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No, a lot of the tension was because she didn’t know how things would be with Christopher once she got up there. On their last case in Eddis, Illinois, the two of them had ended up kissing, breaking the unspoken barrier that they’d kept up between them before that. It made things complicated, possiblytoocomplicated.
Christopher wasn’t waiting for Paige when she got to the floor that housed the BAU. Instead, he was standing next to Agent Sauer inside a glass walled conference room looking at a glass evidence board next to a large conference table. It was as if he didn’t want to risk having to talk before their briefing in case it strayed into anything that wasn’t strictly professional.
It was hard not to stop and stare for a second at Christopher standing there inside the conference room. He was tall and broad shouldered, with boyish good looks—that were hard for Paige to tear her eyes from—and sandy hair. He was wearing a standard issue dark suit that almost matched the one Paige was wearing. Paige couldn’t help but feel a wave of attraction as she saw him there, and that was a problem when things were so complicated between them. They were partners, they needed to be able to work together. Christopher was technically still married even if he was in the middle of a divorce. All of it meant that Paigecouldn’tfeel what she was feeling right then.
Sauer was next to him. He was a slender man in his forties with a dark beard. He glanced up and, obviously spotting Paige through the glass, waved her into the conference room.
Paige took a deep breath and went in, trying her best not to look Christopher’s way.
“Agent King, there you are,” Sauer said. “Where were you?”
“It took me a while to get here, Sir,” Paige said, avoiding the question. If she gave him a real answer, then he wouldn’t be happy about her looking into the Exsanguination Killer case.
Sauer looked as if he wanted to ask more, but Christopher stepped in then. “You said that this was urgent, Sir. Now that Agent King is here, we should get started.”
Agent King.Like the two of them barely knew one another. Like they hadn’t kissed one another just a few days before.
“You’re right,” Agent Sauer said. “We need to hurry if we’re going to get on top of this. There’s a killer in the town of Arnville, out on the west coast. Two victims so far but spaced close together.”
“So, we could be looking at a spree?” Paige said.
Serial killers came in different types. Some paced themselves over years, killing at regular intervals. Others burst out into the world in a spray of carnage, simply trying to kill as many people as they could before they were caught or so caught up in their own madness that they didn’t even consider the possibility.
“Potentially,” Sauer said.
Christopher clearly got the implications of that. “Which means that we could be looking at a killer accelerating as he goes, killing more and more people?”
“That’s one possibility,” Paige agreed.
She saw Christopher look over to her, raising an eyebrow. “What are the others?”
“This might be someone who has a particular set of victims in mind,” Paige replied. “They might have a single grievance that will then lead them to kill a group of people, then disappear. Or they might be someone who kills in bursts, like the Exsanguination Killer.”
She couldn’t help that example when it was the one on her mind constantly at the moment. It was an apt comparison, though. There were killers out there who killed a group of people, then disappeared for a while, only to pop up again later to kill another group.
“Let’s hope that we’re not dealing with another killer like that,” Christopher said.
Sauer was more pointed. “It won’t matter if the two of you are able to catch him.”
He led the way over to the evidence board, picking up a file as he went. He took photographs out of the file, sticking them up on the board.
The first one was disturbing. It was an image of a woman tied to a streetlight, hung up there almost like a puppet, her body contorted by the ropes that held her so that one of her legs was up in the air and her right arm was reaching out as if to grab something.
Paige felt a shiver running through her. “Was she tied there and left to die?” Paige asked.
She saw Christopher look over at her. She could see the hint of worry in his expression.
“You’re thinking about Adam Riker?” he guessed. He knew her well enough to know what she would be thinking about in a moment like this, and it was kind of gratifying. At the same time, though, it was a reminder of all the ways in which they’d started to gettooclose.
Paige nodded. “It looks . . . almost like something he would do.”
Sauer was shaking his head, though. “This isn’t some Adam Riker copycat. The victims were all killed with a knife, not just left to asphyxiate. The killer just did it because he’s a sick bastard.”
That was probably true, but it didn’t feel like enough of an explanation to Paige.
“The choices killers make are significant,” she said. “There are plenty of killers who abandon their victims wherever they fall, or who would only do something like this if it were a way to cause more suffering to the victim.”
“I just told you that this is not about Riker,” Sauer said. He’d grown more impatient with Paige over the last few cases she’d worked with Christopher, not appreciating some of the lengths she’d gone to in order to catch killers.
