“If you want me to tell you about myself, then it’s only fair that you tell me something in return.”
Paige picked out that phrase from the recordings.
She’d done it, hadn’t she? She’d reasoned that Adam wouldn’t be able to do anything with the information he got from her. She’d thought that she’d limited what she told him. She’d thought that what she was getting in return was more than worth it.
She’d been very, very wrong.
Paige found herself wondering if she should call her mother. Should she warn her that there was a dangerous killer on the loose, and that he’d expressed far too unhealthy an interest in everything around Paige?
Something stopped Paige from picking up the phone to call. She told herself that it wasn’t a good idea to panic her mother unnecessarily, but that wasn’t the whole truth. The truth was that she didn’t want to call her mom. Things were too complicated between them.
Besides, she knew Adam. If he was going to focus on anyone, then it was going to be her, slowly showing her how much better he was, before finally…
Paige had to drag her thoughts away from the prospect of everything that a killer like Adam might do to her. Those thoughts had occupied far too big a part of her nightmares already today. She had to remind herself that it was unlikely that he would come for her, and that even if he did, she was living in a secure apartment block, where people would see him coming.
Most likely, he would be caught before anything got that far. Paige had met Agent Marriott, and it was obvious that he knew what he was doing. Add to that all the state police and even marshals who would be hunting for Adam, and he would be lucky to stay out of custody for more than a day. Escaping wasn’t the same thing as staying free.
Paige tried to tell herself that, but it was hard to really believe it when she’d spent so much time talking with Adam. She’d gotten him to do various puzzles, and even an IQ test, mostly by agreeing to do them alongside him, so that he could have the satisfaction of winning. It only occurred to her now that he’d been paying attention to her results just as much as she had to his.
He was highly intelligent, good at planning, and obviously motivated. If anyone could evade custody for an extended period, then it was him.
Paige tried to distract herself by scrolling the internet. She’d read somewhere that procrastination could be a useful part of the creative process. She went through her social media feeds, liking posts and trying to let her brain just switch off with a few undemanding memes. Maybe it would let her brain work out what she needed to do and get her into a space where she could actually write.
Then she saw the news story, sitting there on one of her friends’ feeds like a toad squatting in a pond.
D.C. Woman Found Murdered. Is a serial killer to blame?
Paige tried to tell herself that it was probably clickbait, and that it didn’t have to mean any of the things that she dreaded it might mean. She reminded herself of Betteridge’s Law, that any title ending in a question mark could be answered with the word no. She couldn’t stop herself from clicking, though, couldn’t look away from the prospect that someone might already be dead at Adam’s hands. She read on with growing horror.
D.C. police have today confirmed that local woman Eloise Harper was found dead in her apartment. While the police have declined to comment on her death, witnesses have suggested that she was found suspended and tortured in a manner consistent with the notorious serial killer Adam Riker, who yesterday escaped from a secure psychiatric institution. The police have so far declined to comment on the incident. More generally, they have stated that Adam Riker is an extremely dangerous individual and should not be approached. If you have any information on his whereabouts, call the number below.
Paige felt sick at the thought that Adam might have killed again, so soon after getting out. While the skeptical part of her didn’t want to just trust some story that she’d found on the internet, there was one detail there that told her that the whole thing was far, far too real.
That name told her everything: Eloise Harper.
Paige knew that name almost as well as she knew her own. She’d heard it and read it, many times. Paige had never met her, but even so, she knew more about her than she did about most of the people she had met. Adam had told Paige about her in detail, dissected her life. He’d talked about her at length. About his feelings towards her, about her weaknesses and the ways he’d controlled her.
About the way he’d been caught trying to kill her.
That had been his regret: that he’d been caught, not anything to do with his actions. Not the fact that he’d been trying to kill someone in cold blood. He’d cursed his bad luck to Paige. He’d told her every detail of the things he’d been planning to do to Eloise. At the time, it had seemed like another of his little tests, trying to determine how strong Paige’s stomach was. Trying to unnerve her because that would be another little win for him.
Now, Paige realized that he’d been telling her what he was planning to do. He’d been setting out, not what he wished he’d done, but what he was going to do next.
Paige knew that she couldn’t just keep that information to herself. She snatched up her phone. She still had Agent Marriott’s number and dialed it as quickly as her slightly shaking hands would let her. The phone rang for several seconds, and Paige found herself praying that it wouldn’t go through to voicemail.
At last, Agent Marriott picked up the phone.
“Hi,” Paige said. “It’s Paige King, from last night.”
“I remember,” Agent Marriott said. He sounded pleased to hear from her. If things had been different, Paige might have been happy that he remembered her.
“I… I just heard the news, about the murder.”
How was she meant to bring something like this up? It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone had taught her, even working with killers as she did.
“If you’re worried that this means Adam Riker is still close by, or about your safety, I can have the local police send a car around.”
Paige realized that he thought she’d just been scared by the article. And she had, but it wasn’t just that.