CHAPTER SIX
Paige saw Adam Riker stalking her a dozen different ways. He was following her down the street, just paces behind while a crowd of people ignored them both. He was there in her house, looming above her. He was standing in front of her, while Paige dangled in a web of ropes, unable to breathe…
Paige woke up gasping and clutching at her bedclothes, for what had to be the fifth time that night. Only it wasn’t night anymore. Glimmers of golden sunlight were streaming in past the blinds over her apartment window, illuminating the room and making it impossible for her to shut her eyes again.
Paige checked the time: It was 8am, time to get up and get on with some writing on her thesis. It was definitely better than trying to sleep again when the darkness held only nightmares for her.
Paige got up and got dressed, in jeans and a deep blue sweater. She didn’t have to go into work today, didn’t have to rush to be at the institute on time for the first time in a long time. Her residency was finished, so all that was left was writing up her PhD.
All. That made it sound like some kind of easy thing, rather than a process of trying to draw together different strands that sometimes didn’t want to go together. That would have been hard enough, even without Adam out there somewhere, on the run now.
One of the first things Paige did that morning was to walk around her apartment, checking that it was secure, because she wouldn’t feel safe until she did so. It didn’t take long. The kind of apartment a grad student could afford in Washington, D.C. was so small that a few steps could take her from one side of it to the other. The walls were a basic gray that Paige had tried to liven up here and there with pictures, mostly of far-off places she hadn’t been yet, because there was never any time or money to do it. There was one of Mount Fuji, another of the Victoria Falls. Paige liked to stare at them while she worked on her thesis, reminding herself that being stuck in a room writing wasn’t forever, that this wasn’t the whole world, however much it might seem that way in academia.
Paige took the time to get coffee and then went to her laptop, knowing that she couldn’t put the work off any longer and wanting to sift through the stacks of notes and files that she had. Most of her PhD thesis was written now, and had been through a dozen re-drafts, thanks to Prof. Thornton’s input. Paige would come up with a draft of a chapter that she thought was close to perfect, would send it over to him, and would quickly find the return copy covered in comments asking questions she hadn’t even considered.
Is Stern’s theory of the self relevant here?
Expand with reference to the influence of neuro-psychology.
Would Hauser’s approach to attachment theory explain this paragraph better?
Each one sent her off down a fresh rabbit-hole of investigation, with the result that this draft was something Paige couldn’t even have contemplated writing when she began this process. Each run at it had felt as though it brought her closer to perfection.
More importantly, though, each one felt as though it brought Paige a little closer to actually understanding how serial killers like Adam Riker felt and thought. Each pass she took seemed to bring Paige a little closer to understanding whoever had taken her father from her. If she could just get deep enough into it, maybe it would all finally make sense.
Maybe she would be able to catch the man who’d done it and stop something like that from ever happening again.
Maybe there would finally be some kind of end to the memories that came to her unbidden, of staring down at her father’s corpse.
That thought was normally enough to push Paige deep into her work, writing obsessively, when all the other doctoral students at Georgetown spent their time complaining about just how difficult they found that part of it. She loved getting lost in the words, trying to use them as a way into the ideas behind them. The words usually came almost as quick as her thoughts, so that the challenge was to slow down enough to make sure that what came out was good.
Today, though, Paige was having a harder time than usual. She couldn’t focus, couldn’t concentrate for more than a minute or two. The words wouldn’t come, when normally they poured out in a flood. She sat there for at least ten minutes, just staring at the spot where she’d left off, reading and re-reading the last paragraph, hoping that it would spark something and set her writing again.
The problem was simple: Every time she tried to start, Paige found her thoughts drifting back to Adam, and those thoughts made it impossible to concentrate on the work.
It wasn’t just the thought of him out there in the world, free to do whatever he wanted, although that was a part of it. It wasn’t even the thought of the things he’d done to his victims, although the details of that had haunted Paige’s dreams. She knew far too many of them, from her research. Adam had been only too willing to tell her everything, in that regard.
No, the part that kept coming into her mind, stopping her from thinking about anything else, was that last interview with him. Specifically, it was about that moment when he had announced that he was going to escape, obviously knowing exactly how Paige would react. The moment when he had revealed just how much he knew about Paige and about her family, showing just how efficiently he’d outwitted her in their sessions.
That was the hardest part of this, in some ways. Not the sudden danger, not the risk that a serial killer might be out there, coming for her. Not the possibility that he might be fixating on her, and she knew what happened to the people on whom he fixated. Just the fact that he’d already beaten her in one small way.
Paige found herself opening up her recordings of the sessions, trying to find the points at which she’d given away too much. Where had she gone wrong? Where had she let more slip than she should have done?
“Will you tell me something about yourself please, Paige?”
Paige heard Adam’s voice on the recording and shivered. How many times had he asked that question? He’d made a game of it, asking again and again.
When Paige hadn’t answered, she could remember the silences. It was as if he could feel how deeply Paige needed to get answers from him. He’d known that this wasn’t just a piece of research for her. He’d known that he had a kind of power in withholding information.
“Paige King. That’s a pretty name.”
He’d said that, too, reading the name from one of her notepads. Paige should have taken that as her cue to run as far from Adam as she could, to find other patients to interview and leave him alone completely. It should have been a sign that he was trying to learn about her, and that he was far too dangerous to deal with. Paige should have walked away.
She hadn’t, though. She hadn’t thought that something as tiny as that would allow him to learn anything else about her. Prisoners weren’t meant to have access to the outside world. Anyone outside could just have Googled her, but Paige had assumed that she was safe in an environment where Adam simply didn’t have that kind of access.
Obviously, though, he did. Or he didn’t need it. He knew all about her. He’d done his research.
He’d even traded information with her.