Page 16 of The Girl He Claimed

"Just answer thequestion," Christopher snapped.

"I was probably still incollege," Karen shot back.

"Where?" Paige asked.That was the important part. If Karen had been out of state, if she'd beennowhere near Washington or West Virginia, then the odds of her being the womanwho had killed Paige's father diminished dramatically.

"Fairmont. What does this haveto do with anything?"

Fairmont was just about closeenough. Maybe. Paige decided to bring things back up to date.

"You don't seem to be willingto recall that many details about your past, so let's try something morerecent," Paige said. "7:13 tonight. The moment Adam Riker escaped.Where exactly were you?"

"And don't try to say that youdon't remember," Christopher said. "You know where you were when theescape happened."

"That would have been in themiddle of my rounds," Karen replied. "I was walking the perimeteruntil 7:25. That's when I heard the alarm start to be raised."

"Do you know anything aboutthe escape that you're not telling us?"

Karen's eyes darted back and forthagain, and Paige knew that she had hit a nerve.

"What do you want me tosay?" Karen asked. "I'm just a guard here. I don't have any specialinformation about what happened."

"All right, what was your routearound the grounds?" Paige asked. She pulled up a map of the facility onher phone. "Show me."

Karen hesitated for a moment beforereluctantly leaning forward to take a look at the map. She traced her fingeralong the perimeter, pointing out the areas where she had been patrolling.

Paige couldn't help but feel asense of frustration. Karen seemed to be answering their questions truthfully,but something about her didn't sit right. Maybe it was just the fact that shewas so guarded and evasive.

"Thank you, Karen," Paigesaid, standing up from her chair. "That's all for now."

As they left the room, Christopherturned to Paige with a scowl. "She's hiding something," he said."I can feel it."

"But now we can check if she'stelling the truth, at least," Paige said. "Whoever got Adam outstopped the security cameras around his room, but the ones on the perimeterwere still working."

"So we can check if she waswhere she said she was."

They made their way back to thelibrary, where their computers were set up to access the facility's securitycamera footage. Paige pulled up the relevant footage from that night andstarted scanning through it, looking for Karen.

Without a precise time for any partof her route, it was hard work, but Paige was determined to check it all.Either she would find footage of Karen somewhere at the time Adam escaped, orshe would establish that the guard was lying.

They fast-forwarded through thefootage until they reached the time Karen had specified, 7:13 p.m. Paige'sheart sank as they watched Karen moving along the perimeter of the facility,her flashlight illuminating the dark corners.

"There she is," she said,pointing to Karen, sudden disappointment flooding her. "Looks like she'stelling the truth."

Paige could feel her frustrationrising.They were back to square one. They knew Karen wasn't lying abouther whereabouts at the time of the escape, but they still had no leads on whohad helped Adam Riker escape.

"I don't like this,"Christopher said, running his hands through his hair. "We've hit a deadend."

Paige nodded in agreement, feelingdefeated. They had been hoping to find some new evidence or a lead to follow byquestioning Karen, but it had turned up nothing.

"You go release her,"Paige said. "I'll keep going here. We need to start again. There has to besomething here that will let us know where Adam has gone."

CHAPTER NINE

"Nothing's working."

It was getting later, and Paigefelt as though she'd been looking for answers forever. She'd checked everysecurity log she could find, every camera. When there was nothing on the StJust Institute's systems, she'd expanded outwards, looking for anything thatmight have been caught on local traffic cameras, trying to use the FBI'ssystems to run facial recognition.

Still, she was drawing a blank.There was nothing there.

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