Chapter 27
27
Davis
Sloane makes a noise, and then a cloud of dust envelops her as she drops.
No, not drops.
Falls .
Falls through the stairs.
My heart stops beating. My brain pictures her falling sixty feet into the earth below.
I drop the flashlight.
I drop the metal detector.
And I lunge to save her. “ Sloane .”
“Mother— auuullkkk —fucker,” she gasps.
She coughs.
I suck in a cloud of dust and cough.
But I have her.
I have my arms around her, and I’m hauling her out by her armpits.
One foot fell in. Not both. She only went down to her thigh. Not all the way.
She’s not dead.
She didn’t fall sixty feet from the sky.
She fell maybe two feet, even though she could’ve fallen a few more.
I pull her back down to the basement and set her on the ground next to the stairs. “Are you hurt? Are you cut? Did you twist anything? Break any bones? Do you need a tetanus shot? Fuck. Fuck . Say something.”
She coughs again.
I grab the flashlight and inspect her legs.
Dust all over her jeans.
Her feet aren’t at awkward angles in her sneakers.
I tug up the bottom of her pants, looking at the skin on her legs.
No blood.
“What— ehlk —are you doing?” she rasps.
“Are you hurt?”
“ No .”
Fuck again.
I wrap my arms around her and pull her into a hug.
She’s safe.
She’s okay.
She barely fell.
“Water,” she says.
Shit.
Right.
I dig in my pocket for my phone and text Chuck. Need a water bottle. Dusty.
An answer comes immediately. Boy Scout failure. You’re covering my hazard pay if I die in there .
I stifle a growl of my own.
Sloane keeps coughing.
I keep holding her, knowing full well I need to let her go.
I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep touching her, holding her, falling for her?—
I can’t.
“Look—under—stairs,” she says.
Under the stairs.
I haven’t looked under the stairs.
Why the fuck didn’t I look under the stairs?
I stare at the stone wall beneath the stairs and answer my own question.
Because I assumed if this side of the stairs was walled up, everything under them was solid.
I order myself to let Sloane go, and I disobey my own order to stick my nose in her hair and breathe.
She smells like dusty cinnamon.
Like old, dusty cinnamon.
Living, breathing, heart-beating, coughing, old, dusty cinnamon.
“Are you fucking serious right now?” Chuck says from the top of the stairs.
This time when I order myself to let Sloane go, I also listen.
Chuck’s holding a water bottle.
I lift a hand, and he tosses it down.
I crack the lid and hand it to Sloane, who downs half of it without pausing.
When she’s done, she sighs in relief. “Thank you, Chuck. Much better.”
“Are you hurt?” he asks her.
“Nope. Just annoyed.”
“Good. This place is fucking creepy. I’m sending Rafael if you need a rope to get up. And telling Levi you need to hire your own damn security. I like working for him. You make his kids look like angels.”
He disappears, and I track his path back out of the house by the sound of the floor creaking above us.
Sloane’s already on the move, rising and pointing her phone’s flashlight at the stairs.
I grab my bigger flashlight and aim it at the broken stair too.
“Wouldn’t it be horribly anti-climactic if the treasure’s been buried under a stairwell this entire time?” she says.
No, it would be a goddamn fucking relief. “Sure.”
I step gingerly up about three steps, just enough that I can peer into the hole in the seventh step left by the split board. I grab one end of the broken stair and tug, and it practically disintegrates in my hand.
We shouldn’t be down here.
No, she shouldn’t be down here.
I’ll be fine. But I don’t like putting her in dangerous situations.
Gonna need a rope to get back up.
Or a ladder.
Sloane stops on the step below me, leans over the hole too, and aims her phone’s flashlight in. “Uh-oh.”
That’s worth investigating.
I lean over and aim my flashlight into the gaping hole too.
Motherfucker.
Mother. Fucking. Fucker.
Sloane leans closer.
I grab her by her waistband to keep her from falling in again.
“So…your great-grandpa had enemies, huh?”
My flashlight beam sweeps left to right, then right to left again. “Maybe they’re animal bones.”
“Yeah, no. Those are human.”
Fuuuuuuck . “Are you sure?”
“See the pelvis? And the ribs? They could be some kind of animal, but it’s highly unlikely. That’s a human pelvis. I’m positively certain that’s a human pelvis.” She angles herself to peer deeper into the hole, and I have to brace my feet harder to keep a solid hold on her.
She makes a frustrated noise. “You can let go. I’m not going to fall in.”
“You did once.”
“And I’m not going to again. Just—let me look at the walls, okay? The walls are wood under the stairs. Where’s your metal detector? It’s not disturbing a crime scene if all you do is sweep a metal detector over the walls to see if there’s anything hidden in there.”
Crime scene.
We found a crime scene.
Shit .
“Chuck?” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“Rafael?”
Still no answer.
“What are you doing?” Sloane hisses. “ Get the metal detector .”
“I’m making sure we’re fucking alone,” I hiss back.
She straightens and looks at me, and then she does the worst thing she could possibly do.
She grins. “Are you frustrated?”
I blow out a slow breath. “No.”
“You sound frustrated.”
“I’m not frustrated.”
“So it takes finding a crime scene to make you fully and completely frustrated.”
“ I’m not fucking frustrated .”
She smiles so big that it’s like her entire body has morphed into one giant smile. “If you say so. Metal detector, please.”
Fine.
Fine .
I’m frustrated.
And irritated.
And crawling out of my own skin.
“Get off the stairs. If one more of us is falling in, it’s my turn.” I grab the metal detector, flip it on, and insert the head into the opening under the stairwell, aiming it at the walls.
Sloane returns to the basement, but I can feel her bouncing on her toes behind me.
We’re standing over bones of indeterminate origin, potentially stuck in here until authorities arrive to investigate, and she’s swigging water and bouncing on her toes like we’re at a tennis match.
Or possibly she’s nervous.
People with overdeveloped guilt complexes tend to also have overdeveloped nervous systems.
In my experience.
I reach as far as I can into the opening under the stairs, sweeping the metal detector every which way that I can without disturbing the bones, and?—
Nothing.
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Which means either there’s nothing here, or there’s nothing metal here, and it’ll take tearing the cabin apart board by board, rock by rock, to figure out if there’s anything else hidden in here.
I should text Vanessa.
But the minute I text Vanessa that I found bones, that’s the last minute I get any peace.
“Can you tell how old bones are by looking at them?” I ask Sloane.
“Me? No. I just recognize what they are. It’ll take a forensic scientist doing some testing on them to really get an idea. The fact that it’s just bones though, hidden under the ricketiest stairwell to ever exist—they’ve probably been here at least a few decades.”
I tilt my head at her as I set the metal detector on the lowest step, and before I can ask if she’s also a true crime junkie, the metal detector goes fucking nuts.
We lock eyes in the ambient light of our flashlights.
Sloane acts first.
She stomps onto the first step, then jumps.
“ Stop .” I grab her by the arm and pull her down. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“We can’t pry it up. That’ll be super obvious when the sheriff gets out here to investigate.”
I look up at the ceiling.
She snickers. “Frustrated,” she says in a sing-song voice.
“And that makes you happy?”
“Yes. Because for all of the years that I’ve lived here, the only expression I ever saw you make was this.” She aims her flashlight at herself and goes blank-faced with unfocused eyes.
“That is not the expression I make.”
“I only started doing impressions of you right now, so please forgive me for needing to work on it. The point is, you didn’t laugh, you didn’t smile, you didn’t glower, you didn’t yell, you just existed like you didn’t have any emotions at all. So yes, it’s nice to verify that you’re capable of such human things as frustration.” She drops the phone from her face, and her voice softens. “And I appreciate that you let me see it. Like we’re friends. Or something.”
Friends.
I do not want to be friends with this woman.
I want to be much, much more.
I lift my foot, then bring it down with enough force to put it through the first step.
The sound of wood splintering echoes up the stairwell.
“Holy shit,” Sloane whispers. “Don’t do that to the other stairs, okay? I still have some hope we can get out of here without needing a rescue. Are you okay? Did you hurt anything? Is anything cut?”
“I’m good.”
I’m not good.
My heart’s swelling at the concern in her voice.
I need a break. I need to get back on even footing.
And I don’t mean on these damn stairs.
There’s a squeak overhead. “What did you break this time?” Chuck yells.
“Nothing,” Sloane calls.
“That didn’t sound like nothing.”
“We’re fine,” I tell Chuck.
Then I join Sloane, who’s already on her knees, peering into the space under the first board.
“Um, Davis… I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s good.”
I look at the old, round, dark ball that her flashlight is illuminating.
And my entire body flushes hot, then cold, then hot again.
“Is that…what I think it is? And if it is…are we lucky you still have your leg?”
It’s exactly what she thinks it is.
And we’re getting out of here.
Now .