The Virgin’s Bucket List – Episode 42
Lindsay called Wayne before fear could invent a catastrophe. He answered from the training facility, unharmed and unaware of being photographed. Security checked the entrance but found no one suspicious.
Wayne wanted to fly to the coast immediately. Lindsay refused to let the threat control both their futures. She promised to report it and remain with Alyssa or program staff until they understood the danger.
Campus police documented the message. Because it contained no explicit promise of violence, they could investigate but not provide constant protection. Lindsay hated how easily intimidation occupied the space beneath legal thresholds.
Jeremy traced the image to a prepaid phone near Wayne’s campus. The sender had accomplices or access to people in multiple states. Grant’s former network remained the most obvious possibility.
Elena announced the first reporting assignment that morning. Students had to verify a personally meaningful claim using three independent sources. Lindsay selected the photograph without revealing the threat attached to it.
Alyssa offered to accompany her to the rehabilitation center. Lindsay accepted, aware that entering beside her former bully felt safer than walking in alone. Their partnership remained strange but practical.
The hospital archivist confirmed that the courtyard in the photograph had been renovated eight years earlier. The image could not have been taken on the date displayed because the visible fountain no longer existed then.
The date marker had been placed in front of an older photograph. Jeremy’s analysis had found no digital alteration because the manipulation occurred physically before someone photographed the composite.
Lindsay felt relief and grief at once. Her mother had not secretly survived, but someone had borrowed Catherine’s face to open a wound. Hope created under false pretenses felt crueler than an ordinary lie.
The archivist located Catherine’s consultation records from the year before her death. One visitor signed in repeatedly under the name Elena Vale, not Elena Ward. The address belonged to Victor Hale’s former law office.
Alyssa searched faculty biographies. Professor Ward had published under her married name; her birth name was Elena Vale. She was Victor’s granddaughter.
They confronted Elena in her office with campus security nearby. She admitted knowing Catherine and visiting her during treatment. She denied sending threats or claiming Catherine remained alive.
Elena explained that Catherine had entrusted Victor with evidence against Grant. After Victor’s stroke, Elena feared the files would disappear. She contacted Alyssa anonymously because approaching Lindsay directly might alert Grant’s monitoring network.
Lindsay asked why she staged the photograph. Elena said she had not. Her emails to Alyssa contained Catherine’s original hospital image without the false date.
Alyssa opened the encrypted folder. The stored attachment differed from the version sent to Lindsay. Someone had intercepted Elena’s communication, copied the image, and added the date marker.
Elena acknowledged her own manipulation. She had steered Alyssa toward the program and withheld her identity, believing the outcome justified secrecy. Lindsay told her that using Catherine’s methods without Catherine’s consent did not make deception noble.
Elena accepted the criticism and offered every original file for independent review. Among them was a voice recording Catherine made near the end of her life, addressed to Lindsay but never delivered.
Lindsay pressed play. Catherine’s weakened voice said she trusted Elena to protect the evidence—but warned that if Elena ever turned Lindsay into part of the investigation, she was no longer honoring the promise.