"Ma’am?Are you alright?"
Isla wiped blood from her eye and straightened her spine.
"FBI," she rasped."Special Agent Isla Rivers.I need you to call this in."
CHAPTER FOUR
Paramedics arrived eleven minutes after the patrol officers.Isla counted everyone from the bumper of the squad car, a blanket around her shoulders she hadn't asked for, a water bottle in her hand she wasn't drinking.One of the officers—young, earnest, still following first-responder protocols by the book—had insisted on the blanket, the water, and Isla remaining seated until medical could evaluate her, ma’am.
Isla remained seated because standing required energy she was temporarily short on.Not because she’d agreed to anything.
"I don’t need the ambulance," she told the paramedic who approached with a penlight and an expression of professional concern."I need you to get your people out of my crime scene."
The paramedic—a woman in her thirties who dealt with blood often enough to be unimpressed by it—cleaned the cut above Isla’s eye with quick, practiced hands, applied butterfly strips, and checked her pupils before turning her attention to the bruising already darkening across Isla’s throat in a pattern that would, by morning, show individual chain links like a grotesque necklace.She recommended imaging.Mentioned possible tracheal damage.Asked if Isla could swallow without pain.
Isla swallowed.It felt like dragging gravel down a drainpipe."Yes," she lied.
"It’s worse than you think it is," the paramedic said, and cleared her against recommendation.They both knew how this conversation ended.
Isla pulled her phone from her jacket.The screen was cracked from the fight, but functional.9:47 PM.She pulled up Kate Channing’s number and pressed call.
Kate answered on the second ring."Rivers.It’s late."
"I need to report an incident."Isla’s voice was a ruin, every word scraping past bruised tissue."I was attacked.On the docks, near the old Clarkson warehouse.Robert Brune.He came at me with a chain."She steadied herself."I’m okay.Patrol responded.He fled into the container yard."
Silence on the other end.Not the processing kind.The kind where anger was building so precisely it required architectural containment.
"What were you doing on the docks, Isla?"
She’d spent the eleven minutes on the squad car bumper rehearsing answers.I was just walking.I happened to be in the area.I had a hunch.None of them would survive five seconds of Kate Channing’s scrutiny, and none of them deserved to.
So she told the truth.
"I’ve been walking the docks every night since you put me on leave.Every night, Kate.No badge, no weapon.Watching the waterfront, trying to find him."She paused to breathe, which was harder than it should have been."I know what it sounds like.I know what it is.But he’s still out there, and nobody’s found him, and I couldn’t—" She stopped herself.She wasn’t going to say that she couldn’t just sit there.That sounded exactly what a psychologist would expect.
Kate let the silence hang for three full seconds.When she spoke, each word was chosen the way a surgeon chose instruments.
"You have been conducting unauthorized, unarmed, solo surveillance at night while on mandatory psychological leave.For a week."
"Yes."
"And you told no one."
"No."
"Isla."Kate’s voice cracked, just slightly, and underneath the anger was something that surprised Isla: fear.Not for the case.Not for the Bureau’s liability.For her."He could have killed you.Do you understand that?He nearly killed Sullivan, he’s killed God knows how many people, and you went out there alone with nothing."She stopped.Took a breath.When she spoke again, the containment was back but thinner."We’re going to have a very long conversation about this.But not tonight."
"Kate—"
"Tonight, you're going to the hospital.Not for your injuries, though, from the sound of your voice, you need that too."A beat."Sullivan woke up two hours ago."
The docks went silent.Officers, ambulance, radio static—all of it receded to white noise.The only thing Isla could hear was her own heartbeat.
"What?"
"Patel called my office at eight fifteen.He regained consciousness earlier this evening.They’ve removed the ventilator.He’s weak, but he’s awake, and he’s been asking for you."Kate’s voice softened, barely."Go see your partner, Isla.That’s an order, and unlike my other recent orders, I expect you to follow it."
Isla was in her car before Kate finished the sentence.
