Six-Gun Showdown

by Delores Fossen

  “Also, the Moonlight Strangler’s never used explosives at any of his crime scenes,” Jax added. “My bet’s on Darrin, too. He’s got the money and motive to pull off something like this.”

  “Come on.” Addie slipped her arm around Paige’s waist. “You can take a quick break from the investigation so we can catch up. I want you to meet my husband and our son, and you can have breakfast with Matthew.”

  Jax gave his sister a thank-you look. Paige did need time to catch her breath. Needed time with Matthew, too. However, Paige had barely managed a step when Jax’s phone buzzed.

  “Jericho,” he said, looking at the screen.

  That stopped Paige, of course. It stopped everyone, because Jericho was interviewing both their suspects right about now, and he might have gotten a break in the case.

  “Good news, I hope,” Jax said when he answered the call and put it on speaker.

  “I’m not sure what kind of news it is right now. A package arrived for Paige here at the sheriff’s office. A courier service delivered it, and I had it checked for explosives. There aren’t any.”

  That got Jax’s attention. Paige’s, too. “A package?” she repeated. “Who sent it and what’s in it?”

  “Don’t know who sent it, but there were just two things inside. A cell phone and a typed note telling Paige to call the number programmed into it. Only Paige. The note said if anyone else called, there’d be no answer.”

  Jericho blew out a long breath that was audible even from the other end of the line. “Jax, I think you should bring Paige in right away. Not just to deal with the phone. But I think she should talk to the courier. He says he’s got orders to speak to only her.”

  Chapter Ten

  Paige tried to steady her heart rate. Tried not to think the worst. But since the worst seemed to be the norm for her, it was hard not to wonder if this package was some kind of ruse to draw her out.

  Still, she didn’t have a lot of options—also the norm for her lately—because she hadn’t wanted Jericho to bring the courier to the ranch, yet she wanted any answers the man might be able to give.

  “Please tell me Matthew will be all right,” she said when Jax pulled the cruiser not in the parking lot of the sheriff’s office but directly in front of it. Of course, she knew what he would say.

  Matthew was safe.

  And it was as true as it could be. Chase, Levi and Weston were all there. Cord, too. Plus, there were at least a half dozen armed ranch hands. In addition to that, both Chase and Levi had searched the cruiser to make sure it wasn’t bugged or that a tracking device hadn’t been attached. It was clear. However, that didn’t mean someone wasn’t in town watching the sheriff’s office and waiting for them to arrive.

  “It’s not Matthew I’m worried about right now.” Jax glanced around the area as if he expected them to be attacked again.

  And they very well could be.

  Because this could be a ruse not to go after Matthew, but rather to go after Jax and her.

  Jericho must have thought it was possible, too, because he had suggested that Levi or Chase drive in with them so they’d have backup. But Jax and she had wanted that backup at the ranch. Something they’d easily agreed on. At least they were on the same page when it came to their son’s safety.

  Paige mentally shrugged.

  Apparently on the same page when it came to that kiss, too. Jax had hardly looked at her since then, and that was a good thing. Kissing was a distraction, and it muddied waters that she needed to be clear right now. All their focus had to be on protecting Matthew.

  Jax drew his gun, and with his body practically wrapped around her, he hurried her into the building. Her hair was still damp from the shower she’d hurriedly taken. Not exactly a luxury. She hadn’t managed to take one the night before, and she had to wash off some of the scents from the attack. Also, she’d needed all the help she could get loosening up her tight muscles. So tight that her neck was stiff.

  The moment they got inside the sheriff’s office, Paige spotted Mack, Jericho and a tall, thin man with dark hair. The courier, no doubt. He looked even more nervous about this than Paige did. His Adam’s apple was bobbing, and his eyes were darting all around.

  There was no sign of Leland or Darrin, so maybe that meant Jericho had finished with them. Or maybe they were still being interviewed by one of the deputies.

  “His name is Chad Farmer,” Jericho supplied, tipping his head to the man.

  Jax’s brother was seated at a desk, leaning back in the chair. Almost casually. But there was nothing casual about that dangerous look Jericho was giving their visitor.

  “Does he have a record?” Jax asked.

  “Not yet. But he knows he’s going to jail after he talks to you. I’m charging him with obstruction of justice for not answering my questions. Oh, and for having a broken taillight on his car. And I’ll tack on anything else I can think to charge him with.”

  Evidently, Jericho wasn’t pleased with this courier. Well, neither was Paige.

  She went closer to the desk and looked in the box that was next to Jericho. Only the typed note and the phone, just as Jericho had said.

  “No prints,” Jericho told her. “Well, other than the prints belonging to this clown, and his are the only ones on the outside of the box.”

  “The man who hired me said he’d kill me if I talked to anyone but you,” Chad volunteered, his attention on her.

  “Well, I’m here now, so talk,” she demanded. “Who was he?”

  Chad immediately shook his head. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t get a good look at him. He was in the backseat of my car when I got in it and put a gun to my head. He said I was to bring the box here and ask to speak to you. Only you. And if I said anything else to anyone I was a dead man.”

  Paige had no idea if any of this was true, but she could practically smell the fear on Chad. See it in his eyes, too.

  “Did this man have an accent?” Paige pressed. “Was there anything about him that stood out?”

  He shook his head to both questions. “He just said he’d know if I talked to anyone but you and that he’d make sure I was dead by morning if I did.” Chad swallowed hard when he glanced at Jericho. “Will you ask the sheriff if he’s really going to arrest me?”

  “You bet I am.” Jericho motioned to Mack. “Lock him up and hold him until I can find out if he’s telling the truth. If he’s not, I can add another charge to the ones I already have.”

  Chad opened his mouth and seemed ready to argue about that, but he looked at the window, his gaze shifting over the sidewalk and buildings. “He could be watching,” Chad said to Paige. “Tell the sheriff to go ahead and put me in jail. Just make sure someone’s guarding me so he can’t get to me.”

  Well, that worked in Chad’s favor. He was willing to be in jail rather than speak to anyone else. Either he was truly innocent or else he was playing them for some reason she couldn’t figure out. Either way, Paige was glad when Mack led the man toward the holding cell.

  “It’s been a busy morning for all of us,” Jericho said, pushing the box closer for her to see. “I still have Darrin in the interview room. Last I checked he was playing a game on his phone, but I’ve been too tied up with this to talk to him. Dexter’s in there with him now.”

  “I’m surprised Darrin didn’t bring one of his attorneys with him,” Jax remarked.

  “Oh, he called them all right. They’re on the way. A whole team of them, apparently. And they’re going to sue me for harassment. I don’t think Darrin liked it much when I wasn’t bothered about that.”

  No, he wouldn’t have liked that. Darrin loved to intimidate people. That didn’t work so well on the Crocketts, though. They had just as much money as he did—possibly more. And they had badges. Darrin wasn’t big on dealing with authority figures.

  “What about Leland?” she asked.

  Jericho shook his head. “He hasn’t come in. If he’s not here by the time we’ve figured out exactly what thi
s box means, I’ll give him a call. Or better yet, call his lieutenant.”

  That wouldn’t please Leland, but Paige couldn’t worry about hurting his feelings. She had to get the truth.

  The truth that might be in that box.

  She took out the note, trying not to touch anything but the edges. Jericho had already said it didn’t have prints on it, but touching it seemed like touching the killer. Because she figured whoever wanted her dead had to be behind this.

  “‘Paige,’” she read aloud from the note, “‘this phone and mine are burners, and if I don’t hear your sweet voice when it rings, then I hang up, and you’ll lose your chance to speak to me. Wouldn’t want that, would you? Call me right now. The number’s programmed in already.’”

  “It’s a burner,” Jericho verified. “No way to trace it.”

  Exactly what she’d expected. And Paige knew what she had to do next. She had to talk to this monster and figure out who he was and how to stop him.

  “Ready?” Jericho asked her. He took out a recorder, and when she nodded, he pressed the button.

  Her hands were shaking, but she didn’t realize how much until Jax reached over and touched the number in the contacts. It rang. And rang. By the fourth ring, her heart was in her throat, and she was afraid all of this had been a sick hoax.

  But then someone answered. Whoever it was didn’t say a word, no doubt waiting to hear her “sweet voice.”

  “It’s me,” she said, trying to sound strong. She failed.

  “Paige,” the man answered. “Good girl, following orders. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss this chance for us to chat.”

  The chill went through her, head to toe, and if she hadn’t sat down in the chair, she would have fallen.

  “It’s him.” She had to clear her throat and repeat it for her words to have any sound. “It’s the Moonlight Strangler. I recognize the voice.”

  “Well, of course you do, sweetheart,” he purred. “We had some time to talk last year.”

  That gave her some steel that she seriously needed. “Yes, while you were cutting my face.”

  “Yes, that. A nasty obsession of mine. We bad boys do have our bad ways, don’t we?”

  Because Jax’s hand was on her shoulder—she wasn’t even sure when he’d put it there, though—she could feel his muscles tense. See Jericho’s doing the same. Paige could tell they both wanted to speak up, badly, to blast this monster to smithereens, but if they said anything, the killer might end the call.

  That couldn’t happen.

  Just talking to him made her want to throw up, but she had to do this.

  “How did you find out I was alive?” she asked.

  “I have my ways, but I will say, you had me fooled. I really thought you were number thirty-one.”

  The FBI didn’t have a confirmed number of bodies they could attribute to the Moonlight Strangler, so she didn’t know if that was true or not.

  “How did you know I was alive?” she pressed. She prayed her voice wouldn’t freeze up and that she could get through this without breaking down. God, she could feel his knife cutting into her.

  “I heard about the attack at the Crockett ranch,” he said. “That’s when I found out.”

  She jumped right on that. “It wasn’t you behind that attack?”

  “No way.” He sounded insulted. “That’s not my style. Too sloppy. Too many working parts. But someone wanted to make you think it was me. Someone using my name and reputation. I don’t like that. I kill people who pretend to be me.”

  That time, he sounded dangerous. Not that she’d needed to hear it to know it. The proof was on her face. Plus, he’d actually murdered another man when he had tried to make everyone believe that the Moonlight Strangler was after Alexa.

  “So, if it wasn’t you last night,” she continued, “who was it?”

  “That sounds like a personal problem. Yours, not mine. Use all those cowboy cops you surround yourself with to figure it out. I just don’t want to be blamed for something I haven’t done. Yet.”

  The yet felt like a punch to the gut.

  “Are you going to try to come after me again?” Paige wasn’t sure, though, that she actually wanted to hear the answer.

  “All in due time. I’ve always wanted to do this mother-daughter thing, and you’re my chance to make that happen. But I have someone else in my sights right now. Oh, she’s such a sweet little thing. A blonde, like you. I’ll bet she begs for mercy when I cut her. I like it when they beg.”

  That was it. He ended the call before Paige could scream for him to stop. The flashbacks came at her full force. All of them at once. The sounds. The pain. His voice. And now he was going to do that to someone else.

  “You have to stop him,” she begged, though she knew there was nothing they could do. The only way she could save her sanity was to believe it’d been all talk, that he wasn’t about to add another victim to his list.

  But she knew in her heart that soon, very soon, they’d hear the news of another murder. Another one that she hadn’t been able to stop.

  “I would ask if you’re okay,” Jericho grumbled when he hit the button to end the recording, “but I know you’re not.” He went to the water cooler, got her a cup and brought it back to her.

  Even though she wasn’t much of a drinker, Paige wished it was something stronger. She downed the whole cup, but her throat was still bone dry.

  Mack came back into the room, and even though he looked at her, he didn’t ask what’d happened. Good thing. Because Paige wasn’t sure she could tell him that it felt as if she’d just been crushed by an avalanche.

  Jericho eased away from her so that Jax could step in. Not exactly a subtle move, and the brothers exchanged a long glance before Jericho went to another desk to make a call.

  “He’ll kill this woman,” she managed to say, “and come after me again.”

  “No, he won’t, because we’ll stop him.”

  Jax sounded so sure of that, but Paige didn’t actually feel that certainty, that promise, until he pulled her into his arms. Just the simple gesture gave her a lot more comfort than it should.

  “Come on,” Jax said, helping her to her feet. “I’ll take you back to the ranch. Holding Matthew should help.”

  It would, but she shook her head. “I don’t want to lead the Moonlight Strangler to the ranch.”

  “He already knows where the ranch is. He knows someone you care about will be there. And we’ve got people in place to make sure he doesn’t come anywhere near you.”

  Paige knew that no measures of security were foolproof. Especially when it came to this particular killer. But Jax was right about one thing—holding Matthew would make her feel better.

  However, they hadn’t even moved toward the door when Jericho held up his finger in a wait-a-minute gesture. “Don’t touch it. Have Levi bag it and bring it in,” he told the person he was speaking to, and he finished the call.

  “Bag what?” Jax immediately asked.

  “There don’t appear to be any bombs at your place, but one of the ranch hands found a camera. It was attached to the bottom of the porch swing, and it appears to have some kind of listening device connected to it.”

  Jax cursed, shook his head. “That would have given the person a view of the yard, driveway and anyone coming in and out of the house. And the person would have been able to hear whatever we said when we were out there.”

  Yes, and as sickening as that was, at least it was better than a bomb. “When it’s analyzed, we might be able to tell who was on the receiving end of the camera feed. Might.” It was a long shot, though.

  “There appears to be a print on the camera,” Jericho added. “That’s why I didn’t want him to touch it.”

  She hated to get up her hopes, but this could be the break they were looking for. Well, unless it was just the prints of another hired gun. Still, that particular lackey might still be alive so they could question him.

  Paige heard the sound of the fr
ont door opening, but she didn’t actually get to see who was coming in. That’s because Jax hooked his arm around her, maneuvering her behind him. Only then did she get a glimpse of their visitor.

  Leland.

  He’d finally arrived for his interview. And he wasn’t alone. He was holding on to a very distraught-looking Belinda. She was sobbing and leaning against him. She didn’t appear to be hurt, but her face was sweaty and red, and her hair was disheveled.

  What had happened now?

  And why were those two together?

  Belinda immediately left Leland and made a beeline for Jax. She flung herself at him, landing in his arms.

  “Someone broke into my house,” she said through the sobs. Her words rushed together. “I didn’t know he was there, but he must have been watching me.”

  “Slow down,” Jax told her. He helped her to one of the chairs and had her sit. Jericho did water duty again and got her a cup.

  While Belinda was drinking that, Paige turned to Leland. “What happened?”

  He lifted his shoulder. “I don’t know. I pulled into the parking lot and I saw her crying and stumbling. I helped her in.” Leland didn’t actually look at Belinda. He kept his attention on Paige. “She’s your son’s nanny, right?”

  Paige nodded. Matthew’s nanny and Jax’s friend. A friend who wanted to be a lot more. Paige got a reminder of that when Belinda lunged at Jax and went right back into his arms.

  “You have to help me,” Belinda begged.

  “I will. Now tell me what happened.”

  Belinda’s tears didn’t exactly dry up when she looked at Paige, but she frowned as if she didn’t want Paige around for this.

  “I could wait in one of the interview rooms while you talk to her,” Paige suggested, not to Belinda but to Jax.

  He nixed that right away with a head shake and moved out of Belinda’s arms again. “Darrin’s back there. Stay here where I can keep an eye on you.”

  Oh, Belinda did not like that, and Paige got a nasty glare from the woman. That alone was enough reason for Paige to stay put. Plus, she really didn’t want to be any closer to Darrin.