CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The ambulance lights painted Enger Tower in alternating shades of red and white, each pulse illuminating the frozen scene like a heartbeat that refused to stop.
James Sullivan stood at the edge of the observation deck, watching the paramedics work on a body that no longer needed their help.
Ethan Benson lay where Isla had left him, his blood already freezing into the stone, his eyes open to a sky that had begun to lighten almost imperceptibly along the eastern horizon.
The camera still stood on its tripod beside him, its screen dark now, the final photograph it had captured waiting for forensic technicians who wouldn't arrive for another hour.
But James wasn't looking at the body.
He was looking at Isla.
She sat on the tailgate of the second ambulance, a thermal blanket wrapped around her shoulders, a paramedic shining a penlight into her eyes while she answered questions in a voice that sounded like it belonged to someone else.
Her hands were still covered in Ethan Benson's blood—it had soaked through her gloves, through the sleeves of James's parka that she'd borrowed, through whatever barrier she usually maintained between herself and the horrors she witnessed.
She looked smaller than he'd ever seen her. Diminished in a way that had nothing to do with her physical size and everything to do with the weight she was carrying.
"Agent Sullivan?"
James turned to find one of the responding officers approaching—a young woman whose name he couldn't remember, her breath fogging in the pre-dawn cold.
"Crime scene techs are about twenty minutes out," she said. "And SAC Channing called. She wants a full briefing as soon as you're available."
"Tell her I'll call in an hour."
"She said—"
"An hour." His voice came out harder than he intended, and he saw the officer flinch slightly before nodding and retreating toward her cruiser.
James ran a hand through his hair, feeling the grit of a night spent driving through frozen streets, coordinating protection details, and praying that Isla wouldn't do something reckless before he could reach her.
He'd known, the moment she'd texted that she was going to make contact, that he wouldn't get there in time.
Had pushed the sedan through conditions that should have killed him, taking corners too fast on ice-slicked roads, because some part of him had understood that she was walking into something she might not walk out of.
She had walked out. Technically. Physically.
But watching her now, watching the way she stared at her bloody hands like they belonged to a stranger, he wasn't sure the same could be said for the rest of her.
He crossed to the ambulance, his boots crunching on frozen gravel, and the paramedic stepped back as he approached. A woman in her fifties with kind eyes and the particular steadiness of someone who had seen worse things than this.
"How is she?"
"Physically? Mild hypothermia, some bruising from the altercation, elevated heart rate. Nothing that rest and warmth won't fix." The paramedic lowered her voice. "Mentally? That's above my pay grade. But she's been through something tonight. You might want to keep an eye on her."
James nodded, the words landing somewhere in his chest and staying there. "Thank you."
He moved to the tailgate, settling onto the cold metal beside Isla. She didn't acknowledge his presence—just kept staring at her hands, at the dried blood that had turned black in the ambulance's interior lighting.
"Hey." He kept his voice soft, the same tone he used when Emma was upset about something she didn't want to talk about. "You okay?"
Isla laughed. It was a broken sound, sharp-edged and hollow.
"I shot him, James. I shot an unarmed man who was running at me, and then I helped him up the stairs so he could look through his camera before he died." She finally looked at him, and the rawness in her amber eyes made his chest tighten. "Does that sound okay to you?"
"It sounds like you did what you had to do."
"Did I?" She shook her head, returning her gaze to her hands. "He wasn't trying to hurt me. He was trying to make me kill him. Suicide by cop—the oldest trick in the book, and I walked right into it."
"You couldn't have known—"
"I should have known. That's my job, James. Reading people, understanding what they want, predicting what they'll do. And I stood there with my weapon drawn while he engineered his own death, and I didn't see it until it was too late."
James was quiet for a moment, letting her words settle into the frozen air.
He thought about all the times he'd second-guessed himself over the years—the cases that had gone wrong, the witnesses he hadn't protected, the suspects he'd let slip through his fingers.
The particular weight of carrying responsibility for outcomes you couldn't control.
"Three people are dead because of him," he said finally. "Three photographers who did nothing worse than take pictures that reminded him of his father's work. And you stopped him, Isla. Whatever he wanted, whatever his plan was—you ended it. Tonight. Before he could hurt anyone else."
"I ended him." Her voice cracked on the word. "He bled out on the observation deck while I held his hand, and the last thing he said was that he was sorry he got blood on the camera lens."
James had no response to that. Some things didn't have responses—they just existed, heavy and immutable, weights you learned to carry rather than problems you could solve.
He reached out and took her hand. The blood had dried to a tacky residue, rough against his palm, but he didn't pull away. Just held on, the way he'd wanted to hold on for three years, waiting for a moment that might never come.
Isla's fingers tightened around his. She didn't say anything.
They sat like that for a long time, watching the sky lighten toward dawn.
***
Getting Isla home took longer than it should have.
She protested, of course—insisted she was fine, that she needed to stay and help process the scene, that there were reports to file and calls to make and a hundred other obligations that couldn't wait.
James listened to all of it with the patient stubbornness he'd perfected over years of dealing with his daughter's objections, and then he told her she was going home anyway.
"Kate's orders," he said, which was technically true—he'd called the SAC while the paramedics were finishing their assessment, and she'd agreed that Isla needed rest before the investigation could continue. "You can fight with her about it in the morning. For now, you're done."
Isla had glared at him with something approaching her usual fire, but the effect was undermined by the exhaustion that dragged at her features, the slight tremor in her hands that she couldn't quite control. In the end, she'd let him guide her to his sedan without further argument.
Her apartment was cold when they arrived—the heater had failed again, he noticed, the radiator beneath her window sitting silent and useless.
James found the thermostat and cranked it up, then started opening cabinets until he located a space heater that looked like it had been purchased during the Reagan administration.
"It works," Isla said from the doorway, her voice flat. "Usually."
"Usually isn't good enough." He plugged in the heater and positioned it near the couch, feeling the first weak waves of warmth begin to push back against the cold. "You need to get your landlord to fix this properly."
"I've told him three times."
"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.