trampoline park, but I don’t bother to correct him.
“Join us. Be the bread to my butter. The cookie to my cream. The taco shell to my meat,” I say as I wave him over.
He does a quick one eighty and starts back toward his car.
Why’s he always trying to leave? “H-Henry? Daddy, don’t go!”
“I’m going to call the police and have them handle this,” he decides.
Jackson turns toward him. “Henry, wait… please. I want to get her to admit to being involved, and I don’t think she’ll admit it even in custody. She’s trying to twist this into some shitshow where she talked us into basically doing all of the bad shit for her,” Jackson says. “I’m afraid she can and will pin it on us if given the chance.”
Henry sighs. “Fine, as long as you stop… whatever that is,” he says as he waves to us.
Cassel and Jackson part, leaving me cold and alone in the middle. But I know it’s just because Henry is jealous, so I understand his issue with it.
Cassel turns to Henry. “I’m going to go around back to keep her from escaping that way. Do you want to come with me, and we can flush her toward the others?”
“Sure. Are you guys ready?” Henry asks.
“Just a moment. I have recording devices for the two of them,” Cassel says before fitting us with them.
Once we’re ready, we part ways. Cassel’s GPS is good enough to tell us which building she’s in and that she’s closer to the front than back, but it can’t tell us exactly where. So Jackson and I head inside to where there’s a guy taking tickets.
He eyes Jackson and me like we could even remotely be suspicious. “Which party are you with?” he asks as he glances down at his computer.
“We’re just meeting someone,” Jackson says as he pulls out his wallet for the tickets.
“Yes, well, you seem to be missing your child,” the man says, like Jackson and I could be mistaken for creeps.
“We’re not creepy,” I assure him.
Jackson glances at me as if that wasn’t the right thing to say, but I’m not quite sure why. I assumed it cleared up any and all misunderstandings. Obviously, it didn’t because the man folds his arms over his chest. “We’ve been having parents complain about a suspicious man hanging around and watching the children. Our first priority is keeping the children safe so unless you have something to prove you’re supposed to be here, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he says as I see Anna skirt on by, clearly having noticed us.
I give Jackson a shove right into the man so they end up doing this bro hug thing before I slip past and take off running. “Anna, hold your fucking horses!” I shout as children’s and parents’ heads snap to me. “I mean… freaking horses!”
I leap onto a trampoline Anna is skirting across and don’t understand the level of bounce until I send a small child careening up into the air. Realizing that slingshotting a child into the rafters isn’t exactly ideal, I grab her even though she seemed to enjoy it. I set her down as Anna makes a quick dodge toward the emergency-only door.
“Anna, you stop right this minute! Police!” I shout just because it makes me feel important. She slams into the door and the alarm starts sounding as everyone who wasn’t already staring at us turns to stare at us. I bounce hard, planning to leap forward to catch her mid jump, when Jackson stumbles onto the same trampoline, knocking me off my groove. I stumble and fall right into Jackson’s path. He tries to jump over me before falling into me and spilling out the other side.
I have faced brutal killers, I have faced abusers, I have even faced Ava, but I now know that the most lethal of all is The Trampoline. Especially when I can feel trampoline burns across my face from my epic face skid. Anna takes the moment of our fuckup to skirt on by. I push up and leap through the air, tackling Anna right into a huge foam ball pit. It’s filled with large square foam blocks that we instantly sink into. She loops her arm over my throat and starts dragging me under. I grab for her but miss and end up grabbing a foam square instead. I decide to make the most of it and try to punch her in the face with