Garrett provided coordinates for each one—all in industrial areas far from downtown, places where activity at odd hours wouldn't attract attention. Isla added them to the whiteboard with a growing sense of futility. Twenty locations now. Twenty potential murder scenes scattered across the city, and their resources were already inadequate for seventeen.
"We need more personnel," Morrison said, reaching for his phone. "I'll call the state police, see if they can loan us some bodies for overnight surveillance."
While he made the call, Garrett settled into one of the empty chairs, studying the case files spread across the table with the focused attention of someone trying to solve a puzzle. Isla noticed but didn't stop him—at this point, they needed all the help they could get.
"Agent Rivers," Garrett said after several minutes of silence. "These victims—did they have any connection to the tunnel system beyond the obvious?"
Isla considered the question. "Langford worked for Public Works, so he was in the tunnels regularly. But Graves and Yamamoto had no professional reason to be down there. Why?"
"Because the killer would need to lure them," Garrett said slowly. "Would need to create scenarios that got them to specific locations at specific times. That requires advance planning, surveillance, and understanding of their routines." He looked up from the files. "Whoever's doing this isn't just operating in the tunnels. They're operating in the world above, too. Watching people. Learning their patterns."
The observation was astute, and it added another layer to their profile. Their killer moved between two worlds—the underground passages where they executed their murders, and the surface where they selected and studied their victims.
"Mr. Garrett," Isla said carefully, "given your expertise with the tunnel system, would you be willing to check some of these remote access points yourself? The ones you identified that aren't on official maps?"
James's head snapped up, his expression immediately concerned. "Isla, we can't ask a civilian to—"
"I'm not asking him to confront the killer," Isla interrupted. "I'm asking him to do what he does every day—inspect infrastructure and report back. He knows those passages better than anyone we could send, and we're spread too thin to cover them otherwise."
Garrett was already nodding. "I can do that. I've got my equipment in the truck, and I know those sections well enough to navigate them safely. If I see anything unusual—any signs that someone's been preparing another murder scene—I'll radio immediately and get out."
"Absolutely not," James said firmly, standing. "It's too dangerous. If the killer is down there preparing their next victim—"
"Then I'll see them before they see me," Garrett said with quiet confidence. "I know how to move through those tunnels without making noise. How to use the darkness and the steam as cover. I've been doing it for over twenty years, and I'm not about to let some killer make me afraid of my own workplace."
Isla felt torn. James was right about the danger—sending a civilian into potentially active crime scenes violated every protocol. But Garrett was also right that his familiarity with the system made him uniquely qualified for surveillance in areas they couldn't adequately cover otherwise.
"If you do this," Isla said finally, "you stay in radio contact at all times. You don't approach anyone you see down there—you observe and report only. And at the first sign of anything unusual, you get out and call for backup. Understood?"
"Understood." Garrett pulled a radio from his belt, checking its battery level. "I'll start with Access Point 18—it's the most remote and the most likely place someone would try to set up without being discovered. Should take me about forty minutes to get there and do a thorough inspection."
As Garrett left the conference room, James moved closer to Isla, his voice low enough that the others couldn't hear. "This is a mistake. We're putting a civilian at risk."
"I know," Isla said quietly. "But we're out of options, James. We can't cover twenty locations with the personnel we have. Garrett knows those tunnels better than any of our people do, and he's volunteering. All we can do is monitor him closely and be ready to respond if something goes wrong."
Morrison ended his call with the state police, his expression grim. "They can spare four troopers for overnight surveillance. Combined with my people and yours, we can cover maybe eightlocations adequately. The rest will have to rely on periodic drive-bys."
Eight out of twenty. The odds were worse than Isla wanted to acknowledge.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thomas Garrett descended the rusted ladder into Access Point 27 at 7:03 PM, his headlamp cutting through darkness so absolute it seemed to swallow the light. This entrance didn't appear on any map—not the city's sanitized versions, not even the comprehensive schematics he'd shown Agent Rivers that afternoon. He'd discovered it himself eleven years ago while tracing a mysterious heat anomaly, had kept it secret ever since, knowing that some knowledge was too dangerous to share.
The FBI thought he was inspecting Access Point 18 right now, dutifully checking for signs of the killer's preparations. His radio sat on the front seat of his truck three blocks away, positioned to pick up ambient street noise that would suggest he was still moving between locations. By the time anyone realized he wasn't where he claimed to be, Stacy Lang would already be dead.
The descent took forty-three rungs—he'd counted them so many times over the years that his body knew the rhythm without conscious thought. At the bottom, the passage opened into a junction he'd privately named the Furnace. Even in winter, the temperature here hovered around 105 degrees, the result of three high-pressure steam lines that converged in faulty insulation. The air was thick enough to chew, humid and oppressive, carrying the metallic taste of superheated water.
Perfect.
Thomas moved through the junction with practiced efficiency, checking the modifications he'd made two days ago when he'd first identified Stacy Lang as a candidate for correction. He'd disabled the automated ventilation system that was supposed to regulate temperature in this section, had welded shut the pressure release valves that would normallyprevent dangerous heat buildup. When he activated the override controls hidden in the junction box near the east wall, this chamber would transform into an oven capable of inducing heat stroke within ten minutes.
Stacy Lang would last maybe eight before her core temperature climbed past the threshold of survival.
He paused at the junction box, his weathered fingers tracing the modifications he'd made to the wiring. The FBI was looking for someone who understood the tunnel system's infrastructure, but they were thinking too small. They were looking for knowledge gained through official channels—training, employment records, documented expertise. They couldn't conceive that someone might have transcended normal understanding, might have been given a gift that allowed them to perceive the tunnels not as mere infrastructure but as a living system with its own rules and logic.
The heat stroke had happened four years ago, during an emergency repair in Section K-9, where a steam line rupture had turned a routine maintenance call into a fight for survival. Thomas had spent forty-seven minutes in temperatures exceeding 130 degrees, his protective equipment inadequate, his body pushed past every safety threshold. By the time his partner had dragged him to the surface, his core temperature had reached 106.7 degrees—high enough to cook his brain, to cause the kind of neurological damage that should have ended his career.
Instead, it had given him clarity.
