Page 9 of Outlaw Ridge: Reed (Hard Justice: Outlaw Ridge #6)

“By the time I was twelve, I was no longer afraid of being alone or starving when they left. I was afraid of them returning. By then, the slaps, kicks, and the punches had started. All that anger and bitterness, all directed at me. They decided that everything that happened bad in their lives was my fault, and I got punished for it.”

She had to push back some horrific flashbacks and forced herself to continue.

“Once, I saw my mother reading the obituaries, circling names of elderly men who’d lost their wives. I know now that Tami was selecting their next targets, but I swear I didn’t know that at the time. I swear I had no idea what they were doing.”

Reed muttered some profanity. “I know that.” He got to his feet, went around to her side of the island and pulled her to her feet.

Then, he drew her into his arms.

Body to body and breath to breath.

“This is wrong,” she managed to say.

“In twenty-four hours or so, you won’t be my boss. Let’s mentally do a little time travel so you’ll be okay with this. Besides, it’s just a hug,” he assured her.

True, but it felt like a whole lot more. The man was magic. How could he ease this pressure in her chest, take away some of her burdens, just by hugging her? It didn’t seem right, but it was helping.

Well, it helped for a couple of seconds anyway, and then her phone rang. She stepped back, saw Deputy Jesse McCain’s name on the screen and answered it right away on speaker.

“Morning, boss,” Jesse said. “Thought you’d want to know we located some footage of Elenore’s possible abduction. Possible,” he repeated. “It’s really grainy footage, but we’ll try to clean it up.”

“I’m on my way into the station. I’ll be there in five minutes,” she assured him. She wanted to see this footage for herself, and clearly Reed did, too, because he moved away from her, turning toward the front door.

“Good, because that reporter’s here,” Jesse added, stopping Reed in his tracks. “Luther Crowe. He says he has something to show you.”

He was probably there to beg for more support for her mother. That wasn’t going to happen. “Put him in an interview room,” she instructed, and this time Reed and she did head for the door.

Reed sped off in his SUV, and she was right behind him in her cruiser. Hallie realized in that moment that this was what she’d needed. Not Luther’s visit but the footage of Elenore. This could give her something to sink her teeth into and stop her from wallowing in misery.

Maybe stop her from thinking so much about Reed, too.

With those possibilities bolstering her up, Hallie drove to the police station, and Reed and she went in together. She spotted Jesse at his desk, and Shaw and he were focused on his laptop. When Hallie got closer, she saw the feed.

And, yes, it was grainy.

The figures didn’t look like much more than blobs.

“Hey, boss. Reed,” Jesse greeted, glancing back at them. He stepped to the side to give them a better view of the screen. “This is what we got from a traffic camera about a half mile from the victim’s house.”

She noted the time stamp. The night before they’d found Elenore’s and Walt’s bodies. Hours before the murder. Had the killer really kept Elenore for that long? If so, why?

“This is the best shot we got,” Jesse continued, freezing one of the frames. It was still blurry, but at least Hallie could make out some of the features of the woman in the passenger’s seat. “Facial recognition is a seventy-two percent match for this being Elenore.”

So, not an absolute certainty. “Is that a gag over her mouth?” Hallie asked.

“Duct tape, we think,” Jesse replied.

“Looks as if she’s duct taped to the seat, too,” Reed pointed out, motioning to the woman’s chest area.

Hallie made a sound of agreement. “What about the driver or any other passengers?”

“No other passengers visible, but they could have been hunkered down in the back seat. And this is all we got of the driver.”

Jesse shifted to another picture that was even more blurrier than the one of Elenore. Or at least that was her first thought. Then, she realized the driver was wearing some kind of ski mask.

“Shit,” Reed and she muttered at the same time.

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too,” Jesse admitted. “I had a similar one when I ran the license plates and discovered they were bogus.”

Hallie stopped herself from repeating the profanity. “So, what do you have here? What’s the big picture?”

Jesse didn’t hesitate, confirming what Owen had said about him being both a damn good Strike Force operative and cop.

“Based on the timing of this siting, we can guess that Elenore was taken from her residence around eleven PM the night before she was murdered. There were no signs of a break-in at her home so either she let her abductor in or he was waiting for her inside the house. Her security system was crap,” Jesse added.

So, it could have played out either of those ways. But the fact that her abductor took her at her home added more confirmation that Elenore had been targeted and that this wasn’t a random act of violence.

“Also, I believe the driver is male,” Jesse said. “Of course, he could have a big ass, long torso or be sitting on a cushion, but if he’s not, then I’m estimating he’s about six feet with a slender build.”

Sadly, that described all their primary suspects, Corman, Luther, and Jay. And countless other men as well.

“Of course, we’re searching traffic cams for this vehicle to try to find out anything we can about it,” Jesse tacked onto that. “Oh, and the reporter’s in interview room one.”

“Good,” Hallie muttered, looking at Reed. “You want to see what Luther has to say?”

“You bet I do,” Reed was quick to say, and together, they went down the hall to interview.

Luther was indeed waiting in room one, and not waiting patiently either. He was pacing, and when Reed and she went in, he practically rushed toward them.

“I have something you need to see,” he blurted, his tone urgent.

That urgent described everything else about him—his quick, shallow breaths, the way his foot tapped restlessly against the floor when he stopped in front of them, and the obvious tension coiling through his body as if ready to spring at any moment.

“Elenore knew your father,” Luther added, the words racing out with those quick breaths.

It didn’t take long for that to sink in, and Hallie’s mind began to whirl with what that might mean. “Knew him? How?” she couldn’t ask fast enough.

“I’m not sure,” Luther admitted, “but here’s the proof.”

He lifted his phone that was clutched in his hand and showed them what looked to be a picture of a photo.

Not a recent one either. It was a group shot of four people taken maybe at party or a backyard barbeque.

On the left side of the photo was a grill spewing out smoke and on the right, there was a table littered with food, beer bottles and glasses.

“That’s Elenore and your father,” Luther insisted, motioning toward the two people in the center.

Hallie shifted her attention to where Luther was pointing. Yes, it was them all right. Her father had his usual oily, cocky expression with his beefy arm slung around Elenore who didn’t look in distress or uncomfortable with the contact. Just the opposite. She was smiling.

“Where did you get this?” Hallie asked, and then she tacked on two other questions. “When was it taken and who are the other two people with them?”

“There was no date on the actual picture so I don’t know when,” Luther explained. “And I don’t know who the others are either. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me.”

She shook her head. Judging from the fact there was little gray in her father’s hair and few wrinkles on his face, Hallie guessed that it’d been snapped well before his arrest. Years before.

“You don’t recognize where the picture was taken?” Luther pressed.

“No.” But then again, there was nothing especially distinctive about anything she could see.

It looked like plenty of backyards in central Texas.

A flat, fenced-in grassy yard, and the back of the house itself was basically a blur.

Whoever had taken the picture had obviously been focused on the people and nothing else.

“Where did you get this?” she repeated, and she made sure that sounded like the order that it was.

Luther didn’t answer, but he hurriedly pulled up another picture. “This was taken at that same party.”

Reed and she leaned it, and everything inside her went still. Because it was another photo of her father wearing the same clothes as in the first picture. But this time, he was standing next to Corman.

Hell.

Unlike his sister, Corman wasn’t smiling in the photo. Just the opposite. He looked nervous and extremely uncomfortable.

“Corman never said anything about knowing your father during the trials,” Luther reminded them.

Pointing that out hadn’t been necessary. Hallie already knew that detail, nor had the photos come up in any of the testimonies. And it should have when Corman had been on the stand to explain how Kip and Tami had wormed their way into his mother’s life.

“Don’t you see what this could mean?” Luther went on. “Corman could have been helping your father. His mother had money, and it’s my guess that Corman wanted to speed up getting a piece of his inheritance.”

“That’s a stretch,” Reed commented, but Hallie heard the doubt in his voice. She had plenty of doubts, too.

“Why wouldn’t Corman have mentioned this in the trial?” Luther questioned. “I’ll tell you why,” he went on before Reed or she could respond. “It’s because he’s got something to hide, that’s why.”

“Or maybe he just didn’t recall going to this party since this was obviously years ago,” Hallie argued.

She huffed. “Where did you get these pictures?” she asked for the third time.

“This time, give me an answer. Give me the truth,” she amended when she saw Luther’s gaze shift to the left which could indicate he was about to lie.

Luther didn’t look at her, and he shook his head. “I’d rather not say.”

Reed huffed. “And we’re rather you did say. In fact, we’re insisting you tell us now, or you’ll be charged with obstruction of justice.”

Hallie waited, wondering if Luther was about to play the reporter card and say that he couldn’t reveal a source. Unfortunately, this might work in this situation. But after several snail-crawling moments, Luther finally responded.

“I got them from your mother,” he whispered.

The shock came. Mercy, did it. Of all the things she’d been expecting Luther to say, that hadn’t even been on her radar.

“Explain that,” she ordered.

Again, Luther took his time, and he cleared his throat first. “I asked your mother if there was anything she had that I could use to help me write some articles to clear her name, and she told me about this storage facility where she’d put some of her personal things.”

Hallie cursed. “What storage facility?” Because that sure as hell hadn’t come up in the trial either, and this was the first she was hearing about it.

“The one out by the interstate, not far from here,” Luther admitted, still dodging their hard stares. “I’ve been going through it, but the only thing I found are these pictures. I showed them to Corman—”

“You what?” Reed snapped.

Luther finally looked at them, but he seemed confused as to why his doing that would alarm them. “I showed them to Corman about two weeks ago. I wanted to know about the party, when and where it was and who was in the pictures.”

“Tami didn’t give you that info?” Reed snapped.

Now, he paused again. “No. She didn’t remember them being taken, but she said it must have been years ago, maybe even when you were still living at home,” he added to Hallie.

That put a knot in her gut. Until she gave it some thought. She’d left home twenty years ago, and she didn’t think the photos were that old.

Maybe though that was wishful thinking. Even now, after all this time, it was torture for her to think of herself sitting in that house they called home while her parents were out murdering people.

“Since Tami didn’t recall any details about the pictures,” Luther went on, snapping her attention back to him. “I took them to Corman, and I asked him point blank if Elenore had been…involved with Kip. I mean, they look chummy, don’t they?”

Well, Elenore didn’t look uncomfortable in the photo as her brother had, and Kip had had his arm around her.

“And what did Corman say?” Hallie pressed.

Luther lifted his shoulder and made a sound of frustration. “Corman claimed he didn’t recall the party, the people or the pictures. But he was pissed, I could tell. His mouth went all tight and he cursed when he saw the one of his sister with Kip.”

Hallie and Reed shared a long look, and she saw in his eyes they were on the same page here.

If Corman or Elenore had been involved with Kip, then this was possible motive for Corman to have killed his sister if he’d wanted to silence her about them knowing their mother’s killer.

Then again, it could be motive for Luther, too, if Elenore had known something that would hurt the sob story that Luther was trying to create to get her mother that appeal.

“I’m assuming you have the code for the storage facility,” Reed stated. “We want that now. And we also want those pictures texted to us.” He motioned for Luther to hand over his phone.

Luther didn’t hesitate this time. He reached into his pocket and extracted a small slip of paper with the handwritten numbers for the code while Reed took the man’s phone and forwarded the pictures to both Hallie and him.

“I hope you find something there that’ll help your mother,” Luther added as Reed handed him back his phone. “She truly is innocent.”

Hallie didn’t bother to respond. Or to work out if she could charge Luther with anything. She’d decide that later. For now, she wanted a look at the things her mother had supposedly squirreled away.

“Luther could have planted something for us to discover,” Reed muttered to her as they walked out.

True. Which meant this could all be a ruse. Still, it had to be checked out now. Ditto for questioning Corman about being in that photo with her father.

First though, the photos would have to be analyzed to make sure they were authentic so Hallie started that process by forwarding them as priority to the crime lab.

When she was done with that, Reed and she went to the bullpen and came to a quick stop when she saw the look on Jesse’s face.

He was on the phone but turned toward them.

“What’s wrong?” Hallie immediately asked.

Jesse dragged in a hard breath. “There’s been another murder.”

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