The service entrance was around back—she'd learned the layout from Murphy's records during the drive over.A narrow alley ran between Maison Laurent and the dry cleaner next door, littered with construction debris and the particular detritus of a renovation in progress.The steel door at the end stood slightly ajar, a sliver of darkness visible between the frame and the door itself.
Isla drew her weapon and approached.
The smell hit her first—the familiar mustiness of a closed restaurant, overlaid with fresh paint and the chemical tang of new flooring adhesive.She eased through the door into a storage area stacked with boxes of supplies, moving on silent feet through the shadows.Ahead, a rectangle of light marked the entrance to the kitchen proper.
And then she heard it.
A strangled gasp.The sound of someone trying to breathe through an obstruction, fighting for air that wouldn't come.The particular wet gurgle of a throat being crushed.
Isla moved.
She burst through the kitchen doorway with her weapon raised, taking in the scene in a single, terrible instant.Jamie Thornton stood at the center of the space, his back to her, his arms wrapped around a woman who struggled weakly in his grip.His hands were locked around her throat, fingers pressing deep into flesh that had already begun to purple.The woman—blonde, mid-thirties, exactly the type—clawed at his forearms with weakening desperation, her feet barely touching the ground.
"FBI!Let her go!"
Thornton's head whipped around at the sound of her voice.His face was a mask of grief and determination, tears streaming down his cheeks even as his hands continued their terrible work.For a frozen moment, their eyes met—his pale and empty, hers burning with the certainty of what she had to do.
"I can't," he said, his voice cracking on the words."She's the last one.She's Rebecca.Can't you see?She's Rebecca."
"She's not Rebecca."Isla kept her weapon trained on him, but the angle was wrong—the woman's body blocked any clear shot, her struggling form interposed between Isla's gun and Thornton's center mass."Rebecca is gone, Jamie.You can't bring her back like this."
"I can preserve her."His grip tightened, and the woman let out a whimper that might have been a plea if she'd had enough air to form words."The fire took everything.The fire takes everything.But the cold—the cold keeps things safe.Keeps them perfect.Forever."
"If you don't let her go, I will shoot you."
"Then shoot me."The words came out flat, resigned."I don't care anymore.I haven't cared since Rebecca died.But let me finish this first.Let me give her what I couldn't give my wife—protection from the flames.Safety.Peace."
The woman's struggles were weakening.Her hands had stopped clawing at Thornton's arms, falling instead to hang limply at her sides.Her face had gone from red to purple, her lips taking on a bluish tinge that Isla had seen too many times before.Thirty seconds, maybe less, before unconsciousness.A minute after that, brain damage.Two minutes, death.
There was no time for negotiation.
Isla charged.
She closed the distance in three long strides, lowering her shoulder like a linebacker and driving into Thornton's side with enough force to tear his hands from the woman's throat.They went down together in a tangle of limbs—Thornton's grunt of surprise, Isla's weapon clattering away across the tile floor as the impact jarred it from her grip.
The woman collapsed behind them, gasping and choking, her hands flying to her ruined throat.Alive.Still alive.That was all that mattered.
Thornton recovered faster than Isla expected.He twisted beneath her, his elbow catching her in the ribs with enough force to drive the air from her lungs.She rolled away, putting distance between them, her eyes already searching for her fallen weapon.
There—three feet to her left, black metal gleaming against white tile.
But Thornton was closer.
He scrambled toward the gun on hands and knees, his movements frantic, desperate.Isla launched herself after him, her fingers catching the back of his coat, yanking him backward just as his hand closed around the weapon's grip.
Not her weapon.His weapon.
The gun came up, dark and ugly, and Isla had just enough time to register the barrel swinging toward her face before instinct took over.She grabbed the nearest thing within reach—the handle of the walk-in freezer door—and yanked it open like a shield between them.
The shot was deafening in the enclosed space.The bullet punched through the freezer door somewhere above her head, the sound of the impact lost in the ringing that suddenly filled her ears.Isla felt the vibration travel through the metal, felt chips of paint and insulation rain down on her shoulders.
Thornton was already moving, rounding the freezer door, the gun still clutched in his trembling hands.His face had twisted into something barely human—grief and rage and madness all tangled together in an expression that no longer resembled the quiet food critic from his author photos.
"You don't understand," he said, his voice barely audible through the ringing in Isla's ears."None of you understand.She was everything.She was my whole world.And now she's gone, and all I have are these—these echoes, these shadows—"
He raised the gun again.
Isla dove through the open freezer door.
