Page 121 of When Stars Collide
“I find some place to hide where I can be by myself. My nana has a tree house in her backyard. I go there. It’s up high and no one ever thinks to look there.”
That seemingly innocuous conversation happened so long ago, yet it was jam-packed with clues now. “Oh my God.” My eyes widened.
“What?” Phineas asked, looking around. “What is it? Do you see him?”
“No, but I think I might have an idea where he may be. I-I have to find Karen Hargrove.”
Without providing any sort of an explanation to Phineas, I sprinted off in the direction of the farmhouse, pushing my tiny legs to their limit.
“Mena, wait!” Phineas called behind me, but I was on a mission and waiting wasn’t an option.
Thistles scraped my ankles as I ran through the untended part of the Hargrove property, unintended for traversal by the public. My adrenaline pumping, I kept on running, powering through the pain. This was the most I’d run in, well, ever. Never mind the fact that I was doing so in a pair of heels that made every attempt to thwart my efforts, occasionally planting themselves in soil softened by an early morning rainfall. If it weren’t for the thistles and whatever else may be hiding in the overgrowth, I would have kicked them off a long time ago.
Up ahead, the pristine ivory farmhouse loomed closer and closer with each step. If my legs were as long as Elle’s I would probably be bounding up to the porch by now, but alas, they were not. “Shit,” I grumbled, coming up to a picket fence. It was tall, but not impossibly tall, much like a hurdle in track. Not wanting to break my stride, I made the snap decision to jump over it exactly like said hurdle and hope for the best. Sucking in a breath, I leapt much the same way I’d seen track stars do in the Olympics. Except I had never run track, and my form wasn’t exactly on point—not to mention, my eyes weren’t exactly open.
Just when I thought I’d lucked out and cleared the fence, my foot kicked one of the pickets. With a snap, it broke in half, sending me crashing to the ground. Dazed but still determined, I pushed myself up and limped the rest of the way to the house, knocking on the door like an anxious woodpecker. In mid-knock, the door opened.
“Can I help you?” a woman I hoped was Karen Hargrove asked, inspecting me curiously. “My Lord, child, were you in a car accident?”
I held up my finger, signaling that I was too out of breath to respond and proceeded to spend the next several seconds gathering myself. “Are … you … Karen … Hargrove?”
“Yes, I am.” She gave me a look that reminded me of the one Jackson gave me whenever I asked him a question he thought I should already know the answer to.
“I’m … in the … wedding party. There’s a boy … missing.”
“What? Oh my, I’ll call 911 right away.”
I felt my breath returning to me as I held out my hand, my voice slow but not as breathy. “That’s fine, but I need to know if you have a tree house anywhere on the property.”
“A tree house?” She squinted her eyes, looking at me like I’d just asked the most inane question she’d ever heard. “No, there’s no tree house on the property.” My heart sank as my only lead to finding Jackson was smashed before my eyes. “There’s a tree stand that I like to sit in and listen to nature from time to time. My husband and I—”
“A tree stand?” My jaw dropped. “Where is it?”
“In the woods next to the parking lot. It’s only a few trees in. You should be able to see it from your car.”
“Great.” In a hurry, I turned to leave, shouting as I ran, “I’m sorry about your fence. I’ll pay for it.”
“Wait, what about my fence?” she called behind me.
“Mena?” Phineas caught up to me mid-stride, just as out of breath as I had been, which made me feel better, considering he was in a hell of a lot better shape than I was. “Jesus, what happened to you?”
“Get Peter and Amanda and have them meet at the tree stand near the parking lot.”
“Okay.” He nodded. Recognizing the urgency in my eyes, he asked no further questions and, instead, ran back in the same direction he’d come from.
Lungs on fire and legs made of jelly by the time I reached the parking lot, I scanned the tree line, searching for the tree stand Karen mentioned. “Please be here,” I whined to no one but myself as my legs limped across the asphalt. Growing increasingly despondent, I was just about to proclaim Karen a filthy liar when a glint from something in the woods caught my attention. Narrowing my eyes, I noticed something metallic twenty feet from the tree line. A ladder. A ladder that led up to a tree stand.
“Jackson,” I called, approaching the ladder. After receiving no response, I peered up the rungs to see whether I could see into the blind, but was impeded by its camouflage cover, which didn’t afford so much as a glimpse of the inside. My stomach sank as I took in the height of the stand compared to my position on the ground and the thought of Jackson climbing up there by himself. Maybe I’d been wrong, and he wasn’t up there at all.
“Jackson.” Disheartened when no response was forthcoming from inside of the blind, I sighed, leaning my body against the tree. If he wasn’t here, then I honestly had no idea where else he could be. This property was huge, a large part of it wooded. What if he was lost in the woods somewhere? What if we couldn’t find him before nightfall? “Oh, Jackson, where are you?”
“I’m not up here,” a small voice answered me from inside of the blind. Give him a few more years and he would sound just as much like Peter as he looked.
With a smile so all-encompassing it hurt my face, I stared up at the inside of the stand from the bottom of the ladder. “You know, you suck at hide-and-seek, right?”
“It took you a while to find me, didn’t it?”
The smartass gene must run strong in the Monroe family.
