Page 5 of The Girl He Wanted

Even as Paige said it, her phone started to ring. It was Sauer. A part of her wanted to ignore the call, but she knew she couldn't. She took it, putting it on speaker.

"I'm at the scene," Sauer said. "Where are you?"

Paige took a deep breath before responding. "We're outside the St. Just Institute. Christopher wants to go in and talk to Adam Riker."

There was a pause on the other end of the line before Sauer spoke again. He was obviously trying to take in the implications of that. "And why does he want to talk to Riker?"

Paige hesitated, knowing that she had to come clean about everything, yet worrying about what that might mean. She wasn't meant to be working the Exsanguination Killer case. She didn’t have a choice though now, not when Jennifer was dead.

"Adam Riker claimed to know who the Exsanguination Killer is. I went to see him, and now Jennifer is dead. We think he may have something to do with it."

There was another pause before Sauer spoke again. "You found information in the Exsanguination Killer case, but you didn't share it with me, Agent King?"

Paige could hear the anger in his voice, barely held in check. "I wanted to check it out before I passed it on."

"I suspect that you wanted to find the man who killed your father.” Sauer wasn’t quite accusing her of misconduct, but it was close.

"Woman," Paige corrected him. She might as well tell him the whole truth now that he'd heard some of it. Maybe it would let them actually catch the killer who had done this. "The Exsanguination Killer is a woman. One who met Adam Riker in the St. Just Institute. I looked through the files there, and I believe I have the name of an ex-patient who fits the profile and who could have met Adam."

Christopher looked at her with something like shock. "You have a name? What name? Tell me, Paige."

"What name?" Sauer demanded. Paige could feel the pressure from both of them to provide an answer.

She tried to set it out, piece by piece. "Anne Dawson. Her former roommate, Louisa, made her sound like she's a very likely candidate for this. Very cold, very calculating. Liked having people under control and hurting them."

There was yet another pause on the other end of the line. Paige suspected that each one was necessary for Sauer to hold his temper in check.

"So, you were conducting an investigation without my approval? Okay, that’s enough. I'm going to need both of you to back off. Right now."

"What?" Christopher exclaimed. "Back off? You can't be serious."

“Agent Marriott, Christopher, you know you aren’t thinking straight right now. You're too emotionally compromised right now. We can't risk you doing something reckless. And Paige, you should know better than to encourage this behavior. Your own behavior ... well, I don't even know what to make of it, right now. I need you both to go home."

“I can’t go home,” Christopher said, “not when there might be answers right—”

“You have to, Agent Marriott,” Sauer said. “Go home. Deal with the things you need to deal with. I don’t want to see you anywhere near the office. That goes for you, too, Agent King. For the moment, you’re both suspended. Marriott, it’s for your own good. King, we’ll talk about all this … later.”

***

Paige stood in the conference room at the BAU, with Sauer pacing just a few feet away. Sauer was a slender man in his forties with a dark beard, and currently, it did nothing to mask the disapproval in his expression.

It had been a week since the death of Christopher’s wife. A week in which Paige hadn’t been able to do anything except sit in her apartment hoping that Christopher was all right. He hadn’t returned her calls. Paige suspected that he’d been far too busy doing all the things that came with a death: arranging the funeral, notifying family and friends, and trying to deal with the suddenness of the loss.

Paige stood there alone in front of Sauer. She knew that he was anything but happy.

“Tell me again what you held back from the investigation into the Exsanguination Killer,” he said.

“That the killer is almost certainly a woman.”

Sauer considered that for a second, then nodded. “And you know that because Adam Riker, the serial killer, told you so?”

He sounded as if he didn’t quite believe it, but Paige held her ground.

“I know Adam,” she said. “I’m the one who helped to put him back inside.”

“I’ve read some of your notes on him,” Sauer said. “You say he’s deeply manipulative. How can you be sure that he wasn’t trying to give you information he wanted you to hear?”

Paige had had plenty of time to consider questions like that over the last week. Plenty of time in which to question her actions. Had they led to the death of Christopher’s wife? Had they produced information that might lead to catching her father’s killer?

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