"James."Isla turned to face him fully."I know it's him.Something about this victim made him change his approach, made him kill up close instead of quick and clean.But it's still him."
James held her gaze for a long moment.She could see him weighing her certainty against the evidence, against the deviation from pattern that would make any investigator pause.Then he nodded slowly.
"Okay.So what made this one different?"
"That's what we need to find out."Isla turned as Scale approached, phone pressed to his ear, his expression carrying news she already knew she didn't want to hear."Starting with who he was."
"Agent Rivers?"Scale's voice cut through the wind."We got a hit on the prints.Mitchell Connelly, age fifty-eight.Last known employer..."
He didn't need to finish.Isla saw it in his face.
"Northern Star Shipyard," she said.
Scale nodded."He worked inventory and shipping.Been there almost twenty years."
Twenty years.Two decades at the same workplace where Robert Brune had spent his career, where they'd hauled cargo and weathered Lake Superior winters and shared whatever passed for camaraderie among men who spent their lives on the water.Mitch Connelly hadn't been a random victim.He'd been a coworker.Maybe even a friend.
And that explained everything.
"That's why the strangulation," Isla said, the pieces clicking into place."Connelly recognized him.Found him wherever he was hiding, and Brune couldn't let him walk away.But this wasn't planned—it was reactive, defensive.He had to kill Connelly quickly, quietly, with whatever method was available.Then afterward, he tried to stage it to look like his other kills."
"He never left," James finished, understanding dawning in his eyes."Brune never left Duluth.He's been here the whole time, hiding somewhere close enough to run into people he knew.Close enough to be recognized."
Isla nodded, her mind racing.If Brune was still in the area, if he'd been lying low somewhere near the shipyard or the docks, there had to be evidence.Signs of habitation, traces of his presence, some thread they could pull to unravel his hiding place.
"We need to search everything," she said."The shipyard, the warehouses, every abandoned building within a five-mile radius.He's been living somewhere for the past two months, James.Eating, sleeping, surviving.That leaves traces."
"That's a lot of ground to cover."
"Then we'd better get started."Isla was already reaching for her phone, pulling up the contact list she'd assembled over months of coordinating the LSK investigation."I'll get the Marshals involved.They've had teams on standby since we ID'd Brune.And local PD—we'll need their manpower for the grid search."
James caught her arm, his grip gentle but firm.She looked up at him, saw the concern in his eyes that he was trying to hide behind professional focus.
"Isla.This is good news, in a way.It means he's close.It means we can find him."
"It means he killed again while we were looking the other direction."Her voice came out sharper than she intended."It means while we were assuming he'd fled, while we were tracking down leads in Wisconsin and Michigan and God knows where else, he was right here.Hunting.And I missed it."
"Wemissed it.This isn't on you alone."
But it felt like it was.It always did.Alicia Mendez's face flashed through her mind—the elementary school teacher in Miami, twenty-eight years old, dead because Isla had profiled the wrong suspect and arrived too late to save her.Three years ago, the weight of it still pressed against her chest every time a case went sideways.
She couldn't let that happen again.She wouldn't.
"I need to make some calls," she said, pulling her arm free."Can you work with Scale on the evidence recovery?Make sure we get everything from that debris field, trace the currents, find out where Connelly went into the water."
James held her gaze for a long moment, and she could see the words he wasn't saying—the concern, the caring, the things that lived in the space between them that neither of them ever acknowledged.Then he nodded, professional mask firmly back in place.
"On it."
Isla watched him walk toward the Coast Guard team, his broad shoulders set against the wind, and felt something twist in her chest.Later, she told herself.There would be time for everything later.
Right now, there was a monster to catch.
***
The Northern Star Shipyard sprawled across twelve acres of Lake Superior waterfront, a maze of warehouses and loading docks and rusted equipment that had seen better days.Isla stood at the entrance as the search teams assembled, her breath fogging in the late afternoon air, her eyes scanning the industrial landscape like she could will Robert Brune into existence through sheer determination.
"Twenty-three buildings total," SAC Katherine Channing said, appearing at Isla's shoulder with a tablet displaying an aerial map."Six primary warehouses, four storage facilities, the administrative building, and a dozen smaller structures—maintenance sheds, equipment storage, that sort of thing.We'll need to clear all of it."