Page 54 of Trustfall
“Guess I don’t need to take a full-page ad out in the paper, then.” I snickered. “Anyway, what brings you by the station?”
“I was hoping we could talk somewhere private, maybe Dad’s office.”
“Yeah, of course.”
We had only made it a few steps inside when the alert tones chimed. “Additional medical assistance required at twenty-fourhundred Spruce Lane. Unresponsive seventy-two-year-old male, history of diabetes, suspected cardiac episode.”
A chill threaded down my spine.
“That’s Malcolm’s place, right?” Jaxon asked.
“Yeah, and Ari and Alex should already be on the scene.”
I pulled out my phone and called her, but it went straight to voicemail.
“You’ve reached the voicemail for Arizona. Please leave me a message, and I’ll get back to you soon.”
“Ari, I need you to call me back. It’s urgent.”
Jaxon’s radio then crackled to life. “Calling any available unit in the area of twenty-four hundred Spruce Lane to report to the scene for suspicious activity. Please be advised one paramedic is unresponsive to radio dispatch.”
“Fuck.” I pounded the side of the fire truck as a fear unlike anything I’d ever experienced didn’t just trickle in, it slammed into me at full force. Knocking the wind out of my lungs as my heart began racing uncontrollably.
Jaxon grabbed my arm and pulled me toward his cruiser.
“Don’t race to conclusions—” His voice sounded like we were in a tunnel underwater.
“Don’t fucking tell me how to react because if anything happens to her . . .” I couldn’t even finish the thought. There were no ends of the earth I wouldn’t go to to protect her. “Fucking hell, drive faster, would you.”
Jaxon beat the second ambulance to the scene, but judging by the sirens’ sounds, Reed and Greer weren’t far behind as we pulled up behind Arizona’s parked ambulance. Other than it sitting parked with no lights, nothing seemed amiss.
“Me first.” Jaxon pinned me with a look that drove home the reality of what could be on the other side of the door.
I followed behind him in his footsteps, taking in the scene.
The house was eerily silent.
The air was heavy, and everything about it felt wrong when we rounded the corner toward the bedrooms. When we got to Malcolm’s bedroom, we found him on the bed with no sign of Ari or Alex. I rounded the corner of the bed and found all the supplies from Ari’s jump bag scattered everywhere across the floor.
“There are definite signs of a struggle; she was here.”
I immediately checked for Malcolm’s pulse; it was faint, and I noted something had to have happened after she got him on oxygen and administered an IV line since there was no sign of the ECG machine, just a tube of glucose gel lying beside him on the bed.
“Malcolm, can you hear me?” I shook his shoulder. “Malcolm, come on, man, I need you to wake up. Arizona is missing, and I need you to tell me if you saw anything.” I shook him again. “Malcolm, did you hear me? Arizona is missing.”
“Paramedics just pulled up,” Jaxon called out from the hallway.
“None of this makes any sense. Where’s Ari?”
“We’ll find her.” He tried to reassure me.
“There is no other option here, what if—” God, I couldn’t even think about it.
Bile churned violently in the back of my throat, burning my esophagus. I stood and threaded my fingers through my hair, gripping the ends forcefully while I paced the small space. Reed and Greer had since taken over treating Malcolm and hooked up leads on his chest to check his heart.
“I’m going to head across the street and see if anyone has doorbell footage.”
Jaxon’s words barely registered, but my clarity snapped back into focus when I caught sight of a syringe lying against the bed skirt on the floor.
