Emily was in the office at the Clearfield Potato Cooperative when her phone rang.
It was an unknown number. She almost didn't answer. But something made her pick up.
"Hello?" she said.
"Emily." The voice was immediately recognizable despite eight years and prison time. Ken Blake's voice. Older. Worn. But unmistakably his.
Emily's hand tightened on the phone. Every instinct told her to hang up. Instead, she forced herself to stay on the line.
"Blake," she said calmly. "How did you get this number?"
"I've had a lot of time to figure out how to reach people," Blake said. "It's not difficult when you know how to look. I know your work address, Emily. I know your apartment address in Boise. I know the route you drive to work. I know everything."
"Why are you calling?" Emily asked, but she already knew. This was escalation. This was Blake making the threat personal.
"Because James has Sarah," Blake said. "And that's good for me because Sarah is useful. But you're more useful. You're the part of this that James never fully recovered from. You're the part that still haunts him."
Emily's throat tightened. "Blake, stop. You need to stop this."
"I need to?" Blake laughed—a sound that was broken and brittle. "Emily, I've spent eight years thinking about what I need. I need James to understand what he took from me. I need him to understand that some consequences can't be avoided. I need him to understand that loving you wasn't the problem. The problem was that he took you away."
"I left you, Blake," Emily said. "I made that choice. It wasn't James's fault."
"But you left me for him," Blake said. "And that's what matters. That's what I've been thinking about for eight years."
FBI agents were appearing in the doorway to Emily's office. She'd given the FBI her number weeks ago, and they'd been monitoring for exactly this kind of contact. Emily held up a hand to signal them to wait while she kept Blake talking.
"What do you want?" Emily asked.
"I want you to call James," Blake said. "I want you to tell him that I know where you are. I want you to tell him that if he doesn't meet me—really meet me, without FBI protection, just the two of us—I'm coming to Idaho. I'm coming to the farm. I'm going to find you."
"Blake—"
"Tell him," Blake interrupted. "Or I'll assume he doesn't care about you. I'll assume he never did. And I'll act accordingly."
The line went dead.
Emily set the phone down and looked at the FBI agents who'd entered her office. One of them—a woman named Sanchez—was already making notes.
"Did you record that?" Emily asked.
"Yes," Sanchez confirmed. "We have the full conversation. And we're already tracing the call location."
Within two hours, the trace had been completed.
Blake had called from a burner phone in Philadelphia. By the time the FBI arrived at the location, he was gone. But they found evidence he'd been there—a motel room with surveillance notes about both Emily and Sarah. Maps with multiple locations marked. Analysis of vulnerabilities.
Blake had been planning this systematically. He'd been mapping out how to reach James through the people James cared about.
Martinez received the report while briefing James on the day's security arrangements.
"Blake called Emily," Martinez said without preamble. "He threatened her directly. He's trying to force you to meet him without protection."
James felt something collapse inside him. "Is Emily okay?"
"She's fine. The FBI responded quickly. But Blake made it clear he knows her location and is considering her a viable target."
James understood what Martinez wasn't saying directly: the situation had escalated. Blake was no longer just hunting James. Blake was now actively threatening everyone connected to James.
"He's going to hurt someone," James said. "Before you can stop him, he's going to hurt someone."
"Possibly," Martinez agreed. "Which is why we're moving up the timeline. The press conference is now tomorrow at 1 PM instead of next week. We're accelerating everything."
Emily received another phone call that evening.
This time it was James.
"I'm so sorry," James said immediately. "I should have warned you. I should have told you that Blake—"
"James," Emily interrupted. "Stop. This isn't your fault."
"It is," James said. "Blake is using you because of me. Blake is threatening you because of me."
"Blake is a broken person making broken choices because of him," Emily said firmly. "Not because of you. There's a difference between being part of someone else's story and being responsible for it."
James was quiet for a moment. Then: "The FBI is moving up the timeline. There's going to be a press conference tomorrow. Blake will likely appear. The FBI thinks tomorrow is when this ends."
"Do you think you'll survive it?" Emily asked.
"I don't know," James said honestly. "But I've made my peace with the possibility that I might not. I've accepted the Cornell job. I've decided on a future. Whether I get to live it or not, at least I know what I'm fighting for."
Emily heard something in his voice that she hadn't heard in years: clarity. Purpose. The sense that James had finally figured out who he was and what mattered.
"I'm proud of you," Emily said. "Whatever happens tomorrow, I want you to know that I'm proud of you. And I'm grateful for what we had, even if it ended badly."
"I'm grateful too," James said. "And I'm sorry it ended."
"So am I," Emily replied. "But I think we both needed it to end so we could become who we're supposed to be."
That night, Emily couldn't sleep.
She kept thinking about Blake—about the brilliant, fragile man she'd dated eight years ago, and the broken, desperate man she'd spoken to today. She kept thinking about how easily obsession could transform a person. How quickly love could turn to hate. How one wrong choice, one moment of divergence, could reshape an entire life trajectory.
She also kept thinking about James. About how far he'd come from the man who'd been paralyzed by guilt and fear in Ithaca. About how he'd found purpose and direction despite—or perhaps because of—the threat that Blake represented.
Emily pulled out her laptop and wrote Blake a letter. She didn't send it. Instead, she saved it to a file and emailed it to her own address as backup. The letter said:
"Ken—I know you probably won't read this. But I need to write it anyway. I want you to understand something: what happened between us wasn't James's fault. What happened to you wasn't James's fault. I left you because I didn't love you enough to stay. That was my decision. That was my choice. And James didn't make that choice for me.
"You've spent eight years blaming him. You've spent eight years in prison thinking about revenge. But the person you've become—the person who threatens women and stalks people and kills strangers—that's not James's fault either. That's yours.
"I hope you find some way to understand that before it's too late. I hope you find some way to stop. Because what you're doing won't fix anything. It won't bring me back. It won't restore your career. It won't undo the past.
"All it will do is destroy more people. And it's going to destroy you.
"—Emily"
She didn't send it. But she saved it anyway, a record of what she wanted Blake to know if he ever had the capacity to understand it.
The next morning, Emily called the FBI.
"I want to be there," she said to Sanchez. "At the press conference. I want to be there when this ends."
"That's not recommended," Sanchez said. "We need to keep you away from the scene."
"I understand," Emily said. "But I need to be there anyway. I need to see it end. I need to know that it's actually over."
After some discussion with Martinez, Emily was allowed to attend—positioned safely away from the main event but able to observe from a distance.
That afternoon, Emily drove from Idaho to Salt Lake City. She drove through empty landscape, through weather that was clearing, toward the moment when everything would finally resolve.
She kept thinking about Blake. About the man he'd been. About the man he'd become. About whether redemption was possible for someone like him, or whether some breaks were simply too severe to repair.
She didn't have the answer. But she was going to watch tomorrow and find out.