Page 36 of Their Wicked Secrets: Untouched, Vol 5 of 6

My insides collapse again. I thought it was a sign. Something my father left. But it’s just fungus.

Luke touches the bark. “It looks like initials.”

“What?” I squint to try to see what he’s seeing.

Luke smiles up at me. “It’s S.D. plus J.D.”

CHAPTER 12

The Climb

Eli

We’ve covered every inch of this quarry over the years. If something had been left out here, we should have found it by now. But we didn’t lurk in the forest much. It’s not surprising we didn’t notice the initials.

The carving is old, and if it hadn’t been for the fungus, we might not have spotted it. Especially at night. The grass blocks the majority of it.

“Do you think...” Harper covers her mouth with her trembling hand.

I draw her back against me, wrapping my arm around her waist. Luke’s eyes meet mine, and I get the message. Hold her. Don’t let her go.

Not a problem. He isn’t the only one worried about her. We all are.

Even with all the other shit, her mom disappearing and this shit about her dad have to be getting to her. It’s too much, and at some point she’s going to break. But we’ll be there when that happens. We’ll pick up her pieces and put her back together, because we can’t do any of this without her.

Our lives are irreversibly tangled.

She leans back against me. She clings to my arm through Caden’s sweatshirt. My heart settles. While Luke searches around the base of the tree, she trembles. Thirteen years is a long time for anything to weather the elements out here.

Even if we find something, it may be more like trash at this point.

As much as I want to prepare Harper for that probability, she needs hope right now. Luke stands and brushes off his jeans, shaking his head.

“What if it’s not down, but up?” Harper steps forward, but I don’t release her. She sighs. And says under her breath, “Not you too.”

I ignore her words. Luke looks up in the tree and I follow his gaze. It’s not a very thick tree outside of the trunk. With our weight, the branches would likely break.

“I can climb a tree. If I fall, you’ll catch me.” She turns in my arms and draws my face down to look into hers in the darkness. “Eli, this may be our only shot. If the cars are being tracked, they’ll know we were here.”

Fuck, she’s right. They may not know what to look for, but it won’t matter. If it’s Luke’s dad tracking us, we’ll never get another opportunity. He’ll have this place locked down tight. I lift my gaze to Luke’s. He’s already shaking his head.

“We need to go,” he says and steps forward like he’s going to grab her and run. Not that I blame him, but...

“We can’t.” I crush her against me. “She can climb up into the branches and look around. We won’t get another chance.”

He gets that expression like he’s going to argue, but then resignation slides over his face.

“Fuck.” Luke kicks a stone. “Stay here.”

He storms off. Most likely to get Caden and Jack. He might try to find a ladder of some sort, but that’s not going to happen. Most of the old equipment is at the bottom of the quarry. A few rusted pieces are rotting into the ground up here, but he’s not going to find anything useable.

“I climbed trees all the time as a kid.” Harper rests her cheek against my chest. “There’s not much to it.”

I stare up into the branches. Maybe. I turn on the floodlight and try to see if there’s something obvious up there. Maybe a reflection of the lens if there’s a small camera. But the branches are thick toward the top and with the leaves, it’s hard to tell. If her father hid it well, a small enough object might have gone unnoticed for years.

“No unnecessary risks, kitten.” I kiss the top of her head. “We don’t need to solve everything tonight.”

“I know.” She sighs into me. “But what if it’s proof that will help put Luke’s father away? Or prove that he had a hand in my father’s death?”