He gave her a flat stare. “Of course, the only way I’d get a chance to do that is for him to get close enough to murder you.”
Yes. There was no way around that.
“He’s never shot anyone before.” Not that Paige knew of, anyway. “He’ll want an up-close-and-personal kill, like the others.” Something that tightened the knot in her stomach. A knot that’d been there for nearly a year since the Moonlight Strangler attacked her.
Jax’s next round of profanity was even worse than the others. Before he could tell her a flat-out no, that there was no chance this was going to happen, Paige interrupted him.
“If I could think of another way out, one that didn’t involve you, I’d take it. But I can’t risk him coming after Matthew. And neither can you.”
Jax didn’t agree with that. Didn’t argue, either.
“He said we’re to leave our guns by the side of the road before we approach the bridge,” Paige explained. “He has to know that you’ll be carrying some kind of backup weapon. That’s why I believe he’ll use a thermal scan.”
“He wouldn’t be able to see a gun on thermal scan.” Jax closed his eyes for a second, shook his head. “But he would be able to see the outline of one.”
“That’s why it can’t look like something he’d recognize as a weapon.” She took the plastic syringe from her pocket. “Hopefully, it’ll look like an ink pen, but it’s filled with enough sodium thiopental to incapacitate him in less than thirty seconds.”
“Sodium thiopental,” he repeated, no doubt knowing that it was a powerful drug that would stop the Moonlight Strangler from moving. It could also kill him, since it was the same drug used in lethal injections for those on death row.
“I would just try to use it on him myself,” Paige added, “but he left specific instructions that’ll prevent me from doing that.”
She took her phone from her jeans pocket and handed it to Jax so he could read the text message for himself. Everything was there. The time and place of the meeting. The offer for her to have Jax and no one else to drive her. If anyone else did show up, the meeting was off, and Jax’s house would be attacked. There was also the demand for them to leave their weapons on the side of the road twenty yards from the bridge and then walk there.
And one final demand.
“He wants you to strip down to your underwear so he can make sure you don’t have a weapon,” Jax read.
She nodded. “Obviously, he doesn’t trust me.”
“He won’t trust me, either,” Jax reminded her just as quickly.
“No. He might even have a hired thug hiding nearby to try to take you out. That’s why you’ll need to wear Kevlar. Do you still keep a vest in your truck?”
Jax nodded. “Kevlar won’t stop him from killing you, though.”
“No, but it’ll stop him from killing you. We can take other precautions for me, like using our own thermal scan of the area.” She tipped her head to the small equipment bag she’d stashed behind the truck. “There’s a handheld one in there so we can see if anyone’s lurking nearby before we surrender our guns.”
And there it was. All spelled out for him. Paige just waited to see what he was going to do. Part of her wanted him to refuse. That way, he’d be safe.
For tonight, anyway.
But she didn’t believe the killer was bluffing. If he couldn’t have her, then he would come after Matthew and Jax and make her suffer a million times more than she would with just her own murder.
Jax looked up at the ceiling as if asking for some divine advice. They needed it. But when his gaze came back to her, he handed Paige her phone and took out his own. He fired off a text and within just a matter of seconds, he got an answer.
“Jericho will be here in five minutes to guard Matthew,” he relayed to her.
Jericho’s house was less than half a mile away, and she’d hoped he would be able to come right away. Not to try to talk them out of this plan but to help in a way that wouldn’t spur an attack at the ranch. Even though Jericho wouldn’t be happy to see her, he would do everything humanly possible to protect Matthew. Not just tonight. But forever.
Good thing, too.
This could be the worst mistake of her life. The worst mistake of Jax’s life, too. Because this meeting could make their son an orphan.
“Unless we kill the Moonlight Strangler tonight, you’ll have to make sure everything here is secure, that he can’t get to Matthew,” she reminded him.
Of course, they couldn’t shut their little boy away for the rest of his life, and that meant one way or another, someone would have to stop the killer.
“Does Cord know about this plan?” Jax asked.
Paige nodded. “He’s in one of the trees across the road with a long-range rifle. He’s Jericho’s backup. He would have gone with me to the bridge, but the Moonlight Strangler said I could only bring you. Anyone else, and Matthew could be hurt.”
Jax’s teeth came together. “That’s not going to happen.”
It was the exact reassurance she needed. One that only a father could give. Yes, Cord would fight to the death for her, but Jax would fight to stay alive so he could keep their son safe.
“Once Jericho is here, we’ll come up with some additional security measures,” Jax insisted. “He might be able to get a deputy to pose as a hunter so we can scan the woods around the creek before we even get there. That way, we’d still be here if he’s detected.”
It was a risk, but everything was at this point.
“I saw him,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word.
Jax’s gaze slashed back to hers. “The killer?”
“Matthew. Belinda had him on the back porch earlier.” Mercy, just the memory of seeing him nearly brought her to her knees. “They were on the porch swing, and she was reading to him. He’s gotten so big.”
No longer a baby. He was a toddler now, almost two years old. Walking and talking. Every second seeing him was like a precious gift that Paige had never thought she’d get.
“I’ve missed so much.” She hadn’t meant to say that last part aloud, and it caused Jax to mumble something. She didn’t catch exactly what he said, but it was clear he believed that “dying” had been a choice she’d made.
It was.
And at the time it had been her only choice.
She saw the slash of headlights coming toward the garage. Jericho, no doubt. But just in case it wasn’t, Paige drew her gun from the back waist of her jeans.
A gesture that had Jax doing the same, along with raising an eyebrow.
Paige
