Page 12 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
Lauren stiffened beside him. Jesse narrowed his eyes. “Reardon? The county sheriff who got involved with Lauren’s abduction?”
Graves nodded, his smirk returning. “Yeah. The golden boy cop. Everyone thought he was the hero trying to save the missing girl, but I always had my doubts.”
Jesse exchanged a glance with Lauren. Reardon had been respected, even decorated, but a couple of years later, he’d resigned under a cloud of suspicion. Jesse couldn’t recall the reason for that suspicion, but he’d soon find out.
“This is the thanks I get for trying to help the cops,” Graves muttered while he stormed away.
Jesse watched the station door swing shut behind Graves. The profiler-psychologist had left them with more questions than answers, but one thing was clear, he was either trying to throw them off his scent or nudging them toward something they hadn’t yet considered.
Lauren let out a slow breath, crossing her arms as she stared at the door. “I hate that he got to me,” she murmured.
Jesse didn’t push. He could see the way she was working through something, the way her fingers tapped restlessly against her arm.
Finally, she turned to face him. “I never told anyone this, but… I had doubts about Tim Reardon, too.”
That had Jesse’s full attention. “You think he was involved?”
Lauren hesitated, then shook her head. “I don’t know. But something’s never sat right with me.” She exhaled sharply, running a hand through her hair. “After I escaped, he was the one who interviewed me. Over and over. I thought he was just trying to help me process what happened, to find details that might lead to the other girls. But looking back, maybe it was more than that.”
Jesse frowned. “More how?”
Lauren’s expression darkened. “What if he wasn’t just studying me to help me heal? What if he was studying me for his own fascination? Or worse, what if he was trying to find out if I knew anything that could incriminate him?”
Jesse absorbed that, his gut tightening. Hell, had that happened?
“I don’t have an ounce of proof against him or Graves,” she admitted. “But there’s something else about Tim Reardon. Something I learned when I started digging into him a few years ago.” She hesitated before meeting his gaze. “When he was fiveyears old, his father abducted a young woman and murdered her.”
Jesse couldn’t bite off the profanity before it left his mouth. “What? I never heard about any of this.”
“It happened before we were even born. From all accounts, Tim adored his father. It crushed him when his dad was sentenced to life in prison.” She shook her head. “No, there aren’t any direct similarities between what his father did and what happened to me. But what if it twisted him up? What if it made him into something worse?”
Jesse’s jaw clenched. Reardon had been a damn good county sheriff at the time. The one leading the search. The one questioning Lauren, guiding the investigation.
And now, with new victims appearing after sixteen years…
“What if he’s the one who took me?” Lauren whispered.
Jesse felt the weight of Lauren’s words settle over him like a storm rolling in over the plains.
What if he’s the one who took me?
He wanted to tell her she was wrong, that it was impossible, but he knew better. The world didn’t work like that. People wore masks, and sometimes the ones you were supposed to trust the most were the ones hiding the darkest secrets.
Before he could say anything, Jesse’s phone buzzed against his hip. A call from the hospital. His gut twisted and bracing himself, he answered. “Deputy McCain.”
The voice on the other end was tight, urgent. “Deputy, I’m Sal Becker with hospital security. You need to get back here right away. Abilene Joyce is dead.”
Chapter Six
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Lauren’s pulse pounded as she and Jesse strode through the hospital’s automatic doors. Again. But this time, it wasn’t to interview the traumatized woman who’d shown up at the police station.
It was to find out why that woman was now dead.
As they walked, Jesse’s hand hovered near the small of her back, a calm and steady strength as they approached the nurses’ station. She spotted the security guard, Sal Becker, and a weary-looking doctor, Larry Monroe, in a white coat. Both the doctor and the guard looked up, recognition and dread, flickering in their eyes.
“You’re here about Miss Joyce,” the doctor said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. The guard moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
