CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #2
But James wasn't her commanding officer. And twenty-five minutes was too long—long enough for Ethan to finish his preparations, long enough for him to decide the surveillance wasn't real and drive away, long enough for the window to close on the only chance they might have to end this tonight.
Isla checked her weapon, confirmed a round was chambered, and opened the car door.
The cold hit her like a wall of knives, the wind driving through even James's heavy parka with immediate, brutal efficiency.
She moved toward the tower with her weapon drawn, her boots finding purchase on ground that crackled with every step, her breath forming clouds that the wind shredded into nothing.
"Ethan Benson." Her voice came out strong, steady, carrying across the frozen air with the particular authority she'd spent a decade cultivating. "FBI. Put your hands where I can see them and step away from the equipment."
The figure on the observation deck went still. For a long moment, neither of them moved—Isla at the base of the tower, her weapon trained on the silhouette above; Ethan framed against the floodlights like a subject in his own composition.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't the laugh of a madman—no theatrical cackling, no unhinged hysteria. It was the laugh of someone who had just heard a joke they'd been expecting, a confirmation of something they'd suspected all along.
"Agent Rivers," he said. "I hoped it would be you."
The sound of her name on his lips sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the cold.
He knew who she was. Had researched her, maybe, the way he'd researched his victims. Had seen her face in news coverage of the investigation, had connected her to the case that was slowly closing around him.
"Hands," she repeated. "Now."
Ethan raised his arms slowly, his palms open and visible in the floodlight's glare.
But he didn't move away from his equipment.
Didn't step toward the stairs that would bring him down to her level.
Just stood there, silhouetted against the sky, his breath forming clouds that the wind carried away like dissipating ghosts.
"I'm not armed," he said. "Well, I have a hammer in my bag. But I'm not going to use it. Not on you."
"Step away from the equipment. Walk down the stairs slowly, keep your hands visible."
"No."
The word was simple, flat, carrying no heat or challenge. Just a statement of fact, as immutable as the stone beneath his feet.
"Ethan, don't make this harder than it needs to be. Backup is on the way. You're not leaving here tonight, one way or another. The only question is how this ends."
"I know how it ends." His voice was eerily calm, the voice of someone who had made peace with something terrible. "It ends with my father's legacy finally complete. It ends with the last photograph he never got to take."
"Your father is dead. He's been dead for five years. Whatever you think you're accomplishing here—"
"I'm accomplishing what he deserved." For the first time, emotion crept into Ethan's voice—not anger, but something closer to grief.
"Fifty years of work. Fifty years of capturing this region, of showing people what it means to really see a landscape.
And what did he get for it? Forgotten. Copied.
Stolen from by people who didn't have a fraction of his talent. "
"So you killed them. Paulson, Hayes, Yamada—"
"I made them part of something beautiful.
The same way they made themselves part of my father's work without ever acknowledging him.
" Ethan's hands were still raised, but his voice had taken on the fervent quality of a true believer preaching to a congregation.
"They wanted to be landscape photographers.
Now they're part of the landscape. Forever. "
Isla felt her grip tighten on her weapon.
The wind was cutting through her, the cold seeping into her bones despite the layers she wore.
She couldn't stand out here indefinitely—her body would start failing, her hands would lose the fine motor control needed to fire accurately, her judgment would cloud with the first stages of hypothermia.
She needed to end this. Now.
"Ethan, I'm going to give you one more chance. Come down from there, turn yourself in peacefully. You can tell your story, explain what your father meant to you, make sure people understand why you did what you did. But you have to come with me now."
"Or what?" His voice was almost gentle. "You'll shoot me?"
"If I have to."
"I don't think you will. Not unless I give you a reason." He lowered his hands slowly, not reaching for a weapon, just letting them fall to his sides. "And I'm not going to give you a reason, Agent Rivers. Not the kind you need."
"Ethan—"
"I came here to finish my father's work.
To create the one photograph he never got to take—the view from Enger Tower, the composition that made him famous, with the final thief incorporated into the frame.
" He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice carried something that sounded almost like disappointment.
"But there's no one here. No photographer to complete the image. Just you."
"Just me," Isla repeated, her heart pounding.
"Just you." Ethan turned back to his camera, his movements slow and deliberate, his hands reaching for the equipment with the reverence of someone touching something sacred.
"I'm not going to hurt you. That's not what this is about.
You're not a thief. You're just someone trying to stop something you don't understand. "
"I understand that you've murdered three people."
"I've created three monuments to my father's legacy. There's a difference." He bent to the viewfinder, making some adjustment she couldn't see from this distance. "Go ahead and call for your backup. Have them drag me away in handcuffs. It doesn't matter anymore. I've already made my statement."
“And what ‘statement’ was that? The innocent lives you took?”
“Call it what you want,” he spat.
The wind howled across the observation deck, sending snow swirling around Ethan's silhouette. He stood at his camera like a conductor before an orchestra, his posture carrying a strange dignity that Isla found almost as disturbing as his crimes.
He wasn't going to surrender. That much was clear. But he also wasn't attacking, wasn't running, wasn't giving her the justification she needed to fire.
He was just... waiting.
Waiting for her to make the next move.
Isla's finger rested on the trigger guard, her weapon still trained on the figure above. Twenty minutes until backup arrived. Twenty minutes of standoff in conditions that were slowly killing both of them.
"Ethan," she said, her voice hoarse from the cold. "Whatever you're planning—don't. This doesn't have to end with more violence."
He didn't respond. Just stood at his camera, adjusting, composing, creating something in his mind that only he could see.
The wind screamed across Enger Tower, and Isla Rivers waited for the monster to show his hand.