The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(59)

Stevie didn’t actually care about what Carson was doing. She needed to get into the woods and see and hear for herself what had happened to Allison. She took the microphone and hopped out of the car, sprinting across the quiet country lane. Once she was actually in the woods, her phone lost all sense of where she was located. It put her position as either in the road or in the middle of the lake. So she picked her way through the trees until she could see the glint of the water, and then she found one of the paths that wound around the lake. She walked in the direction of Arrowhead Point, trying to keep out of sight of any police or emergency personnel that might be around. But she saw no one except a woman walking her dog, who seemed to have no idea that anything was going on. Strange how someone could die in these woods and everything would be normal and peaceful. These woods ate people up and were quiet about it.

Stevie felt cold despite the heat. She pressed on, in a haze, finding her way on the slatted-wood bridges over the hollows and the silent wood chips, always keeping the lake on her left-hand side, watching it out of one eye, scanning for activity.

Finally, she heard the sound of people talking up ahead.





She left the path and wove through the trees until she could see a small group of older women gathered on a bit of sandy beach, speaking in a huddle. From here, she could see the rise of Arrowhead Point, and maybe some people walking around on top, but not much else. She slipped out of the trees, making a bit of noise so she didn’t just pop out of nowhere and scare these strangers. After fitting the microphone into the jack of her phone and tucking it as far into her pocket as she could, she tried to act like she was out taking a casual walk.

“Did something happen?” she said, approaching them and squinting up at the point.

“Woman fell,” said one of the swimmers. “From up there.” She nodded toward Arrowhead Point.

“She just . . . fell?”

“We heard a scream and she kind of tumbled off . . .”

“Like she tripped,” said another swimmer.

“Yeah, she must have tripped.”

This was why you weren’t supposed to let witnesses talk to one another before you spoke to them—when people all see something together and discuss it, details will start to merge. All that seemed to be known was that Allison had screamed and fallen, but the story had already become that she had tripped.

“Barbara—she’s Barbara—she went back to the dock because her shorts were close to the edge and she could get her phone, and I went up to wait for the police. Our friends swam over to try to help, but . . .”

“It was too late,” Barbara said.





“She fell onto those rocks. No one would survive that.”


“Was there anyone else up there?” Stevie said.

“You mean, did someone push her?” Barbara said. “Oh god. No. There was no one. We would have seen. We could see her clearly. There was no one up there but her. She was screaming. She must have tripped.”

“She must have tripped,” the woman who was not Barbara repeated sadly.

Stevie decided not to press Barbara and not-Barbara any further. They were upset, and they had conveyed what they had witnessed—a woman screaming and tumbling off a rocky point.

Not a woman. Allison Abbott. The librarian, the archivist of her sister’s life. The runner. The person who had been through so much, who loved her sister so fiercely.

Stevie felt nauseous and turned back into the woods, walking the way she had come, taking big gulps of soft pine-scented air, trying to let the curtain of greens and browns and pinpoint sunlight soothe her.

Screaming. Tumbling. Her brain, fueled by thousands of hours of absorbing true and fictional crime, painted the scene in vivid detail.

Then the rush came—the flush of anxiety and panic, the one that made the trees loom and the ground sinister. The one that twisted the morning into something that mocked her and separated her from all that was familiar.

“No,” she said out loud, stopping. She closed her eyes and practiced her breathing, in slowly, holding, releasing





even slower. Breathe. Exhale. She let the world wobble and fall away for a moment.

When she opened her eyes again, all had not been fixed in its entirety, but things were a bit more stable. And she was going somewhere that would help. She tramped on, passing several camping areas, until she finally saw some tents she recognized, and beyond them, the red one she was looking for. She jogged up to it, then wasn’t sure what to do for a moment. You can’t knock on a tent.

“Hey,” she said, her voice coming out rushed. “Hey?”

There was a stirring within.

“Stevie?” said a sleepy voice.

A shuffling. Then the zipper opened itself from the inside and a tousled-haired David in a T-shirt and shorts peered out. He smiled, but this faded when he saw her face.

“What’s wrong?”

Stevie sat down in one of the portable camping chairs outside the tent and stared at the ground for a moment.

“Allison Abbott is dead.”

“Allison . . . Abbott?” he said, ducking to get out of the tent. “Who is Allison Abbott?”

“Sabrina’s sister. The librarian. She fell off the point at the top of the lake. Arrowhead Point.”

“Oh shit,” he said, rubbing at his jaw, taking this in. He didn’t know Allison or Arrowhead Point, but he knew Stevie, and he knew pain and confusion. He looked around for a moment, then opened a cooler and pulled out a can of coffee.