Then, they started to exchange blows in what was obviously a carefully choreographed sequence, complete with jumps and rolls that saw the weapons missing the two combatants by inches. The one with the longsword seemed to be aiming for the shield of the one with the mace, while the mace wielder seemed to be telegraphing his blows to make sure that his opponent had enough time to deal with them. The crowd cheered each attempt, but now Paige wasn’t concentrating on the fight. Instead, she was making her way over to where the knights and squires were gathered, her eyes seeking out Steve Baker. He had to be there somewhere.
She caught her first glimpse of him there grooming a large black horse, checking the cinch on his saddle as he got ready for his own turn in front of the crowd. Paige started to make her way over to him faster now, but even as she did so, she saw him mounting up, grabbing a lance stuck into a rack of them and pulling a full-faced helmet down over his features as he got ready to joust.
“I’ve looked up Steve Baker,” Christopher said, holding up his phone. He’d obviously logged in to the FBI’s systems to run a search on their suspect, wanting to know everything about him. “He has a record, for stalking an ex-girlfriend. There were some suggestions that he’d been violent, although that wasn’t proven.”
A stalker with a possible history of violence? Paige wanted to talk to him even more. Now, he wasn’t just a guy who’d lied to them about where he was; he was a guy with a record of potential violence who had lied to them, and who might well have lashed out, given the right provocation.
She and Christopher were pretty close now, maybe twenty feet away from the area reserved for the knights, approaching as Steve got ready to go out and joust. Paige considered letting him get that over with before they talked to him, and then catching him once he was done, but this couldn’t wait. He’d lied to them about being at the gate all yesterday, and Paige wanted to know why. There was no time to waste.
“Steve Baker!” she called out as she and Christopher got close, wanting to catch his attention and get him to come down off the horse. She flashed her badge.
Paige saw him look her way, turning in her direction, his expression impossible to read. Paige couldn’t see his face because of the helmet, but she could imagine the look of worry and surprise there in that moment. She’d seen that look on the face of suspects before.
“We need to ask you some questions about Meredith, and about why you lied to us!”
Paige quickly realized her mistake, however, as Steve wheeled his horse, lance still clutched in his hand. She’d panicked him, and now he was going to try to run, try to get away from the FBI. On foot, that would have been fine, because they could simply have chased, but Steve had a horse, and there was no way that Paige was going to be able to keep up with him on foot, in spite of the conditioning that came from Paige’s FBI training.
People threw themselves out of the way of the horse, because something that big, moving that fast, was a potential risk to anyone in its path. There was a low fence in the way, but the horse cleared it easily, heading out across the jousting ground without any concern for anyone in the way.
“It seems we have some excitement from the dark knight!” the actor playing the king said, obviously trying to incorporate the sudden disruption into the bigger act, as if this were the kind of thing that happened every day. Maybe he was used to horses not doing what they were meant to. “His fear of our knights is so great that he… what is he doing?”
He was getting away, that was what he was doing. Paige looked around for a way to chase him, and her eyes fell on the other horses there, but Paige had no pretentions of being an expert rider. She’d been on a horse a couple of times in her life, at best. Certainly, she wasn’t going to be good enough to keep up with someone who spent half his life on a horse, jousting and playing up to the crowd.
Paige found herself looking for another solution to the problem, looking around, trying to find anything that might be faster than a horse. Christopher had already found an answer of his own. He was running over to the small golf cart that they used for the catering, his badge already out.
“FBI! I need this vehicle, right now!” he yelled.
He put such authority into his tone that the driver didn’t even argue, just leapt out of the driver’s seat at speed, trying to get clear. The spectators actually applauded, as if they thought that all of this was a part of the show that had been scheduled from the start.
Christopher drove over with the golf cart, the cart moving with a strange, electric speed, and Paige leaped aboard while it was still moving, grabbing on for dear life as Steve Baker headed in the opposite direction and they followed.
“Do you really think this will be able to keep up with a horse?” Paige asked, still trying to hang onto the gold cart.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Christopher hit the gas pedal as he said it. He sent the golf cart hurtling forward after Steve, the would-be knight, darting through a gap in the fence around the jousting field and following along in his wake at surprising speed. Certainly faster than any horse in a straight line.
The golf cart was, Paige had to admit, a lot faster than she’d thought it would be. It was also bumpy and unstable, the ruts of the field bouncing it around as if it might flip over at any moment. It felt like a small boat bounced on the waves of a giant sea, and Paige clung on tight, trying to tell herself that a golf cart was designed for this kind of off road work.
Steve was still ahead on his horse, riding hard. He was zigzagging now, changing direction apparently at random, as if trying to make it harder for Paige and Christopher to guess which way he was going from moment to moment. He still had the lance in his hand, but Paige was more worried about the sword and shield strapped across his back, obviously there for some stage fight after his bout. Those would be the weapons he would attack them with, given the chance. Paige didn’t know if that sword would be sharp or not. She doubted it, since everything here was for show, but could she really risk it when this was someone she suspected of having killed two women?
Paige thought about the gun at her side. She’d been trained to use it; had sent thousands of rounds downrange in the course of her training, ready for exactly this kind of moment. Steve was armed, and was currently looking like more and more of a suspect in two murders. Should she fire? That was the kind of decision that Paige had been told from the start of her training that she would have to make.
No, Paige decided as Steve continued to try to make his escape on horseback, he might be trying to run, but he didn’t currently represent a threat to her, Christopher, or any innocent civilians. She couldn’t just shoot him because he was running, not when he wasn’t potentially about to hurt anyone.
Besides, on a more practical level, Paige wasn’t sure that she would be able to hit him if she tried. The bullet could go anywhere, with the way that the golf cart was bouncing and weaving over the broken ground of the field, churned up by so many horses’ hooves that it was more like a muddy obstacle course than a flat field. The golf cart bounced left and right, so that there would be no chance of Paige getting a clear shot.
Now, Steve was riding his horse in a straight line, racing across the field at a gallop, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the cart. It wasn’t a race horse, though, and the armor slowed it down, so the golf cart was at least keeping pace, even gaining on him slowly over the broken ground.