CHAPTER ONE
Paige stood outside the interview room, taking deep breaths to steady herself as she tried to prepare for a conversation with a serial killer.
One more conversation, one more session, and she was done. Today was the last day of her residency at the St Just Institute, and the last chance that she would have to collect data for her case study. A few weeks from now, and she would have finished writing up the case studies in her PhD thesis at Georgetown.
Today, though, she had to have one more conversation with a man who had killed… well, he’d been convicted of ten murders, but no one really knew quite how many people he’d killed. Not even her, and she’d been interviewing him for months, slowly prying information out of him, even as he tried to obfuscate and stall.
Paige needed this. She needed one more piece, one more connection.
It felt as though she had all the strands for her PhD, but they didn’t quite tie together properly. She still needed that last element, that last understanding of why Adam Riker had chosen to kill his victims. She needed to know what had made him choose them rather than anyone else, and what had made him step over the line from a troubled man to a murderer.
Paige needed to know that, and she needed to know why he’d chosen to kill in the particular way he had, stringing his victims up like puppets while they were still alive and leaving them until they died from slow positional asphyxia. She didn’t even understand why he’d tortured some and left others, just watching them until they died.
Without that understanding, her work would all feel hollow. She might have enough with her case study to get her doctorate, but it wouldn’t be enough, wouldn’t feel complete. With that information… well, with it, she might actually be able to contribute something that led to a better understanding of the criminal mind. Her work might make it easier to catch killers, or even stop them at a point before they hurt anyone, by spotting the signs that they were about to step over the line and kill.
Paige carefully checked her appearance before she went in, wanting to make sure that everything was neutral, nothing would spark too much of a reaction from Adam in ways that she didn’t want. Her red hair was tied back away from her slightly rounded, youthful features and green eyes, her makeup deliberately stark and simple. Paige was twenty-five, but because she was short and slightly built, she found that she had to aim for a severe look just to make people take her seriously.
Especially here, surrounded by killers. In the outside world, the wrong look or word might get a comment or two, or a disapproving expression. Here, it might cost Paige her life.
Today, she was wearing a dark suit with a skirt and a cream blouse. A ring that had been her father’s sat on the smallest finger of her left hand. An enameled butterfly hairclip helped to hold her hair in place. Other than that, though, Paige wore no jewelry. Nothing that could give away too much about her.
From where she stood in front of the door, Paige could see into the interview room. Because this was a secure mental hospital rather than a normal prison, the place was decorated in calming, pastel colors of blues and greens, with soft edges to all the furniture. If Paige didn’t know exactly where to look, if she hadn’t been in there a hundred times before, she might not have seen the bolts keeping the table securely fastened to the floor.
Today, Adam Riker sat on one side of that table, dressed in the gray sweats that were standard wear for the hospital inmates, with his hands cuffed in front of him, secured to the table so that he wouldn’t be able to lunge at Paige. He was tall and broad shouldered, in his mid-thirties, with dark hair cropped short and square jawed features that Paige guessed people found handsome. In fact, she knew that they did, because he’d been only too ready to boast about the people he’d talked into the spots he wanted them, using nothing more than the promise of those looks.
She had a harder time seeing him as handsome or attractive, because she knew all the things he’d done.
He was alone, because that was the only way he agreed to these sessions. There were guards waiting nearby, and he was cuffed to the table, but for this, it was just the two of them. He was staring her way, as if he were looking straight at Paige. There was no way that he could see her through the one-way glass of the door’s window, yet those icy blue eyes were fixed on the door, staring evenly, not betraying any emotions.
Paige took another deep breath, steeling herself for the session to come. Thanks to her residency, she spent her days assessing the worst criminals, trying to diagnose those with genuine conditions, and establish which were competent to stand trial. She’d met deeply insane criminals, and evil men who were merely pretending insanity to try to avoid paying for their crimes. With all of them, there was a small thread of fear that went alongside her fascination.
Somehow though, stepping into this room was harder than her conversations with any of the others.
Paige made herself do it though, stepping inside while trying to hide the note of disquiet she always felt while approaching Riker behind a mask of friendly professionalism. She made herself smile Adam’s way. He always told her more when she smiled.
“Paige, so good to see you again,” he said, as if he were Prof. Thornton, her tutor back in Georgetown, and not a killer sitting in handcuffs. “Please, sit down.”
Paige knew that for the psychological game it was. If she sat, she was doing what he wanted. If she didn’t, then she was reacting to him out of fear. Either way, he won, exactly the way he wanted. Adam liked to win.
The only thing to do was to ignore the game completely, and sit anyway, since it was what Paige had been planning to do all along. The first thing Paige did was to take out a small recording device and set it on the table, halfway between the two of them. She set it running, making sure that it was working before she continued. It was easier than trying to take notes, and safer, too. It meant that she could keep her eyes on him at all times.
“How are you feeling today, Adam?” Paige asked, being careful to betray none of the unease that she felt.
She saw him cock his head to one side, almost mockingly. “Are we really still discussing feelings, Paige? Very well, today, I’m feeling quite happy. There, does that satisfy you?”
“Can you feel happiness?” Paige asked, more interested in that than the answer to her first question.
It should have been a simple question, but there was nothing simple when it came to a man like this. It was one of the reasons why she’d come back to talk to him again and again. She’d started her thesis thinking that it would involve case studies on a dozen different killers, but instead, Adam Riker had come to fill it.
The serial killer smiled faintly at that question. “Do I feel it the way you do, you mean? How would I know, Paige? How would I know what you feel?”
“Empathy, perhaps?” Paige suggested, leaning in very slightly as she said the words. Even so, she was careful about the distance between them, judging just how far he could reach in his cuffs.
Adam gave her a disappointed look. “Empathy? Remind me of my diagnosis, please.”
“Anti-social personality disorder, scoring highly on Hare’s psychopathy scale.” It wasn’t as if Paige was likely to forget any of that. She’d been over his notes enough times. The only reason that she didn’t simply call him a psychopath and have done with it was that the American Psychological Association didn’t formally recognize it as a diagnosis.
“One of the defining qualities of which is a lack of empathy,” Adam pointed out, bringing his hands together and steepling his fingers. “Although I have always considered it a lie in any case.”