"I don't think you will.Not unless I give you a reason."He lowered his hands slowly, not reaching for a weapon, just letting them fall to his sides."And I'm not going to give you a reason, Agent Rivers.Not the kind you need."
"Ethan—"
"I came here to finish my father's work.To create the one photograph he never got to take—the view from Enger Tower, the composition that made him famous, with the final thief incorporated into the frame."He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice carried something that sounded almost like disappointment."But there's no one here.No photographer to complete the image.Just you."
"Just me," Isla repeated, her heart pounding.
"Just you."Ethan turned back to his camera, his movements slow and deliberate, his hands reaching for the equipment with the reverence of someone touching something sacred."I'm not going to hurt you.That's not what this is about.You're not a thief.You're just someone trying to stop something you don't understand."
"I understand that you've murdered three people."
"I've created three monuments to my father's legacy.There's a difference."He bent to the viewfinder, making some adjustment she couldn't see from this distance."Go ahead and call for your backup.Have them drag me away in handcuffs.It doesn't matter anymore.I've already made my statement."
“And what ‘statement’ was that?The innocent lives you took?”
“Call it what you want,” he spat.
The wind howled across the observation deck, sending snow swirling around Ethan's silhouette.He stood at his camera like a conductor before an orchestra, his posture carrying a strange dignity that Isla found almost as disturbing as his crimes.
He wasn't going to surrender.That much was clear.But he also wasn't attacking, wasn't running, wasn't giving her the justification she needed to fire.
He was just...waiting.
Waiting for her to make the next move.
Isla's finger rested on the trigger guard, her weapon still trained on the figure above.Twenty minutes until backup arrived.Twenty minutes of standoff in conditions that were slowly killing both of them.
"Ethan," she said, her voice hoarse from the cold."Whatever you're planning—don't.This doesn't have to end with more violence."
He didn't respond.Just stood at his camera, adjusting, composing, creating something in his mind that only he could see.
The wind screamed across Enger Tower, and Isla Rivers waited for the monster to show his hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The moment stretched like ice forming across still water—slow, inexorable, fraught with the potential for shattering.
Isla watched Ethan Benson through her weapon's sights, her arms beginning to burn with the effort of holding her position.The cold was doing its work, seeping through her layers, numbing her fingers, clouding the edges of her vision with the first whispers of hypothermia.Fifteen minutes until backup arrived.Maybe less if James pushed through the weather.Maybe more if the roads were as bad as she suspected.
Either way, too long.
"You can't complete your composition," she called out, her voice fighting against the wind."There's no victim, Ethan.No thief to incorporate into the frame.It's just you and me and an empty landscape."
Ethan straightened from the viewfinder, his silhouette going still against the floodlit sky.For a long moment, he said nothing—just stood there, his breath forming clouds that the wind snatched away, his face hidden in the shadows beneath the observation deck's overhang.
When he spoke, his voice carried a terrible calm.
"You're right."
Isla felt something shift in the air between them, some change in the quality of the silence that made her grip tighten on her weapon.He was too calm.Too accepting.A man who had killed three people in the past two days, who had driven through a manhunt to reach this specific location, who had set up his equipment with the reverence of a priest preparing for mass—that man shouldn't sound like he'd just made peace with failure.
Unless failure wasn't what he was planning.
"There's no thief here," Ethan continued, his voice almost conversational."No photographer who stole my father's vision.Just a federal agent who came alone to a remote location in the middle of the night, who put herself in the frame without understanding what she was walking into."
"I understand exactly what I walked into.A crime scene where—"
"Where my father created his masterpiece."Ethan's hands moved to his sides, his posture shifting into something more grounded, more ready."And where I'm going to create mine."