"Tell him again.With threats."
Something that might have been a smile flickered across her face, there and gone so quickly he might have imagined it.She moved to the couch and sat down heavily, pulling the thermal blanket tighter around her shoulders.The blood on her hands had been washed off at the scene—one of the paramedics had insisted—but James could still see the faint stains on her sleeves, the physical evidence of what she'd been through.
He found a clean blanket in her bedroom closet and brought it to her, draping it over the thermal one.Then he settled into the armchair across from her, close enough to reach if she needed him, far enough to give her space.
"You don't have to stay," Isla said.
"I know."
"You should go home.Get some sleep yourself."
"Probably."
She looked at him then, really looked, and he saw the question in her eyes that she wasn't quite asking.The same question that had lived between them for three years, unspoken and unanswered, growing heavier with each case they worked, each late night at the office, each moment when they stood too close and pretended not to notice.
"James—"
"Rest," he said gently."We can talk about everything else later."
He watched the fight go out of her, watched her sink deeper into the couch cushions, watched her eyes begin to close despite her obvious efforts to keep them open.The exhaustion was winning—had been winning for days, really, ever since Derek Paulson's body had been found at Hawk Ridge and the photographer case had consumed everything in its path.
"Stay," she said, so quietly he almost missed it."Just...stay.Please."
"I'm not going anywhere."
She was asleep within minutes, her breathing evening out, her face relaxing into something that looked almost peaceful.James sat in the armchair and watched her, the space heater humming softly, the first pale light of dawn beginning to creep through the frost-covered windows.
He should sleep too.Should close his eyes and steal whatever rest he could before the day's obligations came crashing down—the reports, the briefings, the endless aftermath of a case that had claimed four lives and left scars that would take much longer to heal.
But he couldn't stop thinking about the scrapyard.
The search had been ongoing for days, coordinated between the FBI and the Marshals, covering every inch of the industrial district where Robert Brune had hidden for two months.They'd found nothing—no sign of recent habitation, no evidence that the Lake Superior Killer was anywhere near the shipyard where he'd killed Mitch Connelly.
But there was one location they hadn't fully cleared.The old scrapyard on the city's outskirts, the one James had suggested as a potential hiding spot when Brune's shipyard refuge had come up empty.The search teams had begun their sweep yesterday, but the weather had slowed things down, and there were still sections that hadn't been thoroughly checked.
James looked at Isla, at the peaceful rise and fall of her chest, at the face that had become more familiar to him than his own over the past three years.She was safe now.Sleeping.Protected by four walls and a space heater that was slowly winning its battle against the Minnesota cold.
He could leave for a few hours.Check on the scrapyard search, make sure the teams were covering everything, maybe do a preliminary sweep of his own before the sun fully rose.It was better than sitting here, useless, waiting for her to wake up.
He wrote a note—Gone to check on the Brune search.Call me when you wake up.—J—and left it on the coffee table where she would see it.Then he pulled on his parka, the one with the duct-taped seam that Isla had teased him about a hundred times, and stepped out into the frozen morning.
The sun was just beginning to crest the horizon, painting Lake Superior in shades of pink and gold that would have made any photographer reach for their camera.James barely noticed.His mind was already turning toward the scrapyard, toward the maze of rusted metal and abandoned machinery where a monster might be hiding.
The drive took twenty minutes, the roads nearly empty at this hour, the city still sleeping off the exhaustion of the night before.James parked at the edge of the scrapyard's perimeter, where crime scene tape marked the boundary of the search area, and climbed out into the cold.
The temperature had dropped again single digits, according to his car's display but the wind had died down since the night before.Small mercies.He grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment and ducked under the tape, his boots crunching on frozen gravel as he entered the maze.
The scrapyard stretched before him like a metal graveyard, fifteen acres of rusted hulks and skeletal machinery casting long shadows in the early morning light.Towers of crushed cars rose on either side of the main path, their surfaces glittering with frost, their empty windows staring down at him like the eyes of the dead.Old shipping containers sat scattered throughout the yard, most of them listing at odd angles, their doors hanging open to reveal interiors choked with debris.
James moved slowly, methodically, the way he'd been trained.Checking corners, listening for sounds that didn't belong, cataloging every detail of the landscape around him.The search teams had covered most of this area yesterday he could see the flags they'd left marking cleared sections but there were gaps.Areas where the terrain was too difficult to navigate quickly, where containers sat stacked in ways that created hidden spaces a man could disappear into.
He worked his way toward the far corner of the yard, where the scrap piles grew denser and the morning light couldn't quite penetrate.This section hadn't been fully cleared yet—the flags stopped about fifty yards back, and beyond them the landscape became a tangle of rusted metal and abandoned equipment that looked like it hadn't been touched in decades.
That was when he saw it.
A shipping container, set apart from the others, partially hidden behind a wall of compressed cars that had been stacked with what looked like deliberate care.Unlike the other containers in the yard most of them listing, damaged, their doors hanging open this one stood level, its walls relatively intact, its doors closed tight.
Someone had been maintaining it.