The last thing Amanda Pierce heard, before the darkness closed in completely, was a voice.Low and rough, barely above a whisper, so close to her ear that she could feel the warmth of his breath.
"Shh," the voice said."Shh."
And then there was nothing at all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The shoreline at night was a different country.
Isla walked the frozen edge of Lake Superior with her hands stuffed deep in her coat pockets, her breath coming in pale clouds that the wind tore apart as quickly as they formed.The temperature had plummeted since sunset—single digits now, maybe colder with the wind chill—but she'd needed to get out, to move, to think.The office walls had started closing in around eight o'clock, after she and James had spent six hours chasing leads that went nowhere and connections that dissolved under scrutiny.
Monica Hayes remained a cipher.A woman with no enemies, no secrets, no reason for anyone to want her dead.They'd visited The Looking Glass that afternoon—her salon, a cheerful space with exposed brick and vintage mirrors that still smelled faintly of hair products and jasmine perfume.Her employees had wept when they talked about her.Her clients had called in, one after another, unable to believe the news.Everyone loved Monica Hayes.
And someone had strangled her anyway.
The ice along the shore glowed faintly under the cloud-shrouded moon, pale and luminous, shifting in patterns that seemed almost deliberate.Isla stopped walking and stared out at the black expanse of water.Somewhere out there, beneath that impenetrable surface, lay the remains of ships that had gone down a century ago.The lake never gave up her dead, the locals said.She kept them.
He's here.
The thought arrived unbidden, as certain as the cold seeping through her layers.Robert Brune.The Lake Superior Killer.Eight weeks since he'd vanished, eight weeks since every law enforcement agency in the region had mobilized to find him, eight weeks of nothing—no sightings, no tips, no bodies washing up on shore.
James thought he was gone.Kate thought he was gone.The task force had shifted its focus to Canada and beyond, chasing rumors of a grizzled old fisherman who might have crossed the border, might have found passage on a freighter, might have disappeared into the vast northern wilderness where a man could live off the land and never be seen again.
But Isla knew better.She could feel it in her bones, in the prickling sensation along the back of her neck, in the way her eyes kept scanning the darkness as if expecting to find him standing there, watching her the way she'd watched him on those docks six weeks ago.
The lake whispers to him,she thought.And he whispers back.
Men like Robert Brune didn't leave.They couldn't.Whatever darkness lived inside them was rooted to a place, fed by familiar waters and familiar shores.He'd spent sixty-four years on these shores.His mother had drowned in this lake when he was eight years old.Every victim he'd claimed had been a sacrifice to these waters, an offering to whatever voice he heard calling from the deep.
He wouldn't leave.Hecouldn'tleave.
A couple walked past her on the path, arm in arm, their laughter carrying on the wind.Late-night stragglers heading home from one of the bars along the waterfront, probably.The woman was wearing a red coat that seemed almost garish against the monochrome landscape of snow and ice and darkness.The man said something Isla couldn't hear, and the woman threw her head back and laughed again, the sound bright and sharp in the cold air.
Normal people, Isla thought.Living normal lives.Going home to warm beds and morning routines and the comfortable assumption that the world was basically safe, basically predictable, basically kind.
She envied them.She hated that she envied them.
Further along the path, a man walked a German Shepherd, the dog's breath steaming as it strained at the leash, eager to explore every drift and shadow.The man nodded at Isla as they passed—a local, probably, someone who walked this route every night regardless of weather, who knew the shoreline in all its moods and seasons.His face was weathered, bearded, unremarkable.
For just a moment, her heart stuttered.
But no.The man was too young, too tall, his gait too casual.Robert Brune walked with the particular roll of someone who'd spent decades on fishing boats, his center of gravity always shifting, always compensating for swells that existed only in memory.This man walked like someone who'd never been to sea.
Isla turned back to the lake and let out a long, slow breath.She was jumping at shadows now.Seeing Brune's face in every stranger, hearing his voice in every whisper of wind.This was what he'd done to her—not just escaped, but burrowed into her mind like a splinter, a constant irritation that she couldn't dig out no matter how hard she tried.
She thought about the case she was supposed to be working.Monica Hayes, posed in a freezer, hands folded, eyes closed.A woman who looked like Vincent Carlisle's dead wife.A grieving widower who had spent the past eighteen months being eaten alive by loss.A restaurant that had once been filled with love and now sat empty, contaminated by something far worse than salmonella.
It didn't fit.None of it fit.Carlisle had the motive—if you could call a shattered psyche and a woman who resembled his wife a motive—and the opportunity, and a timeline that placed him out of the psychiatric facility just days before the murder.But the man she'd met that morning couldn't have done this.She was certain of it, as certain as she was that Robert Brune was still somewhere nearby, watching and waiting.
Which meant there was something she was missing.Some connection, some pattern, some thread she hadn't yet found.
The wind picked up, driving ice crystals against her face.Isla ducked her chin into her collar and started back toward her apartment, her boots crunching on the frozen path.The couple had disappeared around a bend.The man with the German Shepherd was a distant figure now, nearly lost in the darkness.
She was alone with the lake and the cold and the persistent feeling that she was being watched.
It took her fifteen minutes to reach her building, fifteen minutes of scanning every shadow and every parked car and every darkened doorway.By the time she climbed the stairs to the third floor, her fingers were numb despite her gloves and her cheeks burned from the wind.
Her apartment was warm, at least.The heating had been working consistently for months now—a small miracle after those first brutal winters when she'd learned to sleep in layers.She stripped off her coat and gloves, made herself a cup of tea she didn't really want, and stood at the window watching the distant lights of the harbor wink through the darkness.
