The Vanishing Stair (Truly Devious, #2)(52)

“Just watch for us?” she said. “I promise, promise, promise we’ll be careful, but I can’t let him go by himself.”

Nate yanked his beard down to his chest.

“Why. Do. People. Do. Stupid. Things.”

“Because we’re stupid,” she said. She tested the top rung with her foot. Nate grabbed her arm—not hard, but enough to get her attention.

“Hayes didn’t die from the tunnel coming down,” he said. “He died from a gas. You have no idea what’s down there.”

This gave Stevie a moment’s pause. He was right.

“But that gas wasn’t in the tunnel before,” Stevie said. “Someone put that dry ice there. The tunnel was fine before. I went in it. Look, we’re just going to . . . go a little bit.”

“You make it really hard for me,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “But, dragons.”

“Don’t.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m sorry. But will you watch anyway?”

Nate rubbed a tired hand across his forehead.

“Do I have any choice?”

“Technically, yes.”

“Yeah, but you’d go even if I didn’t. He’s down there.”

Stevie wondered what that meant, but there was no time to wonder much. There was a tunnel to explore.





14


STEVIE HAD ENTERED A TUNNEL AT ELLINGHAM ACADEMY BEFORE—the famous tunnel. That tunnel was wide as a highway in comparison with this one. This was a crack in the earth, too tight, too low, and much, much too dark. Stevie turned her flashlight straight down, forming a pool that splashed up the walls around her. Unlike the tunnel to the sunken garden, which was made of even brickwork, this was made of rough rock, possibly pieces left over from the mountain demolition. They might not cut you open, Stevie thought, as she tentatively felt along the wall in front of her, but they would rub you raw if you made contact with your bare skin. She couldn’t extend her elbows more than a few inches in either direction, so she hesitantly reached overhead into the dark; the ceiling was only a little more than a hand’s length above her head. And with each step, the walls grew a little closer.

It was, in a word, unwelcoming. In two words, a mistake.

Some part of Stevie possessed enough basic self-preservation to know that structural integrity and air quality were important parts of staying alive, and not being in tunnels was an important part of Larry not busting her ass right off the mountain. But some louder, wilder, definitely stupider part of her kept her moving forward.

And it wasn’t just because David had gone down first, no matter what Nate said.

Stevie tucked her hands up into the arms of Poirot’s jacket to keep from being cut and numbly felt her way along, taking half-sized steps, and right into David’s back.

“That’s you, right?” he said. “I’m afraid of monsters. Also, it stinks down here.”

This was true. There was a lowlying funk in the air.

“The drone would work better,” she said. “You know, if that’s a leaking gas line or something.”

“Did you just say leaking gas line?” Nate said from above.

“Smells more like ass than gas,” David replied. “Tight, dark, smelly. This tunnel has it all! Five out of five stars.”

“It’s really okay to leave him to die,” Nate said. Then, perhaps remembering that someone actually had died the last time they went into the tunnel, he went silent.

The space felt like it was getting smaller, and she wondered if they might get to some point where they actually got stuck, like people who dove into caves and their hoses caught on rock and they never got out, except this wasn’t underwater. This was almost worse.

“Now this is a Halloween,” David said. Stevie could only see a bit of the back of his shirt. She kept one hand in the middle of his back as a way of maintaining pace. Now that they had proven there was a tunnel under Minerva, it was unclear to Stevie how far they had to go in this exercise. But if she knew anything about David, it was that he was going to find the other end of this passage, and if the other end was at the Great House, that was a good distance away.

So they went farther into the dark, step by step.

“So,” David said, his voice low, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we just need to clean the slate.”

Stevie hesitated for a moment, losing contact with the back of his shirt.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Maybe I should give you everything so there’s nothing left for you to snoop for. Do you want to know about me? About my dad? Do you want to know the whole deal?”

Now? Now he was doing this? In some death crack under the ground?

But it made sense, in a way. It was dark. They couldn’t see each other. No one could hear them—not even Nate, who was too far away at this point. This was as private as you could get, and they were invisible to each other.

“Okay?” she said.

“I don’t tell people my dad is Edward King because he’s Edward King. But I also don’t tell people because it’s pathetic. It’s like every other dumb divorce story. But here goes.”

Stevie wasn’t sure if the sudden airlessness in the tunnel was her imagination. Probably.

“My mom was a concierge at a swanky resort in Marin,” David began. “She did things like set up the wine-tasting weekends and the spa experiences and golf trips. Edward King went to some event there, some fundraising thing, and he and Becky locked eyes. This was before he was a big deal. He wasn’t a senator yet, just some local politician on the rise. My mom is very pretty. And Edward King is rich. It’s not that Becky is just after money, it’s more that she doesn’t get that money doesn’t make you smart. She thinks people who have it are . . . maybe not better, but more complete, or something. I don’t think she’s worked out that you can be rich and have done nothing to deserve it. Which is weird, because she dealt with rich people for a living and should have known that’s not true. She’s not stupid, but she has some issues. You don’t get together with Edward King if you feel great about yourself. It’s not a solid emotional choice.”