Outside Humanity (Isla Rivers #10)

PROLOGUE

Three Weeks Ago

The body was heavier than it should have been.

Mitch Connelly had always been a big man—broad across the shoulders, thick through the chest, the kind of frame that came from decades of hauling cargo and wrestling with equipment that didn't want to cooperate.

In life, he'd moved that bulk with surprising grace.

In death, he was nothing but dead weight, his work boots carving twin furrows through the frost-hardened ground as Robert Brune dragged him between the rusted skeletons of forgotten machines.

The Shipwrecker paused to catch his breath, his lungs burning against the February cold. Sixty-five years old, living on canned beans and desperation. His body wasn't what it used to be, and Mitch wasn't making this easy.

But then, they never did.

Almost there, the lake murmured, its voice soft and satisfied. Just a little farther. Bring him to me.

The whispers had quieted after the killing—they always did, settling into something like contentment once the Shipwrecker gave them what they demanded.

But they never went completely silent. The lake was always there, always waiting, its voice woven into the fabric of his thoughts like thread through canvas.

Robert adjusted his grip under Mitch's arms and started moving again.

The scrapyard stretched around him like a metal graveyard, towers of twisted steel and gutted machinery casting long shadows in the pre-dawn darkness. He'd chosen his hiding spot well—close enough to the water to hear its call, far enough from the main roads to avoid casual discovery.

But Mitch had found him anyway.

Careless, the lake whispered, and this time there was an edge to its voice. You let yourself be seen.

"He came looking for scrap," Robert muttered through gritted teeth. "Nothing to do with me."

Doesn't matter why he came. He found you. Others will come looking when he doesn't return.

Robert knew it was true. Mitch had a wife—Robert remembered her vaguely, a tired-looking woman who'd shown up at the Northern Star Christmas party three or four years back.

She'd notice when her husband didn't come home.

She'd call around, ask questions, file a report.

And eventually, someone would remember that Mitch sometimes came to this scrapyard after hours, picking through the detritus for anything worth selling.

They'd come looking. And when they did, they might find more than they bargained for.

The thought should have worried him more than it did.

But the Shipwrecker had been running for weeks now, staying one step ahead of the FBI and the local police and the amateur sleuths who thought a wanted poster made them detectives.

He'd learned to live in the spaces between, to move through the world like smoke through fingers.

If he had to find a new hiding place, he would.

The lake would guide him. The lake always did.

The ground began to slope downward, the scrapyard giving way to a stretch of rocky shoreline that most people didn't even know existed.

Robert had found it decades ago, back when he'd first started hearing the whispers, first started understanding what the lake wanted from him.

A natural channel cut through the rocks here, deep and dark and connected to the vast cold belly of Superior itself.

Perfect for offerings.

The ice was thick near the shore—thick enough to walk on, if you were careful—but Robert knew where the weak spots were.

He'd been mapping them since he was a boy, since the day his mother slipped beneath the surface and the lake first spoke his name.

Decades of communion with those dark waters had taught him their secrets.

He dragged Mitch across the frozen rocks, his boots finding purchase on surfaces slick with hoarfrost. The moon had set an hour ago, leaving only starlight to guide him, but his eyes had long since adjusted to the darkness.

Ahead, a dark ribbon cut through the silver-white expanse of ice—open water, kept liquid by the current running beneath the surface.

The channel.

Robert lowered Mitch's body to the ground and stood for a moment, breathing hard, looking out across the frozen lake.

In summer, you could see the lights of ships moving along the horizon, their hulls heavy with iron ore and grain and all the commerce that kept Duluth alive.

Now there was only darkness, an endless black void that seemed to stretch on forever.

Beautiful, the lake sighed. Isn't it beautiful?

"Yes," Robert whispered. "It is."

He knelt beside Mitch's body and went through the man's pockets with practiced efficiency.

Wallet, keys, cell phone—anything that might float, anything that might wash up somewhere inconvenient.

He'd take them back to the container and burn them.

The phone was the most dangerous; he'd have to figure out how to destroy it completely, make sure no one could use it to track Mitch's final movements.

But that was a problem for later. Right now, the lake was waiting.

Robert gripped Mitch under the arms one last time and dragged him toward the channel. The ice creaked beneath their combined weight, a sound like old bones settling. Dangerous, but Robert knew exactly how far he could push it. He'd been walking these edges his entire life.

At the lip of the channel, he stopped. The water was black and still, barely visible in the darkness, but he could feel it down there—patient, hungry, eternal. Waiting for the gift he'd brought.

"Thank you, Mitch," Robert said quietly, the words forming clouds that the wind snatched away. "For everything."

He rolled the body into the water.

The splash was shockingly loud in the pre-dawn silence, echoing off the ice like a gunshot. Robert held his breath, suddenly certain that someone had heard, that flashlights would appear on the shore any moment, that this would be the time his luck finally ran out.

But the night remained still.

He watched Mitch Connelly sink. The water embraced the body with something that looked almost like tenderness, dark currents pulling it down, down, down into the cold depths where Superior kept her secrets.

The lake was deep here—over a hundred feet, according to the charts Robert had studied years ago—and the current would carry the body even deeper, into the lightless trenches where nothing human was ever meant to go.

By spring, when the ice melted and the shipping lanes opened again, Mitch would be somewhere in the middle of the lake.

Maybe he'd wash up eventually, bloated and unrecognizable, on some Canadian shore.

Maybe he'd stay down there forever, another ghost in the watery graveyard that stretched beneath the waves.

Either way, he was the lake's problem now.

Robert stood at the edge of the channel until the last ripples faded, until the water was black and still again, until his fingers had gone numb inside his thin gloves.

The whispers were quiet now—truly quiet, the way they only got after a fresh offering.

For a few days, maybe a week, he'd be able to think clearly.

Sleep without dreams. Feel something like peace.

Then the hunger would start again. It always did.

They'll come looking, the lake reminded him, its voice distant and drowsy. Rivers. The FBI. They're still out there. Still hunting.

"I know." Robert turned away from the water and began the long walk back to his container. "Let them hunt."

Special Agent Isla Rivers had been chasing him for almost a year now, ever since she'd started putting together the pattern of "accidents" that had marked his offerings to the lake.

She was smart—smarter than the others who'd come before her, the local cops who'd written off his work as nothing more than tragic mishaps.

She'd seen through his careful staging, recognized the hand behind what should have looked like chaos.

She'd almost caught him. Had stood close enough to look him in the eye before he'd slipped away into the darkness.

He wondered if she still dreamed about that night. He certainly did.

She won't stop, the lake whispered. She'll keep looking until she finds you. Or until you find her.

Robert smiled into the darkness, a thin, humorless expression that cracked his wind-chapped lips. The lake was right, of course. Isla Rivers wasn't the type to give up, to accept defeat, to let a case go cold just because the trail had gone quiet. She'd keep digging, keep watching, keep waiting.

And someday, their paths would cross again.

Behind him, the lake settled into silence, its hunger temporarily sated. Ahead, the scrapyard rose like a maze of shadows, hiding the container that had become his home.

Above, the first pale hints of dawn were beginning to lighten the eastern sky.

The Shipwrecker walked on, leaving no footprints in the frozen ground, disappearing into the maze of metal and rust as the night gave way to morning.