Maybe it was time to stop running from what scared her—and it wasn't just serial killers that frightened her. It was this.Connection. Vulnerability. The risk of letting someone in and losing them.
But she'd lost people before—her parents, Alicia Mendez, pieces of herself in Miami. And she'd survived. She'd rebuilt. She'd found her way to this moment, sitting in Duluth with a career she'd salvaged and a partner who'd become something more without either of them acknowledging it.
The question was: what did she want to do about it?
Isla stood, moving to her bedroom and changing into comfortable clothes. She pulled her hair free from its ponytail, letting the dark waves fall around her shoulders. In the bathroom mirror, her amber eyes looked tired but alert, freckles faint across her nose.
She looked like someone who'd been running for a long time and was finally considering what it might mean to stop.
Her phone buzzed with an email notification—another update from the Marshals about the manhunt. Isla skimmed it quickly: more coordination with Canadian authorities, additional resources being allocated, public tips flooding in but nothing substantive yet.
Brune was still out there. Still hiding. Still dangerous.
And she was still the agent who'd identified him, who'd stopped him from killing again, who'd connected decades of seemingly unrelated deaths into a pattern that revealed a killer's work.
That investigation had happened here. In Duluth, with its brutal winters and tight-knit communities. With James as her partner, Kate as her boss, the docks and the lake as her proving ground.
She'd been sent here as punishment, but somewhere along the way, it had become something else entirely.
Maybe Delgado was right. Maybe what she thought she wanted and what she actually needed were two different things.
Isla returned to the living room, settling back onto her couch with her laptop. She pulled up her case files on Brune, studying them with fresh eyes. The patterns she'd identified, the connections she'd made, the profile she'd built.
This was her work. Her investigation. Her case.
And she wasn't ready to leave it unfinished.
Miami could wait. The promotion could wait. For now, she had a serial killer to catch and a life in Duluth that had become more real, more substantial, than anything she'd left behind in Florida.
The decision should have felt heavy, weighted with consequence. Instead, Isla felt something closer to relief.
She wasn't ready to leave. Not yet.
And maybe—just maybe—when this was all over, when Brune was in custody and the manhunt was finished, she'd finally be brave enough to figure out what she actually wanted from James Sullivan.
But first, she had work to do.
Isla opened a fresh document and began typing notes, building on the profile, considering new angles. If Brune was still in the area, still close to the lake he considered sacred, where would he hide? What resources would he need? Who might help him, knowingly or otherwise?
The questions flowed, and with them came focus. Purpose. The familiar rhythm of investigation that had always been her refuge.
Outside her window, Lake Superior's dark waters lapped against the shore, keeping their secrets. But Isla was patient. She'd learned to read the lake's language, to understand its patterns and rhythms.
And sooner or later, it would give up Robert Brune.
She just had to be ready when it did.
CHAPTER FOUR
The pre-dawn darkness pressed against the windows of Jerry Walsh's truck as he pulled into the maintenance yard at precisely 4:47 AM. After thirty-two years with Duluth's Public Works Department, his body had learned to wake at 4:15 without an alarm, leaving just enough time for coffee, a quick shower, and the drive through empty streets to start his shift before the sun even considered rising.
December in Duluth meant the kind of cold that made your teeth ache, but down in the steam tunnels, it was a different world entirely. Jerry had spent more than three decades navigating the labyrinthine network of passages that snaked beneath downtown, carrying the hot water and steam that kept the city's buildings warm through winters that could kill the unprepared. He knew every pipe, every junction, every quirk of the aging system better than he knew his own house.
He grabbed his equipment bag from the truck bed—heavy-duty flashlight, radio, digital thermometer, clipboard with inspection sheets—and headed for Tunnel Access Point 7, one of the older entrances near the harbor. The steel door protested with a metallic groan as he pulled it open, decades of salt air and moisture having done their work on the hinges despite regular maintenance.
The warmth hit him immediately, a wall of humid air that made his glasses fog. Jerry paused at the threshold, letting his eyes adjust to the transition from the frigid parking lot to the perpetual summer of the tunnels. The familiar smell enveloped him—damp concrete, hot metal, that particular musk of enclosed spaces that never quite aired out.
He descended the metal stairs carefully, his work boots ringing against each step. At the bottom, the main corridorstretched in both directions, illuminated by bare bulbs spaced every twenty feet. The pipes ran along the walls and ceiling—massive steel arteries wrapped in aging insulation, some sections newer than others, a patchwork history of repairs and upgrades spanning decades.
