CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paige wasn't entirely surprised when Christopher wanted to drive straight out to the house the next morning. He'd been quick to jump on the leads she gave him before, which left Paige wondering if she was the only source of leads that he had when it came to Adam Riker.
There was a kind of responsibility that came with that, the weight of which seemed to settle onto Paige's shoulders as they drove together.
In spite of everything Christopher had said to try to reassure her before, it made all of this her responsibility. If she didn't provide him with the right leads, then there was a chance that Adam could get away. That she'd let a criminal slip through her fingers. That he would keep killing, and no one would stop him.
It just wasn't something she could afford to allow herself to think.
"So you're telling me that you think he might go there?" Christopher asked as they were driving out, taking roads out into the countryside.
"He told me about the house. He said that he wanted to see it again. That he wanted closure. And the killings so far seem to have been about tying up loose ends from the past.”
“That makes a kind of sense. The house is where he said his father abused him?”
"’Trying to beat the evil out of him,’ he said," Paige echoed Adam’s words as closely as she could. She’d learned with Adam that the details mattered.
Christopher nodded, and there was an uncomfortable silence in the moments that followed.
“Then it seems like a good place to try.”
Paige had imagined that she'd be nervous about going somewhere that Adam was likely to be, just as she had been back at the farmhouse. In truth, she wasn't. The only thing she felt was a kind of determination that she wasn't going to let Adam get away with anything. She couldn't help but feel like the answers were all within reach. All she had to do was take them, like reaching out to pick an apple from a tree. Yet somehow, she hadn’t managed it so far. She couldn't quite find the right parts of her notes to lead them straight to Adam.
Currently, her notes were leading her and Christopher out into the countryside, down back lanes barely wide enough for Christopher's car. When a pickup truck came the other way, they had to pull almost all the way into a hedge to avoid it. Based on the things Adam had said, Paige found herself imagining the place where he had lived as some run-down shack in the middle of nowhere.
The place they found was nothing like that. In fact, it was a large, well-kept house. The paintwork was still in good condition, the garden was neat and trim. Paige couldn't find a single thing that indicated that this was the house that Adam had been talking about. It could have belonged to anyone.
"This isn't right," Paige said. “We’re not in the right place.”
"This was the only thing you had to go on. It's not your fault," Christopher said.
"I know, but... look at it. It's clearly not the family home of a sadistic murderer."
"What does one of those look like?" Christopher countered.
Paige still wanted to know what was going on. This didn’t seem anything like the kind of place Adam had described when talking about his childhood. "Maybe we should walk up and check that we're in the right place?"
Christopher nodded, drawing the car to a halt in front of the house. Even as he did so, the front door opened, revealing a man and a woman standing there, with a couple of kids running around their legs as they struggled to be the first to see what was going on.
"This can't be right," Paige said again. This was all far too bright and happy to have anything to do with the life of Adam Riker.
"It's the address that's on the file for his former family home," Christopher insisted.
The two of them got out and approached. Christopher did the talking.
"I'm Agent Marriott, with the FBI," he said, showing his ID. "Is this Grove View?"
Out this far in the country, the name of the house seemed to mean more than the address, and Paige guessed that even the GPS might be wrong.
"That's right," the man said, with a slight frown. "Did you say the FBI? What's this about?"
That caught Paige a little by surprise, but she took a guess anyway. "When did you buy this house, sir?"
"About three years back," he said. "We've been renovating it ever since."
Which put it right around the time Adam had finally found himself put away for good.
They were in the right place. It had just changed beyond recognition in the meantime. Paige could only imagine how Adam would react to that. Would he be disappointed? Or would he see it as confirmation of his hatred? Would he take one look at it and walk away?