Chapter Two
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“This can’t be happening again,” Lauren muttered.
Her pulse pounded in her ears, her breath was shallow as she stared at the faded image on her arm. It had taken several painful laser treatments to get it to this point, where it was barely visible.
But there was no laser treatment to rid her of the memory of it.
The memory was always there, alway s, bringing the sickening flashbacks along with it. It all came back to her now. Not as vague smears like the tattoo on her arm but full-blown images.
“Is the woman out there connected to what happened to you?” Jesse asked, the sound of his voice cutting through those nightmarish memories.
“I think so, but I don’t know how,” Lauren admitted.
She saw Jesse and Hallie exchange a concerned glance. Lauren was plenty concerned, too. What was going on here?
Why was this happening?
“Sixteen years ago,” she said under her breath.
She’d been eighteen, excited, nervous. She was supposed to meet Jesse that night, their first real date. She’d spent an hour debating what to wear, feeling butterflies in her stomach.
But she never made it.
“Someone grabbed me from the back parking lot of the hair salon where I’d just had my nails done,” she went on.
Of course, they knew this part, but Lauren was hoping by spelling it out, it might help her make sense of why a blood covered woman with an identical tattoo to hers had stumbled into the police station.
“I never saw my attacker,” Lauren emphasized. “There was a blur of motion on my right, a sharp sting at my neck, then darkness. I woke up blindfolded, restrained, trapped.”
She had to squeeze her eyes shut a moment, but she opened them when she felt someone touch her hand. Jesse. He was looking at her with even more concern in his dark brown eyes.
“There were others held captive,” she made herself continue. And she said it fast, like ripping off a bandage. “I never saw them, never knew how many. But I heard them. The muffled sobs, the whispered pleas. Once, a girl had screamed until her voice gave out.”
Then silence.
Lauren hadn’t thought anything would be worse than the screams, but she’d been wrong. The silence had been much worse.
“The kidnapper never spoke,” she added. “Never touched me except to mark me with the tattoo.”
More flashbacks came. More memories. A sharp burn of a needle, ink pressing into skin. A brand. Lauren had no idea if the others had gotten one too or if she’d been singled out. She never got the chance to find out.
Because she escaped.
Lauren didn’t want to go over all of this. Mercy, she didn’t. But every piece might be relevant. Even after all this time.
“I was kept in total darkness in what I know now was a small room in a survivalist bunker underneath the ground in the woods. The floors were old wood pallets, and the walls were concrete. The man who was holding me had shackled my hands and ankles with duct tape, but on that last day, I managed to get the tape off my ankles.”
Not easily. There’d been multiple layers of the wide sticky stuff, circling around and around her skin.
“My abductor would come in often, maybe every couple of hours,” she continued. “It was hard to gauge time down there. But he’d bring me food or let me use a portable toilet in the corner of the room before he’d leave again. I listened, memorizing the way the wood floor creaked when he moved.”
“Smart,” Jesse muttered.
“Maybe. Not much else to do but think. And try to escape,” she added in a mutter.
“After I got the tape off my ankles, I waited, and when he came back in, I struck, grabbing a chair, swinging hard, hearing a grunt of pain. Then I ran. My hands were still taped up but I managed to get off the blindfold and find my way out the bunker entrance. I didn’t see any other women.
Or any other rooms. So, I ran and ran and ran. ”
“And you made it to a convenience store,” Jesse filled in for her when her voice broke and she had to stop.
Lauren nodded. “I was able to give the cops directions to where I’d been held, but when they went there, it was empty. No sign of the other girls. No sign of him. They collected some DNA samples but weren’t able to match it to anyone.”
Now, she had to pause again.
“At first, I was terrified he’d come after me since the police never caught him. But as the days turned into weeks and then into years, I figured he was long gone.”
That had never stopped her though from looking over her shoulder. It hadn’t stopped the nightmares or her waking up with that overwhelming sense of terror.
“Once I became a cop, I started looking for him,” she admitted.
And that was a serious understatement. She was obsessed with finding him, pure and simple, and it was one of the main reasons she had become a cold case investigator. First, in Austin and now here, home, in Outlaw Ridge.
“So, the kidnapper might have returned,” Lauren managed to say.
“Or else we’re dealing with a copycat,” Jesse was quick to point out. “Over the past sixteen years, have there been any other incidents of abductions like yours?”
“No,” she had to admit. “There were some similar ones, but those didn’t involve the kidnapper putting tattoos on the abducted girls.”
Before she could say anything else, the door swung open and Deputy Griff Abrams stepped inside, his expression grim. A solid, steady presence in the department, Griff was usually the last person to look rattled, but there was something in his eyes now that put Lauren even more on edge.
“The ambulance is taking the woman to the hospital,” Griff said, glancing between them. “But I got an ID on her. Her name is Abilene Joyce, nineteen, a college student. She’s from San Antonio and was reported missing four days ago.”
Lauren’s breath caught. Four days . That would have felt like a lifetime or two if she’d been held captive.
“San Antonio,” Hallie repeated. “Forty miles from here. Does she have any ties to Outlaw Ridge?”
Griff shook his head. “Not that I could find.”
A chill crawled down Lauren’s spine. Why would a kidnapped woman from San Antonio turn up here, covered in blood, with the same tattoo Lauren had been branded with all those years ago?
Before anyone could voice the obvious, Hallie’s phone buzzed. The sheriff answered, listening for a few seconds before straightening.
“That was dispatch,” Hallie said, tucking her phone away in her pocket. “A real estate agent was showing a vacant shop behind the station. And found blood. Looks like we’ve got a crime scene.”
Before she had even finished speaking, Lauren was on her feet with Jesse standing upright beside her. They all started out of the office.
Behind them, Griff headed for his desk in the bullpen. “I’ll stay back and dig for more info on Abilene Joyce and see if there’s anything that connects her to Outlaw Ridge,” he told them.
Hallie gave him a quick nod. “Good. Let me know the second you find anything.”
Hallie, Lauren, and Jesse all hurried toward the exit. And into the Texas mid-day heat. It was only May but the temperature was already in the high eighties.
Lauren stepped out onto the sidewalk, the sun casting long shadows over the pavement. She felt as if she were in a fog. Or a nightmare. Nothing about this felt real. Except she knew it was.
God. It was happening again.
Jesse must have known she was on the verge of losing it because he moved along beside her, the back of his hand brushing against hers. It surprised her that it helped. Surprised her even more that just being around Jesse helped.
When she had returned to Outlaw Ridge a month ago to take the new job, she had thought that being back, being around Jesse especially, might trigger the worst of the memories of her abduction.
But it hadn’t. Just the opposite. Part of her, that teenage girl part, still felt the old heat of attraction that had caused her to accept when he’d finally asked her out on a date.
Lauren latched onto those good memories for a few seconds, letting them level her out.
And it worked. Well, until the three of them rounded the corner, heading toward the vacant shop behind the station, and Lauren saw the real estate agent, Sarah Mendoza.
It was obvious from her expression that she’d just witnessed something horrible.
Sarah was pacing outside of the door of what Lauren recalled as once having been a clothing alterations shop. The Realtor’s steps were sharp, frantic movements, her phone clutched in her white-knuckled hand. She looked up as they approached, exhaling in relief.
“Oh, thank God,” she blurted, pushing a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “It’s inside. The blood. It’s inside.”
Lauren’s stomach twisted, and the overwhelming sense of dread washed over her. But beneath that was a strange kind of hope. If her abductor was still out there and had struck again, this could be her chance at finding him. Her chance to find the closure that had eluded her for sixteen years.
“Are you here to show the place to a client?” Hallie asked.
Sarah nodded but then shook her head. “I got a call from someone in San Antonio who wanted to look at the property tonight. A surprise since there hasn’t been much interest in it,” she added.
“It’s been empty for nearly a year, since Mrs. Moran died, and her kids are asking way above market value for it.
And they won’t pay for a cleaning service to keep it ready to show.
I’ve tried to talk them into lowering the price…
” She stopped, moaned. “I’m sorry. I’m babbling. ”
“That’s understandable,” Hallie calmly replied. “Who’s the client who requested a showing?”
“A Mr. Mark Smith,” Sarah answered. “But he’s not coming. He called me just as I was about to unlock the door to check on the place and told me he had to cancel.”
“Text me his contact info,” Hallie insisted.
Sarah’s hand was shaking when she did that. “I’ve been a Realtor for nearly thirty years, and nothing like this has ever happened. Who did this? Is someone hurt?”
“We’ll find out. You wait here,” Hallie added as she yanked a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket and put them on before she stepped in. Lauren and Jesse did the same.
They all three drew their guns.
The blinds were shut tight on the front window, but someone, maybe Sarah, had turned on the lights so Lauren had no trouble seeing the interior.
One fairly small main room with a counter that reminded her of an old-fashioned saloon.
The doors to a closet, a bathroom, and what had likely once been a changing room all were wide open, revealing they were empty.
Lauren had to clear her throat. The shop was musky and stale, dust covering the wooden floors. And the too familiar metallic stench was heavy in the air. The shelves, counter, and racks had been stripped bare, the walls showing faint outlines of where posters or merchandise once hung.
It had been empty for nearly a year, the Realtor had said.
But it hadn’t been empty today.
The blood was still wet and shiny in spots and was smeared on the floor near the back of the room. Not a large pool of it, but enough to set off alarms. Enough to mean someone had been hurt here.
Or worse.
Jesse went toward the storage closet. Hallie, toward the bathroom. So, Lauren took the dressing room. No blood on the floor in here, but her breath hitched as she turned.
And she saw the full-length mirror on the wall.
A thin layer of dust coated the glass, but scratched into it were deep, jagged letters. A message that sent an ice-cold shock through her veins.
“Oh, God,” Lauren blurted.
Jesse and Hallie no doubt heard her because they came hurrying in with Jesse getting to her first. His breath was gusting, the adrenaline and worry obvious on his face, and he looked her over as if checking for injuries.
Then, his attention landed on the mirror.
“Shit,” he muttered, and Hallie added her own single word of profanity under her breath.
There were no more questions about whether or not the woman with the tattoo was connected to what had happened to Lauren sixteen years ago. No questions because the proof was there in that message.
Lauren, you should have saved me, too .