Isla thought about Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce and Sarah Ramsey—three women she hadn't been able to save, three faces that would haunt her along with all the others.She thought about Jamie Thornton in the back of that patrol car, a man who had loved so deeply that losing his wife had broken something fundamental inside him.She thought about the cold, the terrible preserving cold, and the way grief could freeze a person just as surely as any walk-in refrigerator.
"I was almost too late," she said.
"But you weren't."James's hand found her shoulder, squeezed once, then fell away."That's what counts."
The afternoon sun was beginning to break through the clouds, painting Lake Avenue in shades of gold and amber.Valentine's Day was winding down, lovers all over Duluth finishing their dinners and exchanging their gifts and not knowing how close death had come to their city.Four women targeted.Three killed.One saved.
It wasn't enough.It was never enough.
But it was something.
Isla finished her coffee, crushed the cup in her hand, and turned toward the sedan that would take her back to the field office.There would be paperwork to file, statements to take, a case to close.There would be questions from Kate and congratulations from Fritz and probably some kind of debrief that would last until well past midnight.
But for now, in this moment, with the sun on her face and James at her side and a woman alive who should have been dead—
For now, it was enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Claddagh was quieter than usual for a Thursday night.
Isla sat in their usual booth near the back, her hands wrapped around a glass of whiskey she'd barely touched.The amber liquid caught the warm light from the overhead fixtures, throwing patterns across the scarred wooden table that she and James had claimed as their own over almost three years of late nights and difficult cases.The Irish pub had become a refuge of sorts—a place where the weight of the job could be set aside, if only for an hour or two, in favor of dark beer and darker humor.
James sat across from her, his own Guinness half-finished, the foam leaving a ring on the glass that marked how long they'd been sitting in companionable silence.His flannel shirt was untucked, his tie long since discarded, and the lines around his eyes seemed deeper than they had that morning.Valentine's Day had come and gone, taking with it the particular urgency that had driven them both to the edge of exhaustion.
"The doctors released their preliminary findings on Thornton," James said finally, breaking the silence that had stretched between them."Kate forwarded the report about an hour ago."
Isla looked up from her whiskey."And?"
"The neurological damage they found—it wasn't from yesterday.It wasn't from anything we did."James took a long pull from his beer, his expression troubled."According to the medical team, the brain damage was accumulative.Happened over months.Maybe longer."
"From what?"
"Cold exposure.Repeated, prolonged cold exposure."James set down his glass and met her eyes."They found evidence consistent with someone subjecting themselves to near-freezing temperatures for extended periods.Thirty to forty-five minutes at a time, they estimate.Multiple times.The cellular damage to his prefrontal cortex, the markers in his blood work—all of it points to someone who spent months deliberately exposing himself to the kind of cold that kills people."
Isla felt something twist in her chest.She thought about Jamie Thornton's apartment—the spartan furnishings, the wall of photographs, the obsessive documentation of women who looked like his dead wife.
"He was trying to kill himself," she said quietly."In the same way he was preserving them."
"That's the working theory."James's jaw tightened."The doctors think he started doing it shortly after his wife died.Months before he killed anyone.Climbing into those freezers, staying until he couldn't stand it anymore, then climbing back out."He shook his head slowly."They can't say for certain whether he was trying to die or trying to understand what it felt like—trying to experience what he was eventually going to inflict on his victims.Maybe both.Maybe he didn't know the difference anymore."
The thought settled over Isla like a weight.
"The brain damage explains some of it," she said."The escalation.The loss of impulse control.Three victims in three days—that's not the pattern of someone thinking clearly."
"No.It's the pattern of someone whose brain was already deteriorating."James turned his glass in his hands, watching the dark beer swirl."The cold he subjected himself to—it damaged the parts of his brain responsible for judgment, for planning, for understanding consequences.By the time he started killing, he wasn't really Jamie Thornton anymore.He was whatever was left after months of trying to freeze himself to death."
Isla thought about the man she'd confronted in that restaurant kitchen.The tears streaming down his face even as his hands tightened around Grace Hyland's throat.The way he'd called her Rebecca, his voice cracking with a grief that had consumed everything else—reason, morality, the basic human recognition that the woman he was strangling was not his wife and never had been.
"Grief does terrible things to people," she said."When it's not processed.When there's no one to help carry the weight of it."
"His wife was everything to him," James agreed."And when she died, he didn't have anyone else.No family, no close friends—just a job reviewing restaurants that probably felt meaningless without her there to share the meals with."He leaned back in the booth, his broad shoulders settling against the worn leather."Some people, when they lose everything, they rebuild.Find new connections, new purposes.Others just...disappear into the loss."
"And some of them take others with them."
"Yeah."The word came out heavy, tired."Some of them do."
They sat in silence for a moment, the sounds of the pub washing over them—glasses clinking, low conversation, the Irish folk music that played softly from speakers mounted near the bar.Normal sounds.The sounds of people going about their lives without knowing how close death had come to their city, how many women had been marked for preservation in the pages of a magazine they'd probably never read.
