She really did think that she had him all figured out, but she was wrong. Her criminal profiler's mindset had blindsided her. She'd looked at a few bodies and thought that she knew how the killer behind them worked. She wanted to profile Adam. She wanted to find out who he was and why he did the things that he did.
He could laugh about it, really. She was right about some of it, but not nearly enough. She hadn't gotten to the truth. Not yet. It had been fun to let her think that she knew things about him. He'd even encouraged her, using their sessions to confide in her, to open up to her. She'd never guessed all the ways in which he was just lying to her.
Oh, not constantly. There were some truths in there, of course. It was important to season the lies with enough truth to make the whole believable.
Besides, he hadn’t wanted everything he told her to be a lie, not when he’d started to see the connection between them.
He'd always known that she was smart. The fact was, though, that she hadn't known him as well as he'd known her. She had thought that she'd understood him, but Paige King had never really understood him. He'd been the one learning about her. He'd learned about her family, about her father's death, and about all the things that her new stepfather had done to her.
Paige had been the one asking the questions, but Adam had been the one getting answers. He knew her better now than she knew herself.
He'd been quite surprised to find that he liked what he'd found. There was something about Paige's gentleness, a kind of empathy that he couldn't really get enough of even as he despised the lie of empathy in everyone else. He'd loved being able to make her react, to see her squirm, to even hear her laugh during their sessions. The truth was, he'd liked her from the start, but it had taken him a while to admit it to himself.
It had taken time to see past it all, to understand the heart of her.
He'd been sure, briefly, that he'd never be able to hurt her. Then he'd been sure that he was going to kill her slowly, seeing exactly how long it would take for her to break before she died.
Now, things felt far more... ambivalent. Paige felt special. Adam wanted to be close to her and to hurt her, all at once. He'd learned about her to make it easier for him to torment and kill her later, but the things he'd found had made him feel closer to her, appreciating the strength that she had to possess in order to get to where she was today in spite of her past.
Paige had taken a spot in him that seemed both private and special. It meant that Adam wanted to toy with her far more, to help her and hurt her all at once. He wanted to explore that connection between them, even as he wanted to use all the information that he'd gained to make her life more difficult.
He wanted to explore all the ways that they were similar.
Adam wanted all of that, but there wasn't space in his heart for two women like that. Sara had been special to him for so long, but now it was Paige who was special.
That meant that Adam had felt his feelings towards Sara shifting. He'd hated her for leaving him, but never felt as though he could hurt her. Now, though, with Paige at the center of his attention, he felt as if he could do anything. Sara wasn't protected anymore.
Adam would see Paige soon, would move on to the next phase of the plan he’d been putting together almost since their first session together. But first...
...first, he needed to finish things with Sara. He needed to bring their long, long connection to an end, in the most final way possible.