CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Paige ducked on instinct, the sword passing right through the space where her neck had been. The weight of it took it around into the wall beside Paige, striking sparks from it and gouging a line into it that suggested that the blade was more than sharp enough that it could take her head off.
In the confines of the tunnel, only Paige’s small size saved her, because it meant that she was able to roll past Stephen, back towards the room in which she’d just landed. She tried to turn and bring up the gun she held, but Stephen was swinging that huge sword again, and this time it smashed into the Glock, sending it skittering away into the darkness of the tunnel.
“You had to interfere!” Stephen said, his fury twisting his otherwise handsome features. “You couldn’t just let me finish my act!”
“It’s not an act, Stephen. People are dying.”
“People die!” he shot back. “So what? Antoinette deserves it!”
“And did the others?” Paige backed away slowly, working her way into the room where she’d first landed. It gave her some more room to try to dodge that huge blade.
“They were just like her!” Stephen roared. “Do you think I couldn’t see it written on their faces?”
“They all had beauty marks, that’s all.” Paige was doing her best to reason with him or, failing that, to simply stall for long enough that she could think of something else. The last thing she wanted to do was try to take on a man with a sword with nothing but her bare hands.
“And when I saw them, I knew that they deserved to die,” Stephen said. “The same way you do. The cut and restored federal agent.”
Paige assumed that was some kind of reference to a magic trick, but she had no time to think about it, because Stephen was already swinging for her again. Paige threw herself backwards, tripped over the crash mat that had broken her fall, and barely rolled up onto her feet again before the killer brought the prop scimitar down in a two handed sweep aimed at the spot where she’d been lying.
Sheer terror propelled Paige into movement. She might have trained to bring down suspects, but nothing in her training had included men with swords trying to cut her down. All Paige could do was improvise, and hope that she found a way.
Paige grabbed that mat, hauling it up between the two of them, trying to use it as an oversized shield as Stephen swung again. Its sheer bulk slowed down the blow, giving Paige a chance to kick the mat over into him. The mat tangled Stephen for a moment or two, giving Paige a chance to grab another of the prop swords from the barrel of them down there and bring it up in front of her.
“Just put the weapon down, Stephen,” she said. “It’s over. The FBI knows who you are now. Even if you get away, even if you somehow kill me, we’ll hunt you down. There will be nowhere you can run that you won’t be found.”
“I’m good at disappearing,” Stephen assured her, and took another swing at Paige with the sword.
Paige’s FBI training hadn’t covered sword fighting, but it had covered hand to hand combat and the use of weapons. Meanwhile, she got the feeling that Stephen didn’t actually know what he was doing with the prop sword he held. Instead, he whirled it and swung it like he was showing off for an audience.
The only problem was that he had enough of an advantage in size and strength that it almost didn’t matter. When Paige parried his first blow, the sheer force of it made her take a step back. She ducked under another, swinging back at him as best she could. Paige didn’t want to close the distance on him, though, not when he might be able to overpower her.
Stephen parried Paige’s blow, then swung back, forcing her to block again. The two of them traded sword strokes for several seconds, neither of them truly knowing what they were doing. Paige had trained with a baton when she was learning to be an agent, but a sword wasn’t a baton, especially not some oversized one like this.
The only part that mattered was the one thing her instructors had drilled into her: in any fight, she had to be aggressive. She had to try to overwhelm the suspect quickly, and end the fight before they had a chance to kill her or hurt civilians.
Paige swung the sword quickly, making multiple swift attacks that tried to probe Stephen’s defenses. She struck and struck, keeping him on the back foot, trying not to give him a chance to make attacks. If she could keep him parrying and moving back, then maybe an opportunity would open up for Paige to trip him, or even to thrust the prop sword home.
Paige saw an opening, and knew that she should take it, but in that moment she found herself hesitating. She couldn’t bring herself to simply kill someone. She wasn’t a killer. Even with Adam Riker, the serial killer who had tormented her and gone after her mother, she had only wounded him. Paige held back now, and that hesitation cost her.
She saw Stephen pull a deck of cards from his pocket, but there was no time to react as he sprayed them out into her face in a cascade of cards. It made Paige stumble back, and in that moment, Stephen struck the sword from her hands, the sheer impact of his blow too great for her to hold onto it.
It clattered to the floor, and Paige had no time in which to reach for it, because Stephen was already winding up for another blow, aimed at her head again. There was no time to dodge sideways or back, so all Paige could do was duck down, letting another stroke of the sword pass over her head.
She didn’t have any choice other than to work in close now, grabbing onto Stephen Booth’s wrists with both hands as he raised the sword again, straightening her arms to keep him from forcing it down into her flesh. She kicked and kneed him, trying to get him to let go of the weapon, but there was a fury in his eyes that said he just didn’t feel the pain.
He struck her then, sending Paige sprawling onto her back, looking up at the trapdoor above.
A moment later, Stephen Booth was in that space, standing above Paige with the sword raised, ready to kill her. He started to lower it towards her, and Paige reached up, grabbing for his wrists again, using all her strength to try to keep him off her.
It wasn’t enough. Paige was putting every ounce of strength she had into trying to keep Stephen away from her, but his weight and his strength were greater. The sword inched down towards her, and Paige knew that when it reached her throat, he would just keep pushing it all the way through her flesh. He would kill her and then he would go back to try to kill Antoinette again.
Paige struggled, trying to create some space, trying to break free, but it didn’t make any difference. The blade kept descending towards her throat, and Paige was certain that she was going to die.
Then Paige saw Christopher standing above, visible through the trapdoor, lit by the lights of the stage above. He stood there, staring down at what was going on, his weapon out and leveled, like he was looking for a clear shot.
Yet with Paige and Stephen so close, there was no way that he would get one. Bullets traveled. It was one of the first things that they taught on the firing range at the academy. Shoot a bad guy, and that bullet could easily pass through to hit an innocent civilian beyond. In this case, Christopher might kill her even as he tried to save her.