"Quiet."The word came out hard, carrying an edge of uncertainty that hadn't been there before.
"You're holding a knife to the throat of a woman who's spent her life trying to stop people like the men you killed tonight.Is that what your oath meant?Is that the mission?"
"I saidquiet."But the knife trembled slightly against her skin, the first crack in Kane's armor of certainty.
Isla saw James's eyes shift—saw him tracking something, calculating angles, making a decision that would determine whether she lived or died in the next few seconds.
"Kane," James said, his voice dropping into a calm that was almost hypnotic."Look at me.Look at what you're doing.This isn't a Taliban compound.This isn't a hostile vessel in the Gulf.This is an American fishing boat, and you're holding a knife to an FBI agent's throat.Is this who you wanted to become?"
Something shifted in Kane's posture—a momentary loosening, a breath that might have been hesitation.
James fired.
The shot was perfect—threading the narrow gap between Isla's head and Kane's, finding the target that was no bigger than a playing card.The former SEAL's grip on her went slack, and Isla threw herself forward, rolling across the bloody deck as Kane's body collapsed behind her.
She came up with her backup weapon, a compact Glock 43 that she kept in an ankle holster, but there was no need.Thomas Kane lay on his back, eyes staring sightlessly at the stars that had finally emerged through a break in the clouds, a neat hole in his forehead marking where James's bullet had ended his war.
For a long moment, neither of them moved.The boat rocked gently beneath them, her deck transformed into an abattoir, the bodies of smugglers and their vigilante executioner arranged in the graceless composition of violence concluded.
Then James was beside her, his hands on her shoulders, his voice cutting through the shock that threatened to swallow her whole.
"Isla.Are you hurt?Isla, look at me."
She touched her throat, her fingers coming away red with blood that was mostly not her own."I'm okay," she said, and was surprised to find that it was true."I'm okay."
James pulled her close, and she let him—let herself lean into his solid warmth for just a moment, let herself feel something other than the adrenaline and fear that had sustained her through the confrontation.His heart was pounding against her cheek, matching the rhythm of her own.
"Hell of a shot," she murmured against his flannel shirt.
"Hell of a target," he replied, and she heard the tremor in his voice that betrayed how close he'd come to making a different choice, a safer choice, a choice that would have gotten her killed.
They separated as the Coast Guard response boat pulled alongside, its crew ready to secure the scene and begin the process of documenting yet another massacre on Lake Superior's waters.Isla stood, her legs unsteady beneath her, and looked down at the man who had believed he was saving these waters through blood.
Thomas Kane's face was peaceful in death—whatever demons had driven him to this deck, to this moment, had finally released their hold.The lake stretched dark and patient around them, keeping her secrets as she always had, accepting one more body into her cold embrace.
"It's over," James said quietly, standing beside her.
Isla thought about Elena Rodriguez, still sitting in a cell, taking credit for crimes she hadn't committed.She thought about the Lake Superior Killer—the other one, the patient one, still out there somewhere, making murders look like accidents.She thought about all the predators who used these waters as their hunting ground, and the endless work that remained to drag them into the light.
"This part is," she said."But the rest—"
She left the sentence unfinished, watching as the Coast Guard crew began the grim work of processing a crime scene that would generate headlines for days.The lake stretched toward the horizon, vast and dark and full of secrets that she had only begun to uncover.
Thomas Kane's war was over.
Hers was just beginning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The dawn broke gray and cold over Lake Superior, painting the water in shades of pewter and steel that seemed to leach color from everything they touched.Isla stood on the dock at the Duluth Coast Guard station, watching the Cold Current being towed into the harbor—a ghost ship now, her deck scrubbed clean but somehow still carrying the memory of the violence that had transformed her into a crime scene.
James stood beside her, two cups of terrible coffee from the station's break room steaming in his hands.He pressed one into her grip without speaking, and she accepted it with a nod of gratitude that didn't require words.They'd been awake for more than thirty hours now, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the strange energy that came from surviving something that should have killed them.
"Rodriguez's attorney is demanding her release," James said finally, breaking the silence that had stretched between them since they'd returned to shore."Now that Kane's been identified as the killer, the confession doesn't hold.Kate says she'll be processed out by noon."
Isla nodded, taking a sip of coffee that burned her tongue and tasted like motor oil.Elena Rodriguez had been willing to spend her life in prison to protect a man she'd never met—a man she'd believed was doing the righteous work that the system had failed to do.Now that man was lying in the county morgue, and Rodriguez would walk free with nothing to show for her sacrifice except the knowledge that the hero she'd championed had held a knife to an FBI agent's throat.
"Morrison's talking," James continued."Everything—the payments, the shipments he let through, the names of everyone who bribed him.ATF and DEA are already mobilizing.This is going to crack open smuggling operations across the Great Lakes."
