CHAPTER THREE
Paige found her thoughts conflicted as she headed to Quantico, worried about Christopher and what would happen when Paige saw him again.
Quantico was around 35 miles from D.C., giving Paige plenty of time to think about what it would be like seeing Christopher again for the first time since her graduation from the FBI academy. For the first time since she’d met his wife.
That was the part that really had her rattled now, had her wondering if she could even do this. Before, Jennifer had been just someone Christopher mentioned in passing, still a reason for Paige to keep her distance but not enough to trigger this all-consuming worry. Now though, it felt as though even being in the same room as Christopher amounted to some kind of betrayal.
Paige didn’t need her training as a psychologist to know that there was something deeper going on there, something that she was pushing back to avoid confronting it. That such an irrational reaction when she’d already told herself that nothing was going to happen with Christopher only spoke to the depth of the attraction that lay there towards him.
Paige just had to keep telling herself to put it from her mind. She had to focus. She had a briefing to attend, and a job to do.
It was strange to think that the actual town of Quantico had fewer than five hundred people living there, when the FBI campus held so many people, and the various military bases nearby held even more. The FBI facility was huge, with multiple buildings spread across at least a couple of square miles, encompassing everything from training facilities to state of the art labs and offices and firing ranges.
Paige had to stop her small electric car at a checkpoint, feeling a slight twinge of pride as she handed over her driver’s license. She’d completed her training now. She wasn’t a civilian consultant at a crime scene only because Christopher wanted her to be. She was an agent, and she was meant to be there.
“I’m looking for Agent Sauer and his division of the BAU,” Paige said to the guard on the gate. Given the size of the FBI facility, she might spend hours wandering aimlessly before she found what she was looking for.
“Just over that way,” the guard said, pointing. “Building thirteen.”
Paige could only admire the scale of the whole place, and the modern construction of the building the guard had pointed out. It looked a little like the kind of building Paige was used to on a university campus, with ivy growing up the side and stone columns out front to lend it a sense of grandeur. Only the security measures around it said that it was more, from the bollards designed to prevent any kind of vehicular attack to the scanners set just beyond its large glass doors to pick up weapons or contraband.
It was a reminder to Paige of just how serious the situation she was stepping into was. This wasn’t research that probably only a dozen people would read. This was work where lives might hang in the balance.
Paige made her way inside, and found Christopher waiting for her. The sight of him there made her pause, even though she’d known he was going to be there. He looked as boyishly handsome as always, six feet tall, with a square jaw, sandy hair, and blue eyes. His muscular frame was contained by a dark suit, the jacket open just enough to show the straps of the holster beneath.
“Paige,” he said with a nod. It was polite and professional, but there wasn’t something friendly and casual as there had been before between them. It was as if he could sense the awkwardness of Paige’s attraction to him, pulling Paige in every direction all at once. “Sauer sent me down to welcome you and get you your equipment.”
“My equipment?” Paige’s head was spinning so much that it only really occurred to her then that, as an agent, there were things she would have to carry around with her that she wouldn’t as a civilian. She could only follow in Christopher’s wake as he led the way through to what appeared to be a small armory, where a large man in his forties stood waiting behind a screen. There were guns up on the wall, everything from assault rifles to sniper rifles, even what appeared to be a grenade launcher. There was enough ordnance there to supply a couple of military units, and seeing it all like that was a little overwhelming.
“Henry, it’s Agent King here’s first day. She needs your standard welcome package.”
“All ready and waiting,” the big man said. He slid something across the partition, setting it down as casually as if he’d done it a thousand times before. Paige realized that it was an official FBI badge and ID. She no longer had to wait for Christopher to show his, or explain that she was a psychologist or a trainee attached to an investigation. She could just say that she was with the FBI. That counted for a lot.
He pushed a holster and a sidearm across to Paige next. “This is a Glock 19M. You should be familiar with it from your training.”
Paige was. She’d had to fire maybe 4000 rounds of ammunition downrange with one of these as part of her training, before she’d been taught to use shotguns and rifles. Her trainers had been clear: any qualified agent should be ready and able to use any weapon they needed to protect the public. It didn’t matter if she was trying to become a profiler, she still had to be ready to do whatever was required.
Paige took the weapon and strapped it under her suit jacket. The final thing to hit the desk for her to take was a set of functional steel handcuffs. It was still sinking in for Paige that she could arrest people now, had a responsibility to arrest them, if it was necessary. All of this was a big step up from just helping out on investigations, and Paige had to admit that she felt a sense of trepidation as she took everything that was offered to her, putting it away carefully so that she could get to it if she needed it.
When she looked over at him, Christopher looked kind of proud, although the expression was gone again in an instant, and that didn’t help Paige’s determination to not react to him. She found that she wanted to make him proud. She wanted to impress him, wanted to make him think more of her, even though she knew that wasn’t something she should be focusing on.
“Come on,” he said. “Sauer is waiting for us.”
He led the way to an elevator, and in that confined space, it was impossible for Paige not to pick up the sweet honeysuckle scent of his aftershave, not to focus on just how good he looked there. She just hoped that none of the ways she was reacting to Christopher were showing on her face.
Agent Sauer was waiting for them in a glass walled conference room on the third floor, standing in front of an evidence board on which he’d already pinned a couple of photographs. Both were of young women in their twenties, both pretty in their own ways, although they looked nothing alike to Paige. One was dark haired with high cheekbones and deep dark eyes, emphasized by heavy makeup, while the other was blonde and had a girl-next-door look, with slightly rounded features and a button nose, and a beauty mark on one cheek.
Agent Sauer was six feet tall and very slender, with a short dark beard and thin features. He glanced at a chrome plated watch as the two of them approached, and Paige couldn’t tell if that was meant to imply that they were late, or if it was just a habit on his part, wanting to be precise about the time that everything happened.
“Agent Marriott. Agent King.” He emphasized the word, obviously guessing that it was pretty much the first time anyone had called Paige that. “It’s good that you’re both here. We have something very serious going on in Las Vegas. The local police think that it’s a serial killer, and they’ve asked for our help.”
He gestured for them to take a seat at a broad mahogany conference table. Paige waited for Christopher to pick his seat so that she could sit a few chairs away from him, knowing that she needed to give herself the space when it came to him. If he noticed, he didn’t show it.
“There have been two victims so far,” Agent Sauer said. He pointed to the photograph of the dark haired woman. “This is Clarissa Bale. She was found dead in the middle of the stage of a Las Vegas theater this morning, with the spotlights pointing down at her. An empty box of prop bullets was found next to her. When the coroner moved in to examine her, they found that those bullets had been forced into her throat, suffocating her.”
Paige saw Christopher wince at the news. “That’s a nasty way to die. What about the other case?”
“That’s Mylene Jacques,” Sauer said. “She was also found suffocated on a stage, about a week ago. This time, though, it was because she had been locked in a giant safe. An airtight one.”