Something Wilder(71)

His brain rushed through patterns and ciphers related to numbers, positions, shapes.

Four, two, one, two, two, three, two.

Is it a dice cipher? Rosicrucian?

No. Position is clearly important.

The longer he stared, the more his ability to think was thwarted by the heavy, thrumming sense of a ticking clock. He felt understanding just out of grasp; maddening. They might have only a matter of minutes to figure it out, cover the stump, and head out in search of whatever was encoded there.

Leo rubbed his eyes. “Fuck.”

Beside him, Lily let out a little growl. “What if there’s more to it?” she asked. “Are we missing something, or is this it?”

“Burning it in was smart.” Reaching forward, he traced the seven distinct groups with a fingertip. “I think it’s spelling something. We just have to figure out if it’s a numeric code or something else.”

She shuffled to the other side of the stump to see it from a different angle. “Maybe we’re looking at it wrong.”

“The more I stare,” he told her, “the more I feel like I can’t see anything.”

Her breath escaped in an audible gust. “Oh my God. Leo. You’re a genius.”

“What’d I say?”

“You said you can’t see it.” She grinned. “It’s flat, but it’s written as braille. Duke didn’t use it often, but he knew it. He taught me forever ago.”

She let out a little squeal and he peered down, realizing she was right. He scraped through his brain, trying to remember the braille he’d learned for an Eagle Scout badge.

“Okay.” She pointed to the first cluster. “This first one, the backward L? Means a number is next. So, I think the second pattern is a three.”

He stared at the others. “Right, and doesn’t this dot mean a capital letter?”

“Yeah,” Lily said, nodding excitedly.

“I’m almost positive this is B,” he told her. “This one is e. And I’m pretty sure this one is s.”

“I think you’re right, but…” She pointed to the last one. “That means this is e again.”



Frowning, Lily sounded it out. “Three-Bese? ‘Bese’ is not a place. It’s not even a word.” She looked up at him dubiously.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I know.”

“Wait.” Lily’s voice was so loud and forceful that he startled. She dug for the notebook in her bag and pulled it out, extracting the other loose page that Terry had torn free—the intricately drawn and labeled map of a section of the slot canyons. It looked like a dense network of capillaries. “There.” She set it down on the stump, smacking it with a hand. “Look.”

They leaned in and studied it carefully. The start of the map was a single entry point—a wide-open crack in a boulder. From this first opening sprouted about ten smaller arteries, and each of those secondary branches had numerous tertiary and quaternary paths that got smaller and smaller as they branched away. The first series of branches were labeled with numbers, and the paths that broke off from branch one were labeled A, B, and C. The second had six narrow branches labeled A to F. And the third, labeled with Duke’s careful 3, was deeper and had branches labeled up to J.

“Three B,” he said. “Right here.”

“What’s e, s, e, then?” Almost as soon as the words were out, she slapped a hand down on the stump again. “East, south, east! Leo, these are the turns inside the Three-B slot canyon.” She reached out, gripped his arm. “These are the actual directions.”

He leaned across the stump, fitting his lips to hers, feeling her smile curve against his. Adrenaline dumped into his veins. They were really going to find it.

“Are you ready?” he whispered, leaning his forehead into hers.

She nodded, kissing him again, teasing. His blood became helium, stars popping behind his closed lids. The words I love you hovered on the tip of his tongue.

But some sounds were so distinct Leo would know them anywhere. The sound of his mother’s voice, for example. A police siren. An egg cracking. Before his brain cataloged the sound, his body tensed.

Feet crunching through dry branches.

A gun cocking.





Chapter Twenty-Six


“HELLO, LOVEBIRDS,” A voice drawled from behind Leo. “Hands where I can see them.”

Lily peered around him, eyes wide, to find two men standing in the shadows.

The one holding the gun was taller, big, and filthy, with a blood-soaked rip in his pants and cuts and scrapes down each of his meaty biceps. The other one wasn’t faring much better. He was wiry and short, his blond hair matted with dried blood near his temple. A dirty bandage clung to the back of his hand. Both were wearing the same camo-chic style Terry favored.

The Lost Boys, she assumed.

Blinking across the stump at Leo, she took in his blank shock. Still facing her, he slowly raised his hands, mirroring her own movements. It was crazy, but her first thought was to wonder whether, before this trip, he’d ever had a gun pointed at him. Leo’s life was normal. He worked in a cubicle and went on wine-tasting tours. He made cheese in France, for crying out loud.

A week with her, and he had a dead friend, another with a broken foot. He had a deep gash on his cheek, and a pistol aimed at his skull.