I nodded, chin trembling. “Thank you,” I said in a ragged whisper. “The floor… it just collapsed underme.”
“The wood must’ve rotted. Or termites might’ve eatenit.”
“I don’t think so,” Adam cut in. “Look atthis.”
Hunter lifted his chin to look at his brother. “What isit?”
“Just come over here. You’llsee.”
Hunter held my hand as we carefully walked over the undamaged floorboards and around to where Adam wascrouched.
“Look,” he muttered, pointing to the edge of the hole. “The boards aren’t splintered at all here, and they definitely haven’trotted.”
“Shit, you’re right.” Hunter sank down next to him, forehead creasing. “They’ve beencut.”
My eyes widened. “What?”
He looked up at me. “It looks like someone came in here and went at this floor with some sort of power-saw,” he said. He stood up and paced around the edge of the hole, checking out every one of the snapped boards. “Looks like they cut a big circle in the boards, but they didn’t cut all the way through. Just enough so that it would snap and cave in as soon as someone put their weight onit.”
“How the fuck did we miss that?” Adam asked, facepaling.
“They probably covered the cut parts with dead leaves,” Hunter said, motioning toward all the debris on the floor. “So you two didn’t notice it when you came in. But as soon as Laney broke through, most of the leaves fell in with the snapped boards, and now it’s fuckingobvious.”
“So whoever did this… they wanted us to know it wasn’t an accident,” I said, hands shaking at mysides.
Hunter looked at me again. “Yeah. Looks thatway.”
Adam pushed himself to his feet with a grimace and stepped across the safe part of the floorboards, heading around the left side of the hole. He crouched to pick up the envelope that I was on my way to get before I fell through thefloor.
He limped back over and held it out in front of him, dark eyes flashing with confusion. “It’s for you,” hesaid.
My stomach lurched. “How do you know that without openingit?”
“It has your name on it.” He turned it over to show me my name printed in large white letters. “Seriously, Laney… what the fuck is going onhere?”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t even know what to say. Swallowing thickly, I ripped the envelope open to find another note.Good luck reading this one,bitch:)
The short message was accompanied by a crude drawing of a stick figure falling through a giant hole in thefloor.
“Jesus,” Hunter muttered. “It was just a lure to make sure you’d cross the room and fall through thefloor.”
Adam nodded. “They must’ve known she’d decide to go and get it after what happened to me,” hesaid.
“What?” Hunter’s brows shot up. “Whathappened?”
I sighed and gave Hunter a brief rundown of what had occurred before he showed up just in time to help me out of the hole—the attack on Adam, the note they threw at him when they pushed him up against the wall, and the fact that it was probably agirl.
His jaw clenched as he looked at the first note. “This is fucked up. They could’ve seriously hurt you both.” He looked up at me. “That fall could’ve even killedyou.”
I shined a light from my phone over the hole and peered into it. “It looks like there’s a basement level a few feet down, and there’s an old mattress and a bunch of couch cushions on the floor down there. Probably from the parties people have had here over the years,” I said. I looked back at the guys. “Falling down there probably wouldn’t have killed me, but I definitely could’ve broken a few bones. So I think it was just meant to be a warning to make me take the first noteseriously.”
“Pretty fucked-up warning.” Hunter pulled me over to him again, arms tightening around mywaist.
I knew exactly what he was thinking, because I was thinking ittoo.
The Network got the Medusa girls to do this, hoping it would scare me enough to ensure my silence about the true nature of their secret club. That would explain why Adam saw long hair sticking out of the ski mask when he was attackedearlier.
“It’s going to be okay,” Hunter murmured against my ear, stroking my back. “I’m not letting you out of my sight anymore. If they wanna try to get at you, they’re gonna have to go through mefirst.”