The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(24)

“This is it,” he said. “Blink and you’d miss it.”

They stepped out into the woods. The air here had a rich smell of leaves and plant life, and the sun occasionally poked through the cover in a thin finger of light, but mostly it was subdued and soft. Their footsteps fell silently on the dirt and soft pine needles underfoot.

“This is like being inside of a meditation app,” Nate said, looking around.

Carson pointed at a small stake in the ground by the path





with a black ribbon tied to it.

“People come here and mark the spot where you should stop your car. The parks department takes the stake out all the time, and someone puts one back in.”

He cheerfully marched on, into the trees. Stevie was about to follow, but Janelle put out her hand, which held a bottle.

“Tick spray,” she said. “There are going to be so many ticks in here, and Lyme disease is no joke.”

Ticks. Snakes. This is why camping was bad. This and every other reason.

After spraying themselves, they followed Carson down an indistinguishable path, a random and winding walk through the trees, full of roots and snags and branches that reached out to grab hair and clothing. They shortly arrived at a small clearing. The only thing that indicated anything at all might have happened here was a small ring of stones where a fire had been, with a few melted-down candles in the grass.

“This is it,” he said. “People come here, as you can see. It’s a big murder tour and goth hangout.”

The first thing Stevie noticed was that the spot was so . . . unremarkable. When she’d read that this occurred in a clearing in the woods, she expected a wide-open space. This was a spot between some trees, maybe a little larger than most, but it wasn’t special.

“I’ve worked out all the spacing from studying the photos,” Carson said. “Many of the trees are still here. That fire





pit is about right. People have been coming here long enough to mark the spot that they basically made the campfire area permanent.”

He stood on a spot to the left of the stone circle.

“There were log seats there, and there. Everything here at this site was left in an undisturbed state. No sign of a fight of any kind. There was a blanket that would have been about here, the tray of grass was on it. The box was this way. . . .”

He continued on, back into the woods.

“He’s creepier than you,” Nate whispered to Stevie. “How does that make you feel?”

“Honestly, pretty good,” she replied.

The path this time was much thicker, harder to walk down. Stevie had to press back branches with every step. This was where the wild things were, quite literally. When Carson stopped again, there was barely a clearing—just a narrow space between trees.

“It was right here,” he said, leaning on a thick oak tree. “The infamous box. In actuality, it was a hunting blind.”

“What exactly is a hunting blind?” Janelle asked.

“Basically a place to hide,” Carson replied. “It looks like a box. It has a slit open in the side, just big enough to see out of. Hunters sit in the blind and look out and wait for animals.”

“That seems fair,” Nate said.

“And literal,” Stevie added. “In this case. Do we know what happened to it?”

“The police took the lid,” Carson said. “Souvenir hunters





took the rest, years ago.”

“So the crime scene walked away,” Stevie said.

They tramped back to the clearing. As she stood there on the spot of a notorious quadruple homicide, Stevie had a strange feeling—and not the strange feeling that you would expect to get on the site of a notorious quadruple homicide. The sun was bright overhead. A soft summer breeze came through the trees. Everything smelled soft and fresh. This spot was . . .

Nice. It was a nice, normal spot. A good spot for a picnic, or to hang out under the stars with your friends. Its remoteness almost added to the feeling of security. It was padded by woods—a nook. A little oasis. Sabrina, Eric, Todd, and Diane had come here, set up their blankets and music and snacks, set about their rolling and talking and having fun. Someone had waited, perhaps behind one of these very trees, for the right moment.

“What are you thinking?” Carson asked.

What was she thinking? What was the feeling? What was it, this little sensation, like a finger tracing its way up her spine?

“I knew it was out in the woods,” she said, “but I guess I thought it was closer to the camp. This is remote. And it’s so . . . it’s not a place you’d stumble upon. You’d have to know where to go. There were four of them. Four teenagers. One was a football captain, but it sounded like they were all physically fit. So a lone murderer, or even a pair, they’d





be outnumbered. How do you subdue four young adults in a remote place like this, that they may know better than you do?”

“Gunpoint,” Carson said. “That’s one way.”

“But they were all stabbed. If you have them at gunpoint, you shoot them.”

“And there were drugs in their systems, but they weren’t sedated or anything like that,” Carson said.

“So they’re maybe high or drunk, but they’re conscious—conscious enough that Eric could run four miles in the dark. Probably not gunpoint. Maybe you separate them, or they’ve separated themselves. You go two by two. Lots of killers have taken on couples.”