Not fast enough. Paige could see the reason now that he’d started to race away so directly, rather than continuing to zigzag. There was a small patch of woodland ahead, and at the rate that the horse was moving, it would make it there before the golf cart got close enough to try to stop it. Once into the woodland, the horse would be able to move through the trees much faster than the golf cart could, simply being more agile in such a confined space. Steve would be able to lose them, and once he did, there was no guarantee that they would find him again.
He would be free to kill again, if he wanted to do so. He might even accelerate, knowing that he was being hunted.
Paige had to think of a way to stop him before he got to the trees, and now she could think of one that might actually achieve something. She got out her gun.
“You can’t just shoot someone for running,” Christopher said, in an obviously worried tone.
“I don’t need to shoot him,” Paige replied, hoping that she was correct, and fired twice, deliberately aiming above both Steve and his horse.
The sound filled the space around them. It was enough to startle the horse, and now, instead of running, it was wheeling, looking for the sound. Paige fired once more, straight up, startling it so that it reared in fear, whinnying in sudden, uncontrollable panic.
The suddenness of the movement was too much for Steve when he wasn’t expecting it. He tried to cling to his reins as the horse reared beneath him, but with one hand still holding onto the lance, he simply couldn’t hold on long enough. He lost his grip.
He went tumbling backwards off the horse, his armor clattering heavily as he hit the ground in a heap. Paige was already leaping from the golf cart as Christopher pulled it alongside the fallen man. The horse had decided to run again now, heading for the trees once more without the restricting weight of its rider.
Steve, meanwhile, was reaching for the sword at his back as if he might be able to use it to fight back against his pursuers. Paige moved in quickly, determined to get there before he could clear the weapon from its sheath and bring it to bear. She reached Steve, wrenching his arm and pulling him over onto his stomach with all her weight behind the movement.
She kicked away the sword, sending it skidding away over the dirt. She quickly searched him for other weapons, the way she’d been trained to do back at Quantico. A part of her hoped that he would be carrying a dagger that fit the weapon profile the coroner had set out, proving beyond doubt that this was the killer she’d been looking for. To her disappointment, there was nothing like that, but she still set handcuffs around Steve’s wrists.
“Steve Baker, you’re under arrest.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Because they weren’t working with the local police on this case, the way they had with some of the murders they’d investigated previously, Paige and Christopher took Steve Baker to the nearest FBI field office for questioning. It was a small, modern looking building in Lexington, more like the offices of a firm of accountants than a place for federal law enforcement, with a parking facility nearby and a series of glass fronted offices set out one on top of another.
To Paige’s surprise, even though she guessed that it shouldn’t have been a surprise, there were reporters waiting outside of the field office, crowding around as if they might not even let Paige and Christopher through without a fight. The moment Paige and Christopher stepped out of the car with Steve, the reporters pressed in close, taking pictures and shouting out questions, each of them trying to be the one who got an answer.
“Agents, have you caught the killer?” one of them called out, leaning in with a microphone while a camera operator focused on Steve Baker. “Is this the man who killed Meredith Park and Gisele Newbury?”
“Can you reassure the people of Lexington that they’re safe?” another shouted, pressing forward.
“Are you actually making any progress?”
The questions jabbed out like sharp points towards the three of them, leaving no real space for Paige or Christopher to actually answer, only trying to rachet up the pressure until something happened that might be newsworthy.
“Inquiries are ongoing,” Christopher said, in a carefully neutral tone that gave away nothing. It was a tone Paige had heard him use before, with other reporters.
“We’ll make a statement later,” Paige tried, in an attempt to persuade them that they might get an answer if they were just sufficiently patient. It at least got them to back off enough that they could walk Steve towards the door, through a brief, empty corridor between the waiting cameras. The reporters didn’t try to follow them in, and Paige dared to breathe a sigh of relief once she was inside.
The interior of the building seemed vaguely like that of a carefully designed lawyer’s office to Paige. Inside, the whole place was bright and clean, but without the kind of expense that went into things at Quantico. Most of it really did just look like an office, except that the office workers poring over files there would be trained FBI agents and techs, there to help catch the worst criminals, and most of them would be armed, ready for any trouble.
Paige and Christopher put Steve in an interrogation room that looked more like a therapist’s room from Paige’s previous job at the St. Just Institute for the criminally insane, filled with soft furnishings and painted in pastel colors. Paige understood that the idea was to create a less confrontational environment where a suspect might be more willing to talk, but even so, it felt jarring after spending time in harsher environments. It felt wrong, somehow, compared to the time she’d spent in prisons with tables bolted to the floor.
They ran more background checks on the would-be knight while they waited for his lawyer to show up, since they wouldn’t be able to talk to him until then. Paige saw the same charges relating to harassment that Christopher had mentioned, looking over the details of the stalking, the way Steve had kept showing up at his ex’s house long after she’d asked him to stop, harassing her and claiming that he wanted to get back together with her. There were a couple of side notes of her alleging that he’d struck her on one of those unwanted visits, but those hadn’t formed a part of the conviction or the restraining order, because there hadn’t been enough corroborating evidence to make the charges stick.
Paige looked through what she could find of his social media next, picking through the public side of it as carefully as she could, trying to find anything that would get through to him and thus serve to get some answers out of their suspect. She mostly found posts about his work at the Ren-Faire, with plenty of videos of him jousting or fighting, showing off for the crowds. He obviously loved playing the part of the dark knight.
Paige started to look through those videos with a purpose, trying to find any glimpse of Meredith in them. She wasn’t in most of them, because she would have been busy with her work at the restaurant, but Paige kept looking. In a couple, she was there, on the fringes of the crowd, helping with the catering. In both of them, Steve was looking her way, with an expression that Paige could only describe as longing.
“Is it my imagination,” Paige said, “or is Steve staring at Meredith like some kind of lovesick puppy in both of these?”
Christopher came over, looking through the videos that Meredith had found.
“It’s not your imagination,” Christopher said, although if he could spot that look in Steve, it raised the worrying possibility that he could also see it whenever Paige looked his way. It wasn’t as if she could just turn off the attraction that she felt towards him, and it was obvious that he’d seen it before on her face.