CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The address on Jamie Thornton's driver's license led them to a neighborhood that seemed to have given up on itself.
Isla studied the building through the sedan's windshield as James pulled to the curb—a squat, three-story apartment complex on the east side of Duluth, the kind of place that advertised "affordable efficiency units" and meant "barely livable boxes where dreams went to die.
" The siding had gone gray with age and neglect, and the parking lot was more pothole than pavement.
A single car sat in front of the building—not a gray sedan, but a rusted pickup truck with a cracked windshield and a bumper sticker that read "I'd Rather Be Fishing. "
"This is it?" James asked, checking the address against his notes.
"Quite a downgrade from a Victorian on Fifth Street."
"Grief does that to people." Isla thought about Vincent Carlisle's squalid house, the newspapers stacked like monuments to despair, the way loss could hollow a person out until all that remained was a shell going through the motions of living. "Some people rebuild. Others just... stop."
They approached the building's entrance, a glass door with a crack running diagonally across its surface like a wound that had never healed.
The lock was broken—had been for some time, judging by the rust around the latch—and the door swung open at Isla's touch.
Inside, the hallway smelled of mildew and something that might have been boiled cabbage, the particular scent of a building where no one cared enough to complain.
Unit 2B was at the end of the first-floor hallway, its door painted a shade of brown that seemed designed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
Isla positioned herself to one side, her hand resting on her weapon, while James took the other.
They'd done this dance a hundred times before—the choreography of uncertainty, the careful approach to a door that might hide anything.
James knocked. The sound echoed in the quiet hallway, sharp and authoritative.
Nothing.
He knocked again, harder this time. "FBI. Jamie Thornton, open the door."
Silence. The kind of silence that pressed against the ears, that seemed to have weight and texture. Isla strained to hear movement from inside—footsteps, the creak of floorboards, anything that would suggest someone was home and choosing not to answer.
The building's superintendent was a wiry man in his sixties who introduced himself as Gus and seemed entirely unsurprised that the FBI wanted to see inside one of his units.
He'd probably seen worse, Isla thought as he fumbled with his ring of keys.
Places like this tended to collect people running from something.
"Thornton, you said?" Gus squinted at the door as if trying to remember. "Quiet guy. Keeps to himself. Don't think I've seen him in weeks, come to think of it. Rent's paid through the end of February, so I figured he was still around somewhere."
"When did you last see him?" Isla asked.
"Couldn't say exactly. Before Christmas, maybe?
He'd go out at night sometimes—I'd see his car leaving when I was taking out the trash.
Never talked to nobody, never had visitors.
" Gus shrugged, the gesture carrying the particular indifference of someone who'd long ago stopped being curious about his tenants' lives.
"I don't pry. Long as the rent's paid and they're not cooking meth, people can do what they want. "
The key turned in the lock with a click that seemed too loud in the silence. Isla drew her weapon and nodded at James, who pushed the door open from the side, letting it swing inward to reveal the darkness beyond.
"FBI," Isla called into the apartment. "Jamie Thornton, make yourself known."
Nothing.
She went in first, James covering her, their movements practiced and precise.
The apartment was small—a studio, barely four hundred square feet—and it took less than thirty seconds to clear.
The bathroom door stood open on an empty room.
The closet held a handful of clothes on wire hangers.
The narrow bed was made with military precision, its thin blanket pulled taut across the mattress.
No Jamie Thornton. No sign that anyone had been here in days.
Isla holstered her weapon and let her eyes move across the space, cataloguing details.
The apartment was spartan to the point of bleakness—no pictures on the walls, no personal items on the dresser, nothing that suggested a life being lived rather than merely endured.
A hot plate sat on the counter beside a single pot and a single bowl.
A small television faced the bed, its screen dark and dusty.
But it was the wall above the desk that made her breath catch.
Photographs. Dozens of them, arranged in careful rows, their edges slightly curled from being handled too many times.
Women's faces stared out from the display—some cut from magazines, others printed on computer paper, a few that looked like they'd been taken from a distance with a long lens.
All of them blonde. All of them in their thirties.
All of them bearing that same general resemblance to each other, to Rebecca Thornton, to the women who had been found posed in freezers across Duluth.
"Rivers." James's voice was tight. "Look at this."
He was standing by the desk, holding a stack of papers he'd found in one of the drawers. Isla moved to his side and took them, her pulse quickening as she recognized what she was looking at.
Printouts. Information about closed restaurants in Duluth—addresses, closure dates, reasons for shutdown.
Bella Ristorante was there, with notes about the salmonella outbreak and the dates of the health department closure.
The Shoreline Diner, with details about the renovation timeline.
Harrington's Steakhouse, with information about the kitchen fire and the insurance dispute.
Three crime scenes. All of them documented in Jamie Thornton's files.
But there were others, too. A downtown café called The Copper Kettle, closed three months ago when the owner retired and no buyer materialized.
A French bistro called Maison Laurent, temporarily shuttered while the owners converted it into a Mediterranean fusion restaurant.
A sandwich shop near the university, closed for winter break and not scheduled to reopen until March.
"He's been researching," Isla said, her mind racing through the implications. "Tracking which restaurants are closed, which ones might have working freezers."
"Building a list of potential dump sites."
"Not dump sites." The distinction felt important. "Display cases. He's preserving them, James. Presenting them. The freezers aren't about hiding the bodies—they're about keeping them perfect."
She thought about Rebecca Thornton's photograph, about the way grief could twist love into something unrecognizable.
Jamie Thornton had lost his wife to fire—the ultimate destroyer, the force that consumed everything and left nothing behind but ash and memory.
Of course he'd turned to cold. Of course he'd sought preservation over destruction, permanence over loss.
"He's not here," James said, stating the obvious. "But this—" He gestured at the wall of photographs, at the files documenting closed restaurants. "This is enough for an arrest warrant. Maybe enough to prove premeditation."
"If we can find him."
Isla turned back to the photographs on the wall, scanning the faces for anyone she recognized.
Monica Hayes was there—her picture cut from the I Love Duluth magazine feature, the same warm smile that had greeted customers at The Looking Glass.
Amanda Pierce, her Teacher of the Year photograph carefully trimmed and mounted at eye level.
Sarah Ramsey, her professional headshot arranged alongside the others.
Three victims. Three women already dead.
But there were more photographs. More faces she didn't recognize, more women who fit the profile—blonde, attractive, mid-thirties—more potential targets who might not know they'd been marked.
"We need to identify these women," Isla said. "Get their names, their addresses, figure out who's at risk."
"That'll take time."
"Time we don't have." She turned from the wall, her mind already racing ahead to the next step, the next move, the next decision that might mean the difference between saving a life and arriving too late.
"He's escalating. Three victims in three days, and today is Valentine's Day.
If he's working toward something, if this date means something to him—"
"He might already be hunting his next target."
The thought sat between them like something with weight, something that pressed down on Isla's chest and made it hard to breathe.
Somewhere in Duluth, a woman was going about her day—working, shopping, living—without knowing that a man consumed by grief had chosen her to be preserved.
To be kept. To become another frozen echo of the wife he'd lost.
"He needs a location," Isla said, the pieces clicking into place even as she spoke. "A closed restaurant with a working freezer. That's his pattern—he selects the victim first, then finds a suitable place to take her."
"The files," James said, following her logic. "The restaurants he's been researching—"
"Might tell us where he's planning to go next."
Isla pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts until she found the number she was looking for. Daniel Murphy answered on the second ring, his voice carrying the particular wariness of someone who'd recently been suspected of murder.
"Mr. Murphy, this is Agent Rivers. I need your help."
A pause. "You mean you're not calling to apologize for tearing apart my warehouse?"
"We can discuss apologies later. Right now I need your expertise." Isla kept her voice professional, urgent. "Closed restaurants in Duluth—specifically ones that might still have working freezers. I need to know which locations would fit that profile."
"That's... a pretty specific question." Murphy's tone shifted from wary to curious. "Is this about the case? The women in the freezers?"
"Mr. Murphy—"
"I'm not asking to pry. I'm asking because I might actually be able to help.
" She could hear movement on his end—papers shuffling, maybe a chair creaking.
"I keep pretty detailed records, as you know.
Let me think... There's The Copper Kettle on Second Street.
Downtown café, closed about three months ago when the owner retired.
I was hoping to buy their espresso machine, but the estate's still in probate. "
"Would the freezer still be operational?"
"Doubt it. Place has been sitting empty, and the power company usually shuts things off pretty quick when the bills stop getting paid. No one's maintaining anything there."
Isla crossed that one off mentally. A killer as careful as Thornton wouldn't risk a location without a working freezer—the whole point was preservation, and a dead freezer was just an insulated box.
"What else?"
"There's Maison Laurent," Murphy said. "French bistro over on Lake Avenue. The owners are converting it into a Mediterranean fusion place—Olive & Thyme, they're going to call it. Pretty major renovation, been going on since early January."
"Is the freezer still working?"
"Should be. The renovation's mostly cosmetic—new paint, new fixtures, that kind of thing. They're keeping most of the kitchen equipment, including the walk-in. Last I heard, they were even storing some of their inventory in there while the work was being done."
Isla felt something tighten in her chest. A closed restaurant with an operational freezer, accessible during a renovation when workers came and went at irregular hours. The kind of location where a man who knew the restaurant industry could slip in unnoticed.
"Address?"
"Hold on, let me check my files..." More shuffling sounds. "Here it is. 847 Lake Avenue, between Third and Fourth. The owner's name is—"
"That's enough. Thank you, Mr. Murphy."
She ended the call and turned to James, who had been listening to her half of the conversation with growing tension.
"Two possibilities," she said. "The Copper Kettle downtown—probably a dead end, power's likely off. And Maison Laurent on Lake Avenue, a French bistro being converted to Mediterranean fusion. Freezer should still be operational."
"We should check both."
"We should." Isla's eyes moved back to the wall of photographs, to the faces of women who might or might not be in danger, to the meticulous documentation of a killer's obsession. "But we need to move fast. Split up, cover both locations simultaneously."
James hesitated—she could see the objection forming in his expression, the instinct to stay together, to approach the threat as a team. But he'd worked with her long enough to know that sometimes the math was simple: two locations, two agents, no time to waste.
"I'll take The Copper Kettle," he said. "You take the bistro."
"Call Fritz, get backup rolling to both locations. And keep your phone on—if either of us finds something, the other needs to know immediately."
James nodded, already pulling out his phone. Isla took one last look at Jamie Thornton's apartment—the spartan furnishings, the wall of photographs, the files that documented his descent from grieving widower to methodical killer—and felt the familiar weight of a case approaching its end.
Three women were already dead. There might be a fourth out there right now, chosen from the pages of a magazine, stalked by a man who wanted to freeze her forever in some twisted memorial to his dead wife.
Isla intended to find her first.
She left the apartment at a near-run, her boots echoing in the empty hallway, her mind already mapping the fastest route to Lake Avenue. Behind her, James was coordinating with Fritz, his voice fading as she pushed through the building's broken front door and into the cold February afternoon.
Valentine's Day. The irony wasn't lost on her. A day meant for love, for connection, for celebrating the people who mattered most. And somewhere in Duluth, a man who'd lost the woman he loved was hunting for her replacement, one frozen face at a time.
The sedan's engine roared to life, and Isla pulled out of the parking lot with her heart pounding against her ribs. Maison Laurent. 847 Lake Avenue. A French bistro becoming something new, its walk-in freezer humming in the dark, waiting.
She just hoped she wasn't already too late.