Page 26 of Outlaw Ridge: Hayes

“What do you think?” he countered.

Jemma sighed. Then, huffed. Then, nodded. “But if he did it, he likely would have been acting on his mother’s orders.”

“Agreed,” Hayes said just as Reed came their way. He was carrying a laptop that he set on the table.

“Got a minute?” Reed asked. “Because I think I might have found…something.”

“We’re listening,” Jemma assured him.

“I just got through briefing Owen about this on the phone, and he thinks it’s worth pursuing.” Reed took in a long breath. “I’ve been going through the files that were recovered from the water damage and the ones that you digitized into the storage cloud. I’ve merged all of that data with info from county sources and any mention on social media of anyone listed in the files. It’s created a sort of composite, and I’ve found something that doesn’t fit.”

“What do you mean?” Jemma asked.

Reed pointed to three names on his laptop screen. Jacob Worthington, Kyle Furst, and Hailey Trainor. “Do you recognize any of them?”

Jemma leaned in, had a long look and shook her head. “No, I don’t. Who are they?”

“Missing persons. Jacob went missing two years ago when he was twenty-two. Kyle, aged twenty-three, disappeared a month later. And Hailey, who was barely twenty-one, disappeared sixteen months ago.”

“I wasn’t a deputy then,” she muttered. “But I don’t recall the sheriff or deputies mentioning them.”

And that in itself was sort of a red flag. In a small town, any and all cases got some buzz.

“All three were called in as missing persons by their family members or their boss,” Reed continued. “I have the recordings of those 911 calls since they’re stored on the county database. But there’s no record that the cases were ever investigated by Outlaw Ridge PD despite them being in their jurisdiction.”

Jemma stayed quiet a moment. “Maybe those files were destroyed by the sprinkler?”

“I considered that, but you’d digitized all the files from this time period, which means the missing hikers should have been there.” Reed paused. “The county sheriff vaguely recalls seeing notices about the three, but since it wasn’t his jurisdiction, he didn’t follow up to see if any of them were ever found.”

“Could a dispatcher have screwed up?” Hayes asked.

“Maybe,” Reed admitted. “If so, that points to Royce.”

It did indeed. It might also point to more than a screw-up if Royce had tried to conceal these incidents.

“There’s something else about all of this.” Reed pointed to Jacob’s name again. “His mother reported him missing after he failed to come home from a hiking trip. She was killed in a hit and run within hours after she made the report. Jacob’s father and no other close relatives were in the picture so no one else pushed on him being missing.”

“Hell,” Hayes muttered. “What about the others?”

“The people who reported Kyle missing are dead, too,” Reed confirmed. “His parents died in a suspicious house fire.”

Hayes cursed again. This was more than a red flag, but he didn’t know how it fit into murdering an entire police force.

“What about Hailey?” Jemma asked.

Reed shook his head. “She has no parents, they were killed when she was a toddler, and she ended up in a string of foster homes. No close family. Her boss at a diner where she worked part-time is the one who reported her missing, but he didn’tfollow up on it, probably thinking that she’d just quit without letting him know.”

That was possible. And the fact that he hadn’t followed up was probably the reason he hadn’t been killed. Someone had obviously wanted no one asking questions about these missing persons.

“There’s one more coincidence,” Reed added. “All three were on a hiking trip.” He shifted the image on his laptop to a map and motioned to a county park. “All three of the missing hikers posted on social media or left word or some indication that they’d be in this area.”

Jemma sucked in her breath, and Hayes knew why. They both knew the location of that particular park. And better yet, they knew what was right next to it.

Duane’s school.

In fact, some of the trails were mere feet away from the fence that surrounded the school.

Jemma looked at him and voiced exactly what he was thinking. “I think we need to have another chat with Duane and Royce.”

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