She called him a whisper.
That used to make him laugh.
Now, it made him feel seen.
He sat in the motel room, lights off, a single lamp haloing the desk. Everything was clean. Ordered. Pages laid out in front of him, each with a red mark in the top right corner, his own kind of editing. His own system.
Senna's manuscript sat beside his own notebook, the one he never let anyone touch.
He turned to page sixteen. The one with the alley.
She described the death like a memory. A woman leaning back into darkness. Fingers curled. Neck tilted. Not a scream, just silence thick enough to drown in.
She wrote it like she'd seen it.
He had.
And he wondered, again, how much she remembered.
She hadn't meant to create him. But she had.
He didn't exist before her words gave him shape.
She gave him a voice when she wrote her first book. A name in the second. A purpose in the third. By the fourth, he no longer needed her.
But he liked when she spoke through him.
That was the gift she didn't understand. She thought she was warning people. That her stories were fiction.
But they were never stories.
They were instructions.
And he had followed them. Every time.
He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a plain white envelope. He'd already addressed it. No name. Just an office address scribbled in his angular print.
Inside: the next chapter.
He'd written it last night. A new victim. A new message.
He'd left her a clue, too.
Not one of those easy breadcrumb trails Senna used to sprinkle. No. Something harder. Hidden. Deep in the subtext.
He wanted to see if she was still sharp. Still worthy of the voice she'd given him.
Because the truth was simple: he didn't need her anymore.
But he wanted her watching.
The motel clock blinked 3:07 AM.
He stood and walked to the window, lifting the blind just an inch. Rain smeared the glass. Cars moved like ghosts. Across the street, a neon sign buzzed, some diner still open, serving coffee to the sleepless.
He thought of Marianne.
The therapist.
The observer.
Senna had trusted her once. Poured herself onto her couch like ink across a page.
Now she was part of the story, too.
Good. Let her read.
Let her wonder.
Let her run.
He sat again, careful and slow, then picked up his pen.
And on a fresh page, he wrote:
"Chapter Five. The one who listens."