“We can provide a couple of officers to watch your house until this is done,” Christopher said. “Although it might be safer if you and your wife went somewhere else for a few days. Riker is dangerous enough that even police protection might not be enough.”
Something about the seriousness of his tone must have gotten through to Prof. Thornton, because Paige saw the professor pale slightly at the prospect.
“Then I shall take Haley up to Lake Michigan for the weekend,” Prof. Thornton said. “She has always liked it up there. Just to be on the safe side, you understand.”
“That would make me feel a lot better,” Paige said. She wanted to know that her mentor was safe, although there were plenty of other people who might still be in danger. She was going to have to call her mother, for one thing.
“Although I also believe that you may be mistaken,” Prof. Thornton said.
Those words made Paige frown. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve decided that Adam Riker is targeting people close to you. Was Angelique Philips someone you were particularly close to?”
Paige stopped short. It was such a simple point, but in rushing to try to protect the people she cared about, she hadn’t really considered it.
“No, she wasn’t,” Paige admitted.
“So what was she to you?” the professor asked.
“She was…” No, that wasn’t quite the question, was it. “The real point is what Adam thinks she was to me, isn’t it? He thinks that she’s someone who did me this great wrong, even though it was nothing, really.”
“Have I wronged you in some way that I don’t know about?” Prof. Thornton asked.
Paige shook her head. “No, of course not.”
He’d been a wonderful thesis supervisor. Without his guidance, Paige probably wouldn’t have gotten through the work of her PhD.
“And do you feel that your mother wronged you?”
That was more complicated, because her mother had put her into one of the worst situations of her life. Yet she hadn’t known what she was doing at the time, and Paige didn’t blame her for it. The moment she’d found out, she’d gotten them both out of there.
“No.”
“So why would Adam Riker come for either of us?” Prof. Thornton asked.
“He wouldn’t, I guess.” At least, Paige hoped that he wouldn’t. She should have felt relief in that moment, except that Paige knew what the professor was driving at. She didn’t want to go there, didn’t want to think back to those moments.
“So who has wronged you, Paige?” Prof. Thornton asked. He said it gently, but he didn’t let it go. He knew the answer, so Paige knew he was only asking the question because he needed her to say it aloud. “Who has done worse to you than anyone else? Worse even than the man who killed your father?”
Paige didn’t want to say it. She didn’t want to admit where she and Christopher needed to go next, because that would mean going there, and there was nothing that Paige wanted less in the world than to go to see this man.
“What is it?” Christopher asked. “Who do you think Riker is going to target next?”
Paige knew that she had to tell him. Even so, it was hard. Just saying it was hard.
“About three years after my father was murdered, my mother remarried, marrying a man named Jeremy Smithers. He… he seemed nice at first, but then, when my mother wasn’t there… he came into my room…”
Even now, Paige could feel tears building in the corners of her eyes. The hurt didn’t go away; it just got buried under the layers that she’d built up around it. And now she was supposed to go save this man? Paige wanted to kill him, most days.
Which was exactly why Adam would go after him.