CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Claddagh was quieter than usual for a Thursday night.
Isla sat in their usual booth near the back, her hands wrapped around a glass of whiskey she'd barely touched.
The amber liquid caught the warm light from the overhead fixtures, throwing patterns across the scarred wooden table that she and James had claimed as their own over almost three years of late nights and difficult cases.
The Irish pub had become a refuge of sorts—a place where the weight of the job could be set aside, if only for an hour or two, in favor of dark beer and darker humor.
James sat across from her, his own Guinness half-finished, the foam leaving a ring on the glass that marked how long they'd been sitting in companionable silence.
His flannel shirt was untucked, his tie long since discarded, and the lines around his eyes seemed deeper than they had that morning.
Valentine's Day had come and gone, taking with it the particular urgency that had driven them both to the edge of exhaustion.
"The doctors released their preliminary findings on Thornton," James said finally, breaking the silence that had stretched between them. "Kate forwarded the report about an hour ago."
Isla looked up from her whiskey. "And?"
"The neurological damage they found—it wasn't from yesterday. It wasn't from anything we did." James took a long pull from his beer, his expression troubled. "According to the medical team, the brain damage was accumulative. Happened over months. Maybe longer."
"From what?"
"Cold exposure. Repeated, prolonged cold exposure.
" James set down his glass and met her eyes.
"They found evidence consistent with someone subjecting themselves to near-freezing temperatures for extended periods.
Thirty to forty-five minutes at a time, they estimate.
Multiple times. The cellular damage to his prefrontal cortex, the markers in his blood work—all of it points to someone who spent months deliberately exposing himself to the kind of cold that kills people. "
Isla felt something twist in her chest. She thought about Jamie Thornton's apartment—the spartan furnishings, the wall of photographs, the obsessive documentation of women who looked like his dead wife.
"He was trying to kill himself," she said quietly. "In the same way he was preserving them."
"That's the working theory." James's jaw tightened.
"The doctors think he started doing it shortly after his wife died.
Months before he killed anyone. Climbing into those freezers, staying until he couldn't stand it anymore, then climbing back out.
" He shook his head slowly. "They can't say for certain whether he was trying to die or trying to understand what it felt like—trying to experience what he was eventually going to inflict on his victims. Maybe both.
Maybe he didn't know the difference anymore. "
The thought settled over Isla like a weight.
"The brain damage explains some of it," she said. "The escalation. The loss of impulse control. Three victims in three days—that's not the pattern of someone thinking clearly."
"No. It's the pattern of someone whose brain was already deteriorating.
" James turned his glass in his hands, watching the dark beer swirl.
"The cold he subjected himself to—it damaged the parts of his brain responsible for judgment, for planning, for understanding consequences.
By the time he started killing, he wasn't really Jamie Thornton anymore.
He was whatever was left after months of trying to freeze himself to death. "
Isla thought about the man she'd confronted in that restaurant kitchen.
The tears streaming down his face even as his hands tightened around Grace Hyland's throat.
The way he'd called her Rebecca, his voice cracking with a grief that had consumed everything else—reason, morality, the basic human recognition that the woman he was strangling was not his wife and never had been.
"Grief does terrible things to people," she said. "When it's not processed. When there's no one to help carry the weight of it."
"His wife was everything to him," James agreed.
"And when she died, he didn't have anyone else.
No family, no close friends—just a job reviewing restaurants that probably felt meaningless without her there to share the meals with.
" He leaned back in the booth, his broad shoulders settling against the worn leather.
"Some people, when they lose everything, they rebuild.
Find new connections, new purposes. Others just.. . disappear into the loss."
"And some of them take others with them."
"Yeah." The word came out heavy, tired. "Some of them do."
They sat in silence for a moment, the sounds of the pub washing over them—glasses clinking, low conversation, the Irish folk music that played softly from speakers mounted near the bar.
Normal sounds. The sounds of people going about their lives without knowing how close death had come to their city, how many women had been marked for preservation in the pages of a magazine they'd probably never read.
"Grace Hyland is going to be okay," James said, shifting the subject. "Hospital released her this afternoon. Some bruising, some damage to her throat that'll take a few weeks to heal, but no permanent injury. She's already talking about going back to work."
"Good." Isla finally took a sip of her whiskey, feeling the familiar burn trace a path down her throat. "She was lucky."
"She was smart. The way she stopped struggling, conserved her air—she bought herself the seconds you needed to get there.
" James's blue eyes met hers across the table, carrying something that went beyond professional admiration.
"And you were fast. Faster than backup, faster than protocol. If you'd waited—"
"If I'd waited, she'd be dead." Isla turned the glass in her hands, watching the whiskey catch the light.
"I know. I've been running the timing in my head all day.
Another thirty seconds and she would have been unconscious.
Another minute after that and we'd be planning a fourth funeral instead of celebrating a save. "
"You made the right call."
"This time." The words came out before she could stop them, carrying the weight of Miami, of Alicia Mendez, of all the times her judgment had failed when it mattered most. "This time I made the right call."
James was quiet for a moment, and she could feel him choosing his next words carefully. They'd worked together for almost three years now, long enough that he knew her history, knew her fears, knew the particular shape of the guilt she carried.
"You can't save everyone," he said finally. "Monica Hayes, Amanda Pierce, Sarah Ramsey—their deaths aren't on you."
"I know." Isla looked up at him, at the concern etched in the lines around his eyes, at the steadiness that had become her anchor over these past years. "I know that. But knowing it and feeling it—those are different things."
"Yeah." His voice was soft. "They are."
The bartender appeared at their table—a broad-shouldered man named Declan who'd been tending the Claddagh since before Isla had arrived in Duluth.
He set down a fresh whiskey without being asked, gave them both a knowing nod, and disappeared back toward the bar.
They came here often enough that Declan had learned their rhythms, their signals, the particular quality of silence that meant they needed refills but not conversation.
Isla wrapped her hands around the new glass, grateful for the warmth.
"There's something else," James said after a moment. "Kate told me this afternoon. The Lake Superior Killer case—it's being transferred."
Isla's hands stilled on the glass. "Transferred where?"
"US Marshals. Officially, as of tomorrow morning.
" James's expression was carefully neutral—the face he wore when he was delivering news he knew she wouldn't want to hear.
"The Bureau's active involvement is ending.
The case stays open, but unless new leads emerge, it's not our investigation anymore. "
The words landed like stones dropped into still water, sending ripples through Isla's carefully maintained calm.
The LSK. Robert Brune. The Shipwrecker. Two and a half years of her life, two months of waiting and watching and knowing he was still out there somewhere, and now she was being told to let it go.
"It makes sense," James continued, his voice gentle. "We don't have the resources to maintain an active manhunt indefinitely. Not with new cases coming in every week. The Marshals have a dedicated fugitive unit—that's what they do. If anyone's going to find him, it'll be them."
"If he's still alive to find."
"Right." James took a sip of his Guinness. "That's the other possibility. Two months in this climate, for a man his age, with limited resources and the whole region looking for him... he might have frozen to death in some abandoned building weeks ago. We might never know what happened to him."
Isla shook her head slowly. "He's not dead."
"Rivers—"
"I know how it sounds." She met his eyes, saw the concern there mixed with something that might have been resignation.
They'd had this conversation before, in various forms, over the past two months.
"I don't have proof. I don't have evidence.
I just have..." She trailed off, searching for the right word.
"Instinct," James finished for her.
"Instinct." She turned the word over, testing its weight.
"He spent sixty-four years on these shores.
His mother drowned in that lake when he was eight years old.
Every victim he ever took was a sacrifice to those waters.
" She thought about the dream that still haunted her—Brune's face in the fog, his voice whispering about what the lake wanted.
"Men like that don't just leave. They can't. Whatever's inside them is rooted to a place, fed by familiar ground. "
"The task force thinks he crossed into Canada."
"The task force is wrong."
James was quiet for a long moment, studying her face with those deep-set blue eyes that seemed to see more than she wanted to show.
He'd learned to trust her instincts over the years—even when they defied logic, even when the evidence pointed elsewhere.
She'd been right about the yoga studio connection.
She'd been right about the magazine. She'd been right about Jamie Thornton, even when their best lead had turned out to be an innocent man with an unfortunate hobby.
"Okay," he said finally.
Isla blinked. "Okay?"
"Okay, you think he's still here. I'm not going to argue with you about it.
" James lifted his glass, something almost like a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
"Your instincts have saved my ass more than once.
If you say Robert Brune is still in Duluth, then maybe he is.
The Marshals can run their manhunt, follow their leads to Canada or Norway or wherever they think he's gone.
But if he shows up again—if he surfaces anywhere near Lake Superior—you'll be the first one to know it. "
It wasn't agreement, exactly. More like acceptance—the acknowledgment that some things couldn't be argued away, couldn't be dismissed with logic or evidence or the weight of official opinion.
Isla had learned to live with uncertainty over the years.
She'd learned that sometimes the only thing you could do was hold onto what you believed and wait for the world to prove you right or wrong.
"Thank you," she said quietly.
James nodded and changed the subject, steering them away from the darkness they'd been swimming in and toward something lighter—Emma's science fair project, which had apparently involved creating a working model of Lake Superior's thermal layers and had won third place in the regional competition.
His face softened when he talked about his daughter, the lines of worry smoothing out, replaced by the particular pride of a father watching his child succeed.
Isla listened, letting his voice wash over her, feeling the tension of the past week slowly begin to unknot from her shoulders. The Claddagh was warm around them, the whiskey was smooth in her throat, and for this moment at least, the darkness could wait outside.
Jamie Thornton was in custody, his mind already fragmenting under the weight of what he'd done and what had been done to him.
Grace Hyland was alive, her throat bruised but her future intact.
The families of Monica Hayes and Amanda Pierce and Sarah Ramsey would have their answers, even if those answers brought no comfort.
And somewhere out there, in the vast gray expanse of February darkness, Robert Brune was still breathing. Still hiding. Still listening to whatever the lake whispered to him in the watches of the night.
Isla lifted her glass and took a long sip, feeling the burn trace familiar paths through her chest. The case was closed. The killer was caught. The Marshals would handle the manhunt for Brune from here.
But she knew, with a certainty that went deeper than evidence or logic, that her story with the Lake Superior Killer wasn't over yet.
The lake hadn't finished with either of them.
It never did.