Three photographers were dead.If Ethan struck somewhere else tonight, if he found a victim at some other overlooked location while she sat here watching an empty tower—
She pushed the thought aside.Second-guessing wouldn't help.She'd made her decision based on the evidence, and now she had to see it through.
The wind howled across the hillside, carrying ice crystals that stung her exposed face.Through the car's windows, she watched the floodlights cast their cold light across Harold Benson's most famous composition—the stone tower framed against the city below, Lake Superior stretching toward a horizon that was invisible in the darkness.It was beautiful, in the harsh way that this region was always beautiful.A landscape that demanded respect, that punished those who underestimated it.
A landscape that had swallowed bodies before.
Isla found herself thinking about Robert Brune—the Lake Superior Killer, still out there somewhere, still hiding in the shadows while they chased this newer, flashier monster.The scrapyard search was ongoing, James had reported.No definitive signs yet, just more empty containers and abandoned equipment.The trail had gone cold, the way trails always went cold when you were hunting someone who had spent years learning to disappear.
Had Brune moved on again?Found another hiding place, another sanctuary where he could wait out the manhunt and continue feeding the lake?Or was he still close, still watching, still planning to claim another victim when the attention shifted elsewhere?
Two monsters.One city.And Isla sitting alone in a frozen car, betting everything on her ability to predict which one would strike next.
The hours crept by.The temperature continued to drop.Isla ran the car's engine periodically to keep warm, always watching the tower, always waiting for movement that refused to come.
At eleven o'clock, she climbed out of the car and walked the perimeter, her boots crunching on frozen snow, her breath forming clouds that the wind snatched away.The exercise warmed her blood and cleared her head, but it didn't change the fundamental reality of her situation: she was guessing.Hoping.Betting that her profile of Ethan Benson was accurate enough to predict where he would go.
And if she was wrong, someone might die while she sat here watching an empty tower.
She returned to the car and resumed her vigil, her eyes fixed on the stone walls that rose against the starless sky.The city lights glittered below, a carpet of illumination that stretched from the harbor to the hills, marking the boundaries of the world Harold Benson had spent his life capturing.
Somewhere in that city, Ethan Benson was moving through the darkness.
And Isla was waiting for him to come home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Isla checked her phone for the third time in ten minutes, watching the temperature reading drop another degree.Six below zero now, with a wind chill that the weather service had classified as "dangerous."Her fingers had gone numb inside her gloves despite the hand warmers she'd cracked open an hour ago, and her face—the only part of her not buried under James's oversized parka—felt like it had been scoured with sandpaper.
Three hours.She'd been sitting in this car for three hours, watching an empty tower, waiting for a killer who might never come.
The engine was running, the heater blasting, but even that had started to feel inadequate against the assault of a Minnesota night that seemed determined to prove a point about human fragility.Every fifteen minutes, she'd step out to walk the perimeter—partly to maintain circulation, partly to remind herself that she could still move.Each time, the cold hit her like a physical blow, driving the air from her lungs and the feeling from her extremities within seconds.
This was how people died.Not dramatically, not heroically, but stupidly—sitting in cars that ran out of gas, walking trails that turned treacherous, betting on instincts that turned out to be wrong.
Isla looked at the tower one more time, at the empty observation deck where Harold Benson had captured his masterpiece half a century ago.The floodlights illuminated nothing but stone and snow, the wind whipping ice crystals across the scenic overlook in horizontal sheets.If Ethan Benson was coming, he was taking his time about it.
And if he wasn't coming—if she'd been wrong about Enger Tower, wrong about the significance she'd attributed to this location—then she was risking hypothermia for nothing while he struck somewhere else entirely.
The thought had been gnawing at her for the past hour, growing louder with each passing minute.Three photographers were dead.Fourteen more were potential targets, scattered across the city and the surrounding region.James had managed to get protective details on the highest-risk names, but there weren't enough officers to cover everyone.Somewhere out there, right now, Ethan Benson might be approaching a victim she hadn't anticipated, setting up a composition she hadn't predicted.
And here she sat, slowly freezing to death, guarding an empty tower.
Her phone buzzed.James's latest check-in: Status?
Isla typed with fingers that felt like wooden blocks: Nothing.Starting to think I was wrong.
The response came immediately: Come back.We can reassess in the morning.
She stared at the message for a long moment, feeling the weight of the decision pressing against her chest.Every instinct she'd developed over a decade of profiling work told her this was the place.Enger Tower.Harold's masterpiece.The final statement that would complete Ethan's vision of his father's legacy.
But instincts weren't evidence.And evidence was what she needed right now—evidence that Ethan Benson was coming here, that her gamble had paid off, that she wasn't going to find out tomorrow that someone else had died while she sat watching an empty observation deck.
The wind howled across the hillside, rattling the car with a force that made the frame shudder.Through the windshield, Isla watched snow devils spin across the parking area, the floodlights turning them into ghostly dancers against the black sky.
Enough.
She reached for the gear shift, ready to put the car in reverse and admit defeat.Morning would bring new leads, new possibilities, a fresh perspective on a case that had consumed her for three days.She couldn't catch a killer if she died of exposure waiting for him to appear.