Six-Gun Showdown

by Delores Fossen

  She studied the message again. “No. He usually just taunts me with that sugary, sick tone. Why? Do you think it means something? Do you think Pittman could have sent this one?”

  “Maybe.” But Jericho shook his head, groaned. “Then again, the Moonlight Strangler’s not exactly predictable. How’d he get your phone number, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. The account is under the alias I’ve been using, and I never give out the number. Not even to my doctor. I have a prepaid cell I use for that. I’m guessing the Moonlight Strangler found me somehow and then had someone hack into my computer to get the number from my online account.”

  It was possible. They didn’t know if the Moonlight Strangler had the money and resources to launch a full-scale search, but Jax was betting he did. Plus, that crescent-shaped scar on Paige’s face was like a brand. Anyone who saw it might recognize it as the killer’s signature, and the Moonlight Strangler had groupies. One of those sickos could have seen it and then gotten word to the killer.

  Jericho’s attention shifted to Jax. “When you take Paige’s statement, compare this text to the others she’s gotten. In fact, have everything on her phone analyzed because we need to know if Pittman has inserted himself into this by sending this latest text.”

  That was already on Jax’s to-do list. A list that had gotten way too long. He needed to get started on whittling it down.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and both Jericho and Jax automatically reached for their guns. But it was a false alarm. It was Misty Carlton, the nurse.

  Misty sucked in her breath, no doubt alarmed by their reaction, and she lifted her hand to show them some papers. “It’s Paige’s release forms from the doctor. She can go home now.”

  Misty’s info was simple enough, but Jericho, Paige and he just stood there staring at the nurse.

  She can go home now.

  Yes, but the question was—would Jax let her?

  Paige got up from the examining table and took the papers. “Thank you,” she told Misty, and then turned to face Jax. “Please, just let me see Matthew.”

  Jax considered saying no. After all, he could remind her that it wasn’t safe, but the truth was, it wasn’t safe no matter where Paige was. As long as the Moonlight Strangler was after her, Matthew was in danger, too, because the killer could use Matthew to get to her. Besides, he didn’t have a right to keep Paige from their son.

  However, he did have a right to make rules for this visit.

  “I’ll start making arrangements for a safe house for you,” Jax informed her. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see Matthew before I change my mind.”

  Chapter Six

  Chaos. That was the one word Paige could think of when Jax took the final turn toward the Crockett ranch. A place that’d once been her home.

  Well, it sure didn’t look like home now.

  The cops and CSIs were there. The medical examiner’s van, too. Blue lights whirled, and the yellow crime scene tape snapped and rattled in the hot summer breeze.

  Before the attack a year earlier, she’d been a CSI for almost a decade, since finishing college, and she’d been part of situations just like this. Had been in the middle of one as well when she’d been left for dead. But it was different now since she’d been the cause of this particular scene. One man was dead and another in the hospital, and Jax and she had barely escaped with their lives.

  And it wasn’t the end.

  No. The text proved that.

  This isn’t over.

  Paige hadn’t needed the text to tell her that, though. She suspected this nightmare was just getting started, and she needed to figure out what her next step was.

  Jax was no doubt doing the same thing.

  Along with dealing with her return from the dead.

  Other than a few internet searches, she hadn’t kept tabs on his life. That wasn’t only a safety precaution but also to preserve what was left of her heart and sanity. Just that earlier glance of Matthew with Belinda had sent Paige’s emotions into a tailspin. She’d lost so much the day she’d nearly lost her life.

  Matthew.

  And Jax.

  Though Jax hadn’t been hers to lose. After countless arguments over her refusal to stop investigating the Moonlight Strangler, they’d separated. Paige just hadn’t been able to let go of the case, and that thirst for justice had cost her Jax.

  They had signed divorce papers the day of the attack. Ironic. Or maybe that’d been the Moonlight Strangler’s plan all along, to wait until she was at the lowest point of her life to strike. To squeeze out every last drop of misery before he choked her to death.

  Jax didn’t stay on the road, though his house was less than a quarter of a mile away. He maneuvered the cruiser through a cattle gate in the pasture and drove onto a ranch trail. No doubt to avoid disturbing the scene that the CSIs were investigating. The truck explosion had likely scattered debris everywhere, and each little fragment could give them clues as to who’d built the bomb and set it.

  “You’ve added more livestock,” she remarked.

  Small talk. It almost seemed insulting, considering they had some very serious things to discuss, but with her frayed nerves and the pain pounding in her head, it was the best Paige could manage.

  He made a grunt of agreement. Clearly no small talk for him, but his jaw muscles were at war against each other. Probably his thoughts, too. Jax didn’t want her here, and he might let her stay only a few minutes. That was okay as long as she got to spend those few minutes with Matthew.

  After he’d cleared the crime scene, Jax pulled back onto the private road that led to the ranch, and his house came into view. Of course, she knew exactly what it looked like. The two-story stone and wood house. None of the lights were on, a security precaution no doubt. This way, a sniper wouldn’t be able to see anyone inside. She’d already heard Jax arrange to have the area searched to make sure there weren’t any other hired guns lurking around.

  It wasn’t as large as the main house that was just up the road, but it was still big. Six bedrooms. When Jax and she had first married, they’d joked they would fill every one of those rooms with kids.

  Once, she’d been welcome here, but there were no welcoming vibes from Jax now. Just the opposite. He didn’t want her here. And Paige wasn’t sure she wanted to be here, either. Anything she did right now could put her precious little boy in danger.

  Or anything she didn’t do.

  There was just no way of knowing how the Moonlight Strangler would try to come after her next.

  “How much time do I have?” she asked when he pulled the cruiser to a stop.

  “Not much.”

  Since he didn’t hesitate, he’d obviously been thinking about how all of this would play out, and Paige would have to go along with whatever demands he made. Before she’d faked her death, Jax and she had worked out a split custody agreement, but with the danger and her yearlong absence, she didn’t have any claim to custody.

  For now, anyway.

  Jax parked the cruiser directly in front of the house in the circular drive. She immediately spotted two ranch hands in the yard. Both armed. One was Teddy McQueen, someone she’d known most of her life, and he gave Paige a semiwelcoming nod. She didn’t recognize the other hand, a reminder that some things had indeed changed in the past year.

  That thought caused her to freeze for a moment.

  Was Jax seeing anyone? Or more, was he in a serious relationship?

  She hated the pang of jealousy that coiled inside her. She’d made her bed, and now she had to lie in it. And she wouldn’t be lying in it with Jax.

  They got out of the cruiser, started up the steps, but the door opened before they even reached it. Yet another familiar face. Levi. And unlike the others she’d encountered tonight, he flashed her a quick smile and hugged her once she was safe inside.

  “You both okay?” Levi asked, his attention going to the stitches on her head before he glanced at his brother and then reset the secu
rity system.

  “We’re alive,” Jax answered.

  Levi nodded and hitched his thumb toward the hall. “Chase is in Matthew’s room.”

  Good. Like all of Jax’s brothers, Chase was a lawman. A marshal. And he would put his life on the line to protect Matthew. All of them would.

  Later, if there was a later, Paige wanted to catch up with Levi. Alexa, too. For now, she settled for whispering congrats on his engagement to the woman who’d once been Paige’s best friend. Paige wasn’t sure how Alexa would feel about her now, though, especially since Jax said Alexa had been beating herself up about a death that hadn’t even happened.

  “One of the hands drove behind Belinda when she went home,” Levi explained as they headed toward the hall. “No one followed them.”

  Jax made another of those grunts, this one of approval. Paige hadn’t been sure what Belinda’s living arrangements were, but she obviously didn’t live with Jax if she’d been escorted home.

  The moment they reached the hall, she saw Chase. He was sitting in the doorway of the nursery. No smile or hug from him. His hard eyes condemned her and dismissed her with a single glance before he turned his attention to Jax.

  “Matthew’s asleep,” Chase whispered.

  Paige automatically checked the time on her phone. It was nearly 9:00 p.m., but she wasn’t even sure if this was his regular bedtime or not. She prayed he hadn’t been afraid when he’d heard those shots and the sirens.

  Almost hesitantly, Chase stepped out of the way so she could enter. Just like that, Paige’s heart thudded against her chest and her breath became thin with each step that brought her closer to her son. He wasn’t sleeping in a crib but rather a bed with railings, another reminder that she’d lost so much time with him.

  Paige knelt on the floor so she could get a better look at his face. She didn’t dare ask Jax to turn on the light. For one thing, it might not be a safe thing to do, and for another he might not want to be accommodating.

  She reached out, touched her fingers to his hair. He still had those baby curls. Still had his daddy’s face. But she could see some of herself in him, too. The blond hair and the shape of his mouth.

  Paige couldn’t stop the tears that sprang to her eyes. Couldn’t stop herself from brushing a kiss on Matthew’s cheek, either. She kept it soft, but it must not have been soft enough because Matthew stirred, and his eyes popped open.

  Jax grumbled something under his breath. Something she didn’t catch. But he clearly wasn’t happy about this. Matthew, however, didn’t seem upset at all. His gaze went from Paige to his dad and uncles before his attention settled on her.

  “Mommy,” Matthew said.

  Paige couldn’t have been more shocked, and she looked back at Jax for an explanation.

  Jax shrugged. “I’ve shown him your picture.” He glanced at the nightstand, but the only thing there was a lamp and baby monitor. “It’s usually right there by his bed.” He went closer, searching through the drawer. No picture. “Belinda must have moved it.”

  Maybe Belinda had taken it with her when she’d moved Matthew into the bathroom during the attack. At least Paige liked to think that Belinda wanted Matthew to know who his mother was.

  “Thank you for showing it to him,” Paige managed to say, though she wasn’t sure how her little boy recognized her from an old picture. Not with this brunette hair.

  But Paige didn’t waste any time trying to figure that out. She studied her son’s face, soaking in every feature and committing it to memory.

  “Mommy’s here,” she whispered to him.

  Matthew smiled in that lazy, no-effort kind of way that reminded her of Jax, but his eyelids immediately started to drift back down. She sat there, trying to hang on to each precious moment, but they slipped away so quickly, and it took only a matter of seconds before Matthew was asleep again.

  “We need to talk,” Jax said, motioning for her to follow him.

  She did, but Paige didn’t take her eyes off Matthew as she made her way to the door. She continued to look at him until he was no longer in sight. Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be the last time she’d ever see him.

  Chase took up his guard position by Matthew’s door again, and Levi disappeared into another part of the house. No doubt to give Jax and her some time alone so he could deliver whatever bad news he was about to tell her. And it would be bad. Paige could tell by his expression. That was the problem with knowing him so well.

  Jax led her to the other side of the house and into the family room. Someone had redecorated it with a fresh coat of soft gold paint and new furniture that looked more kid-proof than the leather set they’d once had in there. The most noticeable change, though, was that their wedding pictures were missing from the mantel.

  “I’ll take you to the safe house as soon as Jericho has it set up,” he said.

  No surprise about that. She’d heard Jax talking to Jericho about it on the drive over. Considering how Jericho felt about her, he was probably working at lightning speed to get the house ready so that Jax wouldn’t have to be under the same roof as her.

  He motioned for her to sit on the sofa. An invitation, of sorts, and yet another reminder that this wasn’t her home. Not that she needed such a reminder. It was obvious Jax had erased her. Well, except for that photo he’d been showing Matthew.

  “You’ll need to stay at the safe house until Jericho and I can find the Moonlight Strangler,” Jax added.

  Which meant she could be locked away for years. Not exactly what she wanted. “But what about Matthew? And you? You need a safe house, too.”

  He nodded. “I’m working on that, as well. My plan is to move Matthew first thing in the morning, and we’ll lock down the ranch. Chase, Jericho and Addie all have children now, and I have to make sure none of this danger spills over onto them.”

  Paige couldn’t agree more. However, she didn’t want her son living with this dark cloud always following him.

  “If we don’t get answers from Loveland,” she said, “then I need to set some kind of trap for the Moonlight Strangler.”

  Jax was already shaking his head and mumbling some profanity before she even finished. “That didn’t work so well tonight. No, you’ll stay put in the safe house while I work this investigation.” His eyes narrowed. “And this time, you’ll listen.”

  Paige deserved that last dig. Jax had warned her too many times about involving herself in the Moonlight Strangler investigation, and she hadn’t listened. Look where that’d gotten her.

  “I’m sure Cord is working on some kind of plan,” she continued. “You might want to call him to make sure you two don’t get in each other’s way.”

  Of course, Cord would consider anything that Jax did as getting in his way. Still, she didn’t want Jax or Cord caught in each other’s cross fire if they did manage to trap the killer.

  Jax didn’t agree to her request to call Cord, but he did ease down in the chair across from her so they would have direct eye contact. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything about who helped you fake your death, who helped you afterward and finish by explaining how the Moonlight Strangler found out you were alive.”

  Paige took a long, deep breath because she figured she’d need it. “Like I already told you, Leland helped. He was on duty that night, arrived at the scene and got in the ambulance with me. He talked the doctor at the San Antonio hospital into going along with it. The doctor’s name is Wesley Nolan. He had me transferred under an alias to a hospital in Houston, and I recovered there.”

  Well, her body had recovered, anyway.

  “So, who did we bury in the family cemetery?” Jax asked.

  “A cadaver of a homeless woman. Dr. Nolan told the funeral home to have a closed casket service because my injuries were too severe for a viewing.”

  “This Dr. Nolan went above and beyond. I’d like to know why. I want to talk to him.”

  She sighed. “Don’t bother looking for him. He died in a car accident a c
ouple of months ago.”

  That got his attention. “Accident?”

  She knew why he was asking. One of the three people who’d helped her was now dead. “Cord checked into it, and he said it didn’t look suspicious.” Of course, that didn’t mean the Moonlight Strangler or even someone else hadn’t made it look like an accident.

  “How’d Cord get involved?” Jax snapped, sounding like a lawman. Strange, because he usually didn’t. He was the lawman Jericho used in interrogations when they wanted to coax out a confession without the criminal even realizing he was being interrogated. Of course, Jax wasn’t personally involved with those interrogations.

  “I contacted him after I got settled in Houston. I knew he was investigating his birth father, and I thought he could help me find him before you or Matthew were in any danger.”

  The flat look he gave her let her know that it’d been a huge mistake on her part. And it had been. She’d tried to exclude Jax from her life so she could protect Matthew and him, but that had obviously backfired.

  “So how do you think the Moonlight Strangler found out you were alive?” Jax went on. “You said it was possible that Leland let something slip.”

  She nodded. “Because at the time, Leland was the only person who knew where I was. I did ask him about it, and he said he’d been careful when he visited me and had made sure no one followed him.”

  “He visited you?” Jax asked.

  Paige opened her mouth, closed it and decided to take a moment to figure out what Jax’s tone meant. Was he jealous? No. It couldn’t be that. This was about her trusting Leland instead of him.

  “Leland was the one who helped me move from the hospital to the safe house in the Panhandle where I stayed while I was recovering. Then, when I was well enough to work, he got me a job doing computer background checks for a security agency that vets corporate executives,” she explained. “His friend owns the agency, and Leland told him that he was the one doing the work.”

  “Leland really went out of his way for you,” Jax said. His tone was flat, but that wasn’t a flat look in his eyes.