CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The temperature dropped like a stone as night crept across Duluth.
Isla sat in her car at the base of Enger Tower, watching the observation deck through binoculars that were starting to fog with her breath.
The tower rose against the darkening sky like a medieval fortress, its stone walls illuminated by floodlights that cast long shadows across the snow-covered hillside.
From this vantage point, she could see the entire approach—the parking area, the stairs leading up to the deck, the scenic overlook where Harold Benson had captured the photograph that made him famous.
And where his son might come to create his final monument.
The dashboard thermometer read twelve degrees, but the wind chill made it feel like something from another planet entirely.
Isla had finally given in and borrowed one of James's heavy parkas from the trunk—a concession to survival that felt like defeat even as it kept her alive.
The thick fabric was comically oversized on her frame, but it held the cold at bay in a way her usual blazer never could.
Her phone buzzed with James's hourly check-in: Any movement?
Nothing yet. Three photographers in protective custody. No sightings of Benson or the Honda.
The Honda. They'd found it an hour ago, abandoned at a storage facility on the city's western edge. The storage unit had been rented under Harold Benson's name—paid in cash, no questions asked. Whatever Ethan had kept there was gone now, along with any vehicle that might have been stored inside.
He was mobile, equipped, and invisible. Driving something they couldn't identify, toward a destination they could only guess at.
Isla lowered the binoculars and stared at the tower, her mind churning through the possibilities she'd been wrestling with for hours.
She'd made a bet—a calculated gamble that Ethan would target his father's most iconic location for his final statement.
But what if she was wrong? What if the significance she'd attributed to Enger Tower was just wishful thinking, a pattern she'd imposed on chaos because she needed to believe she understood how this killer thought?
Three photographers were dead. If Ethan struck somewhere else tonight, if he found a victim at some other overlooked location while she sat here watching an empty tower—
She pushed the thought aside. Second-guessing wouldn't help. She'd made her decision based on the evidence, and now she had to see it through.
The wind howled across the hillside, carrying ice crystals that stung her exposed face.
Through the car's windows, she watched the floodlights cast their cold light across Harold Benson's most famous composition—the stone tower framed against the city below, Lake Superior stretching toward a horizon that was invisible in the darkness.
It was beautiful, in the harsh way that this region was always beautiful.
A landscape that demanded respect, that punished those who underestimated it.
A landscape that had swallowed bodies before.
Isla found herself thinking about Robert Brune—the Lake Superior Killer, still out there somewhere, still hiding in the shadows while they chased this newer, flashier monster.
The scrapyard search was ongoing, James had reported.
No definitive signs yet, just more empty containers and abandoned equipment.
The trail had gone cold, the way trails always went cold when you were hunting someone who had spent years learning to disappear.
Had Brune moved on again? Found another hiding place, another sanctuary where he could wait out the manhunt and continue feeding the lake? Or was he still close, still watching, still planning to claim another victim when the attention shifted elsewhere?
Two monsters. One city. And Isla sitting alone in a frozen car, betting everything on her ability to predict which one would strike next.
The hours crept by. The temperature continued to drop. Isla ran the car's engine periodically to keep warm, always watching the tower, always waiting for movement that refused to come.
At eleven o'clock, she climbed out of the car and walked the perimeter, her boots crunching on frozen snow, her breath forming clouds that the wind snatched away.
The exercise warmed her blood and cleared her head, but it didn't change the fundamental reality of her situation: she was guessing.
Hoping. Betting that her profile of Ethan Benson was accurate enough to predict where he would go.
And if she was wrong, someone might die while she sat here watching an empty tower.
She returned to the car and resumed her vigil, her eyes fixed on the stone walls that rose against the starless sky. The city lights glittered below, a carpet of illumination that stretched from the harbor to the hills, marking the boundaries of the world Harold Benson had spent his life capturing.
Somewhere in that city, Ethan Benson was moving through the darkness.
And Isla was waiting for him to come home.