The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(67)

She did not go to the most high-profile crimes or scenes. She tended to show ordinary places, often inhabited by people without much money. These were people whose deaths might be overlooked or dismissed. She demanded that the investigator look and care. Look at the neatly folded towels with the single, tiny paring knife on top. Observe the worn clothing. (In fact, she often wore clothing over and over herself to wear it out enough, then cut it down to make the outfits for her studies, such was her dedication.) Examine the meat left out of the icebox, the position of the pillow, the contents of the garbage pail. Feel the textures, note the positions.

If Stevie could observe, she could make sense of it all. The word written on the inside of the hunting blind. The red cord that wasn’t the right type. The wounds on Sabrina’s hands. Eric Wilde’s position on the path. A missing diary. A boy knocked off his bicycle and killed. A brown Jeep that everyone in town knew. A seasoned runner falling from a spot she visited every day. Not all these things mattered—the point of the studies was to see that some of them did. She just had to figure out which ones. . . .

“Hey.”

Stevie looked up and pulled out her earbuds. Standing in front of her, inches away from her face, was Lucas. A new group of kids had come in and she hadn’t even noticed. Nate came in with the group, but hung back, far away from Lucas.

“What’s that?” He leaned in to look at her book. “Is that guy hanging?”





Stevie tried to close the book, but Lucas had his hand on the page.


“Why is that guy hanging? What is this?”

“Research,” she said.

“For what?”

Stevie looked around for Janelle to help her, but Janelle was busy demonstrating proper sand-in-bottle technique to some kids. Some would have called this “doing her job,” but to Stevie, this was abandonment.

“Have you read The Moonbright Cycles?” Lucas asked.

Stevie had read Nate’s book right before they started Ellingham. Her tastes ran toward true crime, and fictional crime, and fictional crime based on true crime, so an eight-hundred-page book about monsters that lived in caves and dragons and swords was not really in her wheelhouse. She’d thought it was fine. But mostly she cared because she loved Nate, and it seemed like a lot of work to write a book. She wouldn’t have been able to do it.

“Uh . . . uh-huh?”

“Don’t you think Moonbright should have stayed in Solarium? It was stupid to leave. He could have fought Marlak there.”

Nothing this child was saying corresponded to real words or ideas in her head.

“He doesn’t like suggestions,” Lucas said.

“That’s okay. He doesn’t like writing either.”

A strange look passed over Lucas’s face.

“He will,” he said, before drifting off to the opposite





corner of the pavilion to fill his sand bottle. When he was gone, Nate approached Stevie and sat down.

“I think Lucas is going to Misery your ass,” Stevie said. “Sorry about your ankles.”

“I swear to god that kid has been watching me in my sleep,” Nate said, wrapping his arms around himself. He noted the book that Stevie had in front of her. “That’s terrifying,” he said, pulling it toward him and opening it up. He flipped through it, asking no questions about why Stevie was examining miniature scenes of horrible deaths.

“I’ve got to figure out something to do,” she said. “About Allison.”

“What’s there to do, though?”

“This case, this place—it’s too much, and at the same time, it feels like it all fits together. Like when you do a puzzle and you first open the box and it’s just a pile of random pieces, then as you go, they get easier to snap together. I feel it, but I’m not there yet. I feel how Allison’s death fits in. I feel that it wasn’t an accident. I feel like I’ve even seen how it happened, like I already know, but it’s in some part of my brain I can’t get to? Do you know what I mean?”

Nate nodded.

“Like when I write. I kind of know what it is I want to do, and I can’t write for so long because it feels out of reach and it drives me crazy, but when I see it I can . . .”

She tuned out for a moment, focusing on something happening over his shoulder. He turned to see what she was looking at. Nicole was striding toward them.





“Shit,” Stevie said. “I didn’t even do anything wrong this time.”


She put the Nutshell Studies book on her lap under the table. Nicole came over, but she wasn’t looking at Stevie.

“Fisher,” she said. “Josh Whitley, the other counselor, has arrived. You can move your things over to the treehouse now.”

Nate’s eyes grew wide.

“I can help you,” Stevie said. “Janelle’s got this.”

Nate was a new man as they went back over to his cabin to get his things. Stevie was amazed when she entered. The kids had stuff everywhere, and even though the place was well-vented, there was a strange funk in the air. She stepped over a pair of small, used underpants that were in the middle of the floor as she followed Nate back to his sleeping area. Nate had never unpacked. He’d been ready to flee at all times. Dylan, however, had spread his things far and wide. He had a ring light for selfies, plus loads of equipment. He had about nine pairs of sunglasses spread out over his bureau, several shady-looking dietary supplements, and many items that suggested a life of surfing, skateboarding, and influencing.