Читать книгу Six-Gun Showdown - Delores Fossen - Страница 7

Chapter One

I’m not dead.

The voice mail message caused Deputy Jax Crockett to freeze. He stabbed the replay button on his phone and listened to it again. Three words. That was it.

But it felt as if a stick of dynamite had just gone off in his chest.

Paige.

Oh, mercy. It was his ex-wife, Paige.

That was her voice, all right. He was sure of it. But it couldn’t be her because he’d buried her a year ago.

Jax listened to the message again. And again. Then, he checked the name and number of the caller.

Unknown.

Which meant the person might have blocked him from seeing it. But it’d come in a half hour earlier when he’d been on the back part of his ranch looking for a calf that’d strayed from the herd. No phone reception was back there, so the call had gone straight to voice mail.

Was that fear he’d heard in her voice?

Or maybe fear that someone else was pretending to feel?

This had to be some kind of sick prank. That was it. Maybe someone who sounded like Paige.

But his gut didn’t go along with that notion.

He knew his ex-wife’s voice, and that’d been her on the other end of the line. Of course, that didn’t mean someone hadn’t used an old recording of her voice, perhaps piecing together words from other conversations to come up with that one sentence.

I’m not dead.

“You okay, boss?” he heard someone ask.

Jax dragged his thoughts back to reality and noticed that one of his ranch hands, Buddy Martindale, was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind.

Heck, maybe he had.

After all, he was standing in the barn while he repeatedly punched the voice mail button on his phone.

“Did anybody call the ranch in the past hour or so?” Jax asked him.

Buddy lifted his cowboy hat enough to scratch his head, giving that some thought. “Not that I know of. Maybe you oughta check with Belinda, though.”

Yes, Belinda Darby would know. His son’s nanny was inside the house, and since it was coming up on dinnertime, Belinda would be close to not only Jax’s son, Matthew, but also near the house phone. She would have been able to hear the line ringing in Jax’s home office, too, if someone had tried to reach him there.

Someone like a dead woman.

Get a grip.

Paige had been murdered by the serial killer known as the Moonlight Strangler. And there had to be some reasonable explanation for the call.

Jax handed off his horse’s reins to Buddy, something he wouldn’t normally do. Tending the horses was a task he enjoyed. Not today, though. Not after that message.

There were a good thirty yards between the barn and the back porch, so while he made his way to the house, Jax listened to the recording again. Hearing it for the fifth time didn’t lessen the impact.

The memories came, slamming into him.

Nightmares of the violence Paige had suffered. Folks often reminded him that she’d only died once. That she wasn’t suffering now, that she was at peace. And while that was true, Jax couldn’t stop himself from reliving every last horrifying moment of Paige’s life.

Their marriage had fallen apart several months before she was killed, but it didn’t matter that their divorce had been finalized only days before that fateful night. Paige sure hadn’t deserved to die, and their son hadn’t deserved to lose his mother.

Before Jax reached the back porch, the door opened, and Belinda stuck out her head. Even though the sunset wasn’t far off, it was still hot, the August air more humid than cooling, and the breeze took a swipe at her long blond hair.

“You look like you saw a ghost,” she said, smiling, but that smile quickly vanished. “Is everything all right?”

Heck, he must have been wearing his emotions on his face and every other part of him. A rarity for him since, to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever called him the emotional type.

“Have there been any calls since I’ve been out?” he asked.

“No.” Unlike Buddy, Belinda didn’t even hesitate. “Why? What’s wrong?”

Jax waved her off. No need to worry her. And she would be worried if he told her about the voice mail. Belinda took care of Matthew as if he were her own and would have done the same for Jax if he’d let her. Anything that bothered the two of them would bother her.

“Can you stay late tonight? I need to go back to the sheriff’s office and look over some reports,” he lied.

Well, it was sort of a lie, anyway. He was a deputy after all, and there were always reports to read, write or look over. He’d maybe work on a few while he was there.

But what he really wanted was to have the voice mail analyzed.

He’d saved the old answering machine with Paige’s recorded message on it. Jax had figured when Matthew got older, he might want to hear his mommy’s voice.

Or at least that’s what Jax had told himself.

But now, the recording could be compared to the one on his voice mail, and he’d have the proof he needed that this was some kind of a sick hoax. Maybe then the knot in his stomach would ease up.

“No problem. I can stay as late as you need,” Belinda assured him.

He hadn’t expected her to say anything different. “Thanks. And don’t hold dinner for me. I’ll be back before Matthew’s bedtime, though.”

Belinda nodded and went back inside. But not before giving him another concerned look. She would believe his lie because she wanted to believe it, but she knew something was wrong.

Jax was within a few steps of the back porch when he caught some movement from the corner of his eye. Just a blur of motion in the open doorway of the detached garage. Since Buddy was still in the main barn, Jax knew it wasn’t him, and none of the hands from his family’s ranch had come to help him work today. Still, that didn’t mean his sister or brothers hadn’t sent someone over to get a vehicle or something.

Except it didn’t feel like anything that ordinary.

Probably because of that voice mail.

He was armed, his Glock in his waist holster, and Jax slid his hand over it and started toward the garage.

There.

He saw the movement again.

Someone was definitely inside.

He’d made some enemies over the years. That came with the territory of being a lawman. But if someone had decided to bring a fight to his ranch, then the person could have already ambushed him.

Not exactly a thought to steady his nerves.

“Who’s there?” he asked. Not a shout.

Jax kept his voice low enough so that Belinda or anyone in the house wouldn’t necessarily hear him. But a person in the garage should.

He got no answer, and he glanced back at his house to make sure Belinda was still inside. She was. Jax considered firing off a text to warn her to get Matthew and herself away from the windows, but it might be overkill.

Or not.

He got another glimpse of the shadowy figure and decided to confront this head-on. Literally. Jax drew his gun and hurried to the entry. It was dark inside, but not so dark that he didn’t see the person lurking behind the back end of one of the trucks.

“Paige?” Jax whispered.

He could have sworn everything stopped. His heartbeat. His breath. Maybe even time. But that standstill didn’t last.

Because the person stepped out, not enough for him to fully see her, but Jax knew it was a woman.

“You got my message,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Paige. It was her. In the flesh.

Jax had a thousand emotions hit him at once. Relief. Mercy, there was a ton of relief, but it didn’t last but a second or two before the other emotions took over: shock, disbelief and, yeah, anger.

Lots and lots of anger.

“Why?” he managed to say, though he wasn’t sure how he could even speak with his throat clamped shut.

Paige cleared her throat, too. “Because it was necessary.”

As answers went, it sucked, and he let her know that with the scowl he aimed at her. “Why?” he repeated.

She stepped from the shadows but didn’t come closer to him. Still, it was close enough for him to confirm what he already knew.

This was Paige.

She was back from the grave. Or else, back from a lie that she’d apparently let him believe.

For a dead woman, she didn’t look bad, but she had changed. No more blond hair. It was dark brown now and cut short and choppy. She’d also lost some of those curves that’d always caught his eye and every other man’s in town.

“I know you have a thousand questions,” she said, rubbing her hands along the outside legs of her jeans. She also glanced around. Behind him.

Behind her.

“Just one question. Why the hell did you let me believe you were dead?” But Jax couldn’t even wait for the answer. He cursed. “I saw pictures of you after the Moonlight Strangler had gotten his hands on you. There’s no reason you should have let me believe that’d happened to you.”

“It did happen.” She stepped even closer, and thanks to the sunlight spearing through the door, he saw the scar on her cheek.

The crescent-shaped knife cut that the Moonlight Strangler had given all his victims.

There were marks on her throat, too. Scars from the piano wire that had sliced into her skin when the killer strangled her.

“Yes.” Paige touched her fingers to her neck. “It’s healed now. For the most part.”

She was wrong. It would never heal. Never go away. Not in his mind, anyway.

“But clearly you’re not dead,” he snapped. And he didn’t want her to be, but he damn sure wanted some answers. “I’ve been through hell for the past year. Hell,” Jax emphasized. “You didn’t just put me through this, either. Matthew went through it, too.”

Even though his son had been only a year old when Paige died, it’d broken Jax’s heart to hear his son call out for his ma-ma.

“Matthew.” Her breath hitched, and tears sprang to her eyes. “I did this for him. For you.”

“You didn’t do anything for me.” There was no way for him to rein in the anger in his voice or any other part of him. “You let me believe you’d been murdered.”

She nodded, came even closer. So close that he caught her familiar scent. But she also glanced around again. “Because if I hadn’t let you believe that, the Moonlight Strangler would have come after me again. And I was afraid he’d use Matthew and you to get to me.”

He cursed again, dismissing that. “I’m a deputy sheriff.”

“And that didn’t stop him from getting to me,” Paige reminded him just as quickly.

Good grief, she might as well have slugged him with a two-by-four. Because it was the truth. And it was a truth that Jax had struggled with for the past year.

He hadn’t managed to save her.

But someone obviously had.

“What happened?” he demanded.

She paused, gathered her breath. Maybe her thoughts, too. “By the time the San Antonio cops got to the crime scene, I was barely alive. In fact, the first cop on the scene did report me as dead. That’s the report that went out to you and everybody else. But the paramedics managed to revive me in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I knew if word got out that I was alive, the killer would just come after me again.”

He mentally went through all the details and saw one big question at the end of that explanation. “Who helped you come up with this stupid plan?”

“I came up with it.” She glanced around again. “And I convinced a cop at SAPD who knew about me to go along with it.”

Jax didn’t miss the glancing around, nor the hesitation in her voice.

“Who helped you?” he pressed.

She dodged his gaze. “Other than the cop, Cord Granger helped.”

Jax would have cursed again if he could have gotten his jaw unclenched. Cord Granger, a DEA agent. Also the biological brother to his adopted sister, Addie.

Cord and Addie’s father was none other than the Moonlight Strangler himself. Though the law didn’t have the actual identity of the vicious serial killer, they knew from DNA comparisons that both Cord and Addie were his biological children. Children the killer had abandoned when they were a little more than toddlers, and neither had any recollections of the man.

Too bad.

If they had a name, then they could find and arrest the piece of slime.

Something that Cord had made his top priority.

Jax had never cared much for Cord. And this wouldn’t help. Because Cord was much more concerned about catching his birth father than he was with the safety of the people around him. Jax wouldn’t have put it past the man to actually use Paige to draw the killer out. And now he’d apparently put Paige up to lying to him.

Not just any old lie, either.

But one that’d crushed Jax and the rest of his family.

“You were a fool to trust Cord,” he finally managed to say. Jax shoved his thumb against his chest. “You should have trusted me instead.”

She huffed. Not an angry sound, but more like stating the obvious. “We weren’t exactly in a good place, Jax.”

That was the wrong thing to say. A new wave of anger came. “You’re sure you didn’t die because you didn’t want to face the divorce?” Or maybe because she hadn’t wanted to face him?

Her eyes narrowed when their gazes connected again. “No. It was to save Matthew and you.”

Jax didn’t have time to figure out if he believed that or not. Because he heard something he didn’t want to hear.

Belinda’s voice.

“Jax, are you all right?” the nanny called out.

Belinda was on the back porch, peering into the garage. She could almost certainly see him, but probably not Paige. Paige kept it that way by stepping into the shadows.

“Tell her to go back inside,” Paige insisted.

Jax opened his mouth to ask why, but because he was watching Paige so closely, he saw the urgency slide across her face.

And the fear.

“I’m fine,” he told Belinda. “Just checking a few things before I head to the office.”

He waited to see if that’d be enough or if he truly would have to tell her to go inside. But thankfully, it worked. Belinda went back in and closed the door.

“What happened?” Jax asked Paige. And he didn’t need his lawman’s instincts to tell him that not only had something happened...

Something had gone wrong.

“What made you come back now?” he pressed.

The fear in her face went up a significant notch. “I think the Moonlight Strangler is on his way here to draw me out.”

All right. That upped his concern, too. A lot. “And how exactly would he do that?”

Paige’s mouth trembled. “The Moonlight Strangler is coming after Matthew and you...tonight.”