Page 27 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
Or worse.
Had Reardon been involved in some way in what Reggie had done?
“On the afternoon you escaped,” Belinda pressed on, voice shaking. “Reggie had come home and packed up some food. And a bottle of my mother’s sleeping pills. That was the second bottle he’d taken in the same week so I knew he was up to something.”
Yes, he had been, and Lauren recalled that woozy feeling she’d gotten sometimes after eating what her abductor had brought her. Reggie had likely used those pills to drug her.
Belinda made a soft sob and squeezed her eyes shut a moment as if trying to block out the memories. Lauren knew from experience that wasn’t going to help.
“When I saw him shove those pills into his backpack,” Belinda said, “I knew he was up to something so I followed him, but I never imagined…” She let out a shaky breath. “I followed him for about a half hour, and then I lost sight of him. I looked around and was ready to head back home when I saw him chasing you.”
Lauren’s hands clenched into fists. Flashes of that ordeal hit her like broken glass—branches cutting her skin, breath burning in her lungs, the feel of him right behind her.
Belinda’s eyes shimmered with more tears. “I gasped, and he heard me. He whirled around, and I saw that he was wearing a ski mask, but I knew it was him. And he had a knife. I thought he was going to kill you. Or me.” She swallowed. “I didn’t think. I grabbed a rock and threw it at him as hard as I could.”
Lauren’s breath caught. And this time, Jesse didn’t just touch her hand. He took hold of it. It was the exact anchor she needed to keep her knees from buckling. To stop herself from letting the flashbacks eat her alive.
Belinda’s lips parted like she, too, was reliving it all over again. “He fell. Hit his head on a boulder. I threw more rocks at him. A lot of them. But when he didn’t move or get up, I went closer. I pulled off the ski mask and could see that he was already dead.”
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Lauren forced herself to breathe, her mind racing. Reggie. Her kidnapper had a name. A sister. A past. And now, he had been dead this whole time.
“You killed him,” Lauren murmured, the reality settling over her.
Belinda nodded slowly. “There was so much blood. His head had this big gash on it.” She pointed to her right temple. “I glanced around for you, but I didn’t see you. You were gone.”
Yes, gone. Or rather running to get away from someone she was certain was about to end her life. Instead, his sister had ended his.
And Lauren believed that.
She might have doubts as to Reardon’s part in all of this, but she could feel it in her bones that Belinda was telling the truth. About all of this anyway. The trauma on her face and in her voice were too real for it to be faked.
“What did you do then?” Hallie prompted Belinda when the woman fell silent.
Belinda took a moment, dragging in several long breaths. “There was a hole in the ground about ten feet away. One of those cracks from when an underground mineral spring has dried up.”
Lauren was very familiar with them. They were all over the area, and she’d nearly fallen in a couple of them when she’d been escaping.
“The hole wasn’t big, only three feet wide, but it was fairly deep,” Belinda explained. “I dragged him over to it and shovedhim, his mask, and the knife inside. I put some limbs and rocks over him like a makeshift grave.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Jesse asked, voicing the question that Lauren wanted to know as well. Hallie, no doubt, too.
“I don’t know. I guess I was in shock. And I thought I’d be arrested,” she murmured.
“You might have been,” Hallie admitted.
“And that would’ve been bullshit,” Reardon snarled. “She was terrified for her life, and Reggie would have used that knife on her. She did the world a favor by getting rid of that bastard. Do you know he marked her up? When she was a kid, he cut her, carved stuff into her body…”
He stopped. Just stopped. And Lauren could see he was fighting to regain his composure. Reardon certainly didn’t look like the hard-ass county sheriff now. He looked a little…unhinged, and Lauren had to wonder if some kind of guilt was playing into this.
Maybe.
But if it was, if Reardon had helped Reggie in some way and now regretted it, she couldn’t see him starting up Reggie’s crimes all over again. Still, there could be things in play here that hadn’t come to light. Things that had spurred him to copycat what his wife’s dead brother had done.
“Your parents or Reggie’s friends didn’t question where he was?” Hallie pressed.
She shook her head. “He didn’t have friends. And my parents might have wondered what’d happened to him, but they never looked for him. Like I said, it was a relief when he wasn’t there.”
Belinda lifted her head, her pale eyes locking into Lauren’s. “After I buried him, I did look for you. I swear, I did. I searched the woods and found that bunker.”
