Paige frowned at that. "How do you know?"
"Because there has been another murder, and it isn't Riker’s uncle. A woman has been killed in an office building downtown.”
*
Paige followed Christopher into the office building, trying to hold back the waves of disappointment at being wrong. The two of them were moving quickly. Paige felt as though her head was spinning with the speed that things were happening. They’d gone from parked outside George Riker’s house to heading for this place in a matter of minutes, obviously racing to catch up with what Adam had done now in the hopes that, if they were quick enough, they might be able to keep up with him and find him.
The building was a tall block on the edge of Constitution Avenue. There were police waiting at the entrance, who let the two of them in as they approached. Inside, it seemed to Paige just like any other office building in D.C., with dark corridors and offices running in lines down the length of the building. They walked past a number of people as they went, all police or emergency responders, but Christopher didn't seem to care about that. He was all business.
"Which way?" he asked a local police officer guarding one of the stairwells.
"Just up those stairs, second on the right," the officer replied as Christopher flashed his ID. "Who's the woman?"
"Paige King. She's with me."
He didn’t say anything else before he set off up the stairs. In fact, he’d been pretty quiet since the news had broken that they were in the wrong place.
Paige could barely keep up as Christopher led the way up the stairs to the second floor and turned right. She didn't really understand what was going on, had never seen so many cops in one place before. Yes, she'd attended the crime scene at Adam's last kill, but that had felt as though it was winding down, with half the cops standing around looking bored. This was something different, something fresh. She ignored the looks that she got from the others, just trying to keep up.
They reached a door with a police officer standing guard on it. He stepped out of the way when Christopher flashed his ID again, and Paige followed the FBI agent into the room beyond without thinking.
She found herself staring at a body.
The body of a woman was strung up among a web of ropes, hanging like a fly in a spider's web.
"We should have been here,” Christopher said, in a voice filled with tension. “We should have been able to stop there being another victim.”
He was right, and the guilt at that failure filled Paige instantly. This was her fault. She’d been so certain.
Paige could see the signs of torture on the woman's body, the bruises and cuts that marked her flesh. This was nothing like a crime scene photograph. This was far more visceral. Far more like… like looking down at her father’s corpse, all over again. She didn't look too closely; the sight was too much.
That made her miss a step. She only just managed to catch herself, but the FBI agent noticed, taking hold of her arm to support her, as if worried that she might faint at the sight. Paige wanted to tell him that she was made of sterner stuff, but she wasn’t sure that it was true, right then.
"Are you okay?" Christopher asked.
Paige shook her head, trying to clear her mind of the disturbing sight. "No. No, I'm not."
Paige had spent her days interviewing serial killers. Interviewing Adam. She'd thought that she understood him, but here, looking at his handiwork, Paige knew that she hadn't really understood at all. She'd treated the whole thing as some kind of intellectual exercise, a puzzle to unpick, but there was a woman, body contorted impossibly, left hanging there while forensics officers worked to gather any evidence they could.
The sight of her there sickened Paige, and it was only made worse by the fact that her wrong guess had made this possible.
"Hey," Christopher said to her, trying to catch her attention. "Are you all right?"
"I will be," Paige said. "Just give me a minute."
She blinked, trying to clear her eyes and her mind. She hadn't expected to be so affected, but there was a human being down there, a woman, a human being that had been strung up and tortured to death. It was shocking, and Paige found herself breathing heavily and trying to calm down.
She took a few deep, calming breaths. Then she nodded, gesturing for Christopher to continue.
"Okay," she said. "I'm ready."
"Are you sure?" Christopher asked.
Paige managed to nod, and Christopher gestured to one of the techs there at the scene, dressed in a full evidence suit and mask.
"Donna, what do we have?"
The tech glanced up at the body, then back at Christopher and Paige.