“Jax,” the caller immediately said. “Don’t bother to trace this. I’m using another burner.”
Hell. It was the same person who’d talked to Paige earlier at the sheriff’s office. The real Moonlight Strangler.
“Paige, are you there?” he asked. “Of course you are. You’re not leaving Jax’s side. Well, unless I can entice you with an offer.”
“What do you want?” she asked. Not much emotion in her voice, but it was all over her face, and every muscle in her body had gone stiff.
“You want these attacks on Jax and you to stop? Do you want to know who’s behind them? Then meet with me.”
Jax wanted to curse. Of course this monster would want that.
“You want to meet with me so you can kill me,” Paige said. Not a question.
“Now, now.” Unlike Paige’s, there was emotion in the killer’s voice. Sugary sweet and sickening. “I said I wasn’t ready to do that yet, and I’m not. Have I ever lied to you before?”
“No,” she admitted after several moments.
“But that doesn’t mean she’ll trust you,” Jax snapped. “If you really know who’s trying to kill us, just tell us. I’m sure you want us to stop the person pretending to be you.”
“Oh, then I’d miss the chance to see Paige up close and personal again, wouldn’t I?” he taunted.
Jax couldn’t hold back the profanity. Profanity that caused this snake to laugh. This was all a game to him.
“Now, about that meeting,” the killer went on. “Here’s your chance to end the danger, to keep your little boy safe. Meet me at the location I’m about to text you. Oh, and you can bring Jax. One of his brothers, too, if you like, but I’d advise against trying to set a trap. Because, you see, I’ll have a hostage. One I hadn’t planned on killing, but I will if you don’t show up.”
“Who did you take?” Jax snapped.
Hell. Had he taken Belinda? Or maybe the Moonlight Strangler had managed to get to someone in his family. Jax motioned for Chase to start checking, and his brother stepped away, already taking out his phone.
“The hostage will be in touch with you, too,” the killer added. “I’m thinking a call like that might convince you to come. Look for that text, Paige.” He ended the call, leaving Paige and Jax standing there, staring at the phone.
“You’re not meeting with him,” Jax said just in case Paige had some stupid notion about doing that.
And apparently, she did. “You heard him. He has a hostage.”
“He’s a killer,” Jax fired back, but the words had no sooner left his mouth when his phone dinged, indicating he had a text message.
“‘Meet me by your grave, Paige,’” Jax read aloud. “‘I’m giving you one hour, but I wouldn’t wait too long. The hostage seems to be having trouble breathing. As I said, bring Jax, his brother. Hell, bring anybody you want. Just show up, let me see your pretty face and I’ll give you both the hostage and the information.’”
Jax had to curse again. This SOB really wanted to twist the knife into Paige. Maybe literally.
“My grave is in the cemetery at the church near here?” she asked.
He nodded. It was where other family members had been buried, and even though Paige had been his ex-wife, Jax had figured that one day he would want to show Matthew her headstone.
“But the old church isn’t there any longer,” Jax explained. “Long story but someone blew it up a couple of months back. They’re rebuilding it, but it’s just a construction site right now.”
Which, of course, meant there were plenty of places for a killer to lie in wait.
Jax got right in Paige’s face so she could see that he wasn’t going to let this meeting happen. “You know what he’s trying to do. He wants you dead.”
She lifted her shoulder. “He was right about never having lied to me. And we both know he hates people using him to take the blame for these attacks. He might be planning on turning the person over to us.”
“And he might just gun you down the second you get there!” he huffed, ready to gear up for more of that, but the phone rang.
Not his cell but Chase’s. Since it could be one of the ranch hands calling about another intruder, Jax went to him. And judging from his brother’s concerned expression, something had indeed gone wrong.
“It’s Cord,” Chase said, holding out his phone while he pressed the speaker function.
“Don’t come here to save me,” Cord immediately said. He didn’t sound right. Not his usual iceman self. He grunted and gulped in his breath. Cord was in pain. “No matter what he says to you or does to me, don’t come.”
“Where are you?” Paige asked, though Jax was certain she already knew the answer.
It took Cord several seconds to respond, and there were more of those sounds that Jax didn’t want to hear. “At the church. I’m the hostage.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I have to do this,” Paige said, something she’d been repeating to Jax for the past thirty minutes. “And we don’t have much time. Cord could be dying.”
She knew that wasn’t an argument Jax wanted to hear. He wasn’t fond of Cord, but Jax was a lawman and he wouldn’t want the Moonlight Strangler to claim another victim.
Including Cord.
God, she hated to think of what that monster had done to him. And all because of her. Cord had been good to her, he’d tried to help her and now he could be dying.
“Jericho and Dexter just arrived at the road near the church,” Chase told them when he finished his latest call. At least Chase was cooperating with her plans to go to the meeting and had scrambled to start getting security in place, not just at the church but here at the ranch, too.
“She’s not changing her mind about this,” Chase added to Jax. “Would you stay put if you knew you could save a man’s life?”
“I would if it meant saving hers,” Jax fired back. He cursed right after that outburst, something he’d been doing a lot in the past couple of minutes.
Chase stepped away from them. Maybe to give her time to win Jax over to what could turn out to be a deadly plan. Or maybe Chase was just tired of hearing them argue, especially since he’d already told them that he’d be going to this meeting with her.
“I don’t want you to do this.” Jax slipped his hand around the back of her neck, holding her in place to make eye contact with her.
“I don’t want to do it, either, but I don’t have a choice. I couldn’t live with myself if he murdered Cord, or anyone else, just because I didn’t have the guts to show up and face him. And you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself, either.”
She stepped away from him to let that sink in, and Paige went into the playroom to kiss Matthew—twice. He had fallen asleep on the sofa, obviously worn-out from his play session.
“We’ll take good care of him,” Addie offered. “Just be careful.” And she kissed Paige on the cheek.
Somehow, Paige managed to thank her despite the lump in her throat, and when she went back into the hall, Chase and Jax were there. Chase handed her a Kevlar vest. Both Chase and Jax already had one on.
“You’re wearing it,” Jax snarled, the muscles in his jaw at war with each other. He took her hand and put a gun in it. “And you’ll be behind me the whole time. If anything, and I mean anything, goes wrong, you’ll get down and stay down.”
She wasn’t sure if her last argument had won him over or if it was something Chase had said. Either way, this meeting was going to happen. And Paige prayed they all survived it.
“Move fast,” Jax told her, and the three of them got moving out the door. Not to the cruiser. It was too shot up. But rather into one of the family’s SUVs.
Levi locked up the house as soon as they were out, and he no doubt set the security system. She counted eight ranch hands outside the house. All armed. All looking ready in case there was another attack. With Levi and Weston inside the house, maybe that would be enough to keep everyone safe.
“Jericho let the ho
spital know that Cord might need an ambulance,” Chase explained once Jax got them moving away from the house. “But obviously the paramedics can’t just go driving in there.”
No. Because they might be shot. Still, maybe they’d be close by and able to respond if all of this came to a quick end.
“Maybe Cord isn’t hurt as bad as he sounded,” she said, thinking out loud now. “He carries a backup weapon in his boot, and maybe he still has it. Maybe he’ll get a chance to use it.”
“Too many maybes,” Jax commented under his breath. “And Cord didn’t want you to do this. No lawman would.”
But thankfully Jax kept driving, the SUV eating up the distance between the ranch and the church. Which wasn’t much distance at all. Just a couple of miles. However, it was more than enough time for the flashbacks to come.
God.
Would they never go away?
Would there ever be a time when she didn’t feel this paralyzing fear? It was yet another maybe, but perhaps if she faced down this monster, the flashbacks would stop. Of course, he might just give her a new set of memories. A new reason to have flashbacks.
First, though, she had to survive. Cord, too. And somehow she had to keep Jax and Chase out of harm’s way.
Jax turned off the road, and she immediately spotted the cruiser, and Jax pulled up along beside it. Jericho was behind the wheel, and Dexter was in the passenger’s seat. Both were wearing Kevlar, too.
“Any sign of them?” Jax asked his brother.
Jericho shook his head. “Not yet. But I figure the Moonlight Strangler was in place before he even called you.”
Paige figured the same thing. Whatever he’d set up—either a meeting or a trap—the killer had everything just as he wanted it.
“Two Texas Rangers are on the way,” Jericho explained. “And an FBI agent out of the San Antonio office. They should be here soon, and I told them to do a silent approach.”
Six lawmen. Paige hoped that would be enough to put an end to this once and for all.
But certainly the Moonlight Strangler had known this would happen. Every law enforcement agency in the country was looking for him, and he’d invited her to bring them along.
That didn’t help with the acid churning in her stomach.
What was this sick fool planning?
“Follow me,” Jax told his brother. “Keep watch behind us.”
Jericho nodded, and they all got moving again. It was only about a hundred yards before Jax rounded a curve and she saw the church. Or rather where the church had once stood. Paige was very familiar with it since it was where she and Jax had gotten married. But it was now indeed a construction site.
She didn’t see any workers. In fact, she didn’t see anyone at all, but there were three huge piles of building materials, all covered with black tarp. The killer could be hiding beneath any one of those.
Or in the cemetery.
Jax pulled to a stop about fifty yards away. But he didn’t turn off the engine. They just sat there and waited.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Jax’s phone buzzed, and she saw “Unknown caller” on the screen. Jax answered it without taking his attention off their surroundings.
“Paige,” the killer said, his voice oozing from the other end of the line. It was the Moonlight Strangler all right. “You came.”
She cleared her throat before she even attempted to answer. “Of course I came. You didn’t give me much of a choice. Now, where’s Cord? And where are you?”
The silence dragged on for so long that Paige thought for a moment that he’d hung up. But he hadn’t.
“I’m here,” he answered.
There was some movement. Not near the church or cemetery, but way back. Hundreds of yards away in a cluster of trees.
It was cloudy, there was a storm moving in, and what thread of sunlight there was didn’t help much. All she could see was a silhouette. But it was a man all right, and he was holding a phone to his ear. Even though she hadn’t gotten a good look at the man who left her for dead, she’d gotten a sense of his height and weight.
“Oh, God,” Paige whispered. She couldn’t stop herself from gasping. “It’s him. It’s really the Moonlight Strangler.”
* * *
“OF COURSE IT’S really me, sweetheart,” the man said.
And it was. Jax had no doubts about it when he heard the man speak. It was the same voice from the earlier calls.
Jax took out binoculars from the glove compartment for a closer look. The guy was about six feet tall, medium build and had brown hair. He was wearing jeans and a gray shirt. The description that came to mind was average-looking.
But this guy was far from average.
Nor did he stay in their line of sight for long. He ducked back behind one of the trees.
Paige swallowed hard, but Jax had to give it to her. She wasn’t panicking, and she hiked up her chin, trying to look a whole lot stronger than she probably felt at the moment.
“You’re not at my grave where you told me to meet you,” Paige reminded the man.
“No. I thought it best if I stayed back at bit. Those cowboys do like to shoot people, don’t they?”
“They do,” Jax assured him. And that’s exactly what he would do if he got the chance. But the snake was out of range, and that’s almost certainly why he’d taken up position there.
That, and he might have some backup in the woods behind him. In the past, the Moonlight Strangler had acted alone—or at least there’d never been any evidence of him teaming up with anyone—but this wasn’t just an ordinary situation for him. He wanted to get another shot at killing Paige.
“All right, here’s how this will work,” the killer continued. “Paige, I want you to step out of the SUV. You can hide behind any lawman of your choosing. Just one, though. I want to see your face, and I can’t do that if there’s a wall of badges in front of you.”
“Release Cord first,” she spoke up before Jax could say anything. “I want to make sure he’s alive.”
“Oh, he’s alive all right. Maybe not all in one piece, exactly. But he will live if you do what I tell you and don’t dawdle. He’s bleeding out.”
Her breath caught, and her bottom lip trembled. “I still want to see him before I get out.”
Her gaze connected with Jax’s for just a second, and he knew what she was aiming for here. She didn’t just want to see Cord, though that was critical. She wanted to try to get Cord to safety so he’d be out of the line of fire.
The moments crawled by with no word from the killer. Then Jax saw the movement in the same area where the Moonlight Strangler had disappeared.
Cord.
Using the binoculars again, Jax could see the blood. On Cord’s face. On the front of his clothes. Cord glanced up at them and shook his head.
Damn.
Was that some kind of signal?
Jax didn’t have time to find out. Cord stumbled, falling about five yards in front of where the Moonlight Strangler had been earlier.
“Don’t worry,” the killer said. “He’s alive. For now.”
Maybe so, but he also appeared to have been drugged. He tried to get up but collapsed.
“What did you do to him?” Paige snapped.
“Oh, he’s not hurt that bad. But I did have to medicate him a little so he wouldn’t try to escape. Or kill. The boy’s a real fighter. The meds will wear off in an hour or two.”
They didn’t have that long. The killer hadn’t lied about Cord’s condition. He appeared to be bleeding out.
“Now it’s your turn, Paige. Step out, let me see you and I’ll tell you the name of the real person who’s been trying to murder you.”
Paige stared at Cord, no doubt praying that he would move farther away from his captor. Jax adjusted the binoculars and spotted the reason Cord wasn’t trying to do just that.
“There’s a rope tied around his leg,” Jax explained. “And the other end of the rope is around a tree. That’s as far
as Cord can go.”
“Time’s a-wasting, Paige,” the killer snarled. Not so much of a taunt now. His temper was coming through.
Jax was about to remind her of the dangers again and that this might all be for nothing. The Moonlight Strangler could gun Cord down at any time. Plus, this piece of dirt might not even know who was behind the attacks.
But Jax stayed quiet. There was nothing he could say that would talk her out of this. Paige might have a boatload of emotional baggage, but she wasn’t a coward. Never had been. In hindsight, it was one of the reasons he’d first been attracted to her.
And this was a hell of a time for him to realize that.
“I’ll be in front of you,” Jax insisted. He would take the killer up on that particular offer.
She didn’t argue. Probably because she knew it was the only way he’d let her out there. “If something goes wrong—”
“Don’t,” he interrupted. It sounded like the start of a goodbye. Something he didn’t want to hear.
Jax put the SUV in gear, maneuvering it so that the driver’s side was facing the killer. Or at least facing where the killer had been earlier. It was possible the guy had moved.
And Jax opened the door.
Though he was still out of range, he already had his gun drawn, and he slipped his phone into his pocket to free his hands and stepped from the SUV.
No shots.
That was a surprise and somewhat of a relief. Jax had half expected this moron to start shooting. Or maybe he was just waiting for Paige before he pulled the trigger.
Paige’s grip on her gun had caused her knuckles to go white. She was still shaking, too. That didn’t stop her from getting out behind him. Thankfully, she didn’t move to Jax’s side. She stayed behind him.
“Can’t see your face,” the killer complained, though his voice was muffled now because Jax’s phone was in his pocket. “At least stand on your tippy-toes so I can get a good look at you. I wouldn’t put it past your ex to try to bring in a ringer.”
Six-Gun Showdown Page 13
