"Ethan—"
"I ruined it."His voice cracked, broke, dissolved into something raw and wounded."The one thing I needed to get right, the one photograph that was supposed to matter, and I—" He tried to raise his hands to the camera, tried to wipe the lens clean, but his arms wouldn't respond anymore.His body was giving up, systems shutting down one by one as the cold and the blood loss completed their work.
"I'm sorry," he said, and she wasn't sure if he was talking to her or to his father or to the three people he'd killed in pursuit of a vision that had just slipped through his bloodied fingers."I'm so sorry.I tried—I tried to make it right—"
"I know," Isla said, because she did.Because she understood, in that terrible final moment, what it meant to carry a weight that was never supposed to be yours, to fail at something that felt more important than your own life.
Ethan's eyes found hers one last time."Tell them," he whispered."Tell them about my father.About what he created.About what they stole."
"I will."
He nodded—or tried to.The motion barely registered, his body settling against her with the particular heaviness of someone who had stopped fighting.
"The lens," he said, his voice barely audible."I got blood on the lens."
"I know."
"He would have been disappointed."
Isla didn't respond.There was nothing to say to that, nothing that would matter in the few seconds that remained.
Ethan Benson took one more breath—shallow, rattling, final—and then he was gone.
Isla lowered him to the observation deck's frozen stones, his body settling into the position where he would stay until the ambulance arrived.The camera still stood on its tripod, its screen glowing with the image he had tried so hard to capture, the smear of blood marring the composition that was supposed to complete his father's legacy.
In the distance, she could hear sirens—James, finally, backup that had come too late to change anything.She should move, should secure the scene, should prepare to explain how a routine stakeout had turned into a shooting, a confrontation, a death that would haunt her in ways she couldn't yet predict.
But for a long moment, she just sat there, holding the hand of a man who had killed three people in pursuit of a photograph, who had died trying to correct a smudge he would never be able to wipe clean.
The wind howled across Enger Tower, and Isla let herself feel the cold.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The ambulance lights painted Enger Tower in alternating shades of red and white, each pulse illuminating the frozen scene like a heartbeat that refused to stop.
James Sullivan stood at the edge of the observation deck, watching the paramedics work on a body that no longer needed their help.Ethan Benson lay where Isla had left him, his blood already freezing into the stone, his eyes open to a sky that had begun to lighten almost imperceptibly along the eastern horizon.The camera still stood on its tripod beside him, its screen dark now, the final photograph it had captured waiting for forensic technicians who wouldn't arrive for another hour.
But James wasn't looking at the body.
He was looking at Isla.
She sat on the tailgate of the second ambulance, a thermal blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a paramedic shining a penlight into her eyes while she answered questions in a voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else.Her hands were still covered in Ethan Benson's blood—it had soaked through her gloves, through the sleeves of James's parka that she'd borrowed, through whatever barrier she usually maintained between herself and the horrors she witnessed.
She looked smaller than he'd ever seen her.Diminished in a way that had nothing to do with her physical size and everything to do with the weight she was carrying.
"Agent Sullivan?"
James turned to find one of the responding officers approaching—a young woman whose name he couldn't remember, her breath fogging in the pre-dawn cold.
"Crime scene techs are about twenty minutes out," she said."And SAC Channing called.She wants a full briefing as soon as you're available."
"Tell her I'll call in an hour."
"She said—"
"An hour."His voice came out harder than he intended, and he saw the officer flinch slightly before nodding and retreating toward her cruiser.
James ran a hand through his hair, feeling the grit of a night spent driving through frozen streets, coordinating protection details, and praying that Isla wouldn't do something reckless before he could reach her.He'd known, the moment she'd texted that she was going to make contact, that he wouldn't get there in time.Had pushed the sedan through conditions that should have killed him, taking corners too fast on ice-slicked roads, because some part of him had understood that she was walking into something she might not walk out of.