CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
From his hiding place across the street, Adam watched Vivien King. He stared through the windows of her home, eyes following her as she made what seemed to be a pie in the kitchen. She looked a lot like her daughter, with the same petite frame, the same red hair, just fading a little with age now. She was a perfect vision of homemaking bliss there.
She didn’t deserve it.
She didn’t deserve anything, after what she’d done to Paige.
Adam started to edge forward, towards the house, trying to make it look as if he were simply a stranger out for a walk, while hiding the cold fury that powered him.
A mother’s task was to protect her child, just as Adam’s mother should have protected him from the beatings, rather than leaving. This one had stayed, but that hadn’t done anything to stop the things Paige’s stepfather had done to her. She’d been willfully blind, let her supposed love for the man override the need to protect her daughter.
Adam kept moving forward, walking along in front of the house, wanting to pick his moment. He didn’t want to approach it directly, because that would have let her see him coming, given her time to run.
Adam had told Paige in their final session that empathy was a lie, that it was impossible to truly know what the world was like for another person, yet in this case, he understood Paige perfectly. It was just one part of what made the connection between them so strong.
Adam swung down the side of the house, moving a little quicker now. He could be seen from the street or the surrounding houses for a second or two, and this was the kind of neighborhood where people might call the police if they saw him doing that, or even come out to challenge him.
Adam didn’t want to be interrupted before he finished what he’d come here to do. This was the moment that mattered.
He’d thought about killing the stepfather who’d hurt her, but Adam had guessed that Paige would be waiting there with the FBI. Besides, she’d already broken away from him emotionally. This woman still seemed to exert some kind of hold over her. Paige acted as if she didn’t blame her mother, when Adam knew that the horror of her actions had to be eating Paige up inside.
He'd killed Angelique Philips for the same reason: he’d seen the pain that she’d caused Paige, even if Paige did her best to hide it and pretend that it was nothing. Adam had made that right the way he made every wound done to him right. He’d done it both for Paige and to show her just how deeply he was thinking of her.
Her mother was the next step. Adam knew that Paige would never do this herself. At least, not yet. He hoped that if he showed her what was possible, she might see that she had the power to act herself.
His plan was to show her who she could be, who she really was.
She might see that they weren’t so different after all.
Adam was at the side door to the house now. He paused, taking out his lockpicks, starting to work on the lock silently, feeling for the give of the tumblers. This was always a tense moment, a moment when he could be caught, obviously committing a crime, but before he had achieved what he came to do.
Adam didn’t feel really fear, though. He liked to think that Paige wouldn’t either, in his position. Adam had thought that Sara Langdon was the same as him, but their connection had turned out to be a false thing, a lie. He’d seen the truth now: that it should always have been Paige in his heart, rather than her.
Adam felt the lock give way under his efforts, with the softest of clicks. He pushed the door open slowly and silently, giving him a way into the house.
Adam dared to dream of the future in that moment: of him and Paige together. He’d seen how special she could be over the course of their sessions together. He’d seen the potential there.
The potential to be like him. The potential to be everything he was.
Adam padded into the house, making his way towards the kitchen on silent feet. As he did so, it was impossible not to imagine Paige padding beside him, stalking her mother even as he did. Perhaps one day, she would.
At first, her thesis had held no interest to him. Trying to understand what made him a killer? Why should he help her do something like that? Yet, as things had gone on, as he’d started to learn about her life, Adam had started to see the parallels: someone young, who had been abused, who had lost one parent, and found the other a part of that abuse. Someone intelligent, charismatic, who had found her own way through the world in spite of everything that had happened.
Adam had found himself fascinated by that, by the question of how someone could be so similar to him, yet on the other side of the conversation, asking about serial killers rather than being one herself. He found himself asking what the difference was.
He was in the kitchen now, Vivien King just a pace or two away. Adam waited for his moment, wanting her to be far enough from anything that might hurt him before he struck. He found himself thinking that Paige would admire his patience.
He’d come to the conclusion with Paige that there was no difference between the two of them. That she had all the potential needed to be just like him. She simply needed the right push. And then… the two of them could truly be together. They could do whatever they wanted. They could kill whoever they wanted.
Paige would see that soon. He would make her see that.
First, though, Adam had to do this. He saw Paige’s mother take a step back from the counter, and that was when he struck. He lunged forward, his forearm going around her neck, his hand putting a chemically soaked cloth over her mouth as he dragged her back off balance. Vivien had a moment to cry out, but then his arm was dragging back sharply into her throat, cutting off both the sound and the air that she needed to make it.
He had no doubt that Paige would be shocked by this. Perhaps she would even be upset. Yet she would see that this was necessary. This was her doorway into what she needed to become.
Adam kept his grip as Vivien King struggled, continuing to drag her back off balance because that made it harder for her to fight. He felt her struggles starting to weaken, her limbs slowly going slack as the sedative took effect.
She went still and Adam let her go, unconscious, but not yet dead. He took out a rope and started to bind her hands.
He didn’t put her in a position that would eventually suffocate her, though. Not yet. It was a big change for Adam. Normally, he killed his victims in the places where he took them. The location didn’t matter so long as it was secure enough that he wouldn’t be disturbed.
This was a special case, though. He was doing this for Paige, and that meant that he had to do this in a way that would mean something to her. He would take her mother’s car for this. It would make her easier to find.
Picking up Vivien King, he took her to her car and used her keys to unlock it. He shoved her into the trunk, and then headed back into the house, looking for Vivien’s phone. When he found it, he did something that he had never done at the scene of one of his killings, and dialed 911.
He waited for an operator to pick up.
“911, which service do you require?”
Adam didn’t bother with that part. He was sure that his message would get where it needed to go. “This is Adam Riker. Tell Paige King that I’m at her mother’s house. Tell her that I will be at the last spot she lost someone.”