Emily Washburn was sorting seed catalogs when the news came on the radio.
She was in the office at the Clearfield Potato Cooperative, a small building that smelled like fertilizer and dust. It was early April, planning season, and she was organizing the spring orders. The radio was on in the background—a local station playing country music and farm reports.
Then the announcer interrupted with breaking news.
"—shooting at a Hyatt Place in Provo, Utah. A police officer has been killed. The suspect is believed to be Ken Blake, a 52-year-old fugitive from Pennsylvania. The intended target was James Patterson, a consultant from Virginia. Patterson was unharmed."
Emily's hand stopped moving. The seed catalog slipped from her fingers onto the desk.
Ken Blake. She'd thought she was done with this name. She'd thought that restraining order and those prison years had put him away—both literally and metaphorically. She'd moved to Idaho specifically to get away from Blake, from James, from the whole damaged triangle of their history.
But the past, apparently, had other plans.
Emily pulled the seed catalog toward her again and tried to refocus on the work. But her attention was already elsewhere. She was already wondering about James. Was he okay? Was he really unharmed or was that just what they said on the news to calm people down? Had Blake actually tried to kill him or was this something more complicated?
By evening, Emily had Googled everything available about the shooting. She read about Officer Smith White's death. She read about Blake being a fugitive. She read the FBI's statement asking for information.
She also read about how James Patterson was now in FBI protective custody.
Emily made a decision.
She called the FBI's tip line at 9 PM Utah time.
"I have information about Ken Blake," she told the agent who answered. "My name is Emily Washburn. I'm in Idaho. I knew Blake personally, about eight years ago. I can provide context about his psychology and his motives."
The agent transferred her to a field office in Salt Lake City. Within twenty minutes, she was on the phone with Special Agent Lisa Martinez.
"You knew Blake?" Martinez asked.
"Romantically," Emily said. It was still difficult to say. "It was brief. Six months. He was obsessed with me, particularly after I ended things."
"And you ended things because—?"
"Because I fell in love with someone else," Emily said. "James Patterson. We got married. Blake didn't handle the rejection well."
Martinez was quiet for a moment. "So Blake's obsession with James isn't just about the research fraud. It's personal. It's about you."
"I think so," Emily said. "Blake saw James as the man who took me away from him. The research scandal just gave Blake a justification for the hate he already felt."
"That's very helpful, Ms. Washburn," Martinez said. "Can you tell me more about Blake's psychology? What was he like when you knew him?"
Emily talked for forty-five minutes. She described Blake's intelligence and his fragility. She described how his self-esteem was entirely constructed from external validation—academic success, romantic attention, social status. She described how quickly he fell apart when faced with failure.
"When I told him I was leaving him for James," Emily said, "he didn't just get angry. He disintegrated. He couldn't accept that he'd lost. He couldn't accept that someone he saw as less accomplished than himself had won."
"And you think that's what's driving him now?" Martinez asked. "That need to reclaim his sense of superiority?"
"I think," Emily said slowly, "that Blake has spent eight years in prison thinking about how to restore himself. And I think he's convinced himself that killing James will somehow do that. That if James is dead, then Blake won in some cosmic sense. That James can't have beaten him."
"But Blake knows you're married to James. Or were you?"
"We're divorced," Emily said. "Three years ago. Financial problems, mostly. But Blake wouldn't see it that way. Blake would see it as proof that James didn't deserve me either."
After the call, Emily sat in her apartment in Boise and thought about James. She thought about their marriage—how it had started with such hope and ended with such exhaustion. She thought about how she'd left him, not because she didn't love him, but because she couldn't handle the weight of his guilt about Blake.
She also thought about what it would mean if Blake succeeded. If Blake killed James. If the man she'd once loved enough to marry was murdered by the man she'd once dated.
The guilt would be unbearable.
The next morning, Emily received a call from Martinez.
"We'd like you to come to Salt Lake City," Martinez said. "We're conducting interviews with people who knew Blake. We'd like you to participate."
"Okay," Emily said. She thought about her job, about her life in Idaho. She thought about how she'd built this life specifically to avoid this kind of involvement.
"Also," Martinez continued, "James would like to see you. Once you're here. If you're willing."
Emily's throat tightened. She hadn't seen James in over a year. After the divorce, they'd tried to stay in touch but it had been too painful. They'd had too much history, too much shared trauma with Blake.
"I'll come," Emily said.
Emily drove from Idaho to Utah on a Tuesday morning.
The drive took eight hours. She drove through empty landscape, through small towns where nobody knew her, through weather that was clearing and settling into spring.
She thought about the three of them—herself, James, Blake—and how their lives had become entangled in ways that none of them had intended. She thought about how a brief romantic relationship with Blake had set in motion a chain of events that had destroyed his life, damaged her marriage to James, and now, eight years later, was still creating chaos.
She thought about responsibility. About whether she was responsible for Blake's actions. About whether if she'd handled the breakup differently, if she'd been kinder to Blake, if she'd warned James more explicitly about Blake's instability—whether any of that would have changed anything.
By the time she reached Salt Lake City, it was evening. She checked into a hotel near the FBI field office. She showered. She stared at her phone, looking at James's number in her contacts, wondering if she should call him.
She didn't. She waited.
The next morning, she had breakfast with Martinez and gave a formal statement. She described Blake's psychology, his rage at rejection, his obsessive tendencies. She explained the connection between Blake's loss of Emily and his hatred of James.
"I think," Emily said to Martinez, "that Blake would see James's death as a form of victory. Not just revenge, but restoration. If James is dead, then Blake can tell himself that he was right all along. That he was superior. That James didn't deserve me."
"And you feel responsible for this?" Martinez asked.
Emily paused. "I feel like I'm part of the reason this is happening. I don't know if I'm responsible, but I'm definitely part of the story."
"You're part of the story," Martinez agreed. "But you're not responsible for Blake's choices."
That afternoon, Emily met James at a coffee shop near the FBI field office.
He looked different than she remembered. Older. Worn. But also somehow clearer—like someone who'd been sanded down by difficulty but hadn't broken.
"Hi," Emily said.
"Hi," James replied.
They sat at a small table in the corner. Neither of them quite knew where to start.
"I'm sorry," James said eventually. "For everything. For Blake. For not protecting you from him. For—"
"Don't," Emily interrupted. "I'm not here to be apologized to. I'm here because Blake is after you and I wanted to help. And I wanted to see if you were okay."
James looked at her properly for the first time since she'd sat down. "Am I okay? I don't know. A cop died because Blake decided to kill me. I'm in FBI protection. I don't know if I'll ever be safe again. But I'm alive, and I'm thinking about the future, and I'm starting to understand that maybe some of what Blake did wasn't really about me at all. It was about his own brokenness."
Emily nodded. She understood what he meant. She'd come to understand it too—that Blake's obsession had said more about Blake than it had said about her or James.
"I don't blame you," Emily said. "For any of it."
"Even though I reported Blake's research fraud?" James asked. "Even though that started the spiral that led to prison and rage and all of this?"
"Even though," Emily confirmed. "Because it was the right thing to do. And because Blake's response to it was his choice, not yours."
They drank their coffee in silence for a while. Then James said: "Are you happy? In Idaho?"
"Yes," Emily said. "Finally, I think I am."
"Good," James said. And he meant it.
When they left the coffee shop, Emily hugged James—something that would have been impossible a year ago, when the pain was still too fresh. But now, with the FBI's investigation providing a kind of distant container for their shared history, they could touch without everything collapsing.
"I hope they catch him," Emily said.
"So do I," James replied. "But I also hope that when they do, he'll actually understand what he's done. I hope he'll have an opportunity to change."
Emily looked at James with something like gratitude. Whatever else had happened between them, whatever had broken their marriage, at least he'd maintained his capacity for compassion.
"That's a generous wish," Emily said.
"Maybe," James replied. "Or maybe it's just the only wish that has a chance of actually healing anything."
That evening, Emily drove back to Idaho. But she left behind a statement with the FBI, a willingness to testify if needed, and the understanding that she was finally, genuinely ready to move forward—not away from the past, but through it.