son, she nearly corrected, but Paige figured that was a different battle for a different time. They had to survive this one first.
“The killer likely knows I’m here,” she explained, hoping it would get Jax to stay put. “I figure he’s watching me. Somehow. Maybe with cameras. Maybe he’s out there somewhere in the woods with infrared equipment. He’s been watching me for the past three days, though I haven’t spotted him yet.”
Jax’s eyes narrowed. “And even though you knew he was watching, you brought him here, to my doorstep?”
She had no trouble hearing the anger in his voice. Or seeing it on his face. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice,” he snapped.
They weren’t just talking about her being here now, but all the other things that’d happened between them. Again, another battle, another time.
Paige stopped him again when he tried to bolt. “The killer would have come here no matter what I did because he knew he’d be able to use Matthew and you to get to me.”
He went still. Not in a good way. But in that calm, almost lethal way of a lawman who’d just heard something he didn’t want to hear. “And how the heck do you know that?”
“Because he’s sent me several texts. And, yes, I’m certain they’re from the Moonlight Strangler because he knew details about my attack that hadn’t been released to the press. In the last one he sent, he said if I didn’t meet him tonight at 9:00 p.m., then he’d go after Matthew and you.”
That was still nearly two hours away.
Not much time to pull off a miracle. But it might be enough time to bring all of this to an end. An end that would keep Matthew and Jax out of danger.
Jax stood there, obviously processing that, and cursed again. Glared at her, too.
She deserved the profanity and the glare. Deserved every drop of rage that he wanted to sling at her. Because he was right. She had turned his life upside down. Her precious little boy’s, too.
“If you knew the killer was watching you, following you, then why hide here?” Jax asked.
She’d known that question was coming. Others would, too. “Because I didn’t want to pull Belinda or your ranch hands into this. I’m not hiding from the killer. I’m hiding from them. That’s why I parked by the creek and walked here.”
Paige was thankful no one on the ranch had spotted her. Even though she’d altered her appearance, someone could have recognized her. Especially Belinda. They’d known each other since childhood, and a change of hairstyle wasn’t going to fool anyone for long.
“At the time I faked my death,” she continued, “I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was trusting the right people.”
“You mean Cord,” he snarled.
Paige hated that Jax was aiming his venom at Cord. Because Cord was the one person she was certain had kept his promise to make sure Jax and Matthew stayed out of harm’s way.
But someone else had betrayed her.
Paige hoped she got a chance to discover who’d done that and deliver some payback. First, though, she had to protect Matthew—and Jax if he’d let her.
“After the attack, I went to a safe house in the Panhandle,” she said. “Not an official safe house,” Paige corrected, “but it was a place for me to recover and get back on my feet. Then, I moved to an apartment in Houston. That’s where I’ve been, where I probably would have stayed, if I hadn’t started getting those texts from the Moonlight Strangler three days ago.”
“And those texts just appeared without any kind of warning or sign that the killer knew you were alive?” His voice stayed a snarl.
“Yes. I’m still trying to figure out how he learned that.” She gave a heavy sigh. “Look, I know you have a lot of questions, but they have to wait. We have to put Matthew’s safety first.”
He couldn’t argue with that, but mercy, she was dreading those questions. Dreading even more that she didn’t have the answers that Jax wanted to hear.
Jax cursed again before he glanced around the garage, the yard and the back of the house. “I don’t want you inside. I don’t want Matthew seeing you yet.”
“Agreed.” Though it broke her heart to say that.
Jax’s eyebrow lifted, and he got that look, the one that condemned her as a mother.
“I want to see him and hold him more than I want my next breath,” Paige clarified. “But if I go inside, it might give the killer a reason to try to get in there, too. He warned me not to try to hide behind my son.”
As if she’d do that.
But she would have to draw Jax into the middle of this. Paige couldn’t see a way around it.
“If I’d thought I could make Matthew safer by going inside with him, I would have already been in there,” Paige added.
That stirred Jax’s jaw muscles, but thankfully he didn’t try to bolt toward the house again. However, he did take out his phone, and he moved into the shadows of the garage, his attention nailed to the house.
“I’m texting Belinda to tell her to lock the doors and set the security system,” Jax relayed to her. “I’ll tell her it’s just a precaution, that a prisoner has escaped. And then I’m calling for backup.”
Paige didn’t stop him from sending the first text. She wanted the house locked down. But she did stop him from texting his brother Jericho. Jericho was the sheriff, and while he would ultimately get involved in this, now wasn’t the time. Ditto for Jax’s other two brothers, Chase and Levi. They were both lawmen, too, and having them here could make a bad situation worse.
“Hear me out before you involve your brothers in this,” she said. “After I got those messages from the Moonlight Strangler, I knew he wasn’t going to back down until he had me. I’m the one who got away, and he wants me dead.”
“I’m listening,” Jax said when she hesitated.
Paige hadn’t hesitated because she thought he wasn’t listening, but rather because she wasn’t sure how to say this. Best just to get it out there. “If I’d thought it would keep Matthew out of danger, I would have just surrendered to him. Would have let him finish what he started.”
Jax cursed again. “Do you hear yourself? You’re talking about suicide. What you should have done is gone to the cops. Or to me.”
“I did come to you, tonight,” she whispered. “You won’t be thanking me for that, though, but it was the only way. I want this monster dead, and I want you to kill him for me.”
He gave a crisp nod. “Tell me where he is, and I will,” Jax said as if it were a done deal.
It was far from being a done deal, though.
“He wants me to meet him tonight at nine on the bridge at Appaloosa Creek. I’m sure
