Page 6 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
Those were the words repeating through Jesse’s mind as they waited in Lauren’s office for information on the crime scene. He had no doubts, none, that those same words were playing the leading role in Lauren’s thoughts as well. And Hallie’s. Heck, through all the deputies’ as well.
Hallie had holed up in her office, making calls to the CSIs and the hospital to check on Abilene Joyce. That left him and Lauren alone in hers.
Lauren’s office was one of the best-equipped in the station, thanks to Owen Striker’s deep pockets. After the massacre a year and a half ago when most of Outlaw Ridge’s cops had been slaughtered in a calculated ambush, Striker had funded the rebuild, ensuring the department had state-of-the-art equipment. High-end monitors, specialized software, and top-tier forensics tools.
Didn’t mean the ghosts of the past weren’t still here.
Ghosts of the past could be little shits like that. Never going away. Taking swipes at the living.
That note on the mirror had been such a swipe. Ditto for the blood in the shop and Abilene Joyce. But one of the biggest swipes right now had to be the possibility that a vicious kidnapper was at work again.
And that he was trying to draw Lauren into the nightmare.
If so, the kidnapper had already succeeded. She was drawn in, and she was frantically working on her laptop, looking for any clues about Mark Smith, the man who had called the Realtor to set up a showing. Since he had canceled it, this guy could have arranged the appointment simply to bring attention to the crime scene.
Attention that would eat away like acid at Lauren.
It sure as hell was eating away at him while he tapped away on his own laptop, searching for any and everything on Abilene Joyce. He was finding a lot, mostly unhelpful info of meals, parties, and vacation pix posted on social media, but he was hoping more would surface.
More as in why she’d ended up in the Outlaw Ridge Police Station with that knife and blood on her. And with the tattoo.
Lauren groaned, and even though it’d been a soft sound, Jesse heard the frustration. “Nothing,” she muttered. “Mark Smith’s number is no longer in service.”
So, that added more fodder to the theory of this guy being the kidnapper. Or maybe a copycat. Either way, he’d likely done something bad for that blood to have gotten on the floor.
But how had Abilene gotten away from him?
That was yet another question for which they had no answer, and until Abilene became responsive and could talk to them, they might have to find the info elsewhere.
“How are you doing?” Jesse asked when Lauren groaned again and leaned back against her chair. “How are youreallydoing?” he amended when she quickly opened her mouth to respond with what probably would have been a lie.
She let out a breath and met his gaze. “I don’t know.” A wry smile tugged at her lips, but there was no humor in it. “Not the answer you were looking for, huh?”
He shrugged. “It’s honest. Better than a lie of saying you’re fine.”
Silence stretched, thick with things unsaid. Finally, he gave her a half-smile and went with something that he hoped would shift her thoughts. For a couple of seconds anyway. “You know, we never did go on that date.”
She blinked, caught off guard. “What?”
“That night. I was waiting for you.” His jaw tightened slightly. “Thought you’d changed your mind. Then I got the call that you were missing.”
Lauren’s expression flickered, something raw moving behind her eyes. “Jesse…”
He shook his head. “I’m not bringing it up to make you feel bad. Just… it’s always been there, you know?”
A beat of silence. Then she leaned back, exhaling. “Yes, I know. I became a cold case investigator because of what happened to me.”
That surprised exactly no one. Some people retreated into safety after surviving an ordeal as she had. Others became champions of justice. Like Lauren.
“I needed answers.” She traced an invisible pattern on her desk, and he wondered if she knew it was the shape of a heart. “For years, I kept thinking maybe I had missed something. Maybe if I looked hard enough, I could find the truth.” Her voice dropped slightly. “Find the other girls.”
Jesse felt something tighten in his chest. But there was nothing he could say that was going to make that need go away.
Lauren glanced at him. “I never did find the other girls. Or him.”
The weight of that truth sat heavy between them. But Jesse wasn’t so sure the past was done with her yet.
“How deep do you want to go on this?” he came out and asked.
