“Does this bring back memories of your father?” another reporter asked. It seemed that they’d started to do their research on her.
This time, Paige couldn’t help herself. “Leave my father out of this!”
Before she could say anything else, though, Christopher was there in between her and the reporter.
“Ms. King probably knows Adam Riker better than anyone else. Without her help, we wouldn’t be as far along with this case as we are.”
Paige was grateful for the defense, and even more grateful when Christopher led her to the far side of a line of police tape, into the open space beyond. There, Paige felt as though she could breathe properly again, and Christopher seemed to be willing to give her a moment or two to recover, as if he understood the intensity of what she’d just been through.
“You’re probably wondering what they were talking about,” Paige said, as she tried to recover. She knew that she was going to have to tell him all of it. “About my father.”
“I have an idea,” Christopher said. “But if you want to tell me yourself, you can.”
Of course, the reporters wouldn’t be the only ones to look her up. Paige knew that what had happened to her father sat between them unsaid. She had to be the one to say it.
“My father… was murdered,” she said. “Killed by a serial killer who still hasn’t been caught. I… I was the one who found his body.”
She saw Christopher nod, even though he had to know already. “Thank you for telling me, Paige. I know none of this can be easy for you. Do you need more time to recover?”
Paige shook her head. It was better just to get on with this. They still had to head inside. As horrible as the last few moments had been, this was still the easy part compared to what was coming next. Paige knew that, but it didn’t make it any easier to follow Christopher in there, into a neatly kept home with a couple of coats hanging from hooks in the hall and slightly worn brown carpet on the floor.
It was easy to guess by now where the body was, because that was the room with the highest concentration of forensic techs. Paige tried to steel herself as Christopher led the way inside. She knew what she was likely to see. She’d seen it before. Even so, it was hard to swallow back her shock as she saw the body, a woman contorted there until her body hadn’t been able to breathe with it. There didn’t seem to be any knife wounds this time, but that seemed crueler somehow. It would have been a slow, agonizing death this way.
Paige stared at her and couldn’t look away. Not just because of the cruelty of it all. No, there was more to it than that. A slow, creeping sense of dread filled her, a kind of horror that wouldn’t go away. There was one thing about this crime scene that she hadn’t been expecting at all.
“Paige, what is it?” Christopher asked. “If you can’t cope here…”
“I know this woman,” Paige said, blurting the words out. “I know who she is. Her name is, was, Angelique. Angelique… Philips, I think.”
“Another name from Adam’s past?” Christopher said, obviously thinking that this was the same as Eloise Harper or Sara Langdon.
Paige shook her head. It wasn’t the same, not even close. “Not his past, mine. We went to the same college. She… she started seeing one of my ex-boyfriends, straight after we broke up. I haven’t thought about her in years.”
She saw Christopher frown at that, as if he didn’t quite understand. “Adam killed someone who went out with your boyfriend? Would he know that?”
“He would,” Paige said. As she had so many times in investigating this, she felt so guilty in that moment, and so foolish. “We were talking in one of our sessions. I was trying to get him to talk about his relationships, and I gave him what I thought were details that didn’t matter. I didn’t even use Angelique’s full name.”
She tried to persuade herself that it hadn’t been her fault, tried to repeat Christopher’s reassurances to herself, but that was impossible with Angelique’s dead body twisted there in front of her. Adam had done this because of what she’d said to him. She’d mentioned Angelique in their sessions, and now Angelique was dead.
Why had Adam done this? Why had he targeted someone in her life, rather than his own? Paige didn’t know, but she did know that she couldn’t be in that room anymore. Just the fact that he’d done this was too much for her. Far too much. Without wasting another moment, she ran for the backyard.