Six-Gun Showdown

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.