Too late for that.
Isla stripped off her gloves and coat, then stood for a moment in front of the corkboard.Robert Brune's face stared back at her from the center—the photo from his fishing license, the only image they'd been able to find.He looked tired in it.Harmless.Like someone's grandfather.
Twenty-three confirmed kills spanning three decades.Probably more they'd never find.
Where are you?
The lake offered no answers.It never did.
She turned away and headed for the shower.The office wouldn't wait, and neither would the stack of cases that had accumulated while she'd been chasing ghosts.Armed robbery in Superior.A fraud investigation that had stalled out.The usual grim parade of human cruelty that kept the FBI's Duluth field office busy despite what the rest of the Bureau seemed to think.
The hot water was a shock after the cold, needling against her skin until the numbness faded and sensation rushed back.She stood under the spray longer than necessary, letting it pound against her shoulders, washing away the chill but not the thoughts that circled like vultures.
He's still out there.I can feel it.
James would tell her feelings weren't evidence.Kate would remind her about the task force.Delgado, if she called him, would probably say something wise about the dangers of obsession, his voice carrying that slight tremor he thought she hadn't noticed.
None of them would be wrong.
But none of them had stood on those docks in the fog, watching Robert Brune circle his prey with the patient efficiency of a man who'd done this dozens of times before.None of them had seen the look on his face when he'd spotted Isla—not fear, not surprise, but something like recognition.Like he'd been waiting for her.
The lake whispers to him, she thought.One of Robert Brune’s coworkers, during an interview several weeks back, had told them he’d said something like that once, but it hadn’t meant anything at the time, so of course he hadn’t thought to report it until he’d been asked.
But Isla thought it was a critical piece of evidence.
A critical opening into his mind.
If the lake whispers to him…
What does it say about me?
She shut off the water and reached for a towel, catching her reflection in the fogged mirror.Amber eyes stared back, a little tired, a little haunted.The faint scar near her right eyebrow—a childhood boating accident she barely remembered—stood out pale against her olive skin.Her freckles had faded almost entirely now, victims of Duluth's weak winter sun.
She looked older than thirty-seven.Or maybe just tired.
Her phone buzzed from the counter where she'd left it, and Isla wrapped the towel tighter before checking the screen.A text from James.
Office at 8?
She typed back a quick confirmation, already running through possibilities.New case, probably.Something that would demand her attention, pull her focus away from the corkboard and the waiting and the endless loop of what-ifs that had become her constant companion.
Maybe that was what she needed.Another case, another puzzle to solve, another chance to do some good in a world that seemed determined to prove good was in short supply.
Or maybe she just needed something—anything—to make her stop staring at Robert Brune's face every night, wondering where he was, what he was doing, and when he would kill again.
Because he would kill again.She was certain of that, even if no one else believed her.
The lake hadn't finished with him yet.
And neither had she.
CHAPTER TWO
Kyle Henderson had been putting this off for a week.
He sat in his county-issued sedan outside Bella Ristorante, engine idling, heat blasting against the February cold that crept through every seam of the aging vehicle.The restaurant's windows were dark, the parking lot empty except for a drift of snow that had accumulated against the front door.A handwritten sign—
CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE—hung crookedly in the window, edges curling from the cold.
