CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Paige ran into the kitchen, wishing in that moment that she’d graduated from the FBI academy, and that she was a fully armed FBI agent. As it was, she was unarmed when she burst in there only to find Nadia grappling with a black clad man, fighting for her life.
He was around six feet tall, broad shouldered, but not so massively built that he would stand out in a crowd. He had dark hair and was clean shaven. He was wearing black gloves that probably accounted for the lack of fingerprints at any of the crime scenes. His expression was one of pure, focused fury, while in his right hand Paige saw the steel flash of a knife.
The strangest thing was that Paige had a flash of recognition then. She’d seen him before, in the crowd at the execution. She’d assumed that he was a lawyer or a family member, but instead, the killer had been right there.
Nadia was trying to fight him off, but Paige could see blood on her arms where she’d been cut. If Paige didn’t help, there was no way that she would last much longer.
In that moment, Paige’s mind flashed back to the academy, to her training drills in unarmed combat. She thought of all the times she’d gotten it wrong against an instructor, all the times she’d been stabbed in practice. That had been a dummy knife, though. She’d been able to stop and start again, with no damage to anything but her pride. This knife looked wickedly sharp.
Even so, Paige threw herself into the fray, trying to help Nadia to get control of the attacker, trying to stop him from hurting either of them.
She grabbed for him, then had to dodge back as the knife came slashing for her. She managed to get a grip on the knife arm the second time it came for her, and again her mind flashed back to the training room.
“You have to be more aggressive, King. You have to take down the suspect, not wait for him to kill you.”
Paige struck out with her knees and feet, trying to distract the killer from his grip on the knife long enough to wrench it from his grasp. Nadia came in from his side, but he kicked her in the stomach hard enough that she doubled up with it, the air rushing out of her.
Even as she pushed her way back to her feet, the killer focused his attentions on Paige, hitting her hard with his free hand in the ribs, then shoving her away so that she went stumbling into a stack of dishes waiting to be washed up.
Paige spotted a cast iron skillet there among the plates and the cutlery. She grabbed for it, bringing it around just in time to block another strike by the knife. The killer spun towards Nadia again then, but Paige brought the skillet down hard on his arm, making him cry out in pain and drop it. The knife clattered as it hit the floor, spinning away from the three of them.
Nadia moved in, as if she might tackle the killer then, but he stepped back, blocking the rush. He hit her hard with his fist, then his elbow, and Paige saw Nadia go down, obviously stunned. The killer kicked her with a booted foot as she fell, and she slumped fully into unconsciousness.
Paige leapt at him, trying to use her improvised weapon to attack, but the killer was there, slamming into her and wrenching the skillet from Paige’s hand with a savage strength she couldn’t hope to match. She jabbed upwards at his jaw with her palm, then stomped down at his foot with her heel. The blows did something, but not nearly enough. He shoved her back, again with more strength than Paige could hope to match, and for a second or two they were apart from one another.
The knife was there on the floor, between them, gleaming with a deadly shine. Paige wasn’t sure which of them would get there first if they both dove for it, but the killer had already shown just how dangerous he was when it came to a fight.
“I’m FBI,” Paige said. “We know who you are. This is done.”
“And yet you’re here alone, Paige King,” he replied, in a dangerous tone. He must have seen her look of surprise in that moment. “Oh, yes, I know who you are. I saw you on the news. You and that agent, running around, trying to catch up to me.”
“And now we have,” Paige said. “You must know that this is over. Even if you kill this woman, we know who you are now. You won’t get away.”
“And yet you haven’t used my name,” the killer said. “Which makes me think that you don’t know as much as you’re pretending.”
Paige knew in that moment that she had to keep him talking, had to try to delay, to string this out. If she could get him to keep talking long enough, then she might be able to think of a way out of this situation, or help might arrive. If she couldn’t…
She glanced down at the knife. If she couldn’t keep him talking, then it was going to be a race to see who got to it first.
“What is your name?” Paige asked.
He didn’t answer at first, but then shrugged.
“Carmichael,” he said. “Sebastian Carmichael.”
The fact that he was willing to tell Paige that said to her exactly how he thought that this was going to end. He thought that he was going to kill her, and Paige couldn’t help feeling a deep rush of terror at the thought that he might be right. She’d tried fighting him, and it was obvious that he was stronger.
She needed to find a way to catch him off guard if she was going to have a chance, and she needed to find another weapon.
“Maybe you’re right,” Paige said. “Maybe I don’t know as much about you as I should. But then, you’re just a copycat killer, aren’t you?”
This was a very dangerous tactic, one deliberately calculated to anger an already dangerous man. The fact was that if he stayed cold and calculating, Sebastian Carmichael was going to be able to kill Paige easily. Paige had felt how much stronger than her he was. She needed him not to focus.
“If you think I’m just a copycat, then you really haven’t been paying attention,” Sebastian said.
“Oh, we know a lot,” Paige said. “We know about Nikki Ashenko, for example. That was kind of a mess, wasn’t it, Sebastian? But then, it was your first kill, wasn’t it?”