Outlaw Ridge: Jesse (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #7)

Chapter One

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From his desk in the bullpen, Deputy Jesse McCain heard the front door of the Outlaw Ridge Police Station open, but he kept his attention on the report he was trying to finish.

Tried to shut out, too, the routine chaos around him.

Keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the low murmur of his fellow deputies talking and trading updates of their investigations.

Then, the air shifted. The typing and conversations stopped.

Just stopped.

A murmur of shock rippled through the room. Deputy Griff Abrams swore under his breath, and Jesse’s head snapped up, his gut tightening at the sight he saw in the doorway.

A young, blonde-haired woman stood there.

Early twenties, maybe even younger. Barefoot. Her sleeveless white summer dress was spattered in blood. Her wide, vacant eyes swept the room. But what really caught Jesse’s attention were her fingers curled around the handle of a butcher knife, its blade smeared with blood.

Jesse was on his feet in an instant, moving toward her and motioning for the receptionist to take cover behind his desk. “Ma’am, I need you to put the knife down,” he said, lifting his hands in what he hoped would be a steadying gesture to show her that he didn’t have a weapon trained on her.

But Griff and the other on-duty deputies were certainly ready to do just that if this turned out to be a threat. So far, she wasn’t. The woman didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t seem to register him at all.

“I’m Deputy Jesse McCain,” he said, hands still raised, voice as level and calm as he could manage. Griff moved up behind him. “Can you tell me who you are?”

Normally, Jesse wouldn’t have had to ask that question to someone who came into the police station. In a small town like Outlaw Ridge, everybody usually knew just about everybody, but Jesse was certain, though he’d never seen this woman before.

She didn’t answer his question. She just stood there with that empty look in her pale blue eyes.

With Griff shadowing him, Jesse went closer to her, his gaze sliding over the woman, checking for any signs of an injury.

It was hard to tell with all that blood on her, but the blood wasn’t fresh.

It had dried and crusted in spots on her dress and right arm.

An arm that sported what appeared to be a fairly recent tattoo.

He could see the raw, red outline of a heart with an infinity symbol in the center.

“Ma’am, can you put down that knife and tell me what happened to you?” Jesse pressed.

Still nothing, but he glanced over his shoulder when he heard some movement behind him. Jesse was ready to give a silent warning to any of the other deputies who might try to approach and spook the woman. Something that could cause her to try to use that knife either on him or someone else.

Or herself.

But the movement hadn’t come from an approaching deputy but rather the sheriff, Hallie McQueen, who’d stepped out of her office.

And she wasn’t alone. Deputy Lauren Whitman, the head of the county’s newly formed cold case unit was with her.

They’d all grown up together in Outlaw Ridge, and Lauren and he had been on the verge of starting to date when a horrific incident happened in their senior year in high school.

After that, Lauren had moved away, cut ties, buried the past. Now, she was back, but she wasn’t the same girl he remembered.

But Lauren was a cop.

Like Hallie, Jesse knew that Lauren was steady. And Jesse trusted her not to do anything to escalate this situation.

Whatever this situation was.

He had no idea if this blood-covered woman was a victim, witness or perpetrator of some violent crime.

“Ma’am,” Jesse said, returning his attention to the blonde. “I’m going to need that knife.”

Again, there was no response from her. The woman seemed frozen to that spot, but he saw that her grip had loosened some on the knife.

It looked ready to slip right from her fingers.

Hoping that it would do just that, Jesse wanted to hurry that along.

If someone came walking into the station right now, they could end up being hurt.

Jesse went even closer to her, taking slow and cautious steps while he tried to tamp down the slam after slam of adrenaline going through his body. He homed in on the threat, with all of his training flashing like neon signs in his head.

And he’d had a hell of a lot of training.

First, in the military, followed by a decade working for the elite private security company, Strike Force, and now he’d been a deputy for over a year. He could handle this and hopefully no one would get hurt.

“Ma’am, can you drop that knife?” Jesse tried again.

He went through the gate next to the metal detector, glancing at the receptionist to make sure he was still down. He was. He was all the way down on the floor beneath his desk.

Jesse held out his hand for the knife. “Ma’am,” he prompted.

This time he got a reaction. The woman lifted her head, her attention landing on someone.

Not Jesse though. She looked right past him, and when he followed the direction of her gaze, Jesse realized she had pinned her attention to Lauren.

And not just pinned it. Her eyes had gone wide, and her mouth opened in a silent scream.

“Lauren, do you know her?” Jesse couldn’t ask fast enough.

“No.” And then she muttered, “Oh my God.”

Jesse’s pulse throttled up big time. He glanced back at Lauren, and saw that her face had gone deadly pale as if she’d seen a ghost. He wanted to question what had caused her reaction and what she meant by that Oh, my God , but the knife dropped from the woman’s hand, clanging onto the floor.

He moved in, fast, kicking away the knife before he took hold of her. Not exactly restraining her but to stop her from falling. She sank to her knees and let out a low moan that reminded him of a wounded animal.

Griff moved equally fast to glove up and grab the knife, and Jesse heard the sheriff call for an ambulance. Two other deputies, Jemma Salvetti and Callie Brandon, rushed to help Jesse, with Callie frisking the woman for other weapons while Jemma took hold of her arm.

The woman winced, her attention snapping to the spot that Jemma was holding. The inflamed-looking tattoo. Jemma shifted her grip, and Jesse did a cursory check for any other injuries.

He couldn’t see a single cut, especially one that would have caused that amount of blood on her dress, but it was possible she had injuries beneath her clothes. He’d leave that for the EMTs to check. For now, Jesse wanted to see what had put that look of terror on Lauren’s face.

“She seemed to recognize you,” Jesse pointed out, going back through the gate and walking closer to Lauren.

Lauren nodded. “I, uh, need to sit down,” she muttered.

Yeah, Jesse could see that. She’d lost even more color in her face, and her bottom lip was trembling.

He knew Lauren couldn’t be having this kind of reaction to seeing blood or someone who’d had a knife.

She’d been a cop for a decade, and that was plenty of time to grow accustomed to seeing all sorts of bad things.

“In here,” Hallie said, placing her hand on Lauren’s arm to get her moving back into her office. Lauren didn’t resist, didn’t try to say anything else.

The moment they were inside, Lauren sank down onto one of the chairs. Hallie went in, stooping in front of her. Jesse moved in closer, too, studying her face and wondering what the hell was going on.

“I don’t know who the woman is,” Lauren muttered. “But there’s something about her…”

Jesse exchanged a glance with Hallie, who was watching Lauren with a mix of concern and sharp intuition. He knew the sheriff was good at reading people. So was Jesse.

And right now, Lauren was shaken to the core.

Lauren turned to face them fully, exhaling hard, as if forcing herself to speak. “You remember what happened to me when I was eighteen.” Her voice was steady enough, but Jesse could hear the effort it took to keep it that way. “I was kidnapped and held for a week before I escaped.”

Jesse’s jaw clenched. Yeah, he remembered all right. Every damn detail of it as if it were happening now instead of sixteen years ago.

The whole town had searched for her, him included. He’d been barely eighteen at the time, and they had had plans for a date. Their first one. Before she had vanished. When Lauren finally reappeared, battered and silent, she hadn’t stayed in Outlaw Ridge for long.

She’d left. Left him. Left everything, including the elderly aunt who’d raised her.

Lauren glanced over her shoulder through the still open office door where she could no doubt see the young woman covered in blood. The woman who’d triggered this shock. And apparently had triggered Lauren into telling them what had to be a gut-wrenching recap of the past.

How was that kidnapping connected to this woman?

Jesse hoped they would soon find out.

“There were other girls,” Lauren went on. “I never saw them, never saw him. But I heard them. And then… I got away.” Her throat bobbed as she swallowed again.

Jesse shook his head. “That woman can’t have been one of the other kidnapped girls,” he pointed out. “She’s not old enough.”

He stopped again and realized what was happening here.

Lauren might be seeing herself in the woman.

When Lauren had escaped her kidnapper and returned to Outlaw Ridge, she hadn’t been carrying a knife, but she had had blood on her clothes and that same shell-shocked look.

So maybe just the sight of the woman had given her the motherload of all flashbacks.

Or this was possibly about something else.

Something that twisted at Jesse’s gut when he saw Lauren’s hand, sliding absently over her arm. A long-sleeved top covered her skin, but her fingers weren’t just resting there. They were tracing something.

Jesse frowned. “Lauren…”

She hesitated. Then, with a sharp breath, she pushed up her sleeve. His attention went straight to a patch of smooth skin on her forearm.

Too smooth.

A faint shadow of something, something erased, lingered there, the ghost of a tattoo long removed but never fully gone.

Jesse’s stomach turned to ice. Because he could make out the heart and the symbol inside it.

Hell.

It was the same mark inked on the blood-soaked woman’s arm.