Chapter Ten
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Lauren’s mind was spinning. Everything was spinning. And her pulse was a dull roar in her ears.
Belinda had killed the man who took her.
The words felt too big, too impossible to process all at once. But Lauren was certain she hadn’t misheard Belinda. The woman had just confessed to killing her abductor.
Belinda shifted in her chair, fingers wringing together, her knuckles pale. Tears spilled down her cheek. “After seeing you last night, after hearing about Nicky and Abilene… I couldn’t keep this secret any longer.”
You shouldn’t have kept it a secret at all! Lauren mentally shouted. But she couldn’t say that. Not to this woman who was clearly as traumatized as she had been.
Reardon’s expression was carved from stone, his jaw tight. He didn’t look happy that his wife was talking, but his hand settled firmly on her shoulder. A silent show of support.
Jesse was showing some silent support, too. Not for Belinda but for Lauren. He moved closer to her, the back of his hand brushing against hers. She needed that touch. Needed him. And was beyond thankful he was right by her side.
Lauren swallowed, her voice hoarse when she was finally able to speak. “Who was he?” she asked Belinda.
Belinda closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, raw and full of something Lauren couldn’t quite place. Guilt. Relief. A storm of emotions barely held back.
“My brother,” Belinda whispered. “Reggie.”
Lauren’s stomach dropped. “Your brother?” she muttered though her question had no sound.
Belinda’s breaths came shallow, and she nodded. “He was twisted. Wrong. Sadistic. He was six years older than me, and my earliest memories are of him trying to hurt me. Reggie always wanted to… to play games. Hunting people, hurting them. He was obsessed with the idea.”
Lauren shivered, a deep unease crawling over her skin. Had that been his plan? To use her and the others as human prey?
“My parents have passed away now, but back then, they couldn’t handle Reggie,” Belinda went on.
“He terrorized them. Me, too. So, to try to keep the peace, they basically just turned a blind eye to him. They didn’t question him when he dropped out of school and would disappear for days in the woods.
I can’t blame them,” she added in a whisper.
“We lived in fear whenever he was there.”
“But your parents never reported him to the cops?” Jesse snapped, and Lauren saw he was looking at Reardon for that answer. Belinda’s family’s ranch would have been in the county’s jurisdiction.
His jurisdiction.
“I arrested Reggie a couple of times,” Reardon spoke up. “Shoplifting, getting into fights, that sort of thing. I damn sure had no idea he’d abducted young women.”
Lauren’s mind was whirling too much to try to figure out if he was telling the truth about that. But Jesse touched her hand again, and this time, his arm brushing hers, and Lauren felt his tensed muscles. Maybe he wasn’t buying into what Reardon had just said.
Had Reardon known and turned a blind eye?
Or worse.
Had Reardon been involved in some way in what Reggie had done?
“On the afternoon you escaped,” Belinda pressed on, voice shaking. “Reggie had come home and packed up some food. And a bottle of my mother’s sleeping pills. That was the second bottle he’d taken in the same week so I knew he was up to something.”
Yes, he had been, and Lauren recalled that woozy feeling she’d gotten sometimes after eating what her abductor had brought her. Reggie had likely used those pills to drug her.
Belinda made a soft sob and squeezed her eyes shut a moment as if trying to block out the memories. Lauren knew from experience that wasn’t going to help.
“When I saw him shove those pills into his backpack,” Belinda said, “I knew he was up to something so I followed him, but I never imagined…” She let out a shaky breath.
“I followed him for about a half hour, and then I lost sight of him. I looked around and was ready to head back home when I saw him chasing you.”
Lauren’s hands clenched into fists. Flashes of that ordeal hit her like broken glass—branches cutting her skin, breath burning in her lungs, the feel of him right behind her.
Belinda’s eyes shimmered with more tears.
“I gasped, and he heard me. He whirled around, and I saw that he was wearing a ski mask, but I knew it was him. And he had a knife. I thought he was going to kill you. Or me.” She swallowed.
“I didn’t think. I grabbed a rock and threw it at him as hard as I could. ”
Lauren’s breath caught. And this time, Jesse didn’t just touch her hand. He took hold of it. It was the exact anchor she needed to keep her knees from buckling. To stop herself from letting the flashbacks eat her alive.
Belinda’s lips parted like she, too, was reliving it all over again. “He fell. Hit his head on a boulder. I threw more rocks at him. A lot of them. But when he didn’t move or get up, I went closer. I pulled off the ski mask and could see that he was already dead.”
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Lauren forced herself to breathe, her mind racing. Reggie. Her kidnapper had a name. A sister. A past. And now, he had been dead this whole time.
“You killed him,” Lauren murmured, the reality settling over her.
Belinda nodded slowly. “There was so much blood. His head had this big gash on it.” She pointed to her right temple. “I glanced around for you, but I didn’t see you. You were gone.”
Yes, gone. Or rather running to get away from someone she was certain was about to end her life. Instead, his sister had ended his.
And Lauren believed that.
She might have doubts as to Reardon’s part in all of this, but she could feel it in her bones that Belinda was telling the truth. About all of this anyway. The trauma on her face and in her voice were too real for it to be faked.
“What did you do then?” Hallie prompted Belinda when the woman fell silent.
Belinda took a moment, dragging in several long breaths. “There was a hole in the ground about ten feet away. One of those cracks from when an underground mineral spring has dried up.”
Lauren was very familiar with them. They were all over the area, and she’d nearly fallen in a couple of them when she’d been escaping.
“The hole wasn’t big, only three feet wide, but it was fairly deep,” Belinda explained. “I dragged him over to it and shoved him, his mask, and the knife inside. I put some limbs and rocks over him like a makeshift grave.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Jesse asked, voicing the question that Lauren wanted to know as well. Hallie, no doubt, too.
“I don’t know. I guess I was in shock. And I thought I’d be arrested,” she murmured.
“You might have been,” Hallie admitted.
“And that would’ve been bullshit,” Reardon snarled. “She was terrified for her life, and Reggie would have used that knife on her. She did the world a favor by getting rid of that bastard. Do you know he marked her up? When she was a kid, he cut her, carved stuff into her body…”
He stopped. Just stopped. And Lauren could see he was fighting to regain his composure. Reardon certainly didn’t look like the hard-ass county sheriff now. He looked a little…unhinged, and Lauren had to wonder if some kind of guilt was playing into this.
Maybe.
But if it was, if Reardon had helped Reggie in some way and now regretted it, she couldn’t see him starting up Reggie’s crimes all over again. Still, there could be things in play here that hadn’t come to light. Things that had spurred him to copycat what his wife’s dead brother had done.
“Your parents or Reggie’s friends didn’t question where he was?” Hallie pressed.
She shook her head. “He didn’t have friends. And my parents might have wondered what’d happened to him, but they never looked for him. Like I said, it was a relief when he wasn’t there.”
Belinda lifted her head, her pale eyes locking into Lauren’s. “After I buried him, I did look for you. I swear, I did. I searched the woods and found that bunker.”
Lauren’s breath caught in her throat. Belinda had found the bunker.
The walls of the police station seemed to close in, the air suddenly too thick. A long-buried part of her, the terrified girl who had run for her life through the woods, wanted to shut all of this out. It was too much. But the cop in her needed to hear every word.
Lauren leaned forward, her voice edged with urgency. “Did you find the other captives?”
Belinda’s answer came quickly. “No.” She shook her head. “It was empty.”
Lauren’s gut twisted. Empty. She couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse. If the bunker had been empty when Belinda got there, it meant someone could have maybe moved the other captives. But who? Had they been rescued? Had someone else taken them?
Or had they managed to escape?
Lauren’s heart hammered, her mind spinning with all the possibilities. She searched Belinda’s face, looking for any flicker of hesitation, any crack in her composure.
“You’re sure?” she pressed. “There was no sign of them?”
Belinda’s throat bobbed as she swallowed hard. “I would’ve helped them if they were there.” Her voice softened. “I would’ve helped you.”
Lauren wasn’t sure what to believe. Sixteen years ago, she had barely made it out of those woods alive. Now, she was supposed to believe that the man who’d hunted her had died that same day and that his sister had stumbled across the place where she’d been held captive?
It felt like another piece of the puzzle had been forced into place, but the picture still didn’t make sense.
“There was some food in the bunker,” Belinda went on.
“And I did find a tattoo gun. It had belonged to my uncle. He used to do that, but after he hurt his hand, he gave it to my dad. Thought he might want to use it to brand our cows or something.” She shuddered.
“Reggie volunteered to do that, and I could see the sick pleasure he got from burning marks on them.”