CHAPTER SEVEN
Pretty much from the moment that Christopher hauled Lucas Francisco down from the walkway around the tank, casino staff were there, all trying to talk at once.
“What’s going on?” one man who looked like he might be a manager demanded, in an unhappy tone. “Look at the chaos you’ve caused!”
“Security!” another dealer called out. “Someone’s attacking our dealers! Why isn’t security dealing with this?”
Security guards were indeed coming forward, four of them converging the way they might have on a card counter or an aggressive drunk in the middle of the casino. Christopher had his ID out as they approached, holding it up to ward them off even as he and Paige continued to march Lucas through the casino.
“FBI,” he said in a firm tone, wanting to make it very clear that he wasn’t about to allow any trouble here. If the casino security did think that someone had randomly attacked one of their dealers, then Christopher suspected that they wouldn’t hesitate to use violence.
“FBI?” the manager said. “The FBI are causing chaos on my casino floor? Do you know how much damage you’ve done?”
Christopher looked around pointedly. As far as he could see, there wasn’t any real damage.
“Every hand knocked over is money lost!” the manager complained. “And those chips everywhere? There’s no way of knowing who’s picked them up.”
“You’re worried about money at a time like this?” Paige asked, sounding as if she couldn’t quite believe it.
Christopher could, because he understood how strange people’s priorities could get when they were put under stress. Paige knew about people, Christopher knew how much she knew, but she didn’t have his experience yet of stressful, dangerous situations.
She hadn’t hesitated, though, when Lucas had tried to make a run for it. She’d actually been the one to catch up to him first. She wasn’t just proving that she was good enough to be an agent, she was doing it better than Christopher was. It was… very impressive.
He couldn’t afford to focus on her right then, though. Or at all. He had to focus on the case, and on dealing with the situation in front of him. He had a suspect to question, and he was determined to get answers.
“This man is a suspect in a case. Do you have anywhere that we can question him?”
A casino this big would have somewhere to hold people it suspected of stealing or cheating until the Las Vegas PD could arrive. Since he’d run when they’d identified themselves, Christopher was pretty sure that he could arrest Lucas and drag him back to the local FBI field office, but it would save a lot of time if he could get something out of him first.
“There’s a room near the security office,” one of the security guards said. “We use it to question cheats.”
“We’ll do this there,” Christopher replied.
He followed in the security guard’s wake as he led the way, keeping a firm grip on Lucas’s arm while Paige tagged along behind them.
“You don’t want to do this at the nearest FBI office, or a police precinct?” Paige asked.
“I want to talk to Lucas here first,” Christopher said. He didn’t want to give the stagehand and card dealer any time to try to get his story straight. He could see the man shaking in the wake of his dunk into the shark tank. Maybe if he was still shaken up enough, he might actually give them the truth, rather than whatever story he’d decided on to cover the murder.
They hadn’t arrested him yet, and Christopher wanted to get as much information as possible before they committed to that. The moment they brought him in, he suspected that Lucas Francisco would clam up, saying nothing, and the truth was that they didn’t have enough evidence yet to be sure that they would get a conviction. Yet this was a man who had access to the crime scene, who probably had the skills and interest to commit the murder, and who had run the moment the FBI arrived. It was all deeply suspicious.
They headed to the casino’s small interview room, which held a table, a couple of chairs, and a camera staring down from the corner. Christopher sat Lucas on one side of the table, and waited on the other for the right moment to speak.
In part, he was waiting for Paige. Her background in psychology meant that she often came up with insights into people that Christopher didn’t see. Ordinarily, Christopher loved watching her come up with those insights.
It was… difficult now, though. Christopher had noticed the way Paige had been since Quantico, standing off slightly as if worried about getting any closer. Christopher was worried about that too. It was hard to deny that he found her attractive, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t let that go anywhere. He was a married man.
He wished that he could say he was a happily married man, but that didn’t matter when it came to this. It didn’t matter that his marriage wasn’t exactly the best right now, that Jennifer was good at putting on a friendly public face but that in private things were basically falling apart. At least part of it was his job, but more of it was just that neither of them was the same person they’d been when they’d married, far too young.
All that mattered was that it would be wrong to get any closer to Paige, whatever sparks of attraction he could feel between the two of them. He hadn’t even asked to be partnered with her now that she was an agent. Sauer had done that. But Christopher would make the best of it. He couldn’t deny that Paige was good at what she did, and that the two of them together had been able to solve cases that might otherwise have gone unsolved.
They might even have caught a killer already, after only a few hours in Vegas.
“Why did you run, Lucas?” Christopher asked, once he’d judged that the stagehand had been given enough time to worry.
“Can’t I get a towel, man?” Lucas asked. “I just fell in a shark tank!”
“They were baby sharks,” Christopher replied, not relenting. He repeated his question. “Why did you run, Lucas?”