She was so absorbed in the images that she didn't hear the footsteps behind her.
The snow was deep here, soft and sound-dampening, and whoever was approaching moved with the careful deliberation of someone who knew how to walk without being heard.Jennifer kept scrolling, her attention fixed on the tiny screen, her back exposed to the tree line that bordered the meadow's eastern edge.
The owl called once more from somewhere deep in the forest, a haunting note that seemed to hang in the frozen air.
Jennifer smiled at the sound, still looking at her camera, still lost in the triumph of the perfect shot.The sun was warm on her face despite the cold, and for a moment she felt perfectly content—alone in nature, doing the work she loved, surrounded by the pristine silence of a winter morning.
She didn't see the shadow that detached from the pines behind her.
She didn't hear the soft crunch of a boot breaking through the snow's crust.
She didn't feel anything until something exploded against the back of her skull, white-hot and final, and the world tilted sideways into darkness.
The camera fell from her hands and landed face-up in the snow, its screen still glowing with the image of a great gray owl in flight.
Above the meadow, the owl itself watched from its perch as a figure knelt beside the fallen woman.Watched as gloved hands retrieved the camera, scrolled through the images, paused on one particular frame.
Watched as the figure began the slow, careful work of composing the final shot.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The sandwich sat untouched on Isla's desk, its cellophane wrapper still sealed.
She'd bought it three hours ago from the vending machine in the break room—turkey and swiss on wheat, the same thing she ordered every time she forgot to eat until her body started making demands she couldn't ignore.James had practically forced her to take a lunch break, steering her away from the whiteboard where she'd been staring at Marcus Lang's timeline like she could will it into revealing something useful.
"Thirty minutes," he'd said."Eat something.I'll hold down the fort."
That had been at eleven-fifteen.Now it was nearly noon, and Isla was back at her desk, the sandwich forgotten, her eyes fixed on the surveillance report that had come in twenty minutes ago.
Lang had left his apartment early.Drove directly to his studio.Spent the morning preparing for what his website described as an "Exclusive Winter Landscape Workshop"—twelve participants at five hundred dollars a head, scheduled to run from 11 AM to 4 PM.The surveillance team had visual confirmation of Lang leading the group through his gallery, explaining composition techniques, demonstrating equipment setups.
He'd been surrounded by witnesses all morning.Twelve paying customers, plus his studio assistant, plus the two Marshal deputies watching from a vehicle across the street.No suspicious activities as of yet, so if he was their killer, and he was planning something else, it wasn’t apparent.
"You're doing the thing again."
She looked up to find James standing in her doorway, two cups of coffee in hand.He set one on her desk and nodded at the unopened sandwich.
"The staring-at-evidence-while-forgetting-to-eat thing.We talked about this."
"I'm not hungry."
"You're never hungry when you're working.That's the problem."He settled into the chair across from her, his movements carrying the easy familiarity of three years of partnership."What's bothering you?"
"Besides the fact that our primary suspect is not looking so suspicious after all?”
"Besides that."
Isla pushed back from her desk, running a hand through her hair.A few strands had escaped from her ponytail—they always did, no matter how tightly she secured it—and she tucked them behind her ear with a frustrated gesture.
"The staging," she said."Assuming Lang is innocent and this wasn’t personal… the way Paulson's body was positioned, the photograph on his camera.It was deliberate.Artistic, even.Based on what we’ve seen, someone who kills like that doesn't just stop.They don't do it once and walk away satisfied."
"You think there'll be more victims."
"I think—"
Her phone rang.
The sound cut through the office like a blade, and Isla's hand moved to answer before the first ring had finished.She saw the caller ID—Duluth PD dispatch—and felt her stomach drop.