“Come out, Damian,” she said. “It’s over.”
The problem was that, for a narcissist like him, it wouldn’t be over. He’d still think that he had a chance here, that everything would work out his way in the end. Was Paige going to have to shoot him to stop him?
Paige hoped that it wouldn’t come to that, but she also knew that she couldn’t afford to hesitate if he came at her with that blade again. He’d already shown how dangerous he was with it, and Paige had the wounds to prove it. She made her way around the cars, trying to clear the space between each pair of them before she moved on to the next. In an environment like this, though, with so much cover, the truth was that Damian could be anywhere.
Paige could think of one easy way to get him to show himself, though.
“What’s wrong, Damian? You can’t be afraid, can you? You know you’re better than me, so why not come out and prove it?”
Taunting him had gotten her into all of this, but maybe it could also get Paige out of it too. Would Damian be able to resist coming out to try to take her on directly? She found herself thinking about another word he’d used. He’d said that people who lapsed in courtesy dueled for it. Was that what he thought this was?
“This isn’t how you duel,” Paige said. “You don’t sneak up on your opponent. That’s not honorable. That’s cowardice. Come out. Show yourself.”
Paige fully expected that to bring him roaring out from behind one of the cars towards her. She was so primed for it that when she heard one of the doors there in the parking facility open, Paige spun towards it with her gun raised.
She found herself looking at Christopher, standing there holding a tactical vest in one hand.
“Paige?” he said with a frown. “What is it? I came by to tell you that you’ve forgotten your tactical vest, but… what is all this?”
“The killer is here somewhere,” Paige said. “He’s… look out!”
Too late, Paige spotted the movement from behind one of the cars nearest the doors, obviously where Damian had been trying to work his way to an exit. Now, though, he wasn’t trying to leave. He rushed at Christopher, and in that moment, Christopher simply had no time in which to react. Damian was on him before he could do anything, grabbing him and moving behind him in one smooth movement, an arm going around Christopher’s throat.
He set the point of the misericord against Christopher’s eye, so close that the least movement would be enough to drive it home, all the way into Christopher’s brain. Damian would be able to kill him before either Christopher or Paige could react.
He smiled in something like triumph, his eyes locked on Paige.
“And so we have the other half of the pair hunting for me, defeated easily. Now, Agent King, you are going to do exactly what I say, or your partner here is going to die.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Paige stood there covering Damian, feeling the rush of fear through her at the fact that he had Christopher there in his control like that. The idea of him being killed was a horrifying one, and one that Paige couldn’t accept; she wouldn’t allow it. She would do whatever it took to keep Christopher safe.
“Put the weapon down and we can talk about this, Damian,” she said. “We can take you in, and there will be a trial, where everyone will get to hear your side of the story. Maybe you’ll even be able to persuade a jury to let you go free.”
It would never happen, but maybe Damian believed in his own superiority to such an extent that he was prepared to believe it. Maybe Paige could persuade him that he needed that kind of public forum so that people could give him the attention he thought he deserved.
The only problem with that was that he’d already made it clear that he was there for one thing and one thing only: to kill her.
“Shut up,” Damian said. “You’re not the one in charge here. I am. I’m the one with a knife to your partner’s face. Which means that I get to tell you what to do.”
“Take the shot, Paige,” Christopher said, obviously willing to risk everything if it would end this quickly.
Paige knew what the FBI handbook said about situations like this: that it was better to take a shot if one became available, because there was no way of knowing what might or might not drive the hostage taker to kill their captive.
Paige knew all of that in theory, but here, faced with a killer holding Christopher hostage, it was suddenly a lot harder to put into practice. The thought of having to take a life was bad enough; Paige hadn’t even done that when a serial killer had been about to kill her mother. The thought of missing and accidentally hurting or even killing Christopher was far worse, though. The prospect of it filled Paige with dread. She couldn’t risk it.
“Do it,” Christopher said. “Take the shot.”
There was another problem, though, even beyond the risks involved.
“I don’t have a clean shot,” Paige said. If it came to it, she might take a shot if it was there, but she wasn’t going to just shoot through Christopher to take down a killer. She wasn’t even going to take the risk that she might hit him.
Damian pulled back the knife dramatically, as if he might thrust it home there and then.
“Shut up, both of you! You aren’t in control here. I’m in control. I decide what happens next.”
“You’re in control,” Paige said, trying to reassure him. She needed to make him feel like he had the power here, because for a narcissist like him, the moment he didn’t feel in control he was more likely to lash out. “You decide exactly what happens.”
That at least seemed to mollify him enough to stop him from stabbing Christopher there and then.
“You’re right,” he said. “I do. You’re going to do exactly what I say, when I say it, or I’ll kill him.”
“What do you want me to do?” Paige asked.
“Shut up, I’m trying to think!” He looked both angry and slightly puzzled, as if he hadn’t thought about how any of this would go, and hated the fact that he didn’t know. He’d come here with a simple plan to kill her, and now that things were going wrong, he probably felt like he wasn’t in control anymore.
That was dangerous, because the more out of control Damian felt, the more chance there was of him lashing out blindly.
Paige started to move around Damian and Christopher. She didn’t have a shot right now, but maybe if she could create more of an angle, then maybe she would have a chance to take a clean shot at Damian without risking Christopher’s life. Paige didn’t want to have to do it, but she could feel how this situation was destabilizing, and Paige knew that she couldn’t let it go too far without being prepared for it.
Paige realized that, in a sense, both she and Damian were looking for the same thing. They both wanted more control in the situation, and the battle here was over which of them managed to gain it. It was just as lethal a struggle as when they’d been fighting, even though right now neither of them was actively trying to hurt the other.
“Stay there!” Damian said, turning Christopher so that he was still between them. “Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing? Do you think I haven’t been a step ahead of you since all of this began? Do you?”