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She had to know when to cut her losses. Especially when she couldn’t afford the kind of disturbance that might get back to her boss if she pushed too hard.
Paige left the treatment room in frustration, slamming the door behind her louder than she intended. She wasn’t getting anything here. She could almost picture Adam Riker laughing at how little she’d achieved, before restating his promise to tell her everything if only she did what he wanted and killed someone.
Paige would do a lot of things to catch her father’s killer, but she wouldn’t do that.
The sound of her phone cut through Paige’s growing sense of dejection. It was her boss, Agent Sauer. Paige picked up at once, trying to compose herself because she knew that she couldn’t give away any sign of where she was or what she was working on. He’d made it clear before that the Exsanguination Killer wasn’t her case to look into.
“King, where are you?” Sauer asked as soon as Paige picked up.
“Sir, is everything all right?”
“No, everything isnotall right. We have a situation. Get to Quantico,now.”
CHAPTER THREE
Adam Riker was not happy, and when he was unhappy, people got hurt.
He jostled another of the prisoners there at the St Just Institute. He didn’t lie to himself by pretending that they were all patients, because that would imply that there was something wrong with him. Adam was perfect; this place was just a futile attempt to contain him.
The prisoner turned angrily. He was bigger than Adam: fat where Adam was athletically muscled and ugly to Adam’s eyes where Adam had handsome features, a square jaw, and piercing blue eyes.
“What are you doing? You got a problem?”
Adam could see the anger in the other man’s features as he gesticulated and puffed himself up. Anger issues, obviously, his fury spilling over in some great tidal wave that needed to break everything around him. The big man hauled back one arm for a punch that would probably have broken Adam’s jaw if it landed.
Adam’s anger was not so wild and undirected. It was precise and efficient, a weapon to be used.
He punched the big man in the throat before the other man’s blow could even come close to landing. As his opponent started to gasp, Adam followed up with a kick to the knee that collapsed him, then a knee to the face that sent him tumbling back.
Of course, the orderlies were there then, grabbing Adam and hauling him away. Adam fought then, and fought hard, lashing out with fists and feet, forcing them to fight back. There were approved methods of restraining a prisoner, but Adam was wild enough that they couldn’t use them. Besides, they hated him after he’d killed one of their number in his last escape.
They beat him as he’d known they would. Oh, it would go down in the reports as “reasonable force used to subdue an attacker” but it was obvious that the orderlies were doing far more than they needed to. They lashed out with their fists, slamming them into Adam’s body and head until he was almost senseless with it.
Adam collapsed, twitching in the aftermath of the violence.
“Shit, he’s having some kind of seizure. Get him to the infirmary.”
“Or leave him and hope that he actually dies from it,” another suggested. “The world would be a better place without Adam Riker.”
“Andwe’dall lose our jobs, at least. Probably end up in prison ourselves. A real prison, not somewhere like this.”
They hauled Adam to his feet, but he was limp, making them do far more of the work as they carried him to the infirmary. One of the doctors was on duty.
“What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“A fight with another patient,” one of the orderlies said, clearly not wanting to give the full truth of how Adam had received the bruises that now covered his face. “It took four of us to pull them apart. Then he had some kind of seizure.”
“Well, get him on a gurney,” the doctor said.
They put Adam on a bed in the corner, strapping him down, of course, because even like this, they were aware that he was dangerous. The orderlies left in a hurry as if not wanting to be associated with all of this a moment longer than they needed to.
The doctor started to examine Adam with impressive professional detachment. He didn’t even press on any of Adam’s bruises to hurt him more. That was what Adam would have done in his position, faced with someone tied down at his mercy. Actually, Adam would have done a lot worse than that, but he suspected that the doctor didn’t have the imagination.
As he lay there enduring the examination, Adam found himself thinking about Paige King. She was the source of his anger today. She’d come to him asking for information, and she hadn’t even had the decency to do what he’d asked of her. She hadn’t killed someone, hadn’t learned that she had it in her to be exactly like Adam if she chose.
Adam could tell. Adam could always tell.
For now, though, it seemed that Paige was resisting that part of herself. Worse, she’d managed to glean some fragments of information from Adam about the killer who had ended her father’s life: the Exsanguination Killer.
