OUTSIDE THE CAR by Blake Pierce

Author:Blake Pierce [Pierce, Blake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2025-12-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Shipwrecker stood at the edge of Park Point, watching the last light bleed from the April sky into Superior's darkening waters. The lake was calm tonight, deceptively so—a mirror of black glass that reflected nothing and revealed less. He knew her moods better than most men knew their wives. Had known them for decades now, had learned to read the subtle shifts in her surface the way others read newspapers.

She kept his secrets well.

The news coverage had been unavoidable all week. Ghost ships. Phantom attacks. Maritime massacre. The words scrolled across every screen in every bar and coffee shop he passed, accompanied by aerial footage of bloodstained decks and Coast Guard vessels conducting grid searches. The talking heads speculated endlessly about smuggling operations and rival gangs, about violence erupting on waters they'd assumed were safe.

They had no idea.

He'd watched the reports with a mixture of contempt and curiosity, studying the crime scene photographs that made it onto television, cataloguing the details that marked this newcomer's work. Knife wounds. Multiple victims. Bodies left floating where they'd be found. The man operated like a butcher announcing his presence to the neighborhood—all blood and spectacle, no subtlety, no art.

It was an insult to the lake.

The Shipwrecker had spent years perfecting his craft. Each kill was a conversation with Superior, a careful negotiation between violence and nature. Head wounds consistent with falls. Drownings that appeared natural. Bodies that surfaced—when they surfaced at all—bearing no evidence of foul play. He'd learned to work with the lake, to let her cold depths and unpredictable currents do the work of concealment. This new killer worked against her, leaving messes that demanded attention, that brought FBI agents and Coast Guard patrols swarming across waters that had been his alone.

The wind shifted, carrying the smell of diesel and fish from the harbor below. He turned from the water and began walking along the lakeside path, his footsteps silent on the damp pavement. The evening joggers had retreated to their warm apartments, leaving him alone with the gulls and the distant drone of commerce that never quite stopped.

He didn't approve of this other hunter's methods. The brutality served no purpose—drew attention where discretion was paramount. But he'd watched the investigation unfold with professional interest, noting how the FBI scrambled to make sense of attacks they hadn't anticipated, how the maritime community contracted with fear. Chaos had its uses, even chaos he hadn't created. While everyone focused on the bloody spectacle of ghost ships, his own work remained invisible.

Still, the newcomer was a problem. A variable he hadn't accounted for, operating in territory he'd claimed long ago. Two predators on the same hunting ground rarely coexisted peacefully.

The apartment building came into view as he rounded a bend in the path—a modest three-story structure set back from the water, its windows glowing with the warm light of ordinary lives. He'd walked this route many times over the past months, always at different hours, always with plausible reasons to be in the area.

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