The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(37)

They pulled the camp bed away from the wall. Stevie got down on the floor, examining it with her phone’s flashlight, looking over every inch. She found two dead flies, a small piece of used tape, a leaf, a spiderweb, and then . . .

“Here,” she said, pointing to a small spot of white paint. “Look.”

Janelle got down next to her.

“So the bed wasn’t there when that message was painted on the wall,” Janelle said.

“Exactly. This didn’t happen last night, unless we can sleep so soundly that someone can drag my bed away from the wall, set up some kind of stepladder, paint a message, and then push me back again.”

“That makes it a little better,” Janelle said, nodding. “At least someone wasn’t in here with us. So what do we do now?”

“Well . . .” Stevie sat on the edge of her squeaky camp bed. “We can’t tell Nicole about this. She doesn’t really want us here, and she’s definitely not going to like this, especially on the day the other counselors are coming. She might tell Carson we have to leave.”

“But I think we should make sure this place is secure. What if Carson could get us some plug-and-play cameras?”

Stevie pulled out her phone to text him.





“He’ll be thrilled about this,” she said grimly. She took a few pictures of the message and sent the texts. His reply came within a minute.


Will be there as soon as possible with cameras. Have something to show you.

“Cameras are coming,” Stevie said. “You shower and I’ll stay here. Then I’ll go.”

Janelle quickly gathered up her shower basket, towel, and clothes and headed off to get ready. Stevie went outside to sit on the tiny concrete porch of the cabin, hanging her legs over the side and letting her bare toes tickle the dirt. It was early, but she needed to make a phone call.

To her surprise, David answered right away.

“You’re awake?” she said.

“Long drive today,” he said. “We left at six. How’s camp treating my princess?”

“Could be better,” she said. “Someone wrote the word SURPRISE above my bed last night.”

“Is this . . . some kind of sex joke?”

“No. Someone painted a message on our wall. It’s the thing that was written at the crime scene in 1978.”

“Okay,” David said, sounding maybe not so okay. “First of all . . . are you all right?”

“It’s fine,” Stevie said, shielding her eyes from the bright morning sun. “Just a prank.”

“Some fucking prank. What happened? They went into your cabin when you were out, or . . . ?”





“It’s sort of more complicated than that,” she said. “We don’t really know when they did it, except it wasn’t while we were asleep. Somehow they did it before and we only saw it when we woke up.”


“What?”

She shook her head. It was complicated even if you were there, looking at it, and felt impossible to explain over the phone.

“Someone’s playing a game,” she continued. “Maybe someone knows about me, about how at Ellingham someone left a message on my wall.”

“I don’t want to keep bringing up what happened last time, but last time? That person was a murderer.”

“This feels different,” she said.

“Oh good.”

“We’re getting some security cameras. I don’t know what happened, but I’m going to find out.”

“Yeah, I hate this,” he said. “How does this keep happening to . . . Scratch that. I know exactly how this keeps happening to you.”

If Stevie was being completely honest with herself—and she preferred not to be—David’s concern felt very good. He was really worried about her, possibly more worried than she was about herself. He cared. It sent warm bubbles of pleasure through her system.

Then a voice broke through the haze of romantic bliss.

“Welcome, counselors!” Nicole said over the loudspeaker.





“Please bring your things to the dining pavilion.”

“I have to get ready and get going,” she said.

“Okay, but text me. Call me. Both. Let me know what’s going on, okay?”

“I promise,” she said.

She couldn’t help but break into a smile as she said it.

When Janelle returned, dressed in a flowing blue sundress, Stevie grabbed her things. The bathroom area was only a few yards away. The toilets and sinks were in a concrete and wood building (with no doors, so the air and flies could get in without difficulty). The showers were wooden stalls outside of this main structure, with no ceilings. It was basically a fancy hose in an open box, raised slightly off the ground to allow for drainage. Stevie would have much preferred it if the shower had been flush with the ground, because it seemed like a low, dark space under a shower would be an ideal spot for a family of snakes. Something had to live under there.

She tried not to think about it.

Though no one could see inside, it felt weirdly exposed to be able to see the sky and the trees above her as she undressed and showered. The water wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either. It was already so muggy that it made no difference. She washed quickly, barely taking the time to rinse all the shampoo out of her hair. There were definite advantages to having short hair you cut yourself—all she needed to do was rub it a few times with her hand to dry and style it. She tugged on a shirt and a pair of black shorts, stuffed her feet back into her flip-flops, and took a leap out of the shower box to make