The Box in the Woods (Truly Devious #4)(68)

“Here,” Nate said, passing Stevie his computer bag.

There was a buzzing in Stevie’s pocket. She pulled out her phone to see a text from David.

The police are gone. They’ve opened the trail back up on the point.

That was all Stevie needed to hear.





22



WHILE STEVIE WANTED TO WASTE NO TIME IN GETTING OVER TO EXAMINE Arrowhead Point (and also to examine David—those feelings from the morning had not abated), she made a brief stop at her cabin. A shower would take too long, but she could manage a change of clothes. She was dismayed to discover that she had already worn all her Tshirts, due to the frequent changes of clothes. The only remaining one was the squeaky-white Camp Sunny Pines shirt she had been issued on arrival. She shrugged it on. The shirt was made of a thick, stiff cotton and was almost rectangular; it was like she was wearing a milk carton. Whatever sexy was—and Stevie had never claimed to hold this knowledge—she was sure this was the opposite. She considered borrowing Janelle’s lipstick, which she knew Janelle would be okay with, but decided against it. If Stevie put on lipstick, it would be so out of character that it would signal that something was up. It might seem like a cry for help. David might call 911. So she hurried out the door in her massive, rectangular shirt, bare-lipped.

She stopped at the bathroom cabin to fill her water bottle





at the sink and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She was developing a patchy, uneven sunburn on her face—more on the left than on the right. The heavy, wet air made her short blond locks stick to her head.

“I’m a pretty, pretty princess,” she mumbled.

David was waiting for Stevie when she got over to the campsite. It seemed that he had been swimming—he was still wet, his hair flattened to his head. (This suited him. Maybe wet, flat hair was not so bad.) He wore only his swimsuit, and he was stretched out in one of the camping chairs, looking maybe better than Stevie had ever seen him. It was during moments like these that she realized what all those hard-boiled detectives meant when they were seemingly knocked into some kind of drunken oblivion when a woman in a veiled hat walked into their office. Human hormones were powerful drugs.

There was time, of course, to maybe visit the inside of David’s tent for a while, and she was feeling optimistic when he went in that direction, but he reached in and grabbed a shirt.

“I let you know as soon as I saw them drive away,” he said. “I was watching out for you.”

Which was really good and focused of him, and only a little disappointing in terms of the moment.

“Good,” she said, nodding. “Good, yeah . . .”

They began the walk around the lake, which again was riddled with opportunities to stop for a little light making





out, but David was strangely quiet and seemed pensive. He did reach over and take her hand for a good part of the walk, which was very sweet, and also kind of weird. Something was up.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, looking at her with his slow smile. “Fine.”

By the time they reached Arrowhead Point, she had turned her mind back to the matter at hand a bit. It was sobering to be here, at this beautiful spot that Allison had showed her.

“Wow,” David said, standing beside her. “It’s a good view.”

He made his way to the edge more quickly than Stevie liked.

“You could fall here really easily,” he said. “If she was distracted or something.”

Stevie began taking slow, measured steps forward toward the edge. Where would Allison have stopped? At the safest spot with the best view, most likely. Don’t just look at it—see it. What did she see? A dark jag of rock, a bit of a slope, but it was gentle. Stevie squatted down and opened her water bottle, letting a trickle of water flow out and down the point. It made a slow, meandering path. It picked up a bit of speed at a point about halfway in, where the ledge had a small dip and really started to tip down. Stevie got down on her stomach and pressed herself along, like a snake, until she could peek over the edge. It was a straight drop onto the rocks below, then a bit of path and some trees, and about ten feet out to the lake edge. There was no sign of the body or what had happened there, but she shivered nonetheless.





It was a bad way to die.


She scooted back, only standing when she felt grass against her ankles. She joined David, who was sitting on the ground.

“So what are you thinking?” David asked.

Stevie brushed at a dark muddy stain that had gotten on the front of her white shirt.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I know that depression isn’t something you can always see and you can’t always tell if someone is in crisis, but I don’t think she went over the edge on purpose. The people below described her tumbling over the edge, screaming.”

“Then she tripped. It would be super easy to do. You’re running. You’re tired. You’re distracted and looking around, and you trip and go over the edge.”

It made sense. It was not just possible—it was likely. It certainly fit the description of what the witnesses had seen.

There was a low rumble of thunder in the distance, and though there were still hours of daylight left, the sky grew dark.

“It’s going to storm tonight,” he said, resting on his back and looking up at the sky.