“Sure, that makes sense. But walk how far? His age? Seventeen steps?” Without waiting for an answer, Howie immediately loped off to the east, counting out until he hit seventeen.

Shaking her head, Connie caught up to him as he looked around. “The ground doesn’t look disturbed at all.”

“Whatever was buried was buried a long time ago, I bet.”

“Why do you say that?”

Connie wasn’t sure why she said that—it just made sense. It was the kind of thing Jazz would say with complete confidence, and when someone questioned him, he would rattle off an explanation that was duh-worthy.

Channeling her inner Jazz with all her might, she said, “Well…” and then it hit her.

“Look,” she said, speaking rapidly, before the idea could flit out of her mind as quickly as it had flown in, like a bug sucked into and out of an open car window. “We don’t know for sure who’s leading us on this wild-goose chase, but odds are it’s Billy or someone connected to Billy, right? So the first thing that happened after Billy broke out of prison was the FBI and the cops landed on Lobo’s Nod like it was D-day. They covered this place for weeks. So no one would be able to get here, of all places, to bury something. Which means that whatever we’re looking for here was buried at least before Billy went to jail.”

Howie nodded. “Yeah. All right, that tracks.” He stomped the ground with his huge foot. “And, yeah, if anything’s buried here, it had to be long enough ago that all the ground settled.”

Glancing back at the cherry tree—seventeen Howie-steps to the west—Connie shook her head. “It’s not right here. It can’t be.”

“Jazz is seventeen,” Howie protested. “I took seventeen steps—”

“Right. But first of all, we’re assuming seventeen is the right number. Think about it—if whatever it was was buried a long time ago, there’s no way the burier could know when we would come looking for it. Unless whoever it is specifically planned on doing something when Jazz was seventeen. But that’s ridiculous because—”

“—because what if something made it so that this ‘game’ had to be triggered earlier?” Howie finished. “I get it. So maybe it’s Jazz’s age when the thing was buried?” Howie groaned. “How are we supposed to know that?” He turned away from her, morose.

“Come on, Howie. Don’t punk out on me. Whoever’s doing this wants us to play the game. We can figure this out.” She hoped. What if this wasn’t a game, but a joke? What if this was a setup, designed to get Jazz’s girlfriend and best friend out here where something could—

“The cherry tree…” Howie spun around. “We were eleven!”

Before Connie could stop him, he counted back toward the cherry tree, taking six steps. He jumped up and down at the new spot, excited.

“This is it! Eleven steps away from the tree! This is the spot!” He stomped hard, then winced. “Oh, man, that’s gonna bruise!”

He was so happy that it broke Connie’s heart to tell him he was wrong. “This isn’t the spot,” she said, walking over to him.

“But we were eleven when we wanted to build the tree house. That’s why Billy or whoever chose the cherry tree as the starting—”

“Yeah, and I believe that you’re right that eleven is the answer to the ‘Jasper’ clue. But eleven what?”

“Eleven steps,” Howie said, frustrated. “It’s always ‘take three paces this way and ten paces that way.’ Jesus, Connie, haven’t you ever seen a pirate movie?”

“But whose steps, Howie? Billy’s? Jazz’s? Yours? Look at your NBA-length legs, man.” Howie looked down. “When I walk next to you, I have to take, like, a step and a half for every step you take.”

Howie blew out an annoyed breath, clouding the air for a moment. “Jeez. You’re kidding me. So, what? We have to figure out Billy Dent’s shoe size? Is that what’s next?”

“I bet he’d choose something simple to remember. I bet it’s just feet. Not, like, his feet. Real feet. Twelve inches.”

“Then we’re in luck,” Howie said, and rushed back to the tree. By the time Connie got there, catching up to his long strides, he had already lined up his back at the tree and started walking east, carefully placing one foot directly in front of the other like a tightrope walker. “My feet are size fourteen, which is pretty much exactly twelve inches.”

“And you know this because…?”

“Because you know what they say about guys with big feet.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Anyway, this should get us close, right?”

“Yeah.”

Howie counted eleven. “Okay. Then this should do it. Bring me that stick.”

Casting about in the dark, Connie caught sight of the stick he was referring to, a large branch that had fallen off a tree, perhaps even the cherry tree itself. She walked it over to him and watched as he fruitlessly and with much comical grunting tried to spear it into the frozen ground.

“This—uh—marks the spot—uh—or at least within a few inches—uh—so we can come back with a shovel—uh—damn it!” He wiped cold sweat from his forehead.

Connie sighed theatrically and took the branch from him, then crouched down, gripping the end of the branch near the ground. Twisting and pushing at the same time, she was able to drive it a few inches into the ground, though it winded her.

“I was about to try that,” Howie explained.

“Right.”

“You grabbed it from me before I could.”

“Right.”

“You’ll never know!” he called after her, following her back to the car now. “I was just about to try that!”

“Sure.” But she wasn’t paying attention anymore. She was thinking of coming back with a shovel, when it was light out. When the ground would be a little warmer and less solid in the light of the sun. Thinking of digging.

Wondering what she might find.

Howie pulled a reversal of his clandestine extraction, drifting headlightless and engineless down the gentle slope toward her house.

“You’ll call me tomorrow, right?” he asked, and yawned.

“I’m about to jump out of a moving car and you’re yawning.”

“We’re going, like, a mile an hour.” He checked the speedometer, squinting. “Maybe a mile and a half.”

“I’ll call,” she said, and hopped out, jogging alongside the car until she had the door closed.

She felt very conspicuous, standing literally in the middle of the street. Howie had dropped her off (“inserted,” he insisted on saying, demanding they use spy lingo) three houses up from her own, just in case someone was awake and looking out the window in the Hall home. She moved to the side of the road and approached her house carefully. With the exception of the light near the front door, it was dark. And quiet.

She had a feeling, again, that someone was watching her. Not her dad or her mom. Not even Whiz. No, she had a sudden, foolish feeling that Billy was out there. Which was ridiculous, because the odds seemed to be that Billy was in New York. And even if he wasn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to hang around Lobo’s Nod, the one place on the planet where almost every person would recognize him on sight.

But maybe he has magical powers and he can be in two places at once or can see across vast distances….

She shook herself and came just short of slapping her own cheek. She was exhausted. Thinking stupid things. Childish things.

As Howie had promised, her lubricated window opened easily and silently. With a small, nearly inaudible “Oof,” she hauled herself over the sill and into the quiet familiarity of her own bedroom. With the window closed, the room went warm and still. She enjoyed it for a moment.

If this had been a horror movie, she knew, there would be something here. Like, a clue. A note from the person who’d texted her, maybe.

Or a severed head. Or maybe a finger from the Impressionist. Or maybe…