She cast a quick glance over her shoulder to frown at Gabe, and to be sure the butcher hadn't managed to creep in behind them.

Then, in her peripheral vision, a form lunged at her, metal glinting in his hand.

Before she could react, something hard and heavy hit the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. The force of the impact reverberated through her skull, sending stars across her vision.

“Why are you here?” the man said. Ruby twisted, getting a better look at the barrel-chested man in a bloody apron. He had a wild-eyed look to him, angry and desperate at the same time. Whatever was on him smeared across her as he tried to get a hand on her.

Her gun had gone skittering across the metal floor, just out of reach.

Instead of grabbing uselessly at it, she cracked her elbow into his nose first. The butcher groaned, a hand going for his stubbled face. She shoved him away, putting space between them.

“Elias Delko?” Gabe shouted. His voice reverberated off the metal of the building, giving him an eerie, ghostly quality.

“I'm Elias,” he said, “and you are trespassing. The pigs are ruined. Three of them! Unusable.”

He sounded completely deranged. It wasn’t at all how she imagined the killer would act. Their man was methodical. Delko was wild.

“Put your hands on your head,” Gabe said.

Delko slowly obeyed. His cleaver dropped from his hand, the clang of metal against metal reverberating through the room.

“I'm sorry...I'm sorry,” Delko said, his eyes on the floor. He wiped away a bit of blood from his nose.

Ruby pulled herself to her feet, kicking the cleaver away from his reach. Her heart was still pounding, ignoring the fact that Delko surrendered to Gabe's force.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Gabe asked, wrenching Delko's arms behind his back to cuff him.

“Waiting for vandals to strike again. Three pigs in nearly as many days. A waste,” Delko said, “I thought you were here to get another one.”

“We're not,” Ruby said pointedly.

“You're under arrest for assaulting a federal agent,” Gabe said, “while wielding a cleaver.”

Delko winced, his face twisting in fear.

“I swear, it's not what you think,” he said. “You're trespassing and I have my rights. I didn’t know who you were.”

“You also have a house full of probable cause,” Gabe said. “You want to explain the blood on your boots?”

Gabe hauled the butcher up. The man looked between them in visible confusion.

“I'm a butcher,” he said, “I get blood on my clothes.”

That was a reasonable explanation, but it wasn’t the only place they had found traces of blood that day.

“And all over a birthday party?” Ruby said. She touched her side where Delko had run into her, damp with a substance she didn't want to look too closely at.