It was almost impossible in that moment not to be that fourteen-year-old girl again, looking down and seeing the blood. Paige had to force herself to look at other pictures in the album, trying to find enough happy memories to blot out the bad.
She wondered what someone else would see if they had been there to see her now, sitting there, her red hair falling around her slightly rounded face, her green eyes tinged by tears.
She could see that happiness there in the pictures, but it felt distant right now, like she couldn't reach out to touch it.
How had life built up to this empty feeling? The endless stream of killers had a lot to do with it. The cases that never ended. The death of her father. All of it seemed to come back to that moment.
And everything that had happened with Christopher too. Or rather, everything that could never happen. He might have split from his wife, but Paige and he were partners. Whatever they felt about one another, nothing could happen.
She took a deep breath and a deep drink of the glass of wine beside her, leaving her dinner uneaten. It was the right move to request a transfer after everything that had happened with Christopher, Agent Marriott. She was too close to him, and he couldn't be everything that she needed him to be. Not while he was going through a divorce from his wife, Jennifer. She needed something new. A new FBI field office. A new partner. A new everything.
She closed the book of photographs and shut her eyes, trying to calm her racing mind, trying to enjoy the silence. She was still trying when her phone rang, demanding her attention.
She looked down, surprised. It rarely rang these days. It was mostly a series of endless buzzes, of texts, of emails. A call meant something urgent, and as an agent, there were only so many things that could mean.
Heart already speeding, she answered.
"King," the voice said. It was Agent Sauer of the BAU. Her boss. His tone was curt, impatient.
This was bad, and Paige could only think of a couple of things bad enough to make him sound like that.
"A case?" she anticipated. “A body?”
"Yes," he said. There was a pause before he said the next part, as if he were worried about saying it. "It gets worse. It's ... the call came from Agent Marriott's house."
Paige's heart dropped, the glass slipping from her hand and shattering on the ground, forgotten. She couldn't believe it. No, it couldn’t be.
In that moment, fear filled her at the possibility that something might have happened to the man who was her partner, to the man she had so many complicated feelings for. The idea that he might be … no.
"Christopher, is he—"
"It's not Agent Marriott. It's his wife."
Paige hated herself for the brief instant of relief that she felt at those words. The thought that Christopher might be dead had simply been too much to bear.
The thought that Jennifer was dead wasn't much better, though. Paige had met her. Paigelikedher. She knew how this would hit Christopher. Her mind raced, trying to think of what to say, what to do, but she found herself at a loss for words.
"Agent King?" Sauer's voice snapped her back to reality. "Are you there?"
She cleared her throat, knowing that she had no time to focus on her emotions. She had to be the FBI agent she’d trained to be in that moment. "Yes, I'm here. I'll be there as soon as possible."
"Good," he said before hanging up.
Paige's heart sank at the news. She had only met Jennifer briefly, but she had seen how much she meant to Christopher. When the two of them had split up, it had hurt him badly. This ... this was going to hit him even harder.
Paige sat there for a moment, trying to process what just happened. She couldn't believe it. Her partner's wife. She had to call him, tell him. She grabbed her phone but hesitated. How did you even begin to tell someone something like that? Paige had trained as a psychologist before she became an agent, but even that didn’t give her the answers about how she was meant to do it.
Not over the phone. That wasn’t the way to do this. Paige's heart sank. She knew she had to be strong, to keep it together for her partner. She took a deep breath, willing herself to be calm.
She had to get to Christopher’s apartment. Paige ran for the door, grabbed her coat, and left her apartment. The night air was cold and crisp, but it did little to calm her nerves.
She had a job to do.
***
Paige tensed as she approached Christopher's house, bracing herself as she neared the door, not wanting to see what was behind it. It was hard enough stepping into a crime scene normally, but here, there was an extra personal dimension that made it harder.
All around her swirled the lights of a dozen police cars. All too late to stop the harm that had already been done. Police tape cordoned off the scene, but Paige stepped past it, showing her FBI badge to the uniformed officer guarding the tape.
