Page 50 of Outside the Room

Isla leaned back in her chair, frustration building in her chest like steam in a pressure cooker. She believed O'Connor about Sanchez—his method had been calculated, precise, driven by the specific threat each victim posed to his operation. Sarah's murder had been messier, more impulsive, lacking the careful planning that characterized his other crimes.

Which meant somewhere in Duluth, a killer was still walking free.

The realization sent a chill through her. They'd caught one murderer and dismantled one criminal enterprise. But the job wasn't finished.

***

Hours later, as weak winter sunlight struggled through the precinct's grimy windows, Isla sat in the break room nursing coffee that could strip paint and reviewing the case files one final time. The forensic audit had laid bare O'Connor's role in falsifying shipping documents, creating a paper trail that led directly to Nash Global's smuggling network. Bank records showed regular payments to Michael Thorne—modest amounts deposited in his wife's account over eighteen months, the price of his silence about irregularities he'd noticed but never reported.

Thorne's suicide note, reexamined in this new context, told a different story than they'd initially understood. He hadn't fabricated his confession—he'd simply told part of the truth. O'Connor had orchestrated two murders, and Thorne had watched from the sidelines, his conscience corroded by complicity and guilt. In the end, he couldn't live with what his silence had enabled.

The pieces formed a coherent picture now, not perfect but sufficient for conviction. O'Connor would spend the rest of his life in prison, his network exposed and dismantled, his careful plans reduced to evidence in banker's boxes. Justice, of a sort.

Sullivan appeared in the doorway, looking as exhausted as she felt. His usually precise hair was disheveled, and his shirt showed the wrinkles of someone who'd been working for twenty-four hours straight.

"Hartwell just finished the plea negotiation," he reported, slumping into the chair across from her. "O'Connor's cooperation gets him twenty-five to life instead of the death penalty. He'll die in prison, but he won't die by injection."

Isla nodded absently, her mind already moving beyond the immediate resolution. The case was officially closed, the paperwork filed, the press releases drafted. But loose threads had a way of unraveling even the most carefully constructed narratives.

"Good work, Rivers," Sullivan added quietly. "Following your instincts instead of accepting the easy answer—that's what broke this open."

The praise should have felt validating, but Isla found herself thinking of Sarah Sanchez instead. A young woman with boxing trophies and a determination to protect her community, whose killer was still unknown. The weight of unfinished business settled on her shoulders like a familiar burden.

As she gathered her files and prepared to leave the precinct, stepping out into the pale morning light, Isla knew this resolution was incomplete. One killer was behind bars, but another remained free. And somewhere in the maze of corporate connections and political influence that surrounded Duluth's port, that killer was likely planning their next move.

This time, she'd trusted her instincts instead of ignoring them. And they'd been right in some ways, despite pressure from all sides to accept the convenient narrative of Thorne's suicide note.

She had to trust they'd be right again about what came next.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The Claddagh wore its history in every scarred table and faded photograph, an Irish pub that had survived urban renewal and economic downturns through the simple expedient of pouring honest drinks and asking no questions. Its windows glowed amber against the falling snow, a beacon of warmth in a city that seemed permanently locked in winter's grip.

Isla pushed through the heavy oak door into a world of comfortable shadows and low conversations. The walls displayed decades of Duluth police memorabilia—black and white photographs of long-dead chiefs, vintage badges behind dusty glass, a collection of nightsticks that belonged to an era when police work was simpler and more direct. The patrons were predominantly cops and firefighters, their voices creating a low murmur of shop talk and shared grievances.

She found Sullivan in a corner booth beneath a faded Guinness mirror and a photograph of some forgotten commissioner from the 1940s. He'd claimed the table strategically, positioned where conversations couldn't be overheard and faces couldn't be easily read from across the room. A whiskey sat before him, amber liquid catching the light from the hanging lamp above their table.

As she slid into the seat across from him, a server appeared with a dark lager she hadn't ordered.

"Figured you for a beer drinker," Sullivan said, the ghost of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Whiskey's more of a solitary brooding kind of drink."

"You'd be surprised how much solitary brooding I do," Isla replied, accepting the beer gratefully. The first sip was cold and bitter, cutting through the exhaustion that had settled in her bones like sediment.

They began with work—the evidence chain, the timeline reconstruction, O'Connor's plea agreement that would keep him locked away until old age rendered him harmless. But gradually, inevitably, their conversation drifted toward more personal territory.

Sullivan leaned back against the worn leather, studying her with an expression that mixed curiosity with something that might have been respect. The ambient noise of the bar, conversations, the clink of glassware, the soft thud of darts hitting their target, created a buffer around their table.

"Before you arrived," he said finally, "I researched what happened in Miami."

Isla's hand tightened around her beer glass, but Sullivan raised his palm in a gesture of reassurance.

"Not to judge," he continued. "To understand who I'd be working with." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "Your instincts were sound. The execution went sideways, but the reasoning was solid."

The noise of the bar seemed to fade beneath the weight of memory. Alicia Mendez's face floated in Isla's mind—the elementary school teacher who'd died because Isla had been so certain she'd profiled the killer correctly. The warehouse that should have contained their suspect but held only shadows and echoes. The frantic race across Miami that had ended seconds too late.

"That's why I came to the port that night," Sullivan added, his voice pitched low enough that she had to lean forward to hear him. "I had a feeling you wouldn't let it go, and I wanted to see what you'd found. Good thing I did."

They raised their glasses in a quiet toast, the soft chime of glass against glass marking something that felt like the true beginning of their partnership. But even in this moment of connection, Isla's mind returned to the thread that continued to tug at her consciousness.

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