A circus of background noise roared in my ears, then, “I need you down at Switchback Trailer Park immediately.” Colson’s voice crackled in and out, but there was no mistaking the sharpness of his tone.
“What’s going on?”
“Darby’s been shot three times in the chest.”
50
JAGG
Ipaced the tiny hospital waiting room like a caged animal, the stink of antiseptic clinging to the walls—and to me. But it wasn’t just bleach and chemicals. Her scent still haunted my skin. Vanilla. Coconut. Now sickening.
The clock clicked to 10:06 p.m.
It had been 10:03 the last time I looked.
Impossible.
The rickety wall unit rattled but offered no relief from the suffocating heat. Beige tiles stretched in a scuffed, grimy path beneath my boots, and I hated that half the marks were mine. Six mismatched chairs circled a cracked coffee table covered in torn, greasy magazines and the sticky residue of other people’s tragedies.
Hospitals were hell. But waiting rooms? Waiting rooms were purgatory. No answers. Just time. Just silence. Just thoughts.
It had been exactly an hour and twelve minutes since I’d left the trailer park where Darby had taken three rounds to the chest, courtesy of Kenzo Rees.
He’d gone to the trailer park after my pep talk in the woods where I confronted him for following me.
“Do something to make them respect you.”…
The words slammed into my chest like a wrecking ball—for the hundredth time since I’d gotten the call. Darby had been shot because of me. Instead of going home and staying out of the case, like I’d told him to, he’d decided to “man up” right then. Followed up on a lead that I’d either missed, or hadn’t had the good sense to pull out of the kid.
SomethingelseI missed.
I dragged my hands through my hair, the guilt twisting in my gut. My hand lowered to the bottle of pills in my pocket. A second passed, another, and another, and with a guttural groan I pulled my hand back up, reining in every bit of restraint I had to not punch a hole in the sheetrock.
Who the hell was I? Who had I become?
Years ago, none of this would have happened.
Years ago, I hadn’t met Sunny Harper.
What hadsheturned me into?
The most screwed up part? After I left her there in the woods, half-naked, in nothing but my T-shirt—myT-shirt—I’d almost turned around and gone back to pick her up. While I knew Darby was bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds, I’d almost gone back to get the woman who’d lied to me and screwed me over like the chump I was. I contemplated going back the entire drive to the crime scene, jumbled thoughts paralyzing me from taking any action, to make a solid decision either way.
I wasn’t this guy.
An irrational, indecisive, loose cannon.
Colson had been right, and when I’d arrived to the trailer park, it was obvious he wasn’t the only one who’d thought so. I’d been cast out of most of the crime scene.Despite the fact the Moon Magic Festival was in full swing at Devil’s Cove, it seemed like the entire town had shown up to the trailer park, bystanders allowed closer than I was. But even though I was restricted to the sidelines, it wasn’t hard to miss the blue four-door sedan parked beside the shittiest trailer, or the excitement in Colson when he’d found Seagrave’s gun in Rees’s roach-infested hideout. Kenzo Rees had killed Seagrave for revenge, case closed. The credit fully owed to Officer Tommy Darby - the kid I’d sent into the mess in the first place.
According to a hyped-up medic, Rees’s trailer had been like a scene in Scarface, with blocks of cocaine stacked in the corners, half of which were labeled with the symbol of an infamous South American gang, where Julian Griggs had just returned from his “mission trip.” Julian had used the cover of God to monitor a drug-trafficking operation orchestrated by his new boss, Kenzo Rees, followed by an initiation that involved attacking Kenzo’s former girlfriend.
The scum of the earth unite.
According to pictures found in the cell phone hidden in the trailer, Rees had been following both Seagrave and Sunny since he’d been released from prison. The night Sunny stole the Cedonia Scroll from Magic Maven’s, Rees had been following her. The fact that Seagrave was the responding officer to the heist had been an opportunity too great for Rees to pass up. He’d shot Seagrave while Sunny escaped. Almost two birds with one stone.
Almost.
According to the first responder at the trailer park, someone had called nine-one-one after hearing gunshots. When the officer arrived at the scene, he found Darby surrounded by a pool of blood in the middle of the grass. He had been shot at close range, two in the shoulder, onedangerously close to the heart. He had a faint pulse when they strapped him onto the gurney, and that was literally all I knew at that moment, other than that it was all my fault.
