Game (Jasper Dent #2)(64)

“Still is,” Connie said quietly.

Howie nodded once, firmly. “You know what, Connie?”

“What, Howie?”

“We can’t stop Billy Dent. Not the two of us.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“But we can ruin him. We can piss him off and take away the thing he wants more than anything in the world. Can’t we? Can’t we do that?”

Connie thought of kissing Jazz. Of her hands on him, of his on her. Of their hesitant first kiss and of the passionate ones that followed.

“Yeah. We can take away his dream, Howie. We can keep Jazz from becoming Billy.” Mostly, she knew, because Jazz would do the heavy lifting. He would have to—the danger signs and the tools were all locked up in his head, and no one else had the key.

“We can make it easier for him,” Howie said. “That’s what we do, right? We make it easier for Jazz to be normal.”

“Yep.”

She took his hand in her own. It was almost comical, the two of them wearing gloves so heavy that their fingers couldn’t entwine. But that was okay. It wasn’t about the contact. It was about the solidarity.

“So that’s the cherry tree,” she said after a while.

“Sure is. Sunrise.”

“I think that means we face east.”

Howie nodded and released her hand after a brief squeeze. At the cherry tree, they used the compasses on their phones to find east. “Now what?” Howie asked. “The next clue is ‘Jasper.’ ”

“I think we’re supposed to walk. And the last clue is ‘down,’ so we’re supposed to dig.”

“Sure, that makes sense. But walk how far? His age? Seventeen steps?” Without waiting for an answer, Howie immediately loped off to the east, counting out until he hit seventeen.

Shaking her head, Connie caught up to him as he looked around. “The ground doesn’t look disturbed at all.”

“Whatever was buried was buried a long time ago, I bet.”

“Why do you say that?”

Connie wasn’t sure why she said that—it just made sense. It was the kind of thing Jazz would say with complete confidence, and when someone questioned him, he would rattle off an explanation that was duh-worthy.

Channeling her inner Jazz with all her might, she said, “Well…” and then it hit her.

“Look,” she said, speaking rapidly, before the idea could flit out of her mind as quickly as it had flown in, like a bug sucked into and out of an open car window. “We don’t know for sure who’s leading us on this wild-goose chase, but odds are it’s Billy or someone connected to Billy, right? So the first thing that happened after Billy broke out of prison was the FBI and the cops landed on Lobo’s Nod like it was D-day. They covered this place for weeks. So no one would be able to get here, of all places, to bury something. Which means that whatever we’re looking for here was buried at least before Billy went to jail.”

Howie nodded. “Yeah. All right, that tracks.” He stomped the ground with his huge foot. “And, yeah, if anything’s buried here, it had to be long enough ago that all the ground settled.”

Glancing back at the cherry tree—seventeen Howie-steps to the west—Connie shook her head. “It’s not right here. It can’t be.”

“Jazz is seventeen,” Howie protested. “I took seventeen steps—”

“Right. But first of all, we’re assuming seventeen is the right number. Think about it—if whatever it was was buried a long time ago, there’s no way the burier could know when we would come looking for it. Unless whoever it is specifically planned on doing something when Jazz was seventeen. But that’s ridiculous because—”

“—because what if something made it so that this ‘game’ had to be triggered earlier?” Howie finished. “I get it. So maybe it’s Jazz’s age when the thing was buried?” Howie groaned. “How are we supposed to know that?” He turned away from her, morose.

“Come on, Howie. Don’t punk out on me. Whoever’s doing this wants us to play the game. We can figure this out.” She hoped. What if this wasn’t a game, but a joke? What if this was a setup, designed to get Jazz’s girlfriend and best friend out here where something could—

“The cherry tree…” Howie spun around. “We were eleven!”

Before Connie could stop him, he counted back toward the cherry tree, taking six steps. He jumped up and down at the new spot, excited.

“This is it! Eleven steps away from the tree! This is the spot!” He stomped hard, then winced. “Oh, man, that’s gonna bruise!”

He was so happy that it broke Connie’s heart to tell him he was wrong. “This isn’t the spot,” she said, walking over to him.

“But we were eleven when we wanted to build the tree house. That’s why Billy or whoever chose the cherry tree as the starting—”

“Yeah, and I believe that you’re right that eleven is the answer to the ‘Jasper’ clue. But eleven what?”

“Eleven steps,” Howie said, frustrated. “It’s always ‘take three paces this way and ten paces that way.’ Jesus, Connie, haven’t you ever seen a pirate movie?”

“But whose steps, Howie? Billy’s? Jazz’s? Yours? Look at your NBA-length legs, man.” Howie looked down. “When I walk next to you, I have to take, like, a step and a half for every step you take.”