Page 8 of Outlaw Ridge: Jesse
“But I asked him about the social media post, too,” she added in a mutter. “He could have decided it was best to silence me either through traumatizing me with another victim…or doing something else to me.”
He would have tried to soothe her. Would have attempted to say something to lessen the guilt that he could see racing through her like wildfire. But her phone rang, cutting off anything else.
After she muttered something he didn’t catch, she finally tore her gaze from him and looked at her phone screen. “It’s Griff,” she said, taking the call.
A call that didn’t last long. After only a couple of seconds, Lauren was getting to her feet. “I’ll be there in five minutes,” she assured Griff and ended the call.
“The hospital just called the station. Abilene Joyce wants to speak to me, and she says it’s urgent.”
Jesse got up, too. “I’m going with you,” he insisted.
Thankfully, Lauren didn’t argue as they headed out of her office.
Chapter Four
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Lauren had a much too tight grip on the side of the passenger’s seat as Jesse steered the cruiser down Main Street, heading toward the hospital. The ride was short—five minutes at most—but with every passing block, the tension in her chest tightened. She wanted and needed to hear what Abilene had to say, but Lauren knew this was going to fire up those flashbacks with a vengeance.
The drive was firing up some as well. Heck, everything was. Especially when they drove past Harper’s Hair & Nails.
The bright pink and white sign hadn’t changed. Neither had the small parking lot in back, where she had stood sixteen years ago, checking her phone to see if she had any texts from Jesse.
Except she’d never gotten a chance to see any texts. Because someone had abducted her, taken her phone and brought her to that hellhole place where she’d been held captive.
She swallowed hard, dragging her gaze away from the salon’s parking lot. The memories pressed in, crystal clear and relentless. The blindfold. Her wrists and ankles secured with duct tape. The cold, damp air in that tiny cage-like room in the bunker where she’d been held. The distant sound of another girl crying. Of another screaming. The feel of the brand searing into her arm.
Lauren shifted in her seat, forcing the images away. But not the thoughts. She couldn’t keep those at bay. She’d spent years trying to find the man who took her. She’d torn through every case file, every interview transcript, every scrap of evidence. And she’d failed.
And now, after all this time, he might be back.
Or she could be wrong.
Her stomach twisted.What if I made a mistake? What if I pushed the wrong person too hard?
A couple of months ago, she’d confronted Dr. Ethan Graves about the date on that profile report, demanding answers. He’d brushed it off. A simple clerical error. Nothing sinister. But what if her questions had been enough to trigger something?
What if she’d been the reason Abilene Joyce had shown up bleeding in the police station?
The thought coiled inside her, dark and suffocating until Jesse’s voice cut through it.
“You know,” he said, glancing at her, “if we’d actually gone on that date, I’m pretty sure I would’ve been broke by the end of the night.”
Lauren blinked. “What?”
He smirked. “I only had thirty bucks on me. You wouldn’t have ordered something expensive, would you?”
The unexpectedness of it caught her off guard. A laugh—small, but real—escaped her lips. “I don’t remember. But I probably would have.”
Jesse chuckled. “Figures. I had a whole plan, you know. I’d already mentioned to you that we’d be going for pizza at Arlo’s, but then I intended for us to hit up that arcade at the strip mall. I was gonna let you win at air hockey.”
She arched a brow. “Let me?”
He grinned. “Okay, fine. You probably would’ve destroyed me.”
The tension inside her loosened just a little. For a moment, she let herself picture it. The date they never had. The one normal night that had been stolen from her. From both of them.
But the hospital loomed ahead, bringing reality crashing back. And somewhere inside, Abilene Joyce was waiting for her.
