Page 67 of Burning Secrets

More shouts, and she didn’t stick around. She ducked down, let the smoke obscure her, and took off running toward the fence.

Barking.

The fence rose, taller than she’d realized. No way would she get over that, not with the barbed wire along the top.

The storage shed. It sat on cinder blocks, just like the cabin. An old log cabin but sturdy. And attached to the back, a bin, maybe for firewood. And with the window above, possibly a second floor.

She ran, leaped on it, and then pulled herself up, into the window.

Yes, a loft. And it overlooked the body of the cabin.

A storage unit, for sure. And it held a massive four-armed drone, four times the size of the field drone.

A plastic barrel sat next to it.

Probably filled with enough poison to dose the entire Eklutna Lake. The water supply of Anchorage.

The next test?

More barking. She peeked out the window and spotted the dogs loosed in the yard.

If they caught her in here, she’d be trapped.

Now what, Lord?

For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent and set me high upon a rock.

Or a house?

She headed back to the window, peeked out the back. The cabin next door had caught fire, the smoke now roiling into the sky, crackling, sparking.

Obscuring her movements.

She climbed out, then stood on the window ledge and reached for the roof.

Blamed Jade and her insistence that they keep training all the summer, because she grabbed the edge and pulled herself up to the grassy, moldy, rotting surface.

Then she lay on top, watching the chaos like a panther, and prayed.

Sorry, Dad.

Crew didn’t know why that, of all thoughts, pulsed in his head as he lay on the stainless-steel bench in the jail cell.

So many stupid mistakes cluttered his brain, strangled him. And now JoJo would pay the price.

He threw an arm over his eyes, but in the darkness, it only brought to mind the image of Viper—or worse, Jer?—

Okay. Not going there. He sat up, wove his fingers together behind his neck, hung his head. Breathed.

Even though life feels out of control, it’s not, and we’re going to hold on to truth.

JoJo’s words to him in the cabin. Maybe that’s why he kept thinking of his father. She’d spoken his father’s verse.Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?

He could almost see the old man walking up to him in the yard right after he’d been incarcerated. The fact he’d transferred to the prison to be near him…Crew didn’t know what wheels his dad had greased for that to happen, but Crew had become a child in that moment, fighting not to betray the heat that wanted to wash over him.

What Mills had said was true. His father had transferred to watch over him.

To witness to him. To bring him to faith, probably, because he’d been there too when Crew had knelt before the prison altar and asked Jesus to save him.

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