Page 40 of The Girl He Crowned

And waited.

“Either he’s notin, or he doesn’t want to talk to us,” Christopher said. He stepped back andraised a foot like he might kick the door in.

Paige stepped infront of him in sudden concern. “What are you doing, Christopher?”

“Whatever it takesto catch a killer.”

Paige shook herhead. “This isn’t like you. You know we don’t have a warrant, and there’s noprobable cause to let us go in without one. This… it’s more like somethingI’ddo.”

Suddenly, she wasvery worried about her partner. If he was acting out of character like this,then what did that mean for the rest of the case?

“Christopher, areyou sure you’re all right?” Paige asked.

“I’m fine,” hesnapped back, then seemed to realize that he was snapping. “Sorry, yes. It’sjust, I need to do something, you know? I need tocatchthis guy.”

Because doingsomething would make it feel like things were under control. It was a feelingPaige knew all too well.

“Look,”Christopher said. “If we’re not going in there, how do we find this guy?”

“We can start withhis social media and his phone,” Paige suggested. Going back to the car and herwaiting laptop, she went looking online for Saul Bennett’s social media pages.

He wasn’t hard tofind, and Paige quickly found herself scrolling back through the pages, lookingat his life. There were plenty of pictures of clocks, but almost as many of himliving the kind of life that no clockmaker should have been able to afford.

Paige’s realinterest was in his most recent post, though. It was a full length picture ofhim in a tuxedo, clutching what appeared to be an opera libretto, and seemed tohave been posted only an hour ago.

Paige zoomed in onthe libretto, trying to read it. “Christopher, we need to find a performance ofThe Barber of Sevillein Eddis. Do you think Eddis has an opera house?”

Christophergestured to the wealthy street around them. “A place like this? It’s a prettysafe bet.”

They needed tofind it, now, while they knew where their suspect was. Once he left, he coulddisappear into the city, and by the time they found him, he would have plentyof time in which to kill.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Eddis did indeedhave an opera house, and to Paige, it looked far larger and more impressivethan anything a town on the scale of Eddis should have been able to support. Itwas a large, strangely postmodern structure, with strange angles to it thatPaige guessed might be about the acoustics of the building, or might just bethere at the whim of the architect.

Even given the numberof wealthy people in the city, it seemed strange to Paige that there might beenough opera lovers there to support a building of that size. Then it occurredto her that for many of Eddis’s wealthier residents, it might not be about theopera itself, but simply about having a place to see and be seen, to makeconnections and make sure that they appeared to be suitably cultured. Throw inall the people who wanted to make connections with the wealthy and a smatteringof people who genuinely loved the opera enough to travel to Eddis for it, andnow it seemed to Paige that there might be enough people to fill the space.

There was amatinee performance ofThe Barber of Sevillethere today, the postersoutside proclaiming it to be a dazzling reinterpretation. Paige rushed forwardwith Christopher, her focus on the fact that Saul Bennett was in theresomewhere.

“Tickets please,”an usher said.

Paige held up herbadge. “FBI.”

Christopher tookover a moment later. “We believe that a potentially dangerous suspect may beinside. We need access to the opera right away.”

Paige saw a lookof panic cross the usher’s face.

“Should I… shouldI evacuate the opera?”

Paige movedquickly to reassure him. “No, it’s better if you don’t. We’ll go in and removehim as quietly as we can.”

If they tried toevacuate, there was a chance that it would simply alert Saul Bennett to thefact that someone was onto him. He might slip away in the confusion that wasbound to follow, and they might never find him again.

It was better totry to find him within the theater and pull him out quietly, with the minimumof fuss. That meant getting inside the opera house, identifying their suspect,and then finding a way to approach him that wouldn’t give him a chance to run. Paigefelt almost certain that once they got too close to him and he realized that hewas about to be captured, Saul would try to run or fight. He would want to keephis freedom as long as possible to try to kill more people.

Paige andChristopher couldn’t allow that.

They headed intothe opera house. Even outside of the main auditorium, in a bar area, Paigecould see that there was going to be a problem. There were several people outthere, all dressed up to impress in tuxedoes and dresses that looked like themost expensive kind of couture.

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