Two: Up In Smoke.

About six hours later, a perky nurse with a long brown ponytail pushed back the curtain to Aria's little cordoned-off nook in the Rosewood Memorial emergency room. She handed Aria's dad, Byron, a clipboard and told him to sign at the bottom. "Besides the bruises on her legs and all the smoke she inhaled, I think she's going to be fine," the nurse said.

"Thank God." Byron sighed, penning his name with a flourish. He and Aria's brother, Mike, had shown up at the hospital shortly after the ambulance deposited Aria there. Aria's mom, Ella, was in Vermont for the night with her vile boyfriend, Xavier, and Byron had told her that there was no reason for her to rush home.

The nurse looked at Aria. "Your friend Spencer wants to see you before you go. She's on the second floor. Room two-oh-six."

"Okay," Aria said shakily, shifting her legs underneath the scratchy, standard-issue hospital linens.

Byron rose from the white plastic chair beside the bed and met Aria's gaze. "I'll wait for you in the lobby. Take your time."

Aria slowly got up. She raked her hands through her blue-black hair, little flakes of soot and ash raining onto the sheets. When she leaned down to pull on her jeans and put on her shoes, her muscles ached like she'd climbed Mount Everest. She'd been up all night, freaking out over what had just happened in the woods. Even though her old friends had brought to the ER, too, they'd all been taken to separate corners of the ward, so Aria hadn't been able to speak to any of them. Every time she'd tried to get up, the nurses had swept into her room and told her that she needed to relax and get some sleep. Right. Like that was going to happen again.

Aria had no idea what to think about the ordeal she'd just been through. One minute, she was sprinting through the forest to Spencer's barn, the piece of Time Capsule flag she'd stolen from Ali in sixth grade tucked in her back pocket. She hadn't looked at the shiny blue fabric in four long years, but Hanna was convinced the drawings on it contained a clue about Ali's killer. And then, just as Aria had slipped on a patch of wet leaves, the acrid smell of gas had filled her nostrils and she'd heard the papery rasp of a match igniting. All around her, the woods exploded into flames, burning hot and bright and searing her skin. Moments later, she came upon someone in the woods screaming desperately for help. Someone whose body they'd all thought was in that half-dug hole in the DiLaurentises' old backyard. Ali.

Or so Aria had thought at the time. But now…well, now she didn't know. She looked at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the door. Her cheeks were gaunt, her eyes rimmed with red. The ER doctor who'd treated Aria explained that it was common to see crazy things after inhaling a bunch of noxious smoke—when deprived of oxygen, the brain went haywire. The forest had been really suffocating. And Ali had seemed so hazy and surreal, definitely like a dream. Aria hadn't known that group hallucinations were possible, but they'd all had Ali on their minds last night. Maybe it was obvious why Ali was the first thing each of them thought of when their brains began to shut down.

After Aria finished changing into the jeans and sweater Byron had brought her from home, she made her way to Spencer's room on the second floor. Mr. and Mrs. Hastings were slumped on chairs in the waiting area across the hall, checking their BlackBerrys. Hanna and Emily were already inside the room, dressed in jeans and sweaters, but Spencer was still in bed in her hospital gown. IV tubes fed into her arms, her skin was sallow, and there were dark purple circles under her blue eyes and a bruise on her square jaw.

"Are you all right?" Aria exclaimed. No one had told her Spencer was hurt.

Spencer nodded weakly, using the little remote on the side of the bed to sit up straighter. "I'm much better now. They say smoke inhalation can sometimes affect people really differently."

Aria looked around. The room smelled of sickness and bleach. There was a monitor in the corner tracking Spencer's vital signs, and a small chrome sink with stacks of boxes of surgical gloves in the corner. The walls were wasabi green, and next to the floral-curtained window was a big poster explaining how to self-administer the monthly breast exam. Predictably, some kid had drawn a penis next to the woman's boob.

Emily was perched on a child-size chair near the window, her reddish-blond hair tangled, her thin lips cracked. She shifted uncomfortably, her broad swimmer's body too big for the seat. Hanna was by the door, leaning against a sign proclaiming that all hospital employees must wear gloves. Her hazel eyes were glazed and vacant. She looked even frailer than usual, her skinny, dark-denim jeans hanging loosely on her hips.

Wordlessly, Aria pulled Ali's flag from her yak-fur bag and spread it on Spencer's bed. Everyone moved in and stared. Shiny silver doodles covered the fabric. There was a Chanel logo, a Louis Vuitton luggage pattern, and Ali's name in big bubble letters. A stone wishing well, complete with an A-frame roof and crank, was in the corner. Aria traced the outline of the well with her finger. She didn't see any glaring, vital clues here about what might have happened to Ali the night she was killed. This was the same kind of stiff everyone drew on their Time Capsule flags.

Spencer touched the edge of the fabric. "I forgot Ali made bubble letters like that."

Hanna shivered. "Just seeing Ali's writing makes me think she's here with us."

Everyone raised their heads, exchanging a spooked glance. It was obvious they were all thinking the same thing. Just like she was with us in the woods a few hours ago.

At that, they all spoke at once. "We've got to—" Aria blurted.

"What did we—" Hanna whispered.

"The doctor said—" Spencer hissed a half-second later. They all stopped and looked at one another, their cheeks as pale as the pillowcases behind Spencer's head.

It was Emily who spoke next. "We've got to do something, guys. Ali is out there. We need to figure out where she went. Has anyone heard anything about people looking for her in the woods? I told the cops we saw her, but they just stood there!"

Aria's heart flipped. Spencer looked incredulous. "You told the cops?" she repeated, pushing a strand of dirty blond hair out of her eyes.

"Of course I did!" Emily whispered.

"But…Emily…"

"What?" Emily snapped. She glared at Spencer crazily, as if there was a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead.

"Em, it was just a hallucination. The doctors said so. Ali's dead."

Emily's eyes boggled. "But we all saw her, didn't we? Are you saying we all had the exact same hallucination?"

Spencer stared unblinking at Emily. A few tense seconds passed. Outside the room, a beeper went off. A hospital bed with a squeaky wheel rolled down the hall.

Emily let out a whimper. Her cheeks had turned bright pink. She turned to Hanna and Aria. "You guys think Ali was real, right?"

"It could have been Ali, I guess," Aria said, sinking into a spare wheelchair by the tiny bathroom. "But, Em, the doctor told me it was smoke inhalation. It makes sense. How else could she have just vanished after the fire?"

"Yeah," Hanna said weakly. "And where would she have been hiding all this time?"

Emily slapped her arms to her sides violently. The IV pole next to her rattled. "Hanna, you said you saw Ali standing over you in your hospital bed the last time you were here. Maybe it really was her!"

Hanna fiddled with the high heel of her suede boot, looking uncomfortable.

"Hanna was in a coma when she saw Ali," Spencer jumped in. "It was only a dream."

Undaunted, Emily pointed at Aria. "You pulled someone out of the woods last night. If it wasn't Ali, then who was it?"

Aria shrugged, running her hands along the spokes on one of the wheelchair's wheels. Out the big window, the sun was just coming up. There was a line of shiny BMWs, Mercedes, and Audis in the hospital parking lot. It was amazing how normal everything looked after such a crazy night. "I don't know," she admitted. "The woods were so dark. And…oh shit." She dug in the inner pocket of her bag. "I found this last night."

She opened her palm and showed them the familiar-looking Rosewood Day class ring with a bright blue stone. The inscription on the inside of the band said Ian Thomas. When they'd discovered Ian's supposedly dead body in the woods last week, the ring had been on Ian's finger. "It was just lying there in the dirt," she explained. "I don't know how the cops didn't find it."

Emily gasped. Spencer looked confused. Hanna snatched the ring from Aria's palm and held it to the light above Spencer's bed. "Maybe it fell off Ian's finger when he escaped?"

"What should we do with it?" Emily asked. "Turn it in to the cops?"

"Definitely not," Spencer said. "It seems a little convenient that we see Ian's body in the woods, make the cops search the place, they find nothing, and then voila! We find a ring just like that. It makes us look suspicious. You probably shouldn't have picked it up at all. It's evidence."

Aria crossed her arms over her Fair Isle sweater. "How was I supposed to know that? So what should I do? Put it back where I found it?"

"No," Spencer instructed. "The cops will be mobbing those woods again because of the fire. They might notice you putting it back and ask questions. Just hold on to it for now, I guess."

Emily shifted impatiently in the little chair. "You saw Ali after you found the ring. Right, Aria?"

"I'm not sure," Aria admitted. She tried to think about those frantic minutes in the woods. They were growing blurrier and blurrier. "I never actually touched her…"

Emily stood up. "What is wrong with you guys? Why do you suddenly not believe what we saw?"

"Em," Spencer said gently. "You're getting really emotional."

"I am not!" Emily cried. Her cheeks flushed bright pink, making her freckles stand out.

They were interrupted by a loud, squawking alarm in an adjacent room. Nurses yelled. There were frantic footsteps. A sick feeling welled in Aria's stomach. She wondered if it was the alarm, warning that someone was dying.

A few moments later, the wing fell silent again. Spencer cleared her throat. "The most important thing is figuring out who set that fire. That's what the cops need to concentrate on right now. Someone tried to kill us last night."

"Not just someone," Hanna whispered. "Them."

Spencer looked at Aria. "We got in touch with Ian in the barn. He told us everything. He's sure Jason and Wilden did it. Everything we talked about last night is true, and they're definitely out to keep us quiet."

Aria's chest heaved, remembering something else. "When I was in the woods, I saw someone set the fire."

Spencer sat up even more, her eyes saucers. "What?"

"Did you see their face?" Hanna exclaimed.

"I don't know." Aria shut her eyes, calling back the horrible memory. Moments after she'd found Ian's ring, she'd seen someone skulking through the woods only a few paces ahead of her, his hood pulled tight and his face in the shadows. Instantly, she felt in her bones that it was someone she knew. When she realized what he was doing, her limbs froze. She felt powerless to stop him. In seconds, the flames were speeding along the forest floor, making a hungry beeline for her feet.

She felt her friends' stares, waiting for her answer. "Whoever it was had a hood on," Aria admitted. "But I'm pretty sure it was…"

Then she trailed off at the sound of a loud, long creak. Slowly, the door to Spencer's hospital room swung open. A figure emerged in the doorway, his body backlit in the bright hall. When Aria saw his face, her heart jumped to her throat. Don't pass out, she told herself, instantly feeling woozy. It was one of the people. A hand warned them about. The person Aria was almost certain she'd seen in the woods. One of Ali's killers.

Officer Darren Wilden.

"Hello, girls." Wilden strutted through the door. His green eyes were bright, and his handsome, angular face was chapped from the cold. His Rosewood police uniform foisted him snugly, showing off how in shape he was.

Then he paused at the edge of Spencer's bed, finally noticing the girls' unwelcoming expressions. "What?"

They exchanged terrified glances. Finally, Spencer cleared her throat. "We know what you did."

Wilden leaned against the bed frame, careful not to bump into Spencer's IV fluids. "Excuse me?"

"I just called for the nurse," Spencer said in a louder, more projected voice, the one she often used when she was on stage for the Rosewood Day drama club. "She'll call security before you can hurt us. We know you set that fire. And we know why."

Deep creases etched Wilden's forehead. A vein bulged in his neck. Aria's heart beat so loudly it drowned out all the other sounds in the room. No one moved. The longer Wilden glared at them, the tenser Aria felt.

Finally, Wilden shifted his weight. "The fire in the woods?" He let out a dubious sniff. "Are you serious?"

"I saw you buying propane at Home Depot," Hanna said shakily, her shoulders rigid. "You were putting three jugs into the car, easily enough to burn those woods. And why weren't you on the scene after the fire? Every other Rosewood cop was."

"I saw your car speeding away from Spencer's house," Emily piped up, curling her knees into her chest. "Like you were fleeing the scene of the crime."

Aria sneaked a peek at Emily, uncertain. She hadn't noticed a cop car leaving Spencer's house last night.

Wilden leaned against the little metal sink in the corner. "Girls. Why would I set fire to those woods?"

"You were covering up what you did to Ali," Spencer said. "You and Jason."

Emily turned to Spencer. "He didn't do anything to Ali. Ali's alive."

Wilden jerked and glanced at Emily for a moment. Then he appraised the other girls, a look of betrayal on his face. "You really believe I tried to hurt you?" he asked them. The girls nodded almost imperceptibly. Wilden shook his head. "But I'm trying to help you!" When there was still no response, he sighed. "Jesus. Fine. I was with my uncle last night when the fire broke out. I lived with him in high school, and he'd really sick." he shoved his hands into his jacket pocket and whipped out a piece of paper. "Here."

Aria and the others leaned over. It was a receipt from CVS. "I was picking up a prescription for my uncle at nine fifty-seven, and I heard the fire started around ten," Wilden said. "I'm probably even on the drugstore's security camera. How could I be in two places at once?"

The room suddenly smelled pungently of Wilden's musky cologne, making Aria woozy. Was it possible Wilden wasn't the guy she'd seen in the woods lighting the fire?

"And as for the propane," Wilden went on, touching the large bouquet of flowers that sat on Spencer's nightstand, "Jason DiLaurentis asked me to buy it for his lake house in the Poconos. He's been busy, and we're old friends, so I said I'd do it for him."

Aria glanced at the others, taken aback by Wilden's nonchalance. Last night, finding out that Jason and Wilden were friends had seemed like a huge breakthrough, a secret busted open. Now, in the light of day, with his open admission, it didn't seem to matter very much at all.

"And as for what Jason and I did to Alison…" Wilden trailed off, stopping by a little tray on wheels that held a small pitcher of water and two foam cups. He looked dumbstruck. "It's crazy to think I'd hurt her. And Jason's her brother! You really think he's capable of that?"

Aria opened her mouth to protest. Last night, Emily had found a sign-in ledger from when the Radley was a mental hospital with Jason DiLaurentis's name all through it. New A had also teased Aria that Jason was hiding something—possibly about issues with Ali—and tipped off Emily that Jenna and Jason were fighting in Jenna's window. Aria hadn't wanted to believe that Jason was guilty—she'd gone on a few dates with him the week before, fulfilling a longtime crush—but Jason had flown off the handle when Aria had gone to his apartment in Yarmouth on Friday.

Wilden was shaking his head with utter disbelief. He seemed so blindsided by all this, which made Aria wonder if anything A had led them to believe was even remotely true. She gazed questioningly at her friends. Their faces were laced with doubt, too.

Wilden shut Spencer's door, then turned around and glared at them. "Let me guess," he said in a low voice. "Did your New A plant these ideas in your heads?"

"A is real," Emily insisted. Time and again, Wilden had insisted that New A was nothing more than a copycat. "A took pictures of you, too," she went on. She rifled through her pocket, pulled out her phone, and scrolled to the picture message of Wilden going to confession. Aria caught sight of A's accompanying note: What's he so guilty about? "See?" Emily dangled it under his nose.

Wilden stared at the screen. His expression didn't change. "I didn't know it was a crime to go to church."

Scowling, Emily stuffed her phone back into her swim bag. A long pause followed. Wilden pinched the flap of skin at the bridge of his long, sloped nose. It seemed like all the air in the room had seeped out the windows. "Look. I need to tell you what I really came in here for." His irises were so dark they looked black. "You girls have to stop saying you saw Alison."

Everyone exchanged a startled glance. Spencer looked a bit indicated, raising a perfectly arched eyebrow as if to say, I told you so. Predictably, Emily was the first to speak. "You want us to lie?"

"You didn't see her." Wilden's voice was gruff. "If you keep saying you did, it's going to bring a lot of unwanted attention on you. You think the backlash was bad when you said you saw Ian's body? This will be ten times worse."

Aria shifted her weight, fiddling with the cuff of her hooded sweater. Wilden was speaking to them like he was a South Philly cop and they were meth dealers. But what had they done that was so wrong?

"This isn't fair," Emily protested. "She needs our help."

Wilden raised his hands to the white popcorn ceiling in defeat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing a tattoo of an eight-pointed star. Emily was glancing at the star too. From her narrowed eyes and wrinkled nose, Aria guessed she wasn't a fan.

"I'm going to tell you something that's supposed to be top secret," Wilden said, lowering his voice. "The DNA results for the body the workers found in the hole are at the station. It's a perfect match for Alison, girls. She's dead. So do what I say, okay? I really am looking out for your best interest."

At that, he flipped open his phone, strode out of the room, and slammed the door hard. The foam cups on the food tray wobbled precariously. Aria turned back to her friends. Spencer's lips were pressed together fretfully. Hanna chewed anxiously on a thumbnail. Emily blinked her round, green eyes, stunned into speechless.

"So, now what?" Aria whispered.

Emily whimpered, Spencer fiddled with her IV, and Hanna looked like she was going to keel over. All their perfectly crafted theories had gone up in smoke—literally. Maybe Wilden hadn't set the fire—but Aria had seen someone out there in the woods. Which unfortunately meant only one thing.

Whoever had lit that match was still out there. Whoever had tried to kill them was still on the loose, maybe waiting for a chance to try it again.