CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Paige could only stand there, staring at Adam as he stood in front of the tree to which Paige’s mother was bound like some kind of offering. Which was exactly what he clearly intended her to be. An offering to Paige, for her to kill.
“I don’t want to kill my mother, Adam,” Paige said.
Adam laughed then. “Of course you do, Paige. You just won’t admit it to yourself. But that’s all right, because I’m here.”
He said it as if that were meant to be a comfort, rather than a source of terror for both Paige and her mother.
“I know how carefully you listened in our sessions,” Adam said. “I know you tried everything you could to understand me. But I was learning to understand you at the same time.”
“And what have you understood, Adam?” Paige asked, trying to buy time. She wondered if she should pull Christopher’s gun now but doing that robbed her of any chance to try to end this situation peacefully. What had Christopher told her? Not to point it at anything she didn’t intend to kill? Well, even now, Paige wasn’t sure if she would be able to kill Adam.
“That we’re the same,” Adam said. “That we have all the same experiences, the same background. The only difference is that I killed my first person when I was still fairly young, so it came easily to me. I understand that it’s harder for you.”
“I’m not going to kill anyone, Adam,” Paige said.
She saw her mother struggling against the ropes that held her, obviously unable to get loose.
Adam just smiled wider. “Of course you are. I did this for you, Paige. To show you everything that you could be. I see you have a gun. Why don’t you take it out?”
Paige obviously hadn’t done a very good job of concealing the weapon after all.
“Take out the gun, Paige,” Adam said, in a harder tone. He lifted the knife slightly. “Do it. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble for you, and you’re going to do your part.”
He started to take a step towards Paige, and in that moment, she did pull the gun, holding it braced and two handed, exactly the way that Christopher had shown her.
Adam smiled, then.
“That’s better. Much better. Now, would you like to shoot your mother? Be honest, now.”
“I’d rather shoot you,” Paige said.
“Would you?” Adam countered. “Then why haven’t you done it already? No, the truth is that you know I have only done you favors, while your mother contributed to some of the worst moments of your life. To moments that made you feel weak and helpless, completely out of control, the way I did whenever my father beat me.”
Memories threatened to overtake Paige then, threatened to well up inside her and leave no room for anything else. In that moment, she was back there in her room, and her stepfather was coming in, and…
“No,” Paige said, forcing down the memories. “You don’t get to do this to me, Adam. You don’t get to control me. I’ll-”
“You’ll what, Paige? Kill me? Go on then. Do it.”
Paige stood there with the pistol trained on him, hand shaking slightly.
“Do it!” Adam roared at her. “Do it, if you think you have it in you. Show me what you can do. Show me what you really are.”
He wanted her to shoot him?
“Shoot me, or I’ll kill her,” Adam said, gesturing with the knife at Paige’s mother, as she stood there, pinned against the tree by his ropes. “If you can’t stand the thought of killing her yourself, then I’ll do it. And then… well, you will have disappointed me.”
And he would kill Paige afterwards.
“You have three choices, Paige,” Adam said. “You can shoot your mother, you can shoot me, or you can stand by and be a victim for what’s left of your life.”
With those words, he lunged towards the tree, and Paige’s mother.
Paige pulled the trigger before she could even think about it.
The roar of the gun was an explosion of sound against the silence of the forest. Paige saw Adam stumble, his knife gone from his grasp as he fell to his knees.