I send the email before I can second-guess the wisdom of responding at all. Because regardless of how this contact came to happen, the situation has moved beyond passive surveillance. Someone is using my signature to kill innocent people, and the only person who might understand the deeper implications has reached out to me directly.
Whether this is reunion or confrontation, it's inevitable now.
The next twenty-four hours will determine whether Dr. Lila North is still the remarkable girl who once thanked me for committing murder, or whether she's become someone whose professional obligations make her a threat to everything I've built since that night.
Either way, I'm about to find out if some connections can survive nine years of careful distance and radical transformation.
***
I don't sleep that night. Instead, I lie in the hotel bed staring at the ceiling while my mind works through possibilities and contingencies, each scenario more complex than the last.
I just run it through my mind, over and over:Why now?What's changed that made her break so many years of silence to make contact just as someone is corrupting my signature to kill innocent people? Is it a coincidence, or is she somehow connected to what's happening?
I stare at the email on my laptop screen, at the carefully crafted sentences that manage to be both completely innocent and deeply incriminating depending on who's reading them. Every word chosen with surgical precision, each phrase carrying layers of meaning that would be invisible to anyone who doesn't know our history.
The forensic psychologist consulting on copycat murders that match my historical work is Delilah Jenkins. The girl who helped me position her father's body has become Dr. Lila North, someone whose professional expertise makes her uniquely qualified to recognize my signature and understand its significance.
Someone whose official position gives her access to crime scene details, investigative files, and evidence that could destroy me if she chose to use it.
Someone who instead chose to reach out with an invitation disguised as a business inquiry.
The implications make my hands shake as I close the laptop. Everything I thought I knew about this situation has just shifted fundamentally. This isn't just about stopping a copycat anymore—it's about confronting the most important person from my past, someone who carries secrets that could save or damn us both.
I don't know if I'm ready for that conversation. Don't know if either of us is prepared for what it might reveal about who we've become and whether the connection we once shared can survive nine years of careful transformation.
But ready or not, the choice has been made for us. She's reached out, and ignoring that communication isn't an option when innocent people are dying and my signature is being used to send messages I never authorized.
Tomorrow, I'll have to decide how to respond to the most dangerous email I've ever received. Tonight, I'll sit in this anonymous hotel room and try to process the reality that Delilah Jenkins has found me.
And that she apparently wants to talk.
Chapter 15 - Delilah
MAY 2017
The prom dress hangs in my closet like evidence of a crime I'm about to commit.
Pale blue silk that catches the light when I move, bought with Janine's credit card and her delighted surprise that I finally wanted to participate in something normal. Something that might help me "process my senior year experience in a healthy way," as Dr. Walsh would probably say if she knew about it.
Which she doesn't. Because this isn't about processing anything in a healthy way.
The dress cost three hundred dollars and fits perfectly, hugging curves I didn't have at sixteen, falling to just above my knees in a way that suggests sophistication rather than innocence. I've been planning this moment for months, ever since Kent's letters started arriving more frequently, growing longer and more personal with each exchange.
Seven months. That's how long we've been corresponding since that night in our kitchen, seven months of careful handwriting and philosophical discussions that have evolved into something I can't name but definitely can't ignore. His latest letter sits on my desk, read so many times the creases are starting to wear thin.
Delilah,
Your questions about methodology continue to surprise me with their sophistication. Most people—even those with professional training—struggle to understand the psychological preparation required for what I do. But youseem to grasp intuitively that violence without purpose is just destruction, while violence with clear intention can become something approaching art.
I've been thinking about your observation that justice sometimes requires actions that can't be taken through official channels. You're right that the system protects people like your father precisely because they understand how to manipulate it. They know which words to say, which performances to give, which relationships to cultivate in order to maintain their protective facades.
But there's something else you said that I keep returning to: your comment about feeling "alive" in ways you never experienced before. I understand that feeling, though I worry about what it might mean for someone your age to recognize it so clearly.
You're graduating soon. Starting college, building the life you deserve, moving toward a future that should be bright and full of normal concerns. Part of me wonders if our correspondence is helping you process what happened, or if it's keeping you connected to darkness you should be leaving behind.
I don't want to be the thing that prevents you from healing, Delilah. You deserve peace, not continued exposure to the philosophy of necessary violence.
But I also can't deny that your letters have become important to me in ways I didn't expect. Talking to someone who understands the deeper implications of what I do—it's a gift I never thought I'd receive.
