CHAPTER FOURTEEN #2
Cross picked up the photo with trembling fingers. He studied it for a long moment, and Isla could see him genuinely trying to remember, genuinely searching through his memory for anything that might help.
"There was a man," he said slowly. "A few weeks ago. He came into the studio asking about classes, but he never actually signed up. I remember thinking it was odd—he didn't seem like the yoga type."
Isla felt her pulse quicken. "Can you describe him?"
"Late thirties, maybe early forties. Average height, average build. Brown hair, I think, or maybe dark blonde. He was wearing a baseball cap, so it was hard to tell." Cross set the photo down. "The thing I remember most was how he looked at the class schedule. Like he was memorizing it."
"Did he speak to Amanda specifically?"
"Not that I saw. But I wasn't watching him the whole time." Cross's brow furrowed deeper. "Do you think—was that him? The person who..."
"We don't know yet." Isla retrieved the photo and tucked it back into her folder. "But if you remember anything else about this man—anything at all—I need you to call me immediately."
She pulled a card from her pocket and placed it on his desk. Cross stared at it like it was a snake coiled to strike.
"Am I a suspect?" he asked quietly. "Is that why you're really here?"
Isla considered her answer carefully. The truth was complicated—Cross's connection to both victims made him impossible to ignore, and the accounts from his students about his wandering hands and lingering attention painted a portrait of a man who had difficulty respecting boundaries.
But her instincts, honed by years of profiling and a handful of devastating mistakes, were telling her something different.
"You're a person of interest," she said finally. "Both victims attended your studio. You had a romantic history with one of them. Those are facts we can't ignore."
"But?"
"But I don't think you killed them." The words came out before she could stop them, and she saw James's eyebrows rise slightly in her peripheral vision. "Your reaction at the restaurant—either you're an exceptional actor, or you genuinely didn't know Amanda Pierce was dead until we told you."
Cross let out a breath that seemed to deflate him entirely. "I didn't know. I swear to God, I didn't know."
"That said," James interjected, "we're going to need you to stay in town until this investigation is concluded. Don't make any travel plans, don't change your routine dramatically, and if you remember anything else about the man who came asking about classes—"
"I'll call." Cross picked up Isla's card and turned it over in his fingers. "Agent Rivers. Agent Sullivan. I'll cooperate fully. Whatever you need."
Isla stood, and James followed suit. At the door to the office, she paused and looked back at Cross.
He was still sitting behind his desk, staring at the card in his hands, looking smaller somehow than he had when they'd first spotted him at the restaurant—smaller and older and infinitely more afraid.
"Mr. Cross," she said. "The man at your studio. The one asking about classes. Did he seem interested in anyone else? Any other students?"
Cross thought about it, and she watched his face change as a new memory surfaced.
"There was something," he said slowly. "After he left—I noticed him in the parking lot.
He was standing by his car, just... watching.
The Monday evening class was letting out, and he was watching the women leave.
" His voice dropped. "I remember thinking I should say something, but then he drove away and I forgot about it. "
"What kind of car?"
"I don't—" Cross stopped, his eyes narrowing in concentration. "Gray, I think. Some kind of sedan. I didn't pay attention to the make."
Gray sedan. Just like the one captured on the security footage near Amanda Pierce's yoga studio. Just like Nathan Cross's own Honda, which had seemed so damning an hour ago.
"Thank you," Isla said. "We'll be in touch."
She and James walked out through the empty studio, past the reception desk with its crystals and incense holders, past the bulletin board advertising meditation workshops and beginner's packages.
The February cold hit them the moment they stepped outside, sharp and clarifying after the sandalwood-scented warmth.
James waited until they were in the car with the doors closed before speaking.
"You told him you don't think he did it."
Isla started the engine and let the heat begin its slow crawl toward comfortable. "I know."
"We can't rule him out yet. The connection to both victims, the inappropriate behavior with students—"
"I know." Isla stared through the windshield at the yoga studio's cheerful sign, at the promise of serenity and self-discovery that had curdled into something dark. "But his reaction was genuine, James. You saw it. When we told him about Amanda, he nearly fell over."
"He could be a good actor."
"He could be." She pulled out of the parking space and turned toward the main road. "But I've been wrong before about rushing to judgment. I'm not going to make that mistake again."
James was quiet for a moment, and she knew he was thinking about Miami, about Alicia Mendez, about the cost of certainty when certainty was wrong. It was one of the things she appreciated about him—his willingness to let her past inform their present without using it as a weapon.
"So what's your read?" he asked finally.
Isla considered the question as she navigated the gray streets of Duluth, the February sky pressing down like a weight.
Nathan Cross was many things—boundary-pushing, perhaps even predatory in his attention to certain students—but a killer?
The man she'd just interviewed didn't have the control, the patience, the particular coldness required to strangle two women and arrange their bodies with care.
He was too reactive, too transparent, too obviously shaken by the news of their deaths.
"I think the studio is a hunting ground," she said slowly. "But not for Cross. For someone else. Someone who watched Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce without their knowledge, learned their schedules, their routines. Someone patient enough to wait for the right moment."
"The man Cross described."
"Maybe. Or maybe that was just some random person and we're grasping at shadows.
" Isla tightened her grip on the wheel. "But the yoga studio connection feels real.
Both women attended, both fit the same general profile—light hair, mid-thirties, attractive.
If the killer was looking for a certain type of victim, a yoga studio would be a perfect place to find them. "
"A lot of yoga studios in Duluth."
"And we need to check them all. See if any other women matching the profile have reported being followed or approached by a stranger.
" Isla merged onto the highway, heading back toward the field office.
"I also want to pull the membership records from Serenity Yoga.
Everyone who's attended in the past six months.
Cross said the man didn't sign up for classes, but maybe he gave a fake name to get on a mailing list. Something. "
James pulled out his phone and started typing. "I'll have Fritz get started on the records. And the security footage from the Mobil station—we need to verify Cross's alibi for Monday night."
"Do that." Isla felt the weight of the case pressing down on her—two dead women, a killer who posed his victims with care, and now a possible sighting that might lead nowhere. "And James?"
"Yeah?"
"The description Cross gave—late thirties, average build, dark hair or blonde, baseball cap. That's half the men in Minnesota."
"I know."
"We need more." She took the exit toward the FBI field office, the familiar buildings rising against the gray sky.
"The victims' connection to the yoga studio might be coincidence.
Cross's romantic history with Amanda Pierce might be coincidence.
But somewhere in all these coincidences, there's a killer who's choosing his victims deliberately. Who's finding them somewhere."
"And posing them in freezers."
"And posing them in freezers." Isla pulled into the parking lot and killed the engine, but she didn't move to get out.
Instead, she sat for a moment, staring at the building where the whiteboard waited with its photographs and its lines and its growing web of connections that still hadn't coalesced into a pattern she could read.
"We can't rule Cross out completely," she said finally.
"Keep him on the board. But widen the focus.
I want to know about every gray sedan registered within fifty miles of Duluth.
I want to know about every man who's been reported for suspicious behavior near yoga studios or gyms or anywhere women in their thirties might gather.”
James nodded.
They had a lot more work to do if they were to keep the women of Duluth safe for another night.