The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious #2)(62)

Stevie, not being a regular runner, stopped when she got to the tree cover on the other side and heaved a bit, her throat raw. She slowed just enough to hear if David was following her. Of course, he wasn’t. David wouldn’t be behind her anymore.

She continued on to the circle of statue heads, the gossipy stone chorus that gathered eternally between Minerva and the yurt. She held on to one of the plinths and caught her breath. She had to get herself together. Think. Her friends would be at the yurt, waiting for her. That was where she was expected. But she couldn’t face them, couldn’t risk another encounter with David.

She circled a bit under the dark sky and hated it for being so wide.

Maybe she should call her parents and leave.

No. That was fear talking. She had to get a grip. She needed . . .

She spun her bag and opened the front pocket, feeling around until her fingers hit a small metal tumbler, about half the size of her thumb. She twisted it open and dumped the contents into her palm.

One small white pill. The emergency Ativan that she carried “just in case.” The one she never really expected to take. It was not a large pill, so she put it on her tongue and tossed her head back and force swallowed a few times until it went down dry. It would take a little while to work, but at least she knew it was heading for her stomach, where it would be picked apart and sent to her bloodstream.

She felt the need to sleep. Just put her head down somewhere, anywhere, and sleep. If not home and not the yurt, then . . .

She pointed herself in the direction of the art barn, taking broad, fast steps. Upon reaching the barn, she tapped herself in and pulled the door closed behind her.

She walked along at a clip to the yoga studio—a high-ceilinged, bare room with a mirrored wall and a bamboo floor. She pulled that door closed tight as well and then, for no reason she could understand, grabbed one of the yoga straps and ran it around the door handle, lashing it to a barre. It wasn’t the tightest security, but it was something. Then she switched on the light, assured herself that the room was utterly vacant, then turned it off again.

Once you start doing something weird and you fully embrace it, it’s much easier to get on with it. Stevie proceeded to build herself a tiny bunker in the alcove where the yoga supplies were stored. She made herself a thick bed of mats, which she covered in several blankets for padding and for warmth. She folded another blanket as a pillow. Then she stacked the rest of the supplies next to this nest, making a short protective wall around herself so that anyone peering into the room would see nothing but a small pile of yoga blankets and mats. She climbed into the bed she had made for herself, pulling several blankets over her. It was quiet and dark and she was very alone. The wind whistled alongside the building and the trees scraped the art barn roof. The yoga blankets were a little stinky and scratchy, but they were warm and soft enough. She took out her phone and wrote a text to Janelle and Nate.

I am fine. Going to bed.

Nate’s reply came quick: Sleeping where?

Janelle’s followed a minute later: You okay? Where are you?

She replied to both: Fine going to sleep see you at breakfast

Maybe she would stay here forever.

Ellie . . .

Ellie was a missing person, now found. Someone who had blown into the wind, and now the wind had blown her back.

And David . . .

She had destroyed whatever was there. She had killed it. She had murdered her feelings and his, but now all was exposed. She closed her eyes. She was so tired.

Larry would know where she was—her whole, embarrassing path would have been visible. She would not be lost, like Ellie. It was as if Larry alone was watching over her slumber, and that was the only thought that consoled her.





17


STEVIE WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, WHICH WAS A GOOD START. WHEN things are bad, give yourself a point for everything.

She sat up. (Another point.) She was stiff and sore, her mouth dry, her hair definitely sticking up on one side. She felt a waffle pattern of yoga blanket on the right side of her face and the faint smell of lavender and patchouli permeating her being. It was like she had been run over by a boulder made of hippies.

She reached around, trying to find her phone in her belongings. It was stuck between some of the yoga mats she had been sleeping on. It informed her that it was 9:50 in the morning.

“Crap,” she said.

When she took an Ativan, she tended to sleep hard and a lot. People could have been trying to access the yoga studio and she would have had no idea. She peeked over the short wall of blankets and mats to see if there were any angry yoga fiends waiting at the door to get their chakras on. No one in sight. She crawled out of her nest. You were supposed to roll your mat and fold your blanket at the end of class and say namaste and things like that, but this was not class, so Stevie shoved everything back into something resembling the right position and unwound the strap that was holding the door closed. Outside, she saw gray skies and there was slanting rain smacking into the windows.

“That checks out,” she mumbled.

She reached up and rubbed her hand roughly over her short hair, taming it as best she could. She rubbed any sleep out of her eyes and away from her mouth. She had slept in her vinyl coat, so now it had a weird flipped-up bend in the bottom. This was not a good look or a good feel, but this was something detectives had to do. She might have to spend the night in a car, or an abandoned building on a stakeout. Detectives were always rough and sleepless. Of course, she thought, as she pushed open the studio door, not all of them slept in yoga studios by choice, but she would build up to it.