They All Fall Down

  Levi’s gaze follows mine. “Holy shit.”

  “No kidding.” The driver’s side is away from us, the windows tinted too black to see in, and I can’t see the plate.

  Levi instantly yanks me away, behind the cover of the building, and when the truck parks, he gets in front of me.

  “Don’t move. Don’t talk.”

  Blood is rushing through my confused brain, pounding and vibrating in terror. I don’t even know why I’m so afraid, or why we’re hiding, but instinct says he’s right.

  “Who is that?” I demand.

  “Truth is, I don’t know.”

  We hear the slam of a truck door, the squeak of an ancient front entrance, and the bell announcing a new customer inside.

  Is it the same truck I saw on Route 1 when I spun out? The one that almost hit my bike? The one I saw in front of the house where Chloe was killed? Or another coincidence?

  “Stay here,” Levi says, taking a few steps to the side of the building to look around.

  “Do you know who it is? Can you see him? Read the license plate?”

  “No, no, and no. But we’re not taking any chances.” Turning to his bike, he grabs the other helmet. “We’re outta here.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, I pull on the helmet and climb behind him on the bike, wrapping my arms around his waist. He walks the bike forward, closer to the road, before starting the engine and attracting any attention. Then we take off, going the other way so we don’t pass the front of the store, but that means I can’t check the plate on the back of the truck.

  As he turns onto the road, I cling harder, my breath stolen by the thrill and speed.

  “If that is the same guy, what is he doing here?” I call into the wind and Levi’s ear.

  He shakes his head, revving the engine and then turning in to a gas station less than a quarter-mile away. Pulling the bike behind the pumps, we’re blocked but can still see the truck parked in Kipler’s lot. It’s too far away for us to make out a face, but we’re hiding and looking anyway.

  “This has to do with me,” I say, my thoughts focused on that one undeniable truth.

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know it’s the same F-150.”

  Is that what that truck is? I squint harder. “If it is the same truck and the same guy I’ve been running into, then this is no coincidence.” Good Lord, he’s following me?

  Levi puts his hand on my knee, giving it a squeeze and leaning back so that our helmets touch. “You don’t know that it’s the same guy.”

  But deep inside, I do. “You should have gone into Kipler’s and gotten a picture of him so we could see if we know him.”

  He shakes his head.

  “I want to know who he is and what he’s doing here.”

  “I can’t let him see me,” he says.

  “Why not? Would he recognize you?”

  After a long silence, he nods his chin toward the store. “He’s leaving.”

  I look, but all I can see is a guy in a hoodie walking briskly to the pickup truck, his face down, looking at a phone, no package in his hands.

  All of a sudden the man looks up. His head jerks around and he stares right at us—or right at the pumps hiding us. I gasp as he looks back at his phone, then the gas station.

  “What the hell?” Levi whispers.

  In a flash, the guy jumps into his truck.

  “Hang on,” Levi says.

  “Did he see us? How is that possible? Wha—” I swallow the word as the engine revs and we go flying out of the gas station. I stifle a scream by pressing my face into Levi’s back, inhaling leather and gas.

  My whole body tilts left, then right, the acceleration zipping through me like I’m on a roller coaster. Oh, how I wish I were.

  I manage to lift my head, still not breathing, squeezing Levi with all my strength, and I can’t look anywhere but down. I see the asphalt.… It’s so damn close. Inches. We are inches from being slathered all over that.

  I close my eyes and fight the urge to scream as we fly up the ramp to the highway, weaving in and out of traffic at a frightening speed, my whole body vibrating with the engine between my legs.

  I can taste the terror, metallic and hot in my mouth. Why is this happening?

  The truck. The truck and the driver who knows where I am when I’m somewhere even I never knew I’d be today. Somewhere miles and miles from Vienna.

  Fear rolls through me as I angle my head to look over Levi’s shoulder into one of the rear-facing mirrors. Way in the distance, I see a black pickup truck hauling ass right at us.

  Levi sees him, too, and whips around a semi, dirt from the giant tires spitting in our faces, the sound of the monstrous engine even louder than the one I’m sitting on.

  Another wild bank to the other side and we’re in front of the semi, and the rearview mirror is filled with a metal grille and the word Peterbilt in green.

  I stare at the logo, watching it get smaller as we pick up speed and fly down I-70. I don’t want to think about how fast we’re going. I don’t want to think about that truck. I sure as hell don’t want to think about how easily this could all be … another accident.

  “Levi.” I croak his name and it gets thrown away in the wind. I have no control, so I hold on and hope and pray and finally let my body roll into each turn.

  He’s tense, leaning forward, concentrating on keeping us alive and surprising me by flying down an off-ramp, turning right at the bottom, and zooming past a Stuckey’s and a Dairy Queen before winding up a steep hill.

  With all the courage I have, I turn and look over my shoulder just in time to see the black truck fly across the overpass, skipping our exit and continuing on the highway.

  “You lost him,” I call out.

  He nods but keeps going, maybe a tad slower, but I’m too numb at this point to be able to tell. He zips left, farther up the hill along a fire path, then down a road so gutted it’s mostly dirt, and finally pulls over at the edge of a wooded area.

  When he turns the bike off, it does nothing to stop the full-body quivering that has control over me. I try to speak but I can’t, still clinging to his arm as he climbs off and roughly removes his helmet, dark eyes blazing.

  “Give it to me,” he insists.

  “Give wha—”

  “The coin! Give me the damn coin!”

  With trembling hands, I reach into my jacket pocket and close my finger around the coin I’ve forgotten all about. “Why?” I manage to ask as I pull it out.

  He doesn’t answer, but grabs it from my hands and stares at the thing like it’s the devil himself. With two hands he picks at the edges, his expression darkening with frustration as he bites it and swears under his breath.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t you see, Mackenzie? He’s tracking us with this thing!”

  “Then throw it away. Toss it off a cliff. Drive over it and ruin it.”

  “No.” He gives it one more good squeeze, then looks at me. “If we do that, we lose him and we don’t know anything more than we know right now.”

  He’s absolutely right. A wave of gratitude rolls over me, the first thing I’ve felt that isn’t fear in what seems like hours, but I can’t tell him. He’s doing a three-sixty, scanning the area. “We have to do this right. We have to see if he comes back for it and where he takes it.”

  “How?”

  He peers out toward the highway. “We have to be fast. The minute he realizes where we are, he’s coming back.”

  At the thought, I steady myself on the bike. “What’s your plan?”

  “I have no idea. I’m making it up as I go along.” He gives a half smile. “But I’m sure it’ll be good.”

  CHAPTER XXI

  The plan, it so happens, is brilliant. We ride back to the I-70 off-ramp, where Levi hides the coin in some brush as if it fell out of a pocket. Then we head to the parking lot behind Stuckey’s to get a direct view of the ramp. The sweet, rich aroma of coffee wafts from the restau
rant as we wait on the bike, still wearing our helmets.

  Worry curls through me, drawing me closer to Levi, my arms secure around his waist, my chin on his shoulder. It feels good, like I was meant to be here. But the moment of security doesn’t stop the many, many questions that plague me.

  “You better start explaining,” I say simply. “Starting with why that coin bears the same words you asked me to translate the other night.”

  He adjusts his feet and the seat under him so he can divide his attention between the ramp and me. “That ropes course in the woods?” he says. “It’s not like anything you’ve ever seen.”

  I’m not sure what that could possibly have to do with the coin or the Latin phrase, but I trust he’s going to tell me. “Have you done the course?” I ask.

  “Some of it. I was invited, but I didn’t get to the next level.”

  I frown, somehow not seeing this boy as one who’d merit an invitation from Rex Collier. “Who invited you? When?”

  “I have no idea. A few weeks ago, I got this anonymous invitation to do the ropes course. At first I thought it was some stupid Vienna High jock thing and I ignored it. Then the invitations got more … inviting.” He rubs his two fingers together in the universal gesture for cash. “Kind of hard to ignore an envelope when it lands on your doorstep with a picture of Ben Franklin in it.”

  “Someone just gave you a hundred dollars to do the ropes course? Did you?”

  He snorts. “Hell yeah. This thing needs gas, you know, and Mickey D’s doesn’t hire kids with probation officers.”

  “What happened?”

  A blue car takes the ramp, diverting our attention for a second as it travels on.

  “Nothing happened,” he says when the car is gone. “In fact, it was like any high school party that Josh throws. Tons of idiots getting loaded and climbing trees and zip-lining like they’re George of the Jungle.”

  “Like Josh and his football friends?”

  He shakes his head. “No, kids I didn’t recognize. No one talked to me and not everyone was taking it seriously, but some did. Some followed the course. Which is marked …” He slides me a meaningful look. “With instructions in another language.”

  “Latin, by any chance?”

  “By every chance.”

  “Is that why you asked me for the translation?”

  “One of the reasons, yeah. I wanted to know what that meant … nihil whatever.”

  “ ‘Leave nothing behind and no trace.’ ” I nod toward the bushes. “Besides being on that coin, where did you see it?”

  “The phrase is stamped or burned or even painted in a couple of places along the course,” he says. “But everything’s in weird, ancient languages, including the instructions on each platform for getting from obstacle to obstacle.”

  “That adds to the difficulty quotient.”

  “Especially for a guy who struggles with English, let alone Latin,” he agrees. “I quit after a while because it got to be a stupid risk. No one gets very far.”

  “What happens if someone does?” I ask, imagining just how athletic and intelligent you’d have to be to attack that challenge.

  “I imagine they get the scholarship, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting it. Maybe they just get one of those gold coins.”

  With tracking devices in them. “But someone might have finished the course?”

  He shrugs. “I guess. I haven’t been around Vienna long enough to hear about anyone getting the scholarship. Have you?”

  “I told you I’d never heard of it. So what did you do when you quit the course, just walk away?” I ask. “Did you ever hear from whoever invited you again?”

  “Once,” he says after a beat. “Somebody put a note in my locker to go to the senior lot and find …” He adds a meaningful look. “A black F-150 pickup, presumably the one we’re waiting for. Anyway, when I got to the parking lot, I saw that truck—or one that looks exactly like it—windows down, no one in sight. On the dash was an envelope with my name on it.”

  “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.”