CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Paige couldn't stop thinking about what she'd seen at the crime scene. It wasn’t just the sight of the woman tangled there in death. It was what it said about Adam. His coldness, his control, his lack of emotion. He seemed to have no conscience. No humanity, no empathy. He killed women and didn't bat an eyelid. He felt no remorse for his actions.
Paige had known all of that in theory from their sessions but seeing Sara Langdon hanging there dead in a web of ropes was something else entirely. It was a reminder that this wasn't some academic game leading to her thesis; people's lives were in the balance, and when Paige got things wrong, they died for those mistakes.
She should have figured it out. She should have been able to identify Sara as the next victim. Her name had been in Paige's notes, after all, and didn’t it make sense that Adam might go after a former girlfriend he felt had slighted him? If she’d spotted all of that, then maybe Christopher would have been there in time to catch Adam. Maybe then, Sara Langdon would still be alive.
Paige tried to tell herself that it wasn't her job to solve all this, that she was just a psychologist caught up in it all, but she kept thinking about Sara's body. She kept seeing her hanging there, with her dead eyes staring at Paige in silent accusation.
And she kept thinking about Christopher, in spite of her best efforts to do anything else.
In the last day or so, Paige had caught a glimpse of a man she really wanted to get to know better. There was something intelligent, determined, kind about Christopher, not to mention the fact he seemed so easily in control of dangerous situations. She wanted to find a way to get close to him, to know him more deeply.
For one brief moment, she'd thought that there might be something more than even that. She’d thought that there might be something between them, but then Christopher's wife had called him, and just the fact that he had a wife had made it clear that getting any closer to him simply wasn't an option. Whatever Paige had thought was growing between them wasn't real. It couldn't be. He already loved someone.
Paige went to bed that night feeling sad, lonely, and guilty.
She took her computer with her to her room, setting it up next to the bed, the way she often did when she slept, just in case any ideas for her thesis came to her in the night.
She settled back with her eyes closed, waiting for sleep to claim her.
It didn't take long for her to realize that she couldn't sleep. Not now. Not when closing her eyes just brought back images of the crime scene instead. Not when her mind was still in turmoil over everything that had almost, but not quite, happened with Christopher.
Because she couldn’t sleep, Paige picked up the computer and pulled up the files on Adam Riker. She'd been over her transcripts and her notes many times before, but she was hoping that she'd missed something in it all: something that would lead her to Adam. She had to do something about this. She couldn't just let Adam keep killing. She wasn't a detective, but maybe, just maybe, she could make up for some of the mistakes she'd made by working out where he was going to go next.
Paige hunted back through the files, reading them carefully, not daring to skim any of them now in case the detail she needed was hidden in the rest of the text. This wasn't the moment for word searches to try to narrow things down, or for hunting after things she'd half remembered, like the existence of Adam's uncle; this was the moment for doing things properly, for reading every sentence, every word. She couldn't afford to miss anything.
To give her another way of trying to find an answer, Paige turned on the audio files for her thesis, taken from the sessions. Adam's voice came through loud and clear, sending a shiver down Paige's spine while she lay there. It was hard not to imagine him there in the room with her.
"You want to know why I do this, Paige? Isn't that rather a boring question?"
"My thesis is about why people who commit crimes like this choose to do what they do. I thought it would be interesting to try and actually answer the question."
"Oh no, there's nothing interesting about it. But then, people like you are boring. You sit there, you take notes, and you don't think about how you could be helping anyone."
"I'm not the one who's committing these crimes."
"No, I am. But you know, I think there's a way that you can help me, Paige. I think you could tell me about yourself. What's your favorite color?"
Paige remembered the conversation as the recorded words washed over her. At the time, she'd thought that the question didn't mean anything, and if it helped to build rapport, then maybe it was a good way to start to get more out of Adam.
"Teal."
“A mixed color. A fashionable color. Are you someone who can’t make up her mind, Paige? Or are you someone who tries to keep up with fashion?”
“Maybe I just like teal.”
Now, Paige found herself wondering which of her answers had been one answer too far. Which one had given Adam enough to look up every detail of her life. Maybe, if one of the guards had been helping him even then, Paige had gone too far the moment she'd set foot in that room with him for their sessions.
"Now you have to tell me something in return," Paige's voice said, on the recording.
"Have to?"
Paige could imagine Adam shaking his head at that.
"I don't have to do anything, Paige. I don't even have to talk to you."
"Then why do you choose to?"