At the same time, it hurt because it was a long way short of everything Paige wanted to hear from Christopher. There was a layer of reservation to it all that felt faint and cold and professional. It was short even of what Paige would have hoped for from a partner, let alone a friend, or…
Or nothing. Christopher was her partner, that was all.
Honestly, Paige wasn’t sure about what to do when it came to the situation with Christopher. The attraction she’d felt since the moment she met him felt as though it was tearing her apart, yet she couldn’t put distance between the two of them, because she needed to work at the BAU. She needed to be there in the department Christopher worked in or she wouldn’t be able to get close to finding her father’s killer.
That mattered to Paige more than anything. She didn’t pull up her personal files on the case, not here on the flight, not where Christopher could see them, but that didn’t matter. Paige had most of them memorized by this point anyway. She went over the facts in her head, again and again.
She needed more, and hopefully, now that she had shown her worth with this case, she would get more. Agent Sauer had said that she could have details of the Exsanguination Killer’s most recent murders once she was done with this case. Paige had done her part. It was time for her new boss to make good on his word.
*
Paige stood outside Agent Sauer’s office in Quantico, determined to be patient while she waited for him to see her. He was currently in there with a couple of agents, having a discussion that looked incredibly serious.
It was only that discussion that stopped her from just bursting in there to demand the answers that he had promised her. Well, that and the fact that she wanted to keep her job. She needed to keep her job, because that was the only way Paige was going to stay in a position to potentially catch the man who had killed her father.
Paige didn’t go away, though, didn’t go back to her desk to work on whatever was waiting for her next. Christopher was already back there, writing up his report for the case. Paige would need to do the same thing, but right now, she needed to talk to Agent Sauer. She needed answers on the Exsanguination Killer case, because she hadn’t been able to sleep last night, wouldn’t be able to sleep today without those answers.
By the time the two agents left, Paige was itching with the need to talk to her boss. Almost as soon as they were out of the door, Paige knocked and stepped inside Sauer’s office.
The office was neat to an almost obsessive degree, every file aligned perfectly, the desk perfectly clean and minimalist. There were a couple of citations and pictures up on the walls, but even those were aligned with absolute precision.
“Agent King,” he said. “Congratulations on solving your first case as an agent. Agent Marriott tells me that you were the one to make the link between the victims.”
“Thank you, sir,” Paige said.
“Although the Las Vegas PD did raise a couple of issues with me. Something about a civilian being pushed into a shark tank during an attempt to apprehend him, and a well-known figure being wrongly arrested.”
“The first case was a suspect who slipped while trying to run from us, and who has now been arrested for helping people to cheat in the casino,” Paige said. “With the second, we had plenty of good reasons to think that he might be a suspect.”
“Just make sure you put those reasons in your report, in case there’s anything more from the Las Vegas PD,” Sauer said. He said it as if he expected Paige to run off then and start to work on her report immediately.
Maybe Paige should have, but her need to know more about her father’s killer stopped her from doing it. Paige kept standing there in front of Sauer’s desk instead, forcing herself to say the next words.
“Sir, you said that once this case was done, you would bring me up to speed on what’s happening with the Exsanguination Killer.”
Agent Sauer looked over his desk at her, blinking as he obviously tried to remember saying it. Paige caught the moment when he did remember, because there was a slight frown there on his face as he did so.
“Agent King, I know about your personal connection to this case. Are you sure you want to hear the details of it like this?”
Paige nodded without hesitation. “More than anything. I need to know the truth about what’s going on. I need to know about the Exsanguination killer. I’ve pieced together some details, but I know there’s a lot that the FBI hasn’t released about the crimes.”
“That’s true,” Agent Sauer said, and as he said it, he pushed a file across his desk from the very top of his pile. In spite of the moment he’d taken to think, it was obvious that he’d prepared for this moment. “Here’s a copy for you to read, but I can give you most of the details now, if you’d prefer.”
Paige nodded, although she got the feeling that Sauer would have told her all of this anyway. She suspected that he was watching her reactions, trying to see how she responded to the information about her father’s killer.
“All right,” Sauer said. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you know, King?”
He was obviously trying to judge how deeply she’d gone into this already. Paige had the information at her fingertips, stored away in her memory through simple repetition.
“The Exsanguination Killer has been operating for at least eleven years,” Paige said. “My father was his third victim, part of a sequence of three that he completed before he disappeared the first time. Approximately a year later, he killed another set of three people. That has been his pattern since: appearing, killing in threes. There is no obvious pattern to his victims. He has killed both men and women, although slightly more men.”
Paige tried to deliver it like it was just simple information. Like her memories weren’t trying to drag her back into the moment when she’d found her father. She played the part of a cool, professional agent, because she knew that was what was most likely to get her the information she needed.
“His methods have been consistent,” Paige said.
“His?” Sauer said. “There has been some speculation that this killer might be a woman, given that the Exsanguination Killer targets so many men, and the methods don’t rely on strength.”
“I’m playing the odds, sir,” Paige said. “Statistically, the majority of serial killers are male, and the few women tend to kill in different ways.”