road, into a tight cluster of trees. Then he stopped and started stomping at the ground. There was the heavy thunk of thick metal.
“Light,” he said.
Maris shone a flashlight down as he scraped off an inch or so of loose dirt.
“They covered it up,” he said, bending down. “And it looks like they put a lock on it. It wasn’t locked before. That’s going to be a problem.”
“Let me see,” Stevie said, kneeling on the ground beside him. The ground was spongy and cold beneath her knees.
“Just a standard padlock,” she said, peering at the end. “Can you shine a light?”
Maris shone her flashlight down on the lock. Stevie went into her bag and fished around for a while until she found two paper clips at the bottom. She straightened them and inserted them into the lock. One she used as a tension wrench, and with the other, she manipulated the pins. It was all about slow, careful movement—feeling every millimeter. Locks are tiny, and their pins are tinier still, and the movement needed to lift one is barely a flinch.
Luckily, she had picked padlocks like this many times. It was a good, cheap hobby to practice while watching mysteries, and it seemed like the kind of skill she should have.
It popped open.
“Whoa,” Hayes said. “How the hell did you learn to do that?”
Stevie simply smiled, got up, and dusted off her hands.
“Nice one,” Maris added approvingly. Finally, there was something Stevie could do that Maris could not.
Dash was texting, and Nate stood in stunned silence.
Hayes pulled open the doors, revealing a pitch-black hole in the ground. Stevie shone her flashlight down on a dozen or so bare concrete steps, leading into more darkness.
“That’s not ominous-looking at all,” Nate said.
Stevie made her way to the front and squatted down, shining her light into the hole. The space in front of her was a violent, velvety dark. Anything could have been there. A million spiders. Someone with a knife. Or worse—just a lot of dark tunnel.
She counted the steps and felt around with her foot to assure herself she had reached the last one before shining her light up. The million spiders, if present, were well hidden, and there was no one with a knife. The tunnel was made of brick and concrete and was in fairly good condition, aside from a few upsetting jags and cracks that were probably caused by years of snow and ice. There was an overwhelming smell of earth and age and stagnant air. The tunnel felt tighter than she thought it would be, snugly fitting two people across. It made sense, of course. It’s not easy to build a secret underground tunnel. You needed it to be just big enough to get your boxes of booze, or sneak around with your friends while playing one of the Ellingham’s famous games. The brick made it feel like they were inside a horizontal chimney.
Stevie got light-headed for a moment and ran her hand over the walls. They almost felt wet, and she traced the patterns of the mortar with her fingers. This was history, real history, opening up for her. It was almost too much to take in. She ignored the effort going on around her, as Dash pulled a tripod out of his bag and opened it up, and Maris and Hayes tipped their heads together to read the Truly Devious letter off his phone and work out where to stand.
Nate slid up alongside Stevie and broke into her reverie.
“Why do you know how to pick locks?” he asked.
“Because there are a lot of tutorials online.”
“That’s how,” he said. “Why?”
“Who doesn’t want to know how to pick a lock? It only took a few hours. Buy a lock for five bucks . . .”
“Still not why.”
“Because they do it on TV,” Stevie finally said. “It seems like a good thing to know. I like detectives, okay? We all have our hobbies.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” Nate said.
Stevie stared into the dark. She shone her light into it, but there was no end in sight. Just more dark.
“Are they sure about the structural integrity?” Nate asked. “Should we really be in here? It feels like an elevator shaft on the Titanic.”
“It’s fine,” Stevie said. Because it probably was. Most things are.
Stevie swept her light around, steering it away from a terrifying crack in the side, and then aimed it squarely forward.
“I’m going to the end,” she said.
“Seriously?” Nate said.
“This is what I came