Six-Gun Showdown. Delores Fossen

that truck and was ready to gun them all down. Of course, Cord was racing toward it no doubt to try to prevent that from happening.

      “Call an ambulance,” Jax told his brother.

      Probably in case the second thug was still alive. But she rethought that when Jericho looked at her and cursed. And when she felt the blood sliding down the side of her head and face. She wiped it away but felt a new trickle follow right behind it.

      God knew how bad she looked right now or even how badly she was hurt. Her head and body were throbbing, but Paige wasn’t getting in the ambulance. She had to stop the Moonlight Strangler once and for all.

      Jax cursed her, too, when he realized she was trailing after him, and he automatically adjusted his position so that he was in between the truck and her. Protecting her. Despite the bad blood between them, that didn’t surprise her. It wasn’t just the lawman in him that made him do that. Jax had always had this cowboy code about protecting others.

      Even if she probably wasn’t someone he wanted to protect.

      Jax approached the second man with caution. His gun aimed, his gaze still firing all around them. He reached down, pulled off the mask and put his fingers to the man’s neck.

      “He’s alive,” Jax relayed. “Barely.”

      Paige leaned in, hoping this would be the Moonlight Strangler. But he wasn’t. Like the other man, he was much too young. And that meant the killer could indeed be in the truck or nearby.

      “Be careful,” she called out to Cord.

      Whether he’d listen was anyone’s guess. Unlike Jax, Cord didn’t have that whole protection code. He had one goal. Just one.

      To catch his biological father, no matter what the cost. That included sacrificing his own life.

      Paige had been driven by that kind of justice after her parents had been murdered. That was the reason she’d become a CSI. But justice didn’t drive her now. She only wanted to keep Jax and her son safe. That might finally happen if the Moonlight Strangler was in the truck so they could catch him.

      But if he was there, why hadn’t he driven off when he’d seen that his thugs had failed?

      A possible answer popped into her head. An answer she didn’t like one bit.

      This could be a trap.

      Jax must have realized the same thing because his attention went straight to the truck. And to Cord.

      “Watch out!” Jax shouted.

      However, the words had hardly left his mouth when the blast thundered through the air. And the truck burst into a ball of fire.