Delilah Jenkins was never normal. Dr. Lila North might wear the costume better, but underneath the degrees and professional credentials, she's still the girl who looked at a killer and saw someone worth understanding.
The rest stop appears ahead, a cluster of low buildings surrounded by gas pumps and parking spaces designed for travelers who want to stretch their legs and buy overpriced coffee. I signal right and ease into the exit ramp, my truck joining the casual migration of road-weary vehicles seeking temporary respite.
But respite is the wrong word for what I need. What I need is clarity about what I'm walking into, and how much of my old self I'm prepared to resurrect to handle it.
Because whoever's playing this game, whoever killed Marcus Chen to get our attention—they've made one crucial miscalculation.
They think they're manipulating two damaged people who share a secret.
What they don't understand is that some secrets are also weapons. And some damaged people learned long ago how to fight back.
***
The gas pump clicks off at forty-three dollars, the digital display freezing on numbers that feel absurdly mundane given the circumstances. I replace the nozzle and cap the tank, then walk into the rest stop's main building, where fluorescent lights buzz over displays of overpriced snacks and travel-sized everything.
The coffee tastes like it's been sitting since morning, but I need the caffeine more than the quality. I grab a pre-made sandwich that claims to be turkey and Swiss, pay cash to the bored teenager behind the counter, and find a corner tablewhere I can sit with my back to the wall and a clear view of all entrances.
Old habits.
The burner phone I bought three states away comes to life when I power it on, its generic startup screen giving no indication of the searches I'm about to conduct. I connect to the rest stop's Wi-Fi and pull up news coverage of the Marcus Chen case, scrolling through articles I've already read but need to examine with fresh eyes.
Local coverage, regional coverage, then the Metro Police Department's official press releases. I'm looking for details I might have missed before, connections that didn't seem significant when I thought this was just another copycat trying to resurrect my work.
Then I see it, buried in the third paragraph of an article from Channel 7: "Police have enlisted the help of forensic psychology consultant Dr. Lila North, who specializes in violent offender profiling."
The phone screen goes blurry for a moment before my vision clears. I read the sentence again, then a third time, each repetition driving the implications deeper into my chest like nails.
She's not just aware of the case. She's not just another expert who might notice similarities to historical patterns. Dr. Lila North is officially consulting on Marcus Chen's murder. Which means she's seen the crime scene photos, studied the positioning, analyzed the surgical precision of the chest cavity modifications.
Which means she knows exactly whose work this is meant to resemble.
I click through to the police department's website, navigating to their list of approved consultants. Three names, three brief biographies, three professional headshots. Dr. Evelyn Shaw, Dr. Marcus Webb, and Dr. Lila North.
Her photo loads slowly on the rest stop's sluggish connection, pixels resolving into the face I've been trying to recall since I saw her name yesterday. Professional lighting, expensive clothing, the kind of composed expression that comes from years of testifying in courtrooms and consulting on cases that would give normal people nightmares.
But the eyes are the same. Pale green, intelligent, with that particular depth that comes from understanding darkness without being consumed by it. She's almost twenty-six now, not seventeen, but something essential remains unchanged. She still looks like someone who could watch a killer work and help him position the body afterward.
The turkey sandwich tastes like cardboard, but I force myself to eat while my mind processes what this means. The copycat didn't just kill Marcus Chen using my methods—they specifically chose a victim and methodology that would bring Dr. Lila North into the investigation.
This isn't coincidence. This is orchestration.
Someone knows about our connection and is using it. Someone understands that putting her in charge of analyzing my signature would create an impossible situation for both of us. She can't reveal what she knows about my methods without admitting how she learned them. I can't surface to stop the copycat without exposing us both.
We're trapped in a game neither of us chose to play.
But the question eating at me is simpler and more dangerous: What does she know that I don't?
Because if someone contacted her directly, if they revealed knowledge about our past to secure her cooperation, then she might not be a pawn in this game at all. She might be a player.
The thought sends ice through my veins despite the rest stop's overheated air. Delilah Jenkins helped me kill her father, yes, but that was justice served on a monster who deserved to die. This is different. Marcus Chen was innocent, and whoever killed him used my signature to send a message that got multiple people hurt.
Would the woman she became be capable of that kind of calculation? Would Dr. Lila North sacrifice an innocent man to draw me out of hiding?
I study her professional photograph again, looking for traces of the sixteen-year-old who thanked me for committing murder. She's learned to hide it well—the darkness that made our connection possible, the understanding that sometimes justice requires violence. But hiding isn't the same as eliminating.
My fingers hover over the phone's keyboard, cursor blinking in the search bar. I could dig deeper, look for patterns in her case history, see if she's consulted on crimes that might be connected to my old work. I could map her movements over the past year, check for correlations with unsolved murders that match my methodology.
I could investigate her like a suspect.
