He studied her for a moment, those deep-set blue eyes seeing too much as always.His face bore the weathered look of someone who'd spent considerable time outdoors in harsh conditions, with a strong jaw and a nose that had been broken at least once.She'd asked him about that once, during a late night at the office.Bar fight in his twenties, he'd said.The other guy looked worse.She'd never been sure if he was joking.
"You sure?"he asked."You've got your case face on."
"I don't have a case face."
"You absolutely have a case face.Your jaw does this thing."He gestured vaguely at her."Gets all tight."
"My jaw is perfectly relaxed."
"If you say so."But he was smiling now, that slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes that made him look younger than his thirty-nine years."Seriously, though.You okay?"
The honest answer was complicated.The Lake Superior Killer was still out there—Robert Brune, sixty-five years old, forty years a fisherman, quiet and unassuming and responsible for God knew how many bodies at the bottom of the lake.They'd identified him two months ago, had his face plastered across every news station in the Upper Midwest, and still he'd slipped through their fingers like water.The leads had dried up.The sightings had stopped.And Isla lay awake at night, staring at her ceiling, wondering where he was hiding.Wondering who he might be hunting.
James knew all of this.He'd been beside her through every frustrating dead end, every false alarm, every press conference where they'd had to admit they still had nothing.He'd been the one to bring her coffee when she forgot to eat, the one to remind her that even the FBI's best couldn't catch every monster on their preferred timeline.He'd been steady and patient and present in a way that made her chest tight if she thought about it too long.
But today was supposed to be different.Today she was supposed to be a person who ate ice cream and took walks and didn't think about the monster in the dark.
"I'm good," she said."Really."
James held her gaze for another moment, then nodded.He didn't push.He never pushed.It was one of the things she—
Her phone rang.
The sound cut through the afternoon like a blade, sharp and insistent.Isla's hand went to her pocket automatically, the motion so ingrained it was almost involuntary.She saw the number on the screen—Coast Guard, Duluth station—and felt the ice cream turn to lead in her stomach.
"Rivers," she answered.
"Agent Rivers, this is Officer Dave Scale with the Coast Guard."The voice was professional, clipped, but she could hear something underneath it.Something that made her spine go rigid."We've recovered a body from the lake.Male, appears to be in his fifties or sixties.There's trauma to the back of the head, and the positioning suggests—"
"Where?"She was already moving, her free hand finding James's arm, squeezing once.His expression shifted instantly from relaxed to alert—the transformation so familiar it was almost comforting.This was what they did.This was who they were."Where did you find him?"
"About two miles northeast of the harbor.A fishing vessel spotted him caught up in some debris near the shore.We've got the scene secured, but given the, ah, circumstances..."
He didn't need to finish.Given the circumstances.Given the manhunt that had been dominating local news for two months.Given the fact that they'd been waiting—dreading—exactly this.
"We'll be there in twenty minutes," Isla said."Don't let anyone touch anything."
She ended the call and stood for a moment, the phone still pressed against her ear, the world tilting around her.The sunlight felt wrong now, too bright, too cheerful for what was coming.
"Isla."James's voice was quiet, steady.The voice he used at crime scenes, when witnesses were falling apart and evidence was slipping away.The voice that had talked her down from more than one dark moment over the years."What is it?"
She turned to face him.Emma was still at the shop window, oblivious, pointing at something inside.
"Body in the lake," Isla said."Head trauma.It's him, James.It's LSK."
She watched the understanding dawn in his eyes, watched his jaw tighten in an echo of her own.For almost three years, they'd worked side by side.She knew his tells the way she knew her own heartbeat.The slight flare of his nostrils when he was angry.The way he went still when he was thinking.The particular set of his shoulders when he was bracing for something bad.
All of those tells were present now.
"Christ," he breathed."How long has the body been in the water?"
"They didn't say.We need to get down there."
For a moment, neither of them moved.The afternoon hung suspended around them—the families walking by, the laughter from the college kids, the mundane beautiful normalcy of a Sunday in early March.All of it suddenly fragile.All of it suddenly far away.
Then James nodded once, decisive."I'll drop Emma with Stacey and meet you at the scene.Text me the coordinates."
"James—"