The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(40)

“That should cover all the angles,” she said. “It’s got smart detection, so we’ll know if anyone comes in. Most of the other counselors are doing orientation games. We’re the special ones, so we get to spend the day unpacking art supplies and setting things up. Apparently supplies just arrived.”

They headed over to the art pavilion, where Janelle stopped short.

“Oh my god,” Janelle said when she saw the many piles of boxes. “So much to unpack and put in order.”

The joy in her voice couldn’t be hidden.





“Do you need a moment alone?” Stevie asked.


“Maybe?”

Janelle set about her dream job, while Stevie set about to work on the problem.

Stevie took the dolls out of the box and set them on the little table in front of her. Doll Sabrina. Doll Diane. Doll Todd. All slashed with red paint. This was easy and direct enough. The message on their cabin wall was different, clever.

Since she didn’t know how the latter had been done, she switched over to asking why. Why leave the message? Why leave a box of murder dolls on Carson’s running path? What would these things do?

Well, cause fear. That seemed like the obvious answer.

It would have taken time to get the dolls, time to make the outfits, time to do whatever it was that was done to their cabin. These things hadn’t been knocked together in the short space of time between Carson’s announcement last night and when they got back to the camp. Someone had been planning this for a few days, at least.

So someone knew she was coming and had taken the time to look her up.

It was entirely possible that some people in town had gotten wind of Carson’s plans before he announced them. Did they think this would stop the podcast from happening? There was no message attached to these things, nothing that said stop making your podcast.

Maybe it was a question of how. But the how still eluded her. How did you paint a message on a wall well in advance and





have that message be invisible? She spent the next hour looking up paints, dyes, and invisible inks, but absolutely nothing turned up that explained how the thing could be done.

“It had to be something with the paint, right?” she said, coming up behind Janelle and startling her as she was organizing pipe cleaners by size and color. She pulled out her earbuds, leaking music out into the art pavilion.

“The paint,” Stevie said, sitting down on the concrete floor opposite her. “It had to be something with the paint. But I can’t find any paint online that would do what we experienced. I think it was meant to freak me out.”

“And me,” Janelle added.

“. . . us out. But I mean, it also feels like a gift to me? It’s an impossible puzzle. It’s the kind of thing I’ll obsess over.”

“Maybe you have a fan,” Janelle said.

This had something to it. A fan? Some true-crime creep who wanted to mess with the student sleuth. It didn’t explain what had happened with Carson and his box, but it made a lot of sense in terms of the cabin.

“A fan,” Stevie repeated. “Someone wants to play? Then we’ll play.”

“Oh god, no.”

Stevie’s phone buzzed, and she checked her texts. There was one from Nicole.

COME TO THE DINING PAVILION, it read.

“I’ve been summoned,” Stevie said. “If I don’t come back, avenge me.”

She walked over to the dining pavilion with a vague sense





of dread. Nicole was working on her laptop at a picnic table at one end.

“Someone wants to talk to you,” she said. “She’s over there.”

Allison Abbott sat alone at one of the picnic tables at the far side, pensively tapping her chin with her fist. When Stevie approached, she looked up and straightened. Stevie braced herself. The relative of a victim had come here to chastise her. She felt sick but walked on and sat down.

“Hey,” Stevie said.

“Stevie,” she replied. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”

Stevie could not hide her surprise at this turn of events.

“People always talk about this like it’s some lurid slasher movie,” Allison went on. “I lost my sister. Some bastard took my sister from me. I feel like Carson used her memory, gave us that reading room, to try to worm his way in. He can go to hell. But I didn’t mean to catch you in the crossfire.”

She leaned back a bit, taking Stevie in. Stevie was unsure what to do or say now that this announcement had been made. There was a heavy pause, full of the scent of boiled hot dog water.

“Why did you come here?” Allison asked.

“Because I got a message that—”

“I mean here, to Barlow Corners, to this camp. Carson clearly brought you here specially, which is why you were at the event last night and why he keeps introducing you to everyone as the girl from Ellingham Academy and as his





partner in this project of his. I know what he wants. Why did you come here?”

Stevie considered her words carefully.

“Because . . . I want to . . . because people need answers. Because someone should do something.”

Allison cocked her head very slightly to the side. For a moment, she said nothing at all. Stevie felt a clammy nervousness brewing.