Which left him contemplating where best to kill his upstairs neighbor while he watched the news.
The news had been good, the last couple of days. So much of it had been devoted to him. People had spoken about him with fear and awe. Experts had been called onto news shows to talk about him and guess at his motivations. They’d always gotten it wrong, which annoyed him slightly, but at least they talked about the cleverness and precision of what he did.
There was even a guy writing a book about him. He’d been quite surprised to find that the guy in question had been arrested for the murders but maybe that was as it should be. Someone who worshipped him that much should be willing to take the fall for him, at least temporarily.
He assumed that the next time he killed, Julius Bryant would be released. Then he would be even more grateful, and would write even better things about him.
Everything was going well, until the FBI agent came out to speak.
He’d been watching Agent King since she arrived on the case. He thought that it was amusing to have a pretty young woman trying to catch him, as if she’d ever get close. He found himself oscillating between dislike of the fact that she was trying to catch him, and feeling flattered that the FBI was putting so much effort into chasing him.
He'd heard from the news that she was an expert on killers in her own right, and that she’d even lost her father to a serial killer. If there was anyone out there who could, who should, appreciate him and be appropriately scared, then it was her.
Then she stepped out in front of the FBI building and started to speak.
“There’s nothing special to say about this individual.”
That was the first sign that something was wrong, but it only got worse as she kept talking. She insulted him, over and over, belittling him, saying that he wasn’t special, wasn’t smart. When she said that he was someone who was barely worthy of the FBI’s time, he felt like his blood was boiling.
He leapt up in one movement, snatching his misericord off the shelf where he kept it and grabbing his long coat. He didn’t have enough time to search around for his hat, because he was too busy running towards the door. Agent King thought that he wasn’t smart, wasn’t special?
Well, with those words, she’d signed her own death warrant. He forgot all about his neighbor in that moment. She didn’t matter anymore, the small insults of everyday life fading before the kind of grand challenges to everything he was doing that Agent King had thrown out. Such things were unforgivable.
She thought she was safe because she was a federal agent? She wasn’t. When he killed her, the news would have to say again that he was special, that he was dangerous. They would all shout about how he had punished the agent who had dared to insult him.
Agent Paige King didn’t think he was smart? Didn’t think he could get to her? Well, he was smarter than she thought. He’d worked out exactly where to go to get to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
It took more work to plan an ambush than Paige had thought. She’d imagined that she and Christopher could just go back to their hotel, sit there, and wait for the killer to arrive, but apparently, it didn’t work like that.
“First thing’s first,” Christopher said. “You’ll wear a tactical vest at all times at the hotel, right?”
“If it’s obvious, then the killer will know that I’m expecting him,” Paige replied. “He’ll only come for me if he doesn’t expect the trap.”
“So wear the tactical vest under your jacket,” Christopher said, “but there’s no way that you’re going to that hotel again without one. This is a killer who likes a single thrust to the heart. Your vest will stop that first blow, if we’re too slow spotting him.”
“We won’t be,” Paige insisted. “We know where he’s going to come. We know what room. So you and I go there and wait, and the moment he tries to get me to come to the door so he can stab me, we’ll be ready to pounce.”
Christopher shook his head, though. “That’s not enough of a plan, Paige. Sure, we might be able to arrest him like that, but we might also find that he runs the moment he sees us and realizes it’s a trap. Or he might be quick to attack you. Or he might lash out at random people in the hotel. Plus, after the way you’ve done this, Sauer wants the final sign off on the plan. I know him; he’ll want a more thorough plan than us both waiting in a room for a bad guy.”
Paige couldn’t help the feeling that Christopher still didn’t like her idea. He’d gone along with it in front of Agent Sauer, but it seemed that had only been to make sure that Paige didn’t lose her job there and then.
“You don’t think this is a good idea, do you?” Paige asked.
“I think you’ve put yourself at risk much more than you needed to,” Christopher replied. “And while I trust that you’ve assessed this guy’s personality correctly, what if you’re wrong? What if he just turns around and starts killing people at random to show that the FBI has no way of stopping him?”
“I don’t think that he will,” Paige said. “That’s not the way he’s working. It’s about revenge for specific insults, on the person who wronged him. At this point he has to kill me.”
“That certainty’s what I’m worried about,” Christopher said. “Because nothing will get you killed quicker in a tactical situation than the belief that you know exactly what’s going to happen.”
Paige got that, or thought she did. She still wouldn’t change what she’d done even if she could.
“This is our best chance of catching him before someone else dies,” Paige said. “Maybe our only chance.”
“I get that,” Christopher said. “But we’re meant to be a team, Paige. You can’t just go off and make a call this big without including me. That’s not what partners do. In one interview, you declared that our main suspect wasn’t the killer, and committed us to a dangerous trap that might cost us both our careers if it doesn’t cost you your life.”
That was the one part of this that Paige felt a trace of guilt for. She’d done this in spite of Christopher’s objections, at least partly because she’d wanted to keep him out of any of the trouble that was likely to follow as a result of what she did. She’d assumed that she knew what was needed to close this case, and pretty much forced Christopher into a position where he had to go along with it, risking his job in the process. He was right: that wasn’t the kind of thing a good partner did.
Paige had to admit that she was also worried by the risks of all of this. She wasn’t stupid; she knew that she’d just baited a man who had killed three women to come and try to kill her. Whatever precautions they took, there was still a possibility that he might succeed.
“You’re right,” Paige said. “I’m sorry. I just… I thought if it was just me, there wouldn’t be any consequences for you if it went wrong.”
“That’s not how this works,” Christopher said. “Partners stick together.”
Paige nodded. She’d spent a lot of time worrying that she was getting too close to Christopher, but in some ways, she hadn’t even treated him the way she was supposed to as his partner.