The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(52)

“Look at this,” Stevie said.

“Yeah, I know, but remember how these things can be unstable? That, is a hole. A small hole. Anything could be down there. There could be wires or something. There could be water.”

David hung down into the opening with the flashlight.

“I don’t see any water,” he said. “Or wires.”

“Seriously,” Nate said.

Stevie knew he had a point. Also, she had made one other promise—to Larry. No tunneling.

Still . . .

“Nate’s right,” she said.

She sprang up from her crouch and went looking for her phone.

“We can’t just go in there. Here’s what we do,” Stevie said. “We call Janelle. For sure she has a little drone with a camera or something and we fly it down there and . . .”

“Time for hole-diving!” David said, turning himself around so that he was feet first. He started lowering himself down.

“David!” she said. “Seriously. We don’t . . .”

“But we will,” he said. “If I don’t come back in ten minutes, avenge me. Or are you coming? You know you want to.”

Then he started climbing down. Nate shook his head and started to disappear into his robes.

“It’s cool down here,” David yelled up. “You should come in. There’s . . .”

He emitted a scream, which caused both Nate and Stevie to leap. Stevie almost threw herself on top of the hole. David peered up and smiled.

“Kidding. It’s fine,” he said, looking up at her. “You guys are so jumpy.”

“What if it collapses?” Nate said.

“Like, suddenly? Just when we’re in it? For no reason?”

“We could wait for Janelle. . . .”

“Come on,” David said. “You don’t get chances like this all the time. Come on come on come on come on come on. You can’t resist.”

Was it the smile? Was it the coat and the suit? The glint in his eye? Or was it just the pure tunnelness of it all? Because he was right. She could not resist.

“He can’t go alone,” she said to Nate.

“He can. We could shut the hatch.”

“Just watch for us?” she said. “I promise, promise, promise we’ll be careful, but I can’t let him go by himself.”

Nate yanked his beard down to his chest.

“Why. Do. People. Do. Stupid. Things.”

“Because we’re stupid,” she said. She tested the top rung with her foot. Nate grabbed her arm—not hard, but enough to get her attention.

“Hayes didn’t die from the tunnel coming down,” he said. “He died from a gas. You have no idea what’s down there.”

This gave Stevie a moment’s pause. He was right.

“But that gas wasn’t in the tunnel before,” Stevie said. “Someone put that dry ice there. The tunnel was fine before. I went in it. Look, we’re just going to . . . go a little bit.”

“You make it really hard for me,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “But, dragons.”

“Don’t.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. But will you watch anyway?”

Nate rubbed a tired hand across his forehead.

“Do I have any choice?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Yeah, but you’d go even if I didn’t. He’s down there.”

Stevie wondered what that meant, but there was no time to wonder much. There was a tunnel to explore.





14


STEVIE HAD ENTERED A TUNNEL AT ELLINGHAM ACADEMY BEFORE—the famous tunnel. That tunnel was wide as a highway in comparison with this one. This was a crack in the earth, too tight, too low, and much, much too dark. Stevie turned her flashlight straight down, forming a pool that splashed up the walls around her. Unlike the tunnel to the sunken garden, which was made of even brickwork, this was made of rough rock, possibly pieces left over from the mountain demolition. They might not cut you open, Stevie thought, as she tentatively felt along the wall in front of her, but they would rub you raw if you made contact with your bare skin. She couldn’t extend her elbows more than a few inches in either direction, so she hesitantly reached overhead into the dark; the ceiling was only a little more than a hand’s length above her head. And with each step, the walls grew a little closer.

It was, in a word, unwelcoming. In two words, a mistake.

Some part of Stevie possessed enough basic self-preservation to know that structural integrity and air quality were important parts of staying alive, and not being in tunnels was an important part of Larry not busting her ass right off the mountain. But some louder, wilder, definitely stupider part of her kept her moving forward.

And it wasn’t just because David had gone down first, no matter what Nate said.

Stevie tucked her hands up into the arms of Poirot’s jacket to keep from being cut and numbly felt her way along, taking half-sized steps, and right into David’s back.

“That’s you, right?” he said. “I’m afraid of monsters. Also, it stinks down here.”

This was true. There was a lowlying funk in the air.

“The drone would work better,” she said. “You know, if that’s a leaking gas line or something.”