“It’s not like that between Cord and me,” she volunteered.
His glare didn’t soften any. “Then how is it exactly? Why don’t you tell me?”
Well, this was a can of worms that she’d hoped to delay opening. The emotions of it were still too raw, and Paige wasn’t sure she could tell him without choking on the words. But Jax had to know. Because it was hearing this that would hopefully get him to cooperate with her dangerous plan.
“When the killer was strangling me,” she said, but then had to stop to fight back the images of that nightmare. Always the images. “He told me my birth mother was one of his first victims and that he was killing me to make sure her spawn didn’t live another second.”
Judging from the way his eyes widened, Jax hadn’t expected that. “And you believed him?”
“No. But the DNA test I took later proved otherwise.” That required another deep breath. “According to the test, my birth mother was Mary Madison. Her body was found just a few days after I was abandoned in the hospital. I didn’t learn any of this until after I’d faked my death.”
“His victim’s daughter,” Jax said. He did some deep breathing, too, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head. “That’s why he came after you?” But he didn’t wait for her to answer. “Then why hasn’t he gone after the children of his other victims?”
She had to shake her head. “Maybe my birth mother’s murder was more personal to him? Or he could believe I know something about him that the others don’t.”
“Do you?” he asked, and it sounded like some kind of accusation.
With good reason.
Cord wasn’t the only one who’d become obsessed with finding the Moonlight Strangler. She had as well, and even though Paige had dismissed it as part of her job as a crime scene investigator, it’d been more than that. She’d felt it bone deep.
And she’d been right.
She wasn’t just searching for a killer who had eluded the cops for nearly thirty years. Now she knew that she’d been looking for the man who’d murdered her mother so she could stop him from killing again. Of course, the obsession had come back to haunt her and just might cost her everything.
“I don’t know anything about his identity,” she continued, “but I do know how to stop him.”
However, it would cost her big-time. The trick was not to have that cost spread to Matthew and Jax.
Paige checked the time. The minutes were ticking away. “I heard you tell Belinda that you were going to the sheriff’s office, so she’ll be expecting you to leave soon. I suspect you were going to analyze the voice mail I left you.”
Jax nodded. “I thought maybe it was a hoax.”
Of course he had. Because he hadn’t thought she was capable of doing something like faking her own death. “I left the message because I thought it would lessen the blow of you seeing me.”
He looked her straight in the eyes. “Nothing could have done that.”
True. But she’d had to try. Just as she had to try now.
“So, your plan is to...what?” he asked. “Go to the Appaloosa Creek Bridge and meet a killer who’s hell-bent on finishing you off?”
Hearing it spelled out like that didn’t help, but Paige tried to push her fear aside. “I’m sure he’d like to finish you off, too. I can’t think of another reason he would say I could bring you along.”
Jax stayed quiet a moment. “But you’re thinking I can kill him before he can get to me?”
Bingo.
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