Careful, Ali ➳ Emison

Chapter 16 | Square One

A/n: so sorry for the long wait, it was my test season, but I'm back! Hope you like this chapter :)

Caleb held his computer safely in his hands as he led his girlfriend and two of her best friends through the backstreets of Rosewood. He had successfully located the IP address that marked the sending point of one of the text messages, and it took going over five different texts for four hours to find one that had a match to this location. In short, it showed that the device was located already in their little town, saving them a hefty trip, and he followed the directions of his GPS as they navigated on foot.

It was a good thing that Aria and Spencer had volunteered to head somewhere else in order to make sure A couldn't keep track of all of them at once.

"We're almost there," he declared.

Hanna gave him a dopey smile to which he responded with a small smirk, causing Emily to raise her eyebrow quizzically.

"Do I wanna know why you're so happy right now? In the middle of the hunt for A?" the brunette asked Hanna light-heartedly.

"Probably not, because then you'd have to share details about the huge hickey on your neck," Hanna answered smartly with a wicked grin, and Emily flushed, her hand automatically moving to cup her neck, where she knew the bruise resided. The bubbly blonde snickered, delighted at her reaction.

Emily had stolen a bit of makeup from her mother's drawer when she got home from school that day before the woman could see her, attempting to cover up the hickey Alison had given her when the blonde took her into the janitor's closet at the end of the day with a dangerous smirk, and had kissed her as her life depended on it, her mouth even moving to explore Emily's exposed neck. The brunette had bit her lip so hard in order to try to be quiet so she would not draw attention from passing students, because Alison had ravished her like she couldn't get enough of her and the brunette was high on that feeling. In the end, the makeup had been enough to have her mom not ask her questions that she wouldn't know how to answer once she came home from school, but it wasn't enough to hide the bruise from Hanna's watchful eyes.

"It's not like that," Emily chipped in, her cheeks turning an unbelievable shade of red, "I just have s-sensitive skin."

"Right," Hanna drawled, giggling. She reached out to touch the mark, her hand being slapped away almost instantly by the brunette.

"This is it." Caleb stopped in his place at once, almost causing Hanna to run into him. The girls looked around skeptically.

"What do you mean, this is it?" Alison questioned. All she saw was a regular street with a few cars but nothing out of the ordinary. There were no resident buildings, no shops, and no sign of a psychotic stalker's evil lair.

"Somewhere in this area, is the device that was used to send one of the messages," he explained, trying to figure out himself if the place they stood was the correct one. He looked down at his device to discover that it indeed was.

"Check the cars, maybe," Emily suggested, and they all nodded, spreading out across the street in order to find some clues.

Emily checked one of the closest cars by herself as the group searched others cars as well, finding nothing unusual on the outside. She turned on the flashlight function on her phone, shining it into the car. At first, she shone it at the backseats, figuring she might find something fishy on the floor of the car, but nothing outstood. The car was meticulously clean, almost perfectly so.

She heard the others' chatter about the lack of interesting objects they were finding, and she turned off the flashlight just as a man passed by, trying not to look too suspicious. Once he was gone, she turned it on again, and shined it into the front two seats. They were also clean, stainless, as if the car came straight from the dealership or was rented, and she almost gave up until something shiny reflected the light from her flashlight.