He retreated through the narrow corridor, his flashlight beam bouncing wildly off the walls. His mind raced with questions that had no good answers. What had David been doing down here? The work orders for yesterday's shift had been routine—a valve replacement in Section B, pressure testing in C-4, nothing that would bring anyone to the D-8 chamber after hours.
And those burns. Jesus, those burns.
Jerry had seen plenty of injuries in three decades of tunnel work. Guys who'd touched hot pipes without proper protection, steam leaks that had scalded exposed skin, electrical burns from the rare short circuit. But he'd never seen anything like the marks on David's body.
They looked almost deliberate, patterned, like someone had painted them on with heat itself.
CHAPTER FIVE
The call came at 5:47 AM, dragging Isla from a restless sleep filled with fragmentary dreams of dark water and drowning voices. She fumbled for her phone on the nightstand, squinting at the screen's brightness in her bedroom's darkness.
"Rivers."
"We've got a body in the steam tunnels under downtown." Kate's voice was crisp, fully alert despite the early hour. "Duluth PD called it in as a suspicious death. I need you and Sullivan on scene."
Isla was already sitting up, reaching for the clothes she'd laid out the night before—a habit from her Miami days that had never left her. "What makes it suspicious?"
"Victim is a city employee who had no reason to be down there at night. Security footage shows he entered the tunnels voluntarily, but the circumstances around his death are... unusual." Kate paused. "The responding officers requested FBI involvement. They think we might be looking at a homicide."
Isla's pulse quickened as she pulled on her clothes, phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. "I'm fifteen minutes out."
"Sullivan's already en route. Access Point 7, near the harbor. You can't miss the emergency vehicles."
The call ended, and Isla moved through her apartment with practiced efficiency. Blazer, badge, weapon, keys. Her hair went into its usual ponytail, though she didn't bother with the escaping strands that immediately framed her face. The bathroom mirror showed her the same tired eyes she'd seen last night, amber irises reflecting the harsh overhead light.
A body in the steam tunnels. Not Brune's MO—he preferred the open water, the staged accidents near the docks. But after two weeks of dead-end sightings and fruitless searches,any suspicious death in Duluth made her pulse spike with anticipation and dread.
The December morning was brutally cold, the kind of cold that turned her breath to fog the instant she stepped outside. The parking garage's concrete amplified the chill, and Isla's fingers felt stiff as she unlocked her Bureau-issued sedan. The engine protested briefly before turning over, and she sat for thirty seconds letting it warm while pulling up the location on her phone's GPS.
Access Point 7. She knew it vaguely—one of the older tunnel entrances near the industrial district, not far from where she'd confronted Brune two weeks ago. The proximity sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the temperature.
The streets were mostly empty at this hour, just the early shift workers and snow plows making their rounds. Duluth was waking slowly, lights beginning to appear in windows as the city stirred toward consciousness. Isla drove faster than she probably should, her mind already cataloging possibilities.
A city employee dead in the steam tunnels. For some reason entered, but died under unusual circumstances. What constituted "unusual" in an environment already filled with hazards? The tunnels carried superheated steam and water—there were a hundred ways someone could die down there through accident or carelessness.
But the Duluth PD didn't call in the FBI for routine accidents.
She spotted the emergency vehicles from two blocks away—patrol cars, an ambulance, a fire truck, their lights painting the pre-dawn darkness in strobing reds and blues. The scene was contained behind yellow tape, and a cluster of first responders stood near what looked like a steel access door set into the side of a concrete building.
Isla parked behind one of the patrol cars and stepped out into air that bit at her exposed skin. She'd grabbed her heavy wintercoat this time—the one James had convinced her to buy last year after watching her shiver through too many outdoor crime scenes. The memory of his concern warmed her slightly as she approached the perimeter.
A uniformed officer intercepted her, young and looking slightly overwhelmed by the scene. "Ma'am, this is a restricted—"
Isla held up her FBI credentials. "Special Agent Rivers. SAC Channing sent me."
Recognition flickered across his face—whether from her name or the press conference yesterday, she couldn't tell. "Yes, ma'am. Agent Sullivan is already inside with Lieutenant Morrison. They're waiting for you before they move the body."
"What can you tell me about the victim?"
"David Langford, forty-three, pipe fitter with Public Works." The officer consulted his notepad, his breath forming clouds in the frigid air. "Jerry Walsh—another city employee—found him during a routine inspection around 5:20 AM. Walsh called it in immediately."
"Where's Walsh now?"
"Ambulance. He wasn't injured, but he was pretty shaken up. Paramedics are checking him for heat exhaustion—apparently it's like a sauna down there."
Isla filed that detail away. "And the body's still in the tunnels?"
"Yes, ma'am. The medical examiner went down about twenty minutes ago, but they haven't extracted it yet. They're waiting for your assessment before they move anything."
