He looked slightly surprised that she’d figured that part out. Paige’s eyes were less on him, and more on the rest of the kitchen. There was a rack of knives on a countertop to her right. They seemed like a much better option than the one on the floor.
“And then you went on, copying Lars Ingram every time he killed, his shadow, his echo.”
“That wasn’t how it was,” Sebastian said. No, Paige knew that it wasn’t, but every extra second she bought, every fraction that she broke his concentration, was to her advantage. “I was his equal, his competitor.”
“And yet you never did anything greater than he did,” Paige said. “You only ever copied. You never did anything original.”
“I’ve killed as many as he did. When I kill the pair of you, I’ll have won.”
Paige forced herself to smile in spite of the fear that she felt in that moment.
“You haven’t won anything, Sebastian. If you’re remembered at all, it will be as a footnote to Lars Ingram’s crimes. Kill as many people as you want, but you’ll still just be a bad copy.”
“You bitch!” he snarled, his composure cracking.
Paige saw her opportunity. She lunged towards the knife on the floor, but it was a feint. She kicked it away even as Sebastian grabbed for it, and then made a second lunge, towards the knife rack on the side. She grabbed a kitchen knife, close to six inches long and obviously just as sharp as the one the killer had brought. She spun towards Carmichael, and now he had the blade in his hands, squaring off against Paige.
There was no room to circle and dodge in the kitchen, no room for cleverness or trickery. Paige had seen in the training room what fights involving knives could be like.
She just had to hope that she was up to this one.
She slashed at Carmichael as he got too close, making him jump back. She feinted another slash, then pulled back as Carmichael struck out at her arm, missing her by inches.
“It’s a standoff, Sebastian,” she said. “You can’t get close without me stabbing you, and you don’t dare turn your back to run. So we just wait now, for help to arrive.”
He snarled then and lunged forward in spite of Paige’s warning. She got a clean cut in on his chest, but then he was in close trying to stab at her in return. Paige managed to get a hand on his knife arm, but his own meaty hand closed over the wrist of the hand with which she held the knife.
They were pressed in close together then, close enough that Paige could smell the fresh blood on him and the scent of sweat. Close enough that they could both strike at each other with head and knee and shoulder. The blows were battering, bruising, but Paige clung onto Carmichael for her life, knowing that if she lost her grip on the knife arm even for a moment, she was going to die.
The only problem was the killer’s sheer strength. His grip felt as if it were grinding the bones of her wrist together, twisting with an awful power that meant that Paige simply couldn’t keep her grip on the knife she held. She heard the rattle of the metal as it tumbled to the kitchen floor, and now it was just her fighting for her life against a knife again.
Desperation gave her strength. Paige threw a headbutt that cracked into Carmichael’s nose. That let her wrench free of the grip on her now free arm, so that she could lock onto the knife arm with everything she had, keeping the knife trapped, making it impossible for Carmichael to get a real thrust in.
“You might as well give up,” he said. “You can’t hang on forever, and then…”
Even as he said it, Paige saw Nadia rise up unsteadily from the floor, obviously starting to recover her wits after being knocked out. She grabbed the knife that was down there, and stabbed with it, driving it deep into the shoulder of Carmichael’s knife arm before collapsing back to her knees as if that had taken all of her strength.
Carmichael screamed in a mixture of rage and pain, wrenching back from Paige even as he dropped the knife in his agony.
Don’t stop. Keep fighting.
Her instructor’s words echoed in Paige’s memory as she charged forward, hitting out at Carmichael with everything she had. She kicked him in the knee, hard, then brought her elbow up sharply into his jaw. As he rocked back, she tripped him, sending him tumbling to the floor.
She and Nadia both grabbed for him then, and now that it was two against one again with no weapon, they had the advantage. Carmichael was still strong, still bucking with all the violence he had, but he was also crying out in agony as he did it, the blade embedded in his shoulder taking much of the fight out of him.
Paige wrenched him over onto his stomach. She didn’t have any handcuffs, but at least she could hold him there where he couldn’t do any more harm to her or Nadia.
Almost distantly, she heard the crack of a door breaking, followed by the sound of feet running towards her. Christopher burst into the kitchen then, gun already out in his hand, face ashen with worry.
“I heard the scream and I thought… Are you all right, Paige?”
“I’m fine,” Paige said, although in truth, she wasn’t sure how badly she was hurt. She was pretty sure that Carmichael must have cut her at some point in the fight, but pure adrenaline stopped her from feeling it.
She nodded down at Carmichael.
“This is Sebastian Carmichael, the copycat killer. We’ve done it, Christopher. We’ve caught him.”