CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Going back to Jeremy Smithers’s place was one of the hardest things that Paige had ever done in her life. It was a small house in an even smaller town out in Virginia, maybe an hour’s drive away. When she and her mother had moved there, it had seemed like a huge new place to Paige, but now that she’d lived in D.C., the whole place just seemed like a backwater.
It wasn’t anywhere that Paige had thought that she would visit again. One of her therapists had suggested it, and Paige hadn’t been to see that therapist again. Driving there now felt like delving into an area of Paige’s past that she didn’t want to touch.
“Is it wrong that I hope we’re too late when we get there?” Paige said. It wasn’t entirely a joke. If Adam had to kill anyone in Paige’s life, she found herself hoping that it would be her former stepfather.
“It’s understandable,” Christopher said, as they pulled off the main street of the small town, onto the street that held the old house. “Paige, you don’t have to come in with me for this if you don’t want to. I can deal with this.”
Paige would have liked nothing more than to leave this to Christopher, but her every instinct told her that she needed to face up to this. She needed to show Jeremy that he didn’t have any kind of power over her anymore.
When they pulled up outside the house, memories hit Paige of arriving there for the first time, but this wasn’t quite the same place. It was more run down, with weeds growing out of control on the lawn. There were a couple of cracks in the woodwork that hadn’t been there the last time Paige had been here. But then, that had been years, now.
Paige had to force herself to step out of the car, the memories threatening to come back as she stood there. Memories of moving in with her mother, seeing her happy. Memories of being in a new place, a new small town.
Memories of Jeremy, and what he’d done to her.
As if she could leave those memories in her wake, Paige strode up to the door and hammered on it. There was a doorbell, and Jeremy had always been very particular about people using it; it had been one of the many things he’d gotten angry about. That was part of why Paige knocked so hard now.
Time had not been kind to Jeremy Smithers. He had to be around fifty now, but looked older, with wrinkles set in around his eyes and hair that was a dirty gray. He’d been handsome before, and proud of it. Those looks had been a part of what had lured Paige’s mother in.
“You can’t use a doorbell, you…,” he tailed off, staring at Paige. “You. What are you doing here? Come to apologize for driving a wedge between me and your mother?”
“You think I should apologize to you?” Paige snapped back. “After what you did?”
“What did I do, Paige?” Jeremy asked. “Nothing you didn’t want me to. Nothing you weren’t begging me to do.”
Paige hit him then. She couldn’t hold back. She didn’t hold back. She put her full weight into a punch that slammed into Jeremy’s jaw, sending him crashing to the ground. It was the kind of punch she wished she’d been able to throw back when she was younger, back when he’d forced his way into her room, and abused her.
“You bitch, I’ll-”
Christopher was there then, standing between them. Paige didn’t know if that was to stop Paige from throwing any more punches or to protect her from Jeremy.
“Who’s this?” Jeremy demanded as he struggled back to his feet. “Your boyfriend, here to protect you?”
Paige found herself half hoping that were true, but it wasn’t, and it couldn’t be. Besides, she didn’t need protecting anymore.
Christopher flashed his ID then. “Agent Marriott, FBI.”
“Then you should arrest this bitch for assaulting me!” Jeremy said. He seemed pretty brave now that Christopher was between Paige and him.
“From what I understand, it’s you I should be arresting.”
“For what?”
“For the sexual abuse of a minor,” Christopher said, in a tone that made Jeremy take a step back.
“Oh, so you’ve set the FBI on me, have you, Paige? For what? What stories has she been telling you?” Jeremy had some of his bluster back again. “Shall I tell you what really happened? This little bitch destroyed my marriage. I was happy with her mother. We were happy, but she decided to start making up stories. And now she’s doing it again.”
Paige felt sick as he said it. Even now, he was lying about what happened, trying to make it sound as if she were making things up. He’d tried that back with her mother, trying to persuade her that Paige was a liar.
Thankfully, her mother had seen the truth. She’d left Jeremy, the two of them not looking back.
Paige glared at Jeremy with hatred.
“There’s nothing you can do to me,” Jeremy said. “Even if you arrest me, it’s her word against mine.”
The worst part was that it was probably true. It was why Paige had never tried to tell the police about him. Every facet of her life would be dragged through the mud; she would have to spend almost endless time in the legal system. It would tear her life apart, and what would happen in the end?