Page 44 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
“You would have killed Lauren,” Belinda said. Not a shout, and her voice was shaking hard.
“Oh, boo-fucking-hoo.” Reggie jammed the gun harder against Elsie’s head. “Get out of the truck,” Reggie demanded. And his gaze slashed to Lauren. “You come out, too, and I’ll get two birds with one stone.”
“To hell you will,” Reardon yelled at the top of his lungs. He made a sound that wasn’t even human. Like some enraged animal going in for a kill.
“Reardon, stand down,” Jesse ordered him.
But Reardon was already moving out from the truck.
Already taking aim at Reggie.
Her heart thundered in her chest, every muscle coiled tight as she kept her eyes locked on Reggie. His grip on Elsie was firm, but something shifted—a flicker in his posture, a crack in his confidence.
Panic.
It was there for just a second before he moved, trying to swing his gun away from Elsie and toward Reardon. But the motion was sloppy, rushed. Elsie lost her footing, stumbling a little. Not nearly enough though for Lauren or anyone else to have a clean shot at Reggie.
And that’s when it happened.
A gunshot blasted through the air.
For a couple of heart stopping moments, Lauren thought Elsie had been hit. That Reggie had shot her. But then she looked at Reardon and realized that he was the one who’d fired.
Reardon’s shot slammed right into Reggie’s chest. The force of it spun him slightly before he crumpled to the ground, his gun slipping from his hand, landing near Elsie as she scrambled away, sobbing.
Lauren moved fast, rushing forward alongside Jesse. Her breath was ragged, her pulse going a mile a minute in her ears, but her focus was sharp, locked on Reggie’s body.
Jesse kicked Reggie’s gun out of reach, his voice cutting through the chaos. “Weapon secure!”
Lauren dropped to her knees beside Reggie, staring down at the man who had haunted her nightmares for sixteen years. With his mask off, she could see his face—older, worn by time, but still the same monster.
Blood seeped through his fingers as he clutched his chest, gasping, his breaths wet and shallow.
“You’re done,” Jesse muttered beside her, his voice low and cold.
Reggie’s eyes met Lauren’s, something dark flickering there—defiance, maybe. Or regret. She didn’t know. She didn’t care.
She didn’t feel fear anymore.
Just relief.
It was over. After sixteen years, it was finally over.
Chapter Seventeen
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The late afternoon sun was casting some shadows across the road as Jesse drove, the silence between him and Lauren thick but not uncomfortable. She stared out the window of his truck, her expression distant, her body slumped with exhaustion. The events of the day had left her hollowed out—raw and worn thin.
Jesse knew that feeling too well.
Just minutes earlier, Hallie had ordered them both to go home, not that either of them had the energy to argue about that. With the CSIs still combing through Lauren’s street and her house unsecured with the window Reggie had no doubt broken to lure her out, Jesse hadn’t hesitated. He had gotten Lauren out of the station and started the drive straight to his place.
The truck rumbled up the driveway, the tires crunching on the gravel as they pulled up to his house on the edge of town. It sat on several acres, tucked far enough from the road to give him space—and the kind of quiet most people wouldn’t notice until it was gone. The land stretched out wide, dotted with live oak trees and the faint outline of his horses grazing near the back pasture. No neighbors. Just open sky and space.
Lauren barely reacted when he parked in his garage. She’d been silent since they left the station, her shoulders tight, herjaw clenched like she was holding herself together by sheer will. Jesse didn’t push her.
“Come on,” he said softly, getting out and circling around to open her door.
