Page 84 of You'll Never Know
You can end this right here. You can stay and turn yourself in.
Reed wanted to. He did.
But he just kept running.
Chapter 42
BAILEY
Three years.
That’s the thought that runs through my head as Reed Aldridge pushes through the willows and stops at the base of the hill. Zane and I are parked a ways off the road, hidden beneath a thick patch of Douglas fir a quarter mile away from the White property. We’re watching Reed through two pairs of military-grade binoculars that provide a surprising amount of clarity from this distance. We can see him perfectly, but there’s no way he’ll spot us.
Three years,I think again. I’ve waited over three years for this moment. I’ve poured all of my rage into what’s about to happen, every ounce of my grief and pain. My hatred for this man and what he’s taken from me is a fire that’s burned inside of me without end. Every blistering minute without my husband, every scorching second stolen from my child, has led me right here to this place and time.
I love you.
You’re my forever.
I’ll never leave you.
We’re having a baby.
Every one of these statements a lie. There have been so many, but none more important than the last. The icing on the cake. I knew itfrom the way Reed’s eyes filled with tenderness the moment I told him I was pregnant. I saw it in the way his lips tightened when I handed him the fake ultrasound. I felt it in the way his fingers trembled and shook. There was so much awe there. Such beautiful shock. A miracle! His chance at redemption. God’s hand reaching down from the clouds to hover over my womb.Let there be life.
I gave him everything.
My heart. My soul. My life.
A child.
And now, here where Taylor White once lived—a place that held such importance to Reed—I’ll tear it all away and leave him with a hole so deep nothing will ever fill it again. A hole exactly like mine.
“Here we go,” Zane says in a way that reminds me of “Officer Gunn”, the persona he played to absolute perfection with Reed, his voice low and clipped.
It’s all gone to plan so far: My “abduction” and attempted “rescue”. The unstable timelines and the riddles I created. Reed craves control. He prioritizes order. So, taking them away and watching him unravel before my eyes has been particularly satisfying. And now, after my curated tour of the darkest moments of his youth, he’s ready for the grand finale.
Ten minutes ago, Zane sent an email containing phone records, transcripts, photos, money trails, past identity documents, and every other bit of information we have on Reed to every major news outlet in Colorado: Who he is. What he’s done. Who he’s done it to.
Tonight, Reed Aldridge will be local news. Tomorrow, he’ll be national. That’s my hope anyway. I’m banking the story of a con man flushed out of hiding will be too juicy to resist. Sure, I could have called in a tip to begin with. I could have turned Reed in right away and skipped all of this; it would have achieved the same thing. But it would have been too easy. Too benign. A simple arrest and prosecution was never going to be enough. Not when Reed deserves to know what itfeels like to have a life he loves—along with everyone and everything in it—ripped away in an instant.
Right now, Sean, Zane’s son, is in the middle of removing my belongings from Reed’s home. I don’t relish the idea of the kid going through my things alone. Something about Sean Jenson has always given me chills. There’s a certain cruelty to him. The way he intimidated Elizabeth Gleason, the fake version of me, during her brief abduction seemed a little too real, and a little too enjoyable for him. But when it came to Reed’s takedown, Zane insisted we “keep it in the family”, especially this last part. Despite his unstable past, Zane assured me his son was someone we could trust. And I have to admit he’s lived up to that label so far. Despite his age, he slipped right into the role of Officer Holston. Reed didn’t have a clue.
So, I agreed, and we left him there, alone in the home, to remove every happy picture of Reed and me together, along with all of my clothing and jewelry and makeup. Every last trace of me will be wiped from Reed’s life like I was never there at all. Like Reed has done to so many of his victims before this, Avery Carter is about to become a ghost. And now that I’m finished, the public can have him. They’ll devour a story about a misogynistic piece of shit who hates women brought to justice.
Except that’s not the Reed you know.
The thought cuts through me like a bitter wind. I can’t let myself go there. Not now. Not ever. It doesn’t matter the man I’ve spent the better part of the last year with doesn’t match the monster I’d imagined in my mind. I’d expected a selfish man. A man without a conscience. A manipulative narcissist and pathological liar so full of himself he’s able to ruin the lives of innocent people without a second thought. And not only that, but a sadist and a murderer. A man who turned an autistic woman into a corpse and then rationalized pulling her into the driver’s seat to take the blame for killing my family.
Yet from the moment I met Reed Aldridge, all he’s been is polite,respectful, and kind. He remembers the small things about me even Ethan didn’t. Like that I prefer my coffee with two spoonfuls of cream and one packet of sugar. He knows I take my eggs over medium instead of easy. He serves my drinks with straws because my teeth are sensitive to cold, and he’s the first to pour me an evening glass of wine after a long day. He’s attentive. He actually listens when I talk. When I’m frustrated with him about something, he tries to do better.
These are the things, I’ve had to remind myself, he’s done for all of his victims. Because Reed Aldridge isn’t actually a good man. He’s just good at what he does. He’s a con man for a reason. One who I’m going to make sure never harms another woman again.
It’s why five minutes ago, I called the Durango police department using one of Zane’s burners.There’s a man trespassing on Judge White’s property. He’s about to break into the house! Please hurry!
The judge isn’t home. He and his wife are vacationing in California wine country. And although I’d give anything to see Reed arrested in front of the father of the girl who refused to have his child, it had to be this way. We had to prepare things for Reed without the Whites taking note. And now that we have, Zane and I can simply sit back and watch as Reed is arrested and put away forever.
“A few more shovelfuls and he’ll be there,” Zane says.
