Chapter 26
T revor had disappeared behind the burning trailer almost ten minutes ago. I thought he’d have circled it by now. The emergency personnel should be on their way, but I couldn’t even hear sirens yet.
Climbing out of his huge truck, my stomach was churning and I felt like I was going to be sick. I could feel the heat from the flames from here. Maybe Trevor had been hurt?
“Mrs. Rodgers! RUN!” I heard someone yelling behind me, and I turned to meet Jackson’s wide eyes as he tried to break free from the trees to the left that surrounded the back of the trailer. They’d be on fire soon themselves.
“Jackson?” I asked, panicked. I felt a motherly instinct to approach and protect, but a baser instinct to run and save myself. Trevor was back there somewhere though. I heard a bang and gasped, ducking and covering my head out of instinct.
Jackson’s huge eyes stared at me one minute, then he was facedown on the ground, the next. Some oily man standing behind him, that wasn’t his father, came into view.
Terror flooded me and my entire body felt cold.
Run, Monica .
I could hear an inner voice screaming at me…Paul’s voice screaming at me.
But, Trevor, where was Trevor?
I spun, sprinting towards the other side of the trailer, the way Trevor had gone, yelling for him as I redialed the emergency number on my cell.
“Someone’s at the fire, they shot someone!” I gasped, as soon as I heard the voice on the phone. I wasn’t even thinking straight or operating calmly. I was better than this. I had been a cop's wife for over a decade. I rounded the trailer, not seeing Trevor anywhere, a sob leaving my mouth as the woman tried to speak calmly to me.
Apparently, the woman had informed me they were patching me through to the police.
I heard Lucas Marshall’s voice speak gruffly.
“What’s the address of the emergency?”
“Lucas!?” I was screaming now, my adrenaline going crazy, spiking as I hit the treeline and kept running from the footsteps behind me.
“Monica? What the hell’s going on?”
“They shot Jackson. They shot Jackson.” I said, incapable of forming one coherent, complete thought.
“I don’t know where Trevor went. We’re on the Flinton prop-”
I smacked into a hard chest and fell backwards, landing on my back, the breath whooshing from my lungs.
“MONICA?!”
I could hear Lucas yelling from my cell phone and couldn’t scramble fast enough to it. Someone placed a dark cloth over my face, a medicinal smell engulfed my senses, and everything went dark.