“Oh, did you think you let nothing slip in our little sessions?” Adam asked, leaning back in his chair as far as his cuffed hands would allow him. The intense look of a serial killer was back on his face then, either because he wanted to scare her, or because he simply didn’t care about hiding anymore. “Did you think that I wasn’t paying attention? Did you think I wouldn’t find anything else out?”
The warmth had faded out of him completely, so that he seemed to be reciting almost robotically.
“Paige King, twenty-five. Your father was Swedish, your mother is from Virginia, where your family lived. You were an only child. You had a very happy childhood, until you were ten. Very sweet and bucolic.”
“Stop this,” Paige insisted, as she started to realize where Adam was going with this. He’d played games before, but he’d never attacked her like this. He’d never shown before that he knew the one thing about Paige that she least wanted other people to know.
He ignored her and kept going. “What was it like, when you found him dead in the woods? When you found the body, so carefully exsanguinated. The way the others had been. When you realized that he’d been killed by… well, someone like me.”
Paige had to fight back tears, caught between her shock, grief, and anger. In that moment, she was standing over her father’s corpse again, the horror of it all-consuming.
“You know nothing about me,” she snapped, trying to force him back from the verbal grip he currently seemed to have on her.
“I know everything about you,” Adam replied. “You gave me so many snippets when you tried to get me to talk to you, Paige. Did you think I wouldn’t remember? I know your mother waited precisely three years before she remarried. I know what kind of man she married. I know about the abuse, Paige. I know what he did to you. I’m so sorry.”
Those three words were like the cut of a scalpel, catching Paige completely by surprise. There were some things she didn’t talk about. She’d barely discussed them even with Prof. Thornton.
Adam didn’t stop, though. “Whereas what do you really know about me? You’ve spent your time studying psychopaths, but you can sit here in front of me and expect me not to be as smart as you? As capable? Tell me, is that ring you wear your father’s? Tell me that, and I’ll tell you why I did it all. I’ll tell you everything.”
He made it sound so simple, offering everything Paige had wanted when she came into the room, but she knew then that it would be a deal with the devil. Paige recoiled from the table in shock at the onslaught of words. She’d thought she was so careful to give nothing about herself away, and yet here was a killer with all the details of the tragedy that hurt her most.
Paige had to force herself not to show any emotion. Had to force herself to just stand calmly and take her recorder, switching it off crisply.
“Leaving so soon?” Adam asked.
Paige forced her face into a mask, tried to show no emotions at all. “You said it yourself, I already have everything I need. I don’t have to stay here to listen to you, and I’m never coming back to see you again. I don’t need you anymore, Adam.”
She ignored the part where she didn’t have everything. She still didn’t have that last part that would tie her thesis together. She would be left with a hole that she just had to hope the thesis committee wouldn’t notice.
Right then, she didn’t show any of that. It was the only way she had to hurt him, when he wanted her attention so much. Right then, she wanted to hurt him. The way he’d just hurt her.
Instead, he laughed.
“I think we’ll see each other soon enough. Now that our sessions are done, I think it’s time for me to leave.”
That was enough to stop Paige’s movement towards the door for a moment.
“Leave.”
“Escape, if you prefer,” Adam said. He said it so calmly, as if it were a simple fact. “I’m going to, very soon.”
Paige stared at him in disbelief. “Why are you telling me this? What game are you playing?”
She understood that part of Adam Riker, at least. He liked to play games. He liked to prove that he was the clever one, and that everyone around him was stupid by comparison. Well, Paige wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
He shrugged. “I’m telling you so that you’ll try to stop me. And you’ll fail. There’s nothing you can do to stop me, Paige.”
Paige had heard enough. She stalked from the room, trying not to let Adam see how much this had gotten under her skin. The last thing she heard was Adam’s voice calling after her.
“Maybe once I’m out, we’ll talk again. On my terms. I have plans for you, Paige.”
*
Paige rushed to the warden’s office, having to force herself to walk rather than run. Running would have been a kind of admission of defeat, a victory for Adam Riker even if he couldn’t see it.
So she walked past the rooms that held the patients there, each one as secure as a prison cell. She walked past a small group on their way to a group session, watched over by a couple of guards who never took their eyes from them for a second. She passed through a secure door using her code, then walked up a flight of stairs to get to the warden’s office.
Dr. Neil was in there, giving some paperwork his full attention. He was an older man who always wore sharp suits, and kept his white hair slicked back. His features were slightly squashed looking, but his eyes darted around with intelligence. He managed a smile as Paige entered.