotte died. In light of the new evidence she was in the process of getting a warrant to gain access to the security footage from The Radley that night. Fortunately, the hotel's backup drive no longer had access to the footage with Aria on it thanks to Caleb's quick thinking.

Once Toby told them that Tanner and her team were gunning for the security footage, Caleb had gone to the hotel and nabbed the backup drive and replaced it with an identical one that had all of the incriminating footage of Aria on it removed. He'd been able to fudge the time-stamps on the doctored footage so no one would be able to tell anything was missing. Aria was out of the woods, but Toby told them that Tanner would probably scrutinize the girls since they had been at The Radley around the same time that Charlotte had gotten that call. After all, they had motive to want Charlotte dead.

"The call came in a little after eleven. Tanner asked Ali about it this morning," Hanna said. "She told her she never heard the phone ring. She said Charlotte fell asleep on the couch around 10:30. She went to unwind with a bath and when she finished up Charlotte was in the kitchen eating a snack and reading a magazine."

Emily tried to create a timeline in her mind, but her brain was still a little foggy. She knew that the fight Alison and Charlotte had must have happened after that, because Ali told her that Charlotte stormed out after it. What if the phone call had been someone tipping Charlotte off about Ali and Elliott? She wondered if Alison had told the cops about their fight.

"The cops think Charlotte went to the hotel before she went to the bell tower." Hanna shifted her feet uncomfortably.

Every hair on Emily's body stood on end. Her arms broke out in goosebumps. Just the thought of Charlotte being in the same room as them made Emily's blood run cold. It took her back to every terrifying moment Charlotte had put them through. Suddenly, she was back in the nightmare she'd had last night. She saw flashes of everything that had happened before and during the dollhouse. The messages, the threats, the physical danger. The games she'd been forced to play in the dollhouse. The times she'd been forced to choose between her friends, lest they all suffer.

The times she'd been drugged and woke up with no memories of what had happened. Even worse, the times she woke up in complete darkness, her hands bound, her hearing blocked because of some sensory deprivation device on her head, unable to move...too scared to breathe. The times gas had been pumped into her room...her cell, causing horrid hallucinations.

The times she'd been forced to listen to recordings of her parents breaking down...her mother's sobs, her father's anguished anger. The videos she'd been forced to watch over and over again...videos of Maya's last night alive, videos of Alison being buried alive, videos of her loved ones being stalked while she was locked away, unable to do anything to help.

The times A...Charlotte...had taunted her, encouraging her to kill herself and end it all. Sometimes she'd wake up to find a bottle of pills sitting next to a glass of water. Sometimes it was some strange pink substance drawn up into a syringe. Sometimes it was a gun with a single bullet. If she hadn't been so out of it from the sleep deprivation she would have found a way to hide the gun and use it on their captor. Emily never wanted to live that hell again.