Page 10 of Outside the Room (Isla Rivers #1)

The fluorescent lights in the interrogation room cast harsh shadows across Thomas Bradley's weathered face.

Isla watched from behind the two-way mirror as Sullivan entered the room, carrying a thin folder that she knew contained only a fraction of the evidence they'd gathered.

The rest was still being processed, but Bradley didn't need to know that.

After barely three hours of sleep, Isla felt fatigue settling into her bones, but the adrenaline of pursuit kept her alert.

She'd returned to her apartment after midnight, her mind racing with theories about Bradley's connection to Whitman's murder.

Now, watching Sullivan take a seat across from the smuggler, she hoped their strategy would yield answers.

Bradley sat with the false relaxation of someone trying to appear unconcerned. His lawyer, a sharp-featured woman in an expensive suit, sat beside him, whispering something in his ear. Bradley nodded almost imperceptibly, then leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest.

Sullivan didn't speak immediately. Instead, he methodically arranged the papers from his folder, a deliberate psychological tactic that Isla recognized from her own interrogation playbook. The silence stretched until Bradley shifted uncomfortably.

"You know why you're here," Sullivan finally said, his voice carrying clearly through the speakers. It wasn't a question.

"My client has been cooperative thus far," the lawyer interjected. "But he maintains his innocence regarding any smuggling allegations."

Sullivan's lips curved in what might have been a smile if it had reached his eyes. "I haven't made any allegations yet, counselor." He turned his attention back to Bradley. "Let's talk about what we found on your boat."

Bradley's expression remained neutral, but Isla noticed his fingers tightening slightly on his forearm. "I run a fishing operation. You found fish."

Sullivan slid a photograph across the table—a close-up of a false bottom in one of the Northern Star ’s fish storage compartments. "Fish don't need specialized compartments with pressure seals and moisture barriers."

A muscle twitched in Bradley's jaw. "That's for preserving the catch. High-end restaurants pay premium prices for certain fish maintained in specific conditions."

"Is that right?" Sullivan's tone remained casual, but Isla could see the shift in his posture—like a predator preparing to strike. "Then you won't mind explaining these."

He placed another photograph on the table. This one showed what the search team had discovered beneath those false compartments: automatic weapons, carefully wrapped in protective coverings, nestled in spaces designed to hide them from casual inspection.

Bradley's face drained of color. His lawyer leaned forward, whispering urgently in his ear, but he shook his head slightly.

"Those aren't mine," he said, his voice suddenly hoarse. "I don't know how they got there."

Sullivan laughed, the sound entirely devoid of humor.

"Three years for prescription drug smuggling wasn't enough for you?

Had to move up to firearms?" He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a near whisper that still carried through the speakers.

"You know what we call people who smuggle weapons across international borders? Terrorists."

"That's absurd," the lawyer protested. "My client is not—"

"I'm not a terrorist!" Bradley's composure cracked, his fist slamming onto the table. "I move product. That's it. I don't ask questions."

Isla smiled grimly. There it was—the admission they needed to start unraveling the operation. She made a note to have the tech team trace the weapons' origins. If they could identify the source, it might lead them to Bradley's contacts.

"Product," Sullivan repeated, leaning back slightly. "Like Marcus Whitman? Was he just 'product' that needed moving?"

Bradley's brow furrowed, genuine confusion crossing his face. "Who?"

Sullivan slid another photo across the table—Whitman's official customs ID photo. "The customs inspector you murdered and left in a shipping container to freeze to death."

Bradley looked genuinely startled, his eyes widening as he stared at the photograph. "The customs guy? That's what this is about? I didn't kill him!"

Isla studied Bradley's reaction carefully. His shock appeared genuine—not the calculated surprise of someone caught in a lie, but the honest confusion of someone confronted with unexpected information.

"Where were you two nights ago, between eight p.m. and midnight?" Sullivan pressed.

Bradley looked to his lawyer, who nodded. "On my boat. We were running tests on a new sonar system before the ice closes in completely."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"GPS tracking on the Northern Star will confirm it," Bradley said. "I was ten miles out when we anchored for the night. Didn't dock until four a.m."

Isla reached for the phone in the observation room, dialing the evidence team to request verification of the Northern Star ’s GPS data. If Bradley was telling the truth, they'd need to pivot their investigation away from him as Whitman's killer.

In the interrogation room, Sullivan changed tactics. "Tell me about your operation. Who do you work for?"

Bradley hesitated, glancing at his lawyer, who whispered something in his ear. He shook his head firmly.

"Look," he said, leaning forward. "I'll talk about the guns. I'll admit to moving packages across the border. But I don't know names. It's all anonymous—offshore accounts, blind drops, and coded communications. I never met the people in charge."

Sullivan's skepticism was evident in his raised eyebrow. "Expect me to believe you're smuggling military-grade weapons and pharmaceuticals without knowing who's buying them?"

"That's how it works!" Bradley insisted. "Think about it—if I get caught, like I just did, I can't give up what I don't know. That's the point. I'm a courier, not a partner."

Sullivan opened another file. "Let's go back to Whitman. He questioned you recently about your fishing yields, didn't he?"

Bradley nodded slowly. "Yeah, about a week ago. Standard inspection stuff, I thought. He was always thorough, but nothing unusual."

"Did you see him as a threat to your operation?"

"No," Bradley said firmly. "Look, we've been running guns and pharma packages for six months. Whitman had inspected my boat dozens of times and never found anything. The compartments are too well hidden."

"So why kill him?"

"I didn't!" Bradley's frustration was evident. "Why would I? If I thought he was onto me, I'd change routes or lay low for a while. Killing a federal inspector just brings heat we don't need."

Isla noted the use of "we"—confirmation that Bradley was part of a larger organization, despite his claims of ignorance about its structure.

Sullivan gathered his photos, his expression unreadable. "We'll verify your alibi. In the meantime, you can think about whether you want to spend the rest of your life in prison or start giving us something useful about who's really running this operation."

He stood, gathering his files. Bradley looked up, a flash of genuine fear crossing his face.

"You don't understand," he said quietly. "If I tell you what little I know, I'm a dead man."

"You're not in a great position either way," Sullivan observed coldly before leaving the room.

Isla met him in the hallway, where an officer was waiting with an update.

"Both of Bradley's crew members have alibis for the night of the murder," the officer reported.

"One was at a hospital in Superior with his wife, who was giving birth.

The other was at a hockey game at UMD—plenty of witnesses and security footage confirms it.

Neither of them boarded the Northern Star until yesterday morning. "

Sullivan nodded, absorbing this information. "And Bradley's GPS data?"

"Being verified now, but preliminary check shows the Northern Star was indeed anchored offshore during the timeframe of Whitman's murder."

Isla processed this, pieces shifting in her mental map of the case. "So, we've stumbled onto a weapons and pharmaceutical smuggling operation, but it's not directly connected to our murder case."

"Or at least, not in the way we thought," Sullivan agreed, running a hand through his hair. "But there has to be a connection. Whitman was investigating Bradley's operation, and now Whitman's dead."

"Different parts of the same puzzle," Isla mused. "Whitman found something in those shipping manifests—something that led him to Bradley's operation but possibly pointed to something bigger."

"Something worth killing for," Sullivan finished her thought.

As they walked toward the conference room they'd been assigned, Isla felt the familiar buzz of a complex case starting to take shape.

The obvious answer—that Bradley had killed Whitman to protect his smuggling operation—had been easy but wrong.

Now, they were entering murkier waters, where the connections would be more subtle and the stakes potentially much higher.

"We need to find out what Whitman discovered in those manifests," she said. "And who might have known he was looking."

Sullivan nodded grimly. "And we need to do it before they realize we're still looking, too."