The Trouble with Love

❝ if the last thing that i do is bring you down ❞

(unedited)

If the last thing that I do is bring you down,
I'll bleed out for you.
So I bare my skin and I count my sins,
And I close my eyes,
And I take it in.

"Bleeding Out" -Imagine Dragons

No one expected it.

That I was certain of.

But even so, people reacted. Police were trained to react quickly, after all. As soon as the bang! sounded through the room, the officer closet to Vanessa pushed her down. But that didn't help because the bullet wasn't headed towards Vanessa.

She wasn't the target.

Jacen was.

Jacen, who didn't have the reaction time of a police officer and stood frozen in shock as the bullet whizzed towards him.

Then- suddenly- Keira was there, a split second before the bullet hit. It was so fast I almost believed I was hallucinating.

'The average person can move fourteen feet in a second.' I distantly remembered someone telling me- probably Shawn. So it was possible.

But that wasn't what made me believe it was really happening.

No, it was the sharp crack that echoed through the room when Keira's head snapped back, colliding with the witness stand, that made me realize Keira had jumped in front of Jacen. Then the thud as her body slumped to the ground.

For the second time- the room erupted in chaos.

A majority of the police officers rushed to the crowd, already trying to keep them calm. A small group of them, about five, went to Keira and Jacen. Three of them knelt down beside Keira's still body, while the other two pulled Jacen down from the witness stand. But he wasn't paying attention to them. He wasn't even looking at his sister. Instead he was looking to the back of the room.

I turned and followed his gaze to see a man in a police uniform ducking out the doors. The man looked up for a quick moment; just enough for me to see that it wasn't really a police officer.

It was Detective Fallon.

Jacen saw him at the same moment that I did. He pulled away from the police officers holding him, and ran across the room.

Without thinking, I sprinted after him.

"Elena!" I heard someone call behind me- Kaden, I think- but I didn't stop, slipping through the doors just before the officers guarding it could grab me. I skidded into the lobby just in time to see Detective Fallon turn a corner, Jacen chasing after him. I turned down the hall, but there was no sign of either of them.

Shit.

I slowed, glancing around. Then something on the floor, a little farther down the hall caught my eye. Something black that glinted under the fluorescent lights.

Detective Fallon's gun.

As I got closer, I noticed something else near it. A dribble of blood.

Oh, fuck.

A crash came from down the hall, letting me know I was in the right place.

"Come on, Jacen," I muttered, peeking into the different rooms. "Please don't be doing something stupid."

That was when I heard it -the dull thud of flesh hitting flesh. I sped up my pace, hurrying towards the sound. It was some kind of meeting room that I found them in. Multiple chairs were knocked over, and the table was asked, making it look like a tornado had swept through the room.