The idea makes my stomach clench with something that might be betrayal or might be necessity. Because the girl who helped me arrange her father's body earned my protection through understanding and gratitude. But if the woman she became is playing games with innocent lives, then she's become something else entirely.
Something that might need to be stopped.
I close the browser and power down the phone, slipping it back into my jacket pocket. The rest stop continues its mundane operation around me—travelers buying gas and snacks, truckers grabbing coffee and bathroom breaks, families stretching their legs on cross-country journeys that have nothing to do with death or justice or the careful games that dangerous people play.
But I'm no longer part of that normal world, if I ever was. The decision to drive toward the city, toward her, has already pulled me back into patterns of thought and planning that I spent nine years trying to abandon.
The question now is how to approach her. Surveillance first, to understand her current situation and assess the threat level? Or direct contact, gambling that whatever remains of our old connection might still be worth something?
Both options carry risks that could destroy the lives we've built. Both require trusting that the other person hasn't changed in ways that make them dangerous.
But there's a third option, one that sits darker in my mind: treat this as a purely operational problem. Eliminate the copycat threat, disappear again, leave Dr. Lila North to her consulting work and her carefully constructed life.
It would be safer. Cleaner. Less emotionally complicated.
It would also mean never knowing if the sixteen-year-old who understood justice is still alive somewhere inside the woman who studies it professionally.
I finish the terrible sandwich and throw away the wrapper, already knowing which choice I'm going to make. Because some connections transcend logic and self-preservation. Some people earn consideration that goes beyond tactical advantage.
And some secrets are too important to let strangers weaponize them.
I'm going to find Dr. Lila North.
The only question is whether she'll be glad to see me.
***
The city rises from the horizon like a concrete and steel organism, its skyline puncturing the afternoon sky with the aggressive geometry of progress and ambition.
My mind has already shifted gears, moving from the contemplative highway meditation of the past hours into something sharper, more focused. Operational thinking, the mental framework that kept me alive and uncaught for two years of active work. Every decision filtered through questions of security, surveillance, and tactical advantage.
The hotel selection takes twenty minutes of driving through different neighborhoods, assessing options with criteria that have nothing to do with customer ratings or continental breakfast. I need something mid-tier—cheap enough to accept cash without suspicion, expensive enough to have security cameras that actually work. Something with multiple exit routes and parking that doesn't require walking past the front desk.
The Grandview Motor Lodge fits the requirements perfectly. Three stories of faded brick and peeling paint, the kind of place that caters to traveling salesmen and divorced fathers picking up their kids for awkward weekends. The desk clerk barely looks up from his magazine when I register under the name David Morrison, paying cash for three nights in advance.
"Ice machine's on every floor," he says without enthusiasm, sliding a plastic key card across the scarred countertop. "Checkout's at eleven."
Room 237 faces the parking lot, with windows that open and a clear view of the access road. I set my duffel bag on the bed and perform a quick sweep—checking for anything that seems out of place, though I'm probably just being paranoid. The room smells like industrial disinfectant and old cigarettes, with thin carpeting that's seen too many years of transient occupancy.
This is my base of operations now. My home for however long this takes.
I unpack with methodical precision, each item placed according to a system I developed years ago. Surveillance equipment in the top dresser drawer, electronics and chargers arranged on the desk, clothing hung in the closet with quick access in mind. The pistol goes under the mattress, secured but accessible. Cash and fake identification documents stay in the inside pocket of my jacket, never more than arm's reach away.
When I'm finished, the room looks almost exactly as it did when I arrived. The only difference is that now it's ready for whatever comes next.
But as I sit on the edge of the bed, looking out at the parking lot where normal people come and go with normal concerns, the weight of what I'm about to do settles over me like a physical thing.
I'm about to approach Delilah Jenkins for the first time in nine years.
Except she's not Delilah Jenkins anymore. She's Dr. Lila North, forensic psychologist, expert in violent criminal behavior, consultant to law enforcement agencies that would arrest mewithout hesitation if they knew who I really am. She's built an entire professional identity around studying people like me.
What has the last near-decade of that kind of work done to her mind? What does it do to someone to spend their days cataloging the worst things human beings can do to each other, to analyze crime scenes and interview killers and write reports about the systematic nature of evil?
Some people do that work because they want to help victims, want to prevent future crimes, want to bring some kind of order to the chaos of human violence. Others do it because they're drawn to darkness in ways they don't fully understand, because studying monsters is safer than becoming one.
Which category does Dr. Lila North fall into?
The sixteen-year-old who helped me position her father's body was remarkable for her composure, her analytical thinking, her ability to process extreme violence without falling apart. But she was also grateful, relieved, almost euphoric at being freed from years of systematic abuse. Her reaction that night was shaped by very specific circumstances—a lifetime of trauma being resolved through carefully applied justice.
