“Please hold me.”
That was the only warning Jax got before Paige was in his arms.
Instant jolt of memories. His body reminding him that it’d been way too long since he’d had her in his arms.
And in his bed.
Jax didn’t push her away, though. She was falling apart right in front of him, and he felt his arms close around her before he could talk himself out of it.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The latest apology put his teeth on edge. No way could an apology erase what she’d done. For nearly a year, he’d grieved for her. Cursed her. Because he’d believed she had caused her own death. Now he was cursing her for lying to him. Cursing her because of this blasted attraction that just wouldn’t die.
Six-Gun Showdown
USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Delores Fossen
DELORES FOSSEN, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over fifty novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received a Booksellers’ Best Award and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She was also a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. You can contact the author through her website at www.deloresfossen.com.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
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