Grace closed her eyes, tears leaking from beneath her lids."I don't even know him."
"I know."Isla took her hand, felt the trembling that had nothing to do with cold."I know."
The sirens were closer now—close enough that Isla could pick out the individual vehicles, the wail of police cruisers mixing with the lower tone of an ambulance.Through the kitchen's back windows, she could see red and blue lights painting the alley walls in alternating flashes.
She checked her watch.Seven minutes since she'd locked Thornton in the freezer.Cold enough to be uncomfortable, to sap strength and cloud thinking, but not long enough to cause permanent damage.Not yet.
James burst through the service entrance first, his weapon drawn, his eyes sweeping the kitchen before finding Isla on the floor beside Grace.
"Rivers."The word carried more weight than two syllables should have been able to hold—relief and concern and something else, something they'd both been carefully not acknowledging for months."You okay?"
"Fine.Victim needs medical attention—strangulation, she was unconscious for a few seconds at least."Isla pushed herself to her feet, her knees protesting the cold tile."Thornton's in the freezer.He's been in there about eight minutes now."
"We should get him out."
"I know."But Isla made no move toward the door.She stood there, looking at Thornton through the small window, watching him shiver in the cold he'd used to preserve his victims.There was a kind of poetry to it, she supposed.A dark symmetry that would have appealed to him, once.
Fritz arrived with two uniformed officers and a pair of EMTs who immediately descended on Grace, their hands gentle and professional as they assessed her injuries.James moved to stand beside Isla at the freezer door, his shoulder brushing hers in a gesture of solidarity that she found unexpectedly grounding.
"Ready?"he asked.
Isla nodded and threw the latch.
The door swung open on a scene of quiet devastation.Jamie Thornton sat huddled against the back wall of the freezer, his arms wrapped around himself, his whole body shaking with violent tremors.His lips had gone blue, and his skin had taken on the waxy pallor of someone in the early stages of hypothermia.When he looked up at them, there was no fight left in his eyes—only exhaustion, and grief, and something that might have been relief.
"It's cold," he said, his voice barely audible through chattering teeth."It's so cold in here."
"It's supposed to be," Isla said."That's kind of the point."
The uniformed officers moved in, helping Thornton to his feet, guiding his trembling body out of the freezer and into the relative warmth of the kitchen.He offered no resistance as they cuffed his hands behind his back, no protest as they read him his rights in voices that held no sympathy for what he'd done.
"They looked like her," he said as they led him toward the door.His eyes found Isla's, held them with an intensity that made her skin crawl."All of them.They looked like Rebecca.I just wanted to keep them safe.I just wanted to keep her safe."
"Rebecca's dead," Isla said."She's been dead for almost a year.And now three other women are dead too, because you couldn't accept that."
"Four."His voice cracked on the number."Four women.I would have made it four."
The officers pulled him away before he could say anything else, out through the service entrance and into the waiting patrol car.Isla watched him go, watched the car pull away with its lights flashing, watched until it disappeared around the corner and she could finally, finally let herself breathe.
James appeared beside her again, two cups of coffee in his hands—where had those come from?—and offered her one without a word.She took it, wrapped her numb fingers around the warmth, and took a sip that burned her tongue and didn't care.
"Hell of a Valentine's Day," James said.
Isla almost laughed."Not my worst."
"Really?"
"There was this one year in Miami—" She stopped, shook her head."Never mind.Long story."
Behind them, the EMTs were loading Grace Hyland onto a stretcher, her neck in a brace, her eyes closed.She was going to be okay—the paramedics had said as much, their voices cautiously optimistic as they discussed hospitals and scans and the particular resilience of the human throat.She was going to live, going to wake up tomorrow in a hospital bed, going to carry the memory of today for the rest of her life.
But she was going to have a rest of her life.That was what mattered.
"Rivers."
She looked up at James, at his weathered face and concerned eyes and the particular way he was looking at her that made something in her chest tighten.
"You did good," he said."You saved her."
