Page 51 of The Girl He Crowned

“Councilor Vert,are you ok?” she asked.

“I… he was going tokill me,” Yolanda said. “He kept going on and on about how I’m a liar. He askedme questions, and then when I gave him answers, he said they were all lies.Then he just… leaped at me.”

“Are you injured?”Paige asked. “Do you need medical assistance?”

She knew that shecouldn’t just abandon the councilor if she needed medical attention to survive,her training had impressed that much on her, but even so, Paige found herselfglancing towards the door Edward Hales had just run through.

“No, I don’t thinkso,” Yolanda said. Paige could see bruises on her face from where Hales hadattacked her, but nothing serious enough to need emergency medical attention.

“Then wait here. Oneof my colleagues is coming soon, and I imagine the local police will be ontheir way thanks to the alarms.”

Yolanda lookedboth confused and scared. “You’re leaving me here?”

“I have to catchup to Edward Hales, before he has a chance to kill anyone else.”

“Wait, don’t go!”the councilor said.

Paige knew thatshe couldn’t stay. Yolanda Vert might want someone to make her feel safe rightthen, but what this situationneededwas for Paige to take down Edwardso that he wouldn’t be able to kill any more women.

“I have to,” Paigesaid, then ran for the door that Edward Hales had gone through. She drew hergun again as she did so, wanting to be ready in case he turned at bay.

Beyond the door, ashort corridor led to another set of stairs, this one an iron spiral staircase.Paige paused at the bottom of it, checking along it for any sign of her quarry,and saw a door at the very top just starting to swing shut.

That was all theprompting Paige needed to follow, taking the stairs as fast as she could whiletrying to keep her Glock trained on the door at the top just in case EdwardHales came back through it with a weapon.

As she ran upthose stairs, Paige found herself thinking about what Edward had said aboutYolanda Vert being a liar. Was that the core of this for him? Was that theexcuse he gave himself to kill?

Paige reached thetop of the stairs and burst through the door that Edward had disappearedthrough. She was slightly surprised to find herself out in the open air, on theroof of the building. There were multiple old chimneys there, along with moremodern air conditioning units, all of which provided plenty of cover.

Paige scanned theroof and briefly had a glimpse of Edward, running for one of those stacks. Paigetried to line up a shot, but he disappeared behind it before Paige could bringher weapon to bear.

“So, you killedthree women because you thought they were liars, Edward?” she called out. Sheneeded to get him talking, both so that she could be sure of where he was andbecause she genuinely wanted to understand the pathology of what he was doing.

“When I wasyounger, I was a liar,” Edward said, from somewhere out in front of her. “Itold stories. I made things up. I wanted to be an artist.”

“So whathappened?” Paige asked. She moved forward slowly, checking the stacks that shepassed as she went. She thought she’d seen which way Edward had gone, but shedidn’t want to walk into any nasty surprises as she hunted for him.

“My grandfatherwouldn’t stand for it. He told me that the world was a place of truth, ofabsolutes. A universe running like clockwork. Every time I forgot that, he mademe stare at the pendulum of one of his clocks to remind me. Even if I had tostand there for an hour or more.”

To Paige, itsounded as though his grandfather had tormented him relentlessly. That didnothing to excuse what he’d done; plenty of people had cruelty in theirchildhoods, and Paige had experienced more than enough in hers, but it did atleast help to explain some of it.

She kept creepingforward, determined to get closer to him.

“Why now? Whystart killing now?”

Edward didn’tanswer for a moment or two. “What do you want to hear? That my grandfather hasbeen dead for years? That my mother died recently and we found out about allthe lies she told? That I got sick of seeing customers who didn’t deserve theprecision of the clocks we made, because I saw all the deceit in their lives?”

“Why kill your owncustomers, Edward?” Paige asked. “Why target these women? Why target women atall?”

“If my motherproved anything, it’s that women are the worst liars,” Edward said, fromsomewhere ahead of her. Every word he said helped Paige to pin down hislocation. He was close to the edge of the roof, where the view out over Eddisstretched away into the distance. Was he trying to get to a fire escape?

“Why do you thinkthat?” Paige asked.

“They pretend allthe time. They paint themselves, and try to trick the world into thinking thatthey’re beautiful. They preen like Debbie Danton, selling a fake image ofherself, or they lie for a living about people’s businesses like SiobhanMaraty.”

Paige was sure thatshe was almost on him now. She was closing in on the last air-con unit there,weapon raised. She passed by a chimney stack…

That was whenEdward Hales leaped at her. He smashed into her, knocking the Glock from herhand, sending it spinning away over the rooftop. He hit Paige with surprisingforce, so that she tasted blood in her mouth and saw stars.

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