The hallway outside the conference room was quiet at this hour, most of the office staff long gone home to families and lives that didn't involve ghost ships and vigilante killers.Isla's footsteps echoed against the linoleum as she made her way toward the exit, passing the darkened offices of colleagues who had the luxury of normal working hours.
She paused at the window by the elevator, looking out once more at the darkness that had swallowed Lake Superior.Somewhere out there, the Coast Guard was running patrols they couldn't possibly make comprehensive.Somewhere out there, a surveillance team was watching Marcus Sterling's cabin, hoping that watching would be enough.And somewhere out there—in the maze of docks and warehouses, in the holds of ships making their way through the darkness, in places she couldn't see and couldn't reach—predators were waiting.
The Lake Superior Killer, with his years of patience and his deaths disguised as accidents.
The vigilante, with his military training and his knife and his belief that he was saving these waters through blood.
And her, caught between them, trying to find the pattern in the chaos before someone else ended up floating in the cold, dark deep.
She pressed the elevator button and watched the numbers climb toward her floor.James was right—they had Sterling contained, or at least observed.If he was their killer, they'd bought themselves time.And if he wasn't...
The elevator doors opened with a soft chime, and Isla stepped inside, letting the mechanical descent carry her away from the case for a few precious hours.Tomorrow would bring new evidence, new leads, new reasons to doubt everything she thought she knew.But tonight, she would try to sleep.
She would try to forget, just for a little while, how many ways the lake could kill you.
And how many people seemed determined to help it try.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Shipwrecker stood at the edge of Park Point, watching the last light bleed from the April sky into Superior's darkening waters.The lake was calm tonight, deceptively so—a mirror of black glass that reflected nothing and revealed less.He knew her moods better than most men knew their wives.Had known them for decades now, had learned to read the subtle shifts in her surface the way others read newspapers.
She kept his secrets well.
The news coverage had been unavoidable all week.Ghost ships.Phantom attacks.Maritime massacre.The words scrolled across every screen in every bar and coffee shop he passed, accompanied by aerial footage of bloodstained decks and Coast Guard vessels conducting grid searches.The talking heads speculated endlessly about smuggling operations and rival gangs, about violence erupting on waters they'd assumed were safe.
They had no idea.
He'd watched the reports with a mixture of contempt and curiosity, studying the crime scene photographs that made it onto television, cataloguing the details that marked this newcomer's work.Knife wounds.Multiple victims.Bodies left floating where they'd be found.The man operated like a butcher announcing his presence to the neighborhood—all blood and spectacle, no subtlety, no art.
It was an insult to the lake.
The Shipwrecker had spent years perfecting his craft.Each kill was a conversation with Superior, a careful negotiation between violence and nature.Head wounds consistent with falls.Drownings that appeared natural.Bodies that surfaced—when they surfaced at all—bearing no evidence of foul play.He'd learned to workwiththe lake, to let her cold depths and unpredictable currents do the work of concealment.This new killer workedagainsther, leaving messes that demanded attention, that brought FBI agents and Coast Guard patrols swarming across waters that had been his alone.
The wind shifted, carrying the smell of diesel and fish from the harbor below.He turned from the water and began walking along the lakeside path, his footsteps silent on the damp pavement.The evening joggers had retreated to their warm apartments, leaving him alone with the gulls and the distant drone of commerce that never quite stopped.
He didn't approve of this other hunter's methods.The brutality served no purpose—drew attention where discretion was paramount.But he'd watched the investigation unfold with professional interest, noting how the FBI scrambled to make sense of attacks they hadn't anticipated, how the maritime community contracted with fear.Chaos had its uses, even chaos he hadn't created.While everyone focused on the bloody spectacle of ghost ships, his own work remained invisible.
Still, the newcomer was a problem.A variable he hadn't accounted for, operating in territory he'd claimed long ago.Two predators on the same hunting ground rarely coexisted peacefully.
The apartment building came into view as he rounded a bend in the path—a modest three-story structure set back from the water, its windows glowing with the warm light of ordinary lives.He'd walked this route many times over the past months, always at different hours, always with plausible reasons to be in the area.Just another resident taking an evening stroll.Nothing to remember.
He slowed his pace as a car pulled into the parking lot.Dark SUV, government plates.The driver's door opened, and a woman emerged—athletic build, dark hair pulled back from a face he'd memorized from newspaper photographs and television appearances.She moved with the coiled alertness of someone who'd learned to watch her surroundings, her hand brushing unconsciously against the weapon at her hip as she scanned the lot.
FBI Agent Isla Rivers.
He kept walking, maintaining his pace, giving no indication that she held any interest for him.A man out for a stroll, nothing more.She didn't look his way—why would she?He was nobody, a shadow passing through her peripheral vision while her mind churned with evidence and profiles and the weight of dead men she hadn't been able to save.
He understood that weight.Carried his own version of it.
She crossed the parking lot with quick, purposeful strides, fatigue evident in the slight hunch of her shoulders despite her attempt to project competence.He'd read about her—the Miami case that had ended badly, the transfer that everyone knew was punishment, the obsessive focus on cases that others had dismissed as accidents.She was good at her job, perhaps too good.The pattern she'd identified in the waterfront deaths had come closer to the truth than anyone before her.
The Lake Superior Killer, they'd started calling his work.As if a name made it more real.
He watched her disappear through the building's entrance, the security door closing behind her with a muted thud.The windows on the upper floors remained dark except for one that flickered with the blue glow of a television.He counted the windows, estimating which might be hers, but the exercise was merely academic.He wouldn't enter tonight.Wouldn't risk exposure for information he didn't yet need.
But he filed the knowledge away, adding it to the mental map he'd been building of her habits, her routines, the gaps in her awareness that might prove useful someday.She was hunting him, had been hunting him for almost two years now, and he respected her persistence even as he worked to stay ahead of it.
The wind picked up, carrying a bite of cold that promised the spring warmth was temporary.He turned and continued along the path, leaving the apartment building behind, another anonymous figure moving through the Duluth night.
