Upon entering the dorm room, J.J. could sense that something wasn't right. Something was terribly, terribly off. He called Paige's name, but got no response. He saw the bathroom door open, so he went to investigate. Upon entering, he found the curtain over the shower. Not unusual. What was unusual was that Paige's shoe was sticking out of it. J.J. ripped back the curtain to see his love lying there, in the shower, a red necktie wrapped around her throat.
He quickly made his way into the shower, saying "Paige" repeatedly, trying to look for some way to wake her. He pulled the necktie off of her and listened for a heartbeat. When none came, he felt her neck for a pulse. All he felt was Paige's cold flesh. "No." he cried. "No!'. J.J. pulled out his phone and dialed.
A woman's voice came on the other end "911. What's your emergency?". J.J. couldn't bring himself to say anything. He was overcome with emotions. "Hello?" the woman said, wondering if he was still there. "What is your emergency?".
At last, J.J. found his voice. "M-my girlfriend...she-she's...". "Is she in physical danger?" enquired the officer on the line. "Just send someone! Please!" J.J. cried. "Salem U dorms, Building C, Room 202. Please, hurry!" J.J. put down the phone. Crying, he gathered Paige in his arms and kissed her cheek.
In the closet, Paige's head jerked up, forcing the tape tighter around her wrists and making her body ache. JJ, she thought, praying to somehow reach him telepathically. Don't cry, please don't cry… get the cops over to this closet, get them to search the whole room. Then when they get me out of here you can hold me while I tell them what Kyle did to me. It'll be okay, sweetheart, if you can just stop crying and listen for my voice in your head.
Her arms hurt so bad from the way she was holding her head that she had to drop to the ground.
In what seemed like no time at all, and yet an eternity, J.J. heard a knock on the door, followed by a loud voice. "Police! Open up! We're comin' in!". J.J. looked up to see a tough looking officer with black hair standing over him, a gun pointed in his direction. "Step away from her!" the cop demanded.
J.J. stood up and put his hands in the air. "I-I-I found her like this. I-I tried everything I could...I c-couldn't save her." A second cop, one with grey hair, showed up. He and the black haired cop pulled J.J. out of the shower. "Paige!" J.J. cried, as he watched the black-haired cop feel for a pulse. Of course, there was no pulse to be felt. The two cops grabbed J.J. and sat him down on the bed in the dorm. J.J. was so overcome with grief that he made no effort to resist.
Paige heard one of the cops on the phone. "Suspect's name is Deveraux… Jack Junior. I have his ID here. No blanket on the bed but it's not on the victim either, dunno what his plan was but his prints are on the murder weapon and it's obvious he's only pretending to grieve. Figures he has a record. Okay. We got him on the bed, should we cuff him?"
No you idiots! she thought. She struggled again to free herself, managing to make a whistling sound through her nose as she fought against the gag in her mouth. The cops got quiet and for a second she thought they were coming this way because she heard footsteps but then she just heard one of the cops say to JJ, "All right, Deveraux. We're gonna leave the cuffs off for now but you'd better start talking, and if I were you I'd let us search you too."
"Whatever." JJ's voice was flat. "I'd never hurt her, I got nothing to hide. Besides, what difference does it make? She's gone."
No I'm not, Paige thought. I'm right here. Come on, JJ, where's your sarcasm when we need it most? Tell them to go ahead and search the entire room, damn it, so they can find me! But JJ said no such thing and the low whistle she was able to get out of her nose despite the gag in her mouth was lost in the cop ordering JJ to stand up and put his hands against the wall next to the bed so he could be patted down.
"He's clean," the cop said as Paige pulled hard against the tape but got nowhere. "Get back on the bed, Deveraux, and tell us - "
Paige heard the door open again. She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that whoever was here now would somehow figure out to open the closet.
The next thing J.J. knew, Roman and Rafe had entered the room. He looked up as he heard Roman call his name and put a hand on his shoulder. "You know him?" the black-haired cop said. It wasn't a question so much as a demand. "Yeah," replied Roman. "Where's the medical examiner?". "On his way, replied the cop. Roman walked into the bathroom to check out the situation. All J.J. could do was sit there on the bed. He gave orders to the grey-haired cop, but J.J. was too upset to hear them. Rafe asked if he was okay. "He claims he found the body," sneered the cop with black hair. "I pulled his rap-sheet-"
"Not now!" Roman firmly said. Rafe got down to J.J.'s eye level. "Can you tell us what happened?" he asked gently. J.J. shook his head, reliving the events from earlier in the day. "Paige called me," J.J. said between breaths. "She said she wanted to meet. Said..said she had something to tell me."
Good boy, Paige thought. Now, tell them how I sounded weird, how you just knew something was wrong, you thought maybe someone was holding me at gunpoint.
But JJ did no such thing. Instead, his voice broke more with each word. "And when I got here, she was...she was...". He couldn't bring himself to say any more. "Just take a deep breath," Rafe said, trying to comfort him.
J.J. put his hands up. "I swear, I didn't do this." he said, voice still shaking. "I would never hurt her.". Roman put a hand on J.J.'s back. "We know," he said. Rafe excused himself so that he could check out the scene in the bathroom. More conversation happened, but J.J. couldn't make it out. Something about covering Paige up with a blanket.
Yes! Paige thought, rocking back and forth in the limited way she could with her hands and feet taped to each other. That's right, Rafe, Kyle covered me with a blanket so you wouldn't know I was here. Come look in the closet and find me.
Roman sat down next to J.J. "J.J.," he said, "you said Paige was seeing Kyle Southern. Do you have any information that would lead you to believe that he was behind this?". J.J. shook his head. "Think about it, okay? And if you come up with anything, anybody who may have wanted to hurt Paige, you let me know.". Roman squeezed his shoulder, and then went into the bathroom to have a conversation with Rafe.
Paige collapsed on the floor, her shoulders shaking. She couldn't even cry properly with the gag in her mouth, couldn't even make a sound so that they knew that they had been so close to rescuing her and had turned the other way. Why weren't her telepathic messages working? Why wasn't JJ getting weird gut feelings telling him that she was still alive, that Kyle had been behind that phone call luring him here, that Kyle had obviously framed him for a murder that hadn't even happened? JJ always knew when she was near him, from that first day they met. But now when it was so important he seemed to have no clue and she didn't understand why.
When they came back, Rafe handed a small baggie to one of his fellow officers. "A flower petal?". Now, J.J. had found his voice. "Seriously? That's your big clue?". Roman gave J.J. a look, which he ignored. He stood up. "Someone came in here and murdered her! And you're just standing around and waiting! For what? You need to go out and get the bastard that did this!". Roman put a hand on J.J.'s shoulder. "Hey!", Roman said sternly, "I know this is hard, J.J., but you gotta stay focused and in control.".
J.J. broke down again. Roman turned to the black-haired cop and told him to get J.J.'s statement down at the station. The cop took him out of the room. But he didn't take him to the station. Instead, once they got out to the hallway, J.J. turned to look back at the room. He saw the form of the cop slowly change and distort into another figure. Gone was the police uniform, replaced by long, black robes. The cop's face had changed, too. He looked more like André than anything. He had finally revealed himself. This was no cop. This was the Black Guardian.
"You're coming with me," he sneered. The last thing J.J. saw was a bizarre golden wave of light...then he was out cold.
Roman frowned at Rafe. Something felt wrong about this room. "Think we should do a full search?"
Rafe shook his head. "Come back later to do that. Right now I wanna check on JJ while we're waiting for the lab to get back to us. Poor kid's beside himself with grief, and you know how overeager some of the uniforms are. Last thing he needs is someone trying to force a confession out of him on top of losing Paige."
Roman and Rafe left, closing the door behind them. The second uniformed cop came out from behind the bathroom door as soon as they were gone. He reached up and began peeling off the mask covering his face.
It got quiet in the room and Paige knew the cops were gone, along with any hope she'd ever get free. JJ was probably in jail by now, too. She lay on the floor, continuing to sob silently, tasting the cloth in her mouth and feeling sick.
There was a sudden hissing noise, like the radiator coming on, except it was late summer and there was no reason for the heat to come up.
The smell of cinnamon buns wafted up to Paige's nose. She stopped crying as she breathed in the scent. It made her lightheaded and weirdly calm and happy despite knowing in the back of her mind that she was lying bound and gagged on the floor of her closet and soon she was going to die.
A memory popped into her head suddenly, a nice one, as she breathed in another deep breath full of cinnamon bun scent.
Grandma Kim took a tray of hot cinnamon buns out of the oven and put one on a plate for four-year-old Paige. "You like that, huh?" Kim said as she poured the milk. "Someday when you're big I'll teach you how to make these just like Great Grandma Caroline taught me."
Paige's head drooped and her eyes started to close. No, she thought, forcing her head up and her eyes open. Stay awake. God knows what he'll do to you if you pass out.
She felt a hand on her back, petting her, comforting her...
JJ squatted down next to her and said, softly, "You need to sleep, Paige. We've been through too damn much and you gotta keep your strength up, okay?"
"JJ?" Paige mumbled, and was relieved that she was no longer gagged. "But you're in jail. How…"
"Ssh… that was just a bad dream. It sucks having a nightmare on your birthday. I know. But that's all behind us now." JJ kissed her softly as Paige opened her eyes to realize she was lying in their huge, soft bed in their bedroom at home and that she was free. "The kids wanna say happy birthday but not til you wake up. First I wanna hold you while you sleep."
"Sleep," Paige repeated, so exhausted that her speech was almost incoherent. "Right. Okay." She snuggled against JJ. "Love you."
A gloved hand caressed Paige's cheek but she didn't stir. "Out cold already," the man squatted next to her said, his Australian accent distorted slightly by the mask he wore to protect himself from the sedative being pumped into the room. "Pathetic. Don't worry though. We will make you strong again, immune to the influences of such base emotions as puppy love and groundless optimism." He picked Paige up and tossed her over his shoulder. Her head flopped forward and the gag fell from her mouth as he stood. He kicked it away and said, "To be free you must be reborn. Let the Phoenix again rise from the ashes!" He chuckled to himself as he flicked a lighter, burning away the tape around Paige's wrists. Her arms flopped down and he adjusted them, making her hug him as he carried her out of the room, kicking the door closed behind him with his foot.
As soon as they were gone, the blanket in the closet burst into flames.
The flames licked at all the clothes in the closet, then at the closet walls. As the closet began to burn down, the fire spread to the rest of the room, devouring the bed before moving onto the blinds covering the window and the door to the bathroom. The room began to fill with smoke as the fire continued to spread.