“I had to make sure that he wouldn’t show up,” he said.
And he clearly hadn’t. Paige realized that not only had she fallen asleep, but she’d guessed wrong, yet again. She’d put Christopher in a position where he’d had to stand watch all night, because he’d relied on her, and she’d messed up once more.
“I keep guessing wrong,” Paige said. “I was so sure that he would come here.”
“He still might,” Christopher replied. “But I don’t think we can spend any more time waiting here. Every minute we spend here is a minute he could be using to get further away. I’ll see if I can call in anyone to watch the house, but-”
His phone rang in that moment, and Christopher answered instantly.
“Marriott. What’s happening?”
The way his expression changed gave Paige a clue to the answer to that. His face went grave, his eyes narrowing as he listened.
“Yes, I understand. What’s the address? Yes, I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
He hung up, and Paige looked at him expectantly, guessing at what might be coming, but trying to will it not to be true.
When Christopher actually said the words, they hit Paige like a hammer.
“There’s another body.”
*
This was Paige’s third crime scene, but she didn’t think that she would ever get used to them, to the dread feeling that came as she approached them, knowing that inside, there was the body of someone Adam had killed.
This one was in a small suburban neighborhood, not wealthy by any means, but without the cramped, everyone piled on top of one another feeling that came with the inner city.
Although there were plenty of people around now, with the same crush of people there had been at the previous crime scenes Paige had been to. There were the police maintaining a cordon around the house, and the forensic techs working away steadily within that cordon, but there also seemed to be a greater number of reporters and photographers than there had been at either of the other scenes, along with a fair number of people who were just standing around, obviously just trying to see what was happening.
“This is a lot of people,” Paige said as they pulled up as close to the house as they could. With so many people there, not to mention all the police vehicles and TV vans, it wasn’t as close as she might have hoped.
“It’s turning into a circus,” Christopher said. He didn’t look happy about it.
“What do you mean?”
“The attention is spiraling out of control. With every day that passes, there’s going to be more pressure to catch Riker. The story gets bigger, and the TV studios realize that they can get more airtime out of it. When we get out of the car, be careful what you say to anyone. Stay close to me and try not to stop for anything.”
He made it sound as if they were walking into a war zone rather than just crossing the distance to the house.
Paige understood why he’d said that the moment she stepped out into the open air. Camera flashes started to go off all around her, bright enough that it was almost dizzying with its intensity. She’d thought that walking through the press at the first crime scene was bad, but this was far more intense.
Christopher’s hand latched onto her arm, leading the way, helping to guide her through the press of it all.
Around Paige, a cacophony of questions burst out, the noise of the competing voices almost impossible to keep up with, so that the chaos of it all was almost as disorienting as the camera flashes.
“Agent Marriott, as the agent in charge of finding Adam Riker, what does it say about your efforts that he’s now killed three people?”
“It just makes catching him even more important,” Christopher fired back, continuing to move towards the house.
“Do you think that you’re following the right lines of investigation?”
“In a case this important, we’re following up on every line of investigation we can find,” Christopher replied.
They were almost to the police tape now. Paige guessed that if they could just make it to the other side, they might have a little breathing space.
“Ms. King, why have you been brought in on the case? Do you really think you have anything to offer? Have you been leading the FBI on a wild goose chase?”
Paige whirled towards that reporter, anger flashing through her, partly at the question being directed towards her, but mostly because the question was far too close to the ones Paige had been asking herself.