"I know the trails," Marshall said."The Lester River corridor.There's a meadow three miles in—open, sheltered by a ridge, no structures within a mile.It matches the terrain profile of all three sites."
"One of us goes in as the target.The other positions at a distance with line of sight."
"I'll go in," Marshall said.
"No."Isla's voice was flat."I go in.I know his behavioral profile.I know how he approaches, how he selects, what he looks for in a victim.And I've been reading his crime scenes for three days.If he tests me—if he watches before he moves—I need to be the one he's watching."
Marshall opened his mouth to argue, then closed it.She could see the objection working through him—the instinct to protect, to put himself in the more dangerous position, to do the thing that junior partners did when senior partners took risks.But he was learning.Learning that Isla didn't make operational decisions based on chivalry or hierarchy but on the cold logic of who was best positioned for what, and that arguing with that logic was like arguing with mathematics.
"I'll position on the ridge," he said."Thermal scope.Clear line of sight to the meadow.If he comes, I'll see him before he reaches you."
"If he comes, you don't move until he's committed.Until he's close enough that retreat isn't an option.This man climbed a tree at full sprint and vanished into the canopy—if we spook him, we'll never get another chance."
Marshall nodded.His face in the fluorescent light was serious and focused.
Isla looked at the clock on the wall.Ten-forty.The killer operated in darkness, in the deep hours between midnight and dawn.If the pattern held, they had perhaps five or six hours before the window opened.
"We gear up," she said."Full winter kit.Radios, not phones—he may be monitoring cell signals.We leave separately, stagger our arrival.And Marshall—" She waited until he looked at her."If this goes wrong, the official story is that I went alone.You were never there.You went home after the meeting with Kate, exactly like she told you to."
"No."
"Marshall—"
"I said no."His voice was steady."We go together.Whatever happens, it happened to both of us.I'm not going to let you carry this alone."
The words hung in the empty bullpen.Isla felt something shift—some internal calculus she'd been running since the day Marshall had walked into Kate's office with his new portfolio and his careful politeness and his four years that had seemed like nothing.He wasn't James.Would never be James—that partnership had been built over years of shared cases and shared silences and the slow, accumulating trust that came from standing together in the worst places the world could produce.But Marshall was something.Something that had been built in days instead of years, in crime scenes instead of conferences, in the crucible of a case that demanded more than either of them could provide alone.
"All right," she said."Together."
Marshall picked up his keys.Isla picked up hers.They walked to the door of the bullpen, and Isla paused at the threshold and looked back at the case board one more time—the photographs, the timelines, the aerial shots of patterns in the snow that Walker and Harris would inherit tomorrow along with everything Isla had learned and everything she hadn't yet figured out.
She turned off the lights.The case board disappeared into darkness, and the patterns with it, and the faces of the dead.
In the hallway, Marshall was waiting.
"Lester River corridor," Isla said."One hour."
He nodded, and they parted—Isla to the elevator, Marshall to the stairs, two agents walking in opposite directions through a nearly empty building toward the same frozen meadow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Isla’s car was parked on the shoulder of Rice Lake Road with the engine running and the darkness pressing against the windows on every side.Isla had the map spread across the steering wheel—a physical USGS topographic, because cell service was a suggestion this far from the city and satellite data required equipment they didn't have in a sedan at eleven o'clock at night.
Marshall held the flashlight from the passenger seat, angling it across the contour lines.He'd been quiet since the field office, but his quiet now was different from his quiet three weeks ago.That silence had been the restraint of a young agent unsure when to speak.Tonight it was operational.
"Three sites," Isla said.She touched each one on the map with her pen."Gallagher.Brool Lake drainage, six miles west-northwest."The pen moved northeast."Lloyd.Caribou Trail corridor, roughly fifty miles from the first."It dropped south."Pierce.Munger trail, seven or eight miles from the city."
The three points formed a rough triangle, Duluth sitting at its center like a hub from which the violence radiated outward in carefully spaced intervals.Isla had been staring at this geometry for hours—at the field office, in the car, behind her eyes when she closed them—and the pattern that emerged was as deliberate as anything the killer carved in snow.
"He's spacing them," Marshall said.He didn't need to explain.The observation was obvious once you saw it, and Marshall had been seeing more and more of what was obvious in this case, the way eyes adjusted to darkness over time.
"Not just spacing them.Ensuring distance."She traced the gaps between the sites."Fifty miles between Gallagher and Lloyd.Thirty-five between Pierce and Gallagher.Forty from Pierce to Lloyd.He's making sure each snowfield is as far from the last as the geography allows while staying within his operational range."
"Why?"
"Because he doesn't want them found together.Each one is its own stage.If they're too close, the scenes compete.The individual design loses its power."She paused, hearing herself slip into the killer's logic the way she always did when a profile was taking shape."He's an artist who insists on gallery spacing."
Isla drew exclusion radii around each site—circles representing the minimum distance the killer seemed to require between his works.They sat on the map like territorial claims, each staking out a section of backcountry as spent, no longer available.
