CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #2
For a moment, Kane didn't respond. His eyes moved from Isla to James and back again, calculating angles, assessing threats with the tactical awareness that two decades of special operations had made instinctive.
Then he smiled—a cold expression that never reached his eyes.
"Because you're not going to stop me," he said. "Not you, not the FBI, not anyone. These waters are mine now. And everyone who poisons them—" He pressed the knife harder against Halverson's throat, drawing a thin line of blood. "—will answer to me."
"Kane, don't—"
But she was already too late. With a single, efficient motion, Thomas Kane drew the blade across Marcus Halverson's throat.
The captain's body crumpled, and Isla fired.
But Kane was already moving—breaking left, zigzagging across the blood-slicked deck with the fluid speed of someone who had spent years learning to evade gunfire.
Her first shot missed, sparking off metal somewhere behind him.
Her second came closer, tearing through the space he'd occupied a fraction of a second earlier.
Then he was behind the wheelhouse, using its bulk as cover, and Isla was moving too—circling right while James went left, trying to cut off his escape routes.
"Kane!" she shouted. "There's nowhere to go! Put down the weapon!"
His response came not in words but in action. He burst from cover in a direction she hadn't anticipated—straight toward her, closing the distance with the terrifying speed of a predator who had decided she was the next obstacle to eliminate.
She fired again, but the deck pitched beneath her feet as the boat rocked in a swell, throwing off her aim. The shot went wide, and then Kane was on her—one hand seizing her weapon, the other swinging the Ka-Bar toward her face.
Isla twisted away from the blade, feeling it part the air inches from her cheek.
She struck out with her elbow, connecting with Kane's ribs, but the blow seemed to have no effect.
His grip on her gun hand was iron, inexorable, and she felt her fingers going numb as he applied pressure to the nerve cluster in her wrist.
The Glock clattered to the deck.
"James!" she shouted, but Kane was already spinning her around, using her body as a shield against her partner's weapon. The knife came up to her throat, its edge cold and wet against her skin.
"Drop it." Kane's breath was hot against her ear, his voice carrying the calm of someone who had taken hostages before and knew exactly how this dance was supposed to go. "Drop the weapon or she dies."
James stood frozen, his Glock still raised, his blue eyes moving rapidly between Isla and the man holding her. The boat rocked beneath them all, indifferent to the human drama playing out on its deck.
"You're not going to kill a federal agent," James said, but his voice carried doubt that Isla could hear even through the pounding of her own heart. "That's different from killing drug runners, Kane. That crosses a line you can't uncross."
"There are no lines anymore." Kane's grip tightened on Isla's arm, pulling her closer against him. "The lines were drawn by people who never had the courage to do what was necessary. I'm not bound by their rules."
Isla felt the knife pressing harder against her throat, felt the trickle of blood where its edge had begun to bite. Her mind raced through options—none of them good, all of them likely to end with her bleeding out on a deck already slick with other people's deaths.
"You served your country," she said, keeping her voice steady despite the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "Twenty-two years. You believed in something—honor, duty, protecting the innocent. Does this feel like protecting the innocent to you?"
"Quiet." The word came out hard, carrying an edge of uncertainty that hadn't been there before.
"You're holding a knife to the throat of a woman who's spent her life trying to stop people like the men you killed tonight. Is that what your oath meant? Is that the mission?"
"I said quiet." But the knife trembled slightly against her skin, the first crack in Kane's armor of certainty.
Isla saw James's eyes shift—saw him tracking something, calculating angles, making a decision that would determine whether she lived or died in the next few seconds.
"Kane," James said, his voice dropping into a calm that was almost hypnotic.
"Look at me. Look at what you're doing. This isn't a Taliban compound.
This isn't a hostile vessel in the Gulf.
This is an American fishing boat, and you're holding a knife to an FBI agent's throat. Is this who you wanted to become?"
Something shifted in Kane's posture—a momentary loosening, a breath that might have been hesitation.
James fired.
The shot was perfect—threading the narrow gap between Isla's head and Kane's, finding the target that was no bigger than a playing card. The former SEAL's grip on her went slack, and Isla threw herself forward, rolling across the bloody deck as Kane's body collapsed behind her.
She came up with her backup weapon, a compact Glock 43 that she kept in an ankle holster, but there was no need.
Thomas Kane lay on his back, eyes staring sightlessly at the stars that had finally emerged through a break in the clouds, a neat hole in his forehead marking where James's bullet had ended his war.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. The boat rocked gently beneath them, her deck transformed into an abattoir, the bodies of smugglers and their vigilante executioner arranged in the graceless composition of violence concluded.
Then James was beside her, his hands on her shoulders, his voice cutting through the shock that threatened to swallow her whole.
"Isla. Are you hurt? Isla, look at me."
She touched her throat, her fingers coming away red with blood that was mostly not her own. "I'm okay," she said, and was surprised to find that it was true. "I'm okay."
James pulled her close, and she let him—let herself lean into his solid warmth for just a moment, let herself feel something other than the adrenaline and fear that had sustained her through the confrontation. His heart was pounding against her cheek, matching the rhythm of her own.
"Hell of a shot," she murmured against his flannel shirt.
"Hell of a target," he replied, and she heard the tremor in his voice that betrayed how close he'd come to making a different choice, a safer choice, a choice that would have gotten her killed.
They separated as the Coast Guard response boat pulled alongside, its crew ready to secure the scene and begin the process of documenting yet another massacre on Lake Superior's waters.
Isla stood, her legs unsteady beneath her, and looked down at the man who had believed he was saving these waters through blood.
Thomas Kane's face was peaceful in death—whatever demons had driven him to this deck, to this moment, had finally released their hold. The lake stretched dark and patient around them, keeping her secrets as she always had, accepting one more body into her cold embrace.
"It's over," James said quietly, standing beside her.
Isla thought about Elena Rodriguez, still sitting in a cell, taking credit for crimes she hadn't committed.
She thought about the Lake Superior Killer—the other one, the patient one, still out there somewhere, making murders look like accidents.
She thought about all the predators who used these waters as their hunting ground, and the endless work that remained to drag them into the light.
"This part is," she said. "But the rest—"
She left the sentence unfinished, watching as the Coast Guard crew began the grim work of processing a crime scene that would generate headlines for days. The lake stretched toward the horizon, vast and dark and full of secrets that she had only begun to uncover.
Thomas Kane's war was over.
Hers was just beginning.