CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Paige stood with her back to the rear wall of the house, wedged in between the house and the garage, trying to find a spot where the photographers wouldn’t be able to get pictures of her.
She needed the support of the wall, of something that felt real, and solid. She felt as if she were having some kind of panic attack, breathing hard, having to force herself not to walk out of there completely.
Christopher was there then, and that was one more reason for Paige to feel guilty. He should have been back in the scene, doing his job, not looking after her.
“Paige, calm down. Talk to me.”
Paige could barely find enough breath to say anything.
“Slow your breathing down,” Christopher said. “Concentrate on my voice, if it helps.”
It did help. There was something about having Christopher there that made Paige feel safe, although she knew that she should feel anything but safe, when Adam was targeting people she knew. When he’d already told her exactly how much he knew about her. He’d demonstrated what he knew, and even then, Paige had been able to hear the threat in his words. Now, that threat felt very personal.
Even so, she felt as if she shouldn’t be wasting Christopher’s time like this. He had much better things to do than stand out here, reminding Paige to breathe slower.
“You should be back in there, finding evidence,” Paige said, when she was finally able to do it.
“Paige, you’ve just told me that you know that woman. I have plenty of forensics people in there who can tell me the details of what went on, but you’re the only one who can tell me what this was about. You told me that she stole your boyfriend?”
Paige shook her head. That hadn’t been how it was. “She didn’t steal him, exactly. She just started seeing him right after. At the time, I was kind of pissed at her, but it wasn’t a major thing. She didn’t do anything wrong. She didn’t do anything to deserve this.”
Could anyone do anything that might deserve what Adam had done to Angelique? Paige couldn’t imagine anything that could possibly warrant it. Angelique certainly hadn’t done anything bad enough. She hadn’t done anything wrong at all, really. Paige certainly hadn’t had even a moment when she’d wished the woman back there dead. All that had happened was that she’d mentioned the events to Adam.
And he’d decided to act on them. He’d taken her words, and he’d turned them into a deadly kind of reality.
“That sounds like a pretty small thing,” Christopher said. “It’s worrying that Adam would kill someone over it.”
“Think about what Adam said about his uncle.” Paige tried to make some kind of sense of it all. “He told me that George Riker took part in the abuse he suffered. He blamed George, but what did George say to us?”
“That he’d never laid a finger on Adam, and that he’d only ever tried to help him,” Christopher said. “So Adam blows things up out of nowhere?”
“Not completely out of nowhere,” Paige explained. “It’s like he has to have some small fragment to begin with, some small initial grievance. But in his mind, it becomes something much bigger. The same way that, in the institution, he would lash out if someone crossed him. I thought that was just him keeping to some kind of prison rules, but it’s not, is it? It’s a part of him ready to explode at any provocation.”
Christopher nodded, and then looked at her levelly. “Feeling better?”
Paige realized what he’d done then, getting her to focus on the work, rather than on everything that she was feeling. She managed to nod.
“Good, then I need you to come back inside and tell me all about this.”
“You need a statement, Agent Marriott?”
It all sounded far too formal. Paige wasn’t sure that she was going to come out of this well.
Christopher held up a calming hand. “I just want you to talk to me. To explain what’s going on. Come on, Paige, you know that I need to hear all of the details.”
Paige understood. Of course, Christopher needed to hear all of it. He had to understand what was going on, or as much of it as Paige could explain. She’d failed to help him so far, but maybe she could help with this part, at least.
Paige went with Christopher through to the kitchen of Angelique’s house. There was a small table there, and the two of them took seats on either side of it. It was a long way from any kind of official interview room, but Paige still had the feeling that there ought to be a recording device down in between the two of them.
“Ok,” Christopher said. “I need you to tell me it again. What’s going on here? Angelique Philips is someone you know, and not Adam?”
“That’s right,” Paige said. “I didn’t even really know her. I just mentioned her once in my sessions with Adam.”
“And you think that he killed her because of that?” Christopher sounded worried.
“I… I don’t know,” Paige said. “He must have. I can’t think of any reason he might have had of his own to kill her.”