Page 299 of Wrong Pucking Player

“KENZIE MOVE!” Oscar screams, but his words are followed by a round of gunfire that has me screaming and trying to move on the slippery surface.

Only it suddenly collapses beneath my feet.

“MACKENZIE!”

Before I can grasp what’s happening, I’m watching Wyatt and Oscar scream and race onto the ice, but the next, I’m surrounded by frigid waters, making me realize I’m in the depths of the lake.

My heart is hammering against my chest.

My mind still buzzes with urgency and realization as I come to the understanding that someone shot the ice around my feet so I’d collapse inward.

Everything happened so quickly.

So swift that I’m still fighting to comprehend it all.

I try to move my body, fighting to swim upward and pierce through the surface so I can grasp an ounce of air, but I begin to realize as my body grows heavier that I can’t move.

I can’t move…

Panic settles in, fear bubbling to the surface as I watch the light from above get farther and farther away from me.

The dart.

The dart had to have injected me with something, a substance that’s paralyzing me.

I get it now.

This wasn’t simply a way of getting rid of just Katherine. Fernandez was ready to commit a triple homicide if it got rid of us.

Me. Katherine. Would Jayce count as a potential third? Why is this all happening specifically today? There most certainly needs to be a reason.

Why Grandma Harvey though?

Why would he want to be rid of her?

Is that why Jayce hit Ace?

Is there a correlation to all of this?

I yearn to connect the dots, but time is ticking away.

Whatever this drug is, it makes my mind suddenly fuzzy, leaving me to wonder about why I’d done what I did.

I’d moved without thinking, urgency running through my veins to save someone I know is important to another.

A mother, a sister, a grandmother, a woman who deserved to live out her final years surrounded by those who love her dearly.

The memories of Grandma Harvey and the few instances of shared dinners surrounded by friends always lit up my teenage years.The warmth of her cozy home to the steamy hot meals that filled our bellies to our hearts’ content.

I always wondered what it would be like to have a grandma in my life.

Just like I always imagined what it would be like to actually have a family who loved me.

Instead of being a discarded waste of space like my family thought of me, this woman always reminded me of how special I really was.

Only that part was the story woven for the old me.

The Alexandra Mackenzie Andrews, the orphan of Strattonville.

---