They All Fall Down (21 page)

“And another Benjamin Franklin?”

This time he gives me a sardonic smile. “Ten of ’em.”

“A thousand dollars?” I choke on the words. “To do the ropes course again?”

He shakes his head, his eyes as dark as a night sky, filled with regret and something a little scarier. “To go to the Keystone Quarry. The same night Olivia Thayne was killed.”

Holy, holy hell. “And you went.”

“Not until I got a text from you.”

“That I didn’t send.” Then who did? “Any other times?”

“Yeah. One more that I ignored.”

“To go where?”

“A house.” He grimaces. “The house where Chloe Batista died.”

I inhale so sharply I almost cough. “The night she was killed?”

He nods. “But I ignored it and the money because I didn’t want to miss a chance to see you.”

“But someone invited you to go to both places where the girls were killed?”

“Died,” he corrects, but I just look away. Did they die in horrible accidents or were they helped along?

“And you saw the truck in the lot when we were having coffee,” I say.

He nods again. “I got a little freaked out by that, thinking I
was being followed. So I left, hoping that if he was on my tail, he’d follow me and leave you out of anything.”

“Did he?”

He shakes his head. “Never saw the truck again. But you did.”

At the house where Chloe was killed. “And I got the plates. Which we have to give to the police.”

A dark truck comes down the ramp, and we’re both silent, but I feel his whole body relax. “That’s a Tundra. Different truck.” He turns back to me. “We’re not giving anything to the police, Kenzie.”

“
What?
Two girls are dead.”

“Exactly.”

I don’t follow, and then I do. “Do you think they’ll accuse you?”

“I think that if they stop thinking these deaths are accidents, then I’m their number one suspect.”

“But you’re innocent!” I insist. “And girls on this list are dying. And everything we know is—”

“A bunch of coincidence and conjecture to the police,” he says, staring at the ramp as if he can will our truck to come back. “Kids like me make perfect fall guys, Kenzie. And I think that’s why I’ve been paid to be in the wrong place at the—There he is.”

The truck pulls off at the bottom of the ramp, the driver’s side away from us. For a few minutes it just sits there. Then the same guy we saw parked at Kipler’s gets out, his jacket hood still up over his head. We’re even farther away than we were before, and it’s impossible to see any details of his appearance. He goes directly to the bushes and bends over where we left the coin.

“I was right,” Levi murmurs. “It’s a tracking device.”

After a minute, the driver gets back in the truck, turns around in the Dairy Queen parking lot, and gets on the ramp in the direction he came from.

“Let’s go,” Levi whispers, starting the engine. “This time we’re following him.”

I’m not quite as terrified on the ride home toward Vienna, since Levi doesn’t seem to want to break the speed limit or kill us. Relaxing into his back with my arms comfortably wrapped around him and my thighs pressed against his, I actually breathe steadily and lean into the turns.

A few of them are fun. Or maybe that’s just being this close to Levi Sterling. All around me, the golds and russets of the trees and the brisk autumn scents are intensified, each sensation at war with the confusing questions in my head. Questions focused on Josh Collier.

Why did he have that coin? Did he leave it on purpose? Did he take me out to the middle of nowhere for a reason? Is he involved with the guy in the truck? Is the guy some kind of recruiter for his grandfather’s ropes course challenge?

With those questions on my mind, I’m not completely stunned when I see where the black F-150 is leading us … to the easternmost edge of Nacht Woods. Levi widens the distance between us and the truck, and we finally lose track of it when it turns into what looks like a slight clearing in the woods, not exactly a legit road.

He weaves the bike around and we follow the perimeter of the forest, most of it rimmed with a stony creek, evergreens, and brush so dense it would be impossible to penetrate. But
periodically, there are fire roads and breaks in the trees, and it looks like if you go deep enough, there might be a way through the woods.

After a few minutes, we come to a road that eventually leads to the Collier house.

“I don’t want to see Josh,” I say to Levi.

He nods and we head back east where the truck has gone. Finally, he stops the bike and braces us with his feet. “This is more or less the beginning of the ropes course,” he says.

“Can I see it?”

He angles his head to get a look at me. “You want to go in there?”

“I want to read some of the Latin instructions. And to find out how hard it would be to do the course.”

He considers this for a minute, and then agrees. “Let me stash the bike and I’ll show you the first challenge. It’s not far.”

After we hide the bike, Levi pops the seat up and pulls out a navy bandana that he ties to a tree. “You can get pretty lost in here.”

He takes my hand and we work our way through some thick trees before the forest clears. In October, there are just enough leaves on the tall oaks and sycamores that the gray skies are almost completely blocked. The ground is soft, mostly dried leaves that crunch underfoot, the scent of pine and earth almost overwhelming.

“The start of the course is down this way,” Levi says, his whisper barely audible over the creek water rushing near us.

I look around and imagine the utter blackness of this place at night. “No lights, I take it.”

He laughs softly. “That’s another caveat of the course. It has to be done between midnight and three.”

Whoa, that Rex is a sadist. “Hasn’t the guy ever heard of an essay? There’s got to be an easier way to get a scholarship.”

A few feet away something scurries through the brush, making me hesitate and pull closer to Levi. He’s strong, warm, and knows where he’s going, which is small comfort.

“Okay, look up there,” he says, pointing to a space about twenty-five feet wide between tall white birch trees. “That’s the line.”

I squint and look up to the treetops, some a good forty feet high. “Line of what?”

“A zip line. See? Between those two trees.”

A wire so thin it could be considered a thread links the trees, and I peer closer to see very small platforms built on thick telephone poles that blend into the trees. “You mean you ride that?”

“Yep.”

“In a safety harness?”

He laughs again as though charmed by my naïvety. “You clip a rope and hang on.”

Holy cow. “How do you get up there?”

“Climb. And follow the instructions. Here.” He takes me around the tree and lifts the gray bark like he’s peeling back skin. The words are burned into the trunk.

AUT VIAM INVENIAM AUT FACIAM

“Literally, that translates to ‘I’ll find a way or make one,’ ” I tell him, “but it’s sort of the motto for the person who doesn’t quit. How did you translate this when you did the course?”

“I didn’t, but I could tell that the way was up.” He points upward and my neck practically cracks as I follow a series of two-by-fours, each about six inches long, nailed into the tree.
About halfway up, the thickest branch reaches over to the telephone pole, where there are more “steps” up to a platform. That piece of wood is about two feet wide, with no railing, no safety line, no chance a human in her right mind would climb that.

At least, not this human.

“This is how it starts,” he explains. “You climb up to the top, grab a rope, and connect it to the line and zip to the next platform. You need upper-body strength and a pair of titanium balls.”

Neither of which I have.

“And,” he continues, “when you get up there, you don’t know which line to take, since there are two or three or even more. One takes you farther into the course, the other two dead-end on the ground and you have to start over. Or quit.”

Which is what I would probably do. “How far did you get?”

“I made it through about three platforms, then—” He freezes, frowning. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Shh.” He touches my lips with his fingers, peering around with narrow-eyed intensity. An engine in the distance. We’re fairly far from the road, but it sounds like …

The truck? “Let’s hide,” he says.

Using one hand, he pushes branches aside to get us through a thicket, the sound of our ragged breaths and footsteps on soft ground filling my ears.

We round a hill, avoiding any chance of high ground, and are passing more broken, bare trees when Levi stops so suddenly I crash into him. Without a word, he holds me still and we both listen. The engine is definitely in the distance now
and headed the other way—but we’re deeper in the woods and lost.

“We need to get cover,” he whispers. “Long enough to use a GPS to get out of here.”

I spot a steep drop off a small cliff and we work our way there and peer over the edge. It’s about a twelve-foot drop down an embankment, but it’s protected and hidden at the bottom.

“Let me help you.” He crouches and I follow, turning and slowly letting my whole body drop over the cliff. Holding on to him, I dangle, but it’s only about five feet to the ground when I let go.

A second later, he scrambles down and drops the same way.

The sound of the engine might have disappeared, but I still feel vulnerable knowing we’re not alone in the woods, so I nestle deeper into the brush to hide.

Levi pulls out his phone and starts stabbing a GPS program and I lean back into the mound of earth, a chill snaking over me like fear.

No, that’s an actual chill. Like a draft. Curious, I turn around and push through thick branches of a bush until I realize we’re right in front of what looks like a small cave.

“Can you get satellite from in there?” I ask. “We’d be hidden.”

“Let me try.”

Branches scrape my face, but we muscle our way into the opening and right away, I feel safer.

As I get my bearings, the light of Levi’s phone allows me to look around, revealing that we’re definitely in a cave, which isn’t unusual in Nacht Woods. But this one has unnaturally smooth walls and a sense of, I don’t know,
hominess
to it.

My eyes catch something on the cave wall—a drawing? How cool would that be? “Levi, shine your phone over here.”

He does, and we see letters that have been carved into the stone.

“It must be part of the ropes course,” he says.

I don’t answer, my brain already in translate mode as I read:

ARS EST CELARE ARTEM.

“Meaning …‘It is art to conceal art,’ ” I say. “What the heck does that mean? Are all the clues this arcane?”

“Who knows? I couldn’t read them. Look.” He tilts the light toward the bottom of the wall. “It’s signed.”

“Jarvis,” we read together.

I blow out a breath, my head humming as I try to snap together puzzle pieces that just won’t fit even though I know they somehow do. “Jarvis Collier,” I whisper, and this time the chill is real. “Rex Collier told me he buried some stuff of his son’s out in these woods.”

“Nice, we’re in a grave,” Levi says dryly, his attention back on the phone.

“Not a grave, technically. Jarvis’s body was never found, but Rex must have made a shrine or something.”

“Either way, a grave.”

I turn to Levi, an idea brewing. “I wonder if this is, like, the end of the ropes course. If you find your way here, you’re finished—you’ve gotten to the final destination?”

He looks up from his phone. “Possibly.” He peeks around a large boulder near the wall. “This is a passageway?” he says, throwing me a questioning look.

“My answer is yes.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Mack, I wouldn’t take you for such an adventurer.”

“Color me curious. I’ll take any advantage if I have to do that course.”

His look of pure skepticism is accompanied by a low snort. “You’re not going to do that course.”

“For a scholarship to Columbia? If I have the advantage of being able to translate the clues and know how it ends?” I give him a nudge. “C’mon, let’s just see where it goes.”

He takes my hand and we inch into a dark stone corridor, barely high enough for us to stand. His phone gives us just enough light to see.

There’s a sense that we’re going downhill, though the slope is so gradual it’s hard to be sure. As we descend, it’s impossible not to notice that the walls have a finished feel and the path under our feet is made of fitted stone. This is not nature’s cave: someone deliberately created this passageway.

This is some “burial ground” for a few “things” that belonged to Jarvis. But then, rich people are eccentric.

The corridor turns again, sharply, and I catch the shadow of more words carved into the wall. “Shine the light,” I say, lifting our joined hands to indicate the wall.

MULTI SUNT VOCATI, PAUCI VERO ELECTI.

“ ‘Many are called, but few are chosen,’ ” I read.

“I know that quote,” Levi says. “It’s from the Bible. Matthew.”

It’s my turn to look skeptical. “Wouldn’t take you for a Bible reader, Levi.”

“My aunt is born again,” he explains. “That quote’s
embroidered into a pillow on our sofa.” He shakes his head. “Why would someone carve that in a cave?”

“I don’t know.” We take a few tentative steps forward. “To recreate the catacombs of Rome? Maybe Jarvis was one of those classical freaks. There’s a whole subculture that tries to reenact Roman times. Like Civil War battles, only this is Nero and the gladiators.”

Before Levi answers, we abruptly reach a dead end. The whole thing stops with three stone walls. I’m kind of surprised by how disappointed I am. “Guess that’s it.”

“I don’t think so.” Levi kneels down to examine the bottom of one of the walls. “Look.”

I crouch next to him as he shines the phone light on another carving along the very bottom, the words tiny:

EX UMBRA IN SOLEM

“What’s it say?” he asks when I don’t immediately translate.

“Well, literally, it means ‘From shade to sunlight.’ But most of these expressions are more idiomatic than literal. My guess is that it figuratively refers to bringing things out in the open or revealing a secret.”