The body floated face-down in the milky blue water of the geothermal pool, steam rising around it like departing spirits in the grey dawn light. Ingrid Larsson, who had come to the pool hoping the mineral waters might finally grant her the sleep that had eluded her for months, stood perfectly still on the wooden deck, her detective's instincts awakening despite five years of retirement.
Marcus Chen. She recognized the elaborate tattoo spanning his shoulders—a dragon consuming its own tail, rendered in blacks and golds. She'd noticed it yesterday when he'd held court in this very pool, lecturing anyone who'd listen about blockchain technology and the future of decentralized finance.
"Help," she called out, her voice carrying across the snow-covered landscape. "Someone help!"
Within minutes, the remaining guests of Aurora Wellness had assembled on the deck, their faces pale with shock. Dr. Rashid Hassan, the retreat's proprietor and wellness coach, pushed through the small crowd, his usually serene expression replaced by barely controlled panic.
"My God," he whispered, then seemed to remember his role. "Everyone, please step back. We must call the authorities immediately."
"With what?" asked Elena Volkov, the Russian journalist who'd spent most of yesterday typing furiously on her laptop before the mandatory device surrender. "You locked away our phones, remember? Digital detox?"
Dr. Hassan's face flushed. "There's a landline in the office. The storm knocked it out last night, but I'm sure it will be repaired soon."
Ingrid knelt beside the pool, careful not to disturb anything. The habits of thirty years with the Stockholm Police didn't simply vanish upon retirement. The water temperature gauge read 47 degrees Celsius—far too hot for safety. The normal maximum was 40 degrees.
"Nobody should enter the pool," she announced, standing slowly. Her knees protested; retirement had made her body soft even as her mind remained sharp. "This may be a crime scene."
"Crime scene?" James Mitchell, the British venture capitalist, laughed nervously. "Surely it's an accident. Poor Marcus must have had too much of that organic wine at dinner and misjudged the temperature."
"The temperature control has been tampered with," Ingrid said simply. "The safety override has been disabled. Someone wanted that water dangerously hot."
A collective intake of breath from the group. Yuki Tanaka, the young Japanese entrepreneur, took an involuntary step backward. "You're saying someone... murdered him?"
"I'm saying we should preserve evidence until the authorities arrive." Ingrid surveyed the group: seven faces displaying varying degrees of shock, fear, and something else—relief? She'd seen that look before, on the faces of those who'd wished someone dead and gotten their wish.
Dr. Hassan wrung his hands. "The police station in Reykjavik is two hours away in good weather. With this storm..." He gestured helplessly at the swirling snow that had begun falling again, heavier than before.
"Then we wait," Ingrid said. "Everyone should return to the lodge. No one should be alone."
As the group began moving toward the modern glass-and-wood structure that served as the retreat's main building, Ingrid noticed Elena Volkov lingering, staring at Marcus's body with an expression of grim satisfaction.
"You knew him," Ingrid said. It wasn't a question.
Elena's smile was bitter. "Everyone in the crypto world knew Marcus Chen. The boy genius who turned a thousand dollars into fifty million. The prophet of decentralization. The future of finance." She spat into the snow. "Nobody wrote about the people he destroyed getting there."
Before Ingrid could respond, Elena stalked away, her boots crunching through the fresh powder.
In the lodge's great room, with its panoramic windows now showing only a wall of white, the remaining guests clustered around the fireplace. Someone had made coffee—proper coffee, not the ceremonial cacao Dr. Hassan usually served.
"We should make a list," suggested Priya Sharma, the software engineer from Mumbai who'd barely spoken since arriving three days ago. "Of everyone who was here, I mean. For when the police come."
"Eight guests, including poor Marcus," Dr. Hassan said, counting on his fingers. "Myself and my assistant, Björn. The cook, Anna. That's everyone."
"Where are Björn and Anna now?" Ingrid asked.
"Anna lives in the village, down the mountain. She won't be able to come up in this weather. Björn..." Dr. Hassan frowned. "He should be here. Björn!" he called out.
A young man appeared from the kitchen, tall and broad-shouldered in the way of Icelandic men, his blonde beard still dusted with snow. "I was checking the generator," he said. "The power might go out if this storm gets worse."
Ingrid studied him. His hands were red and chapped, consistent with working outside. But there was something in his eyes—a watchfulness that seemed excessive for a wellness retreat employee.
"Did anyone see Marcus after dinner last night?" she asked the group.
"I did," said David Kim, the Korean-American blockchain developer who'd spent most of the retreat looking miserable. "Around midnight. He was heading to his room, talking to himself. Or maybe he was practicing a presentation. He did that sometimes."
"Talking about what?"
David shrugged. "Numbers. Codes. Transaction IDs maybe? I don't know, I wasn't really listening."
"I saw him too," admitted Yuki. "Later, maybe one-thirty. He was in the hallway, trying doors."
"Trying doors?" Ingrid's interest sharpened.
"Like he was looking for something. Or someone." Yuki's face reddened. "I thought perhaps he was drunk."
James Mitchell set down his coffee cup with a decisive clink. "This is absurd. We're not detectives. We should simply wait for the police and not touch anything."
"The police may not arrive for days if this storm continues," Ingrid said calmly. "And meanwhile, one of us may be a murderer."
The word hung in the air like ice crystals. Sarah Okonkwo, the Nigerian fintech consultant who'd maintained an air of amused detachment since arriving, finally spoke: "You're assuming it was one of us. Perhaps someone came from outside."
"In this weather? To this remote location? To kill a man who happened to be taking a late-night soak?" Ingrid shook her head. "No. This was someone who knew Marcus's habits. Someone already here."
Dr. Hassan stood abruptly. "This is outrageous. Aurora Wellness is a place of healing, of peace. I won't have you turning it into some sort of... murder mystery weekend!"
"But that's what it is now, isn't it?" Elena said softly. "A murder mystery. And we're all suspects."
The morning crawled by in tense silence. The storm had intensified, turning the world beyond the windows into a howling void. Ingrid found herself automatically cataloging details: the way Yuki's hands shook when he poured tea, how Elena kept checking her wrist where her smartwatch used to be, the fact that James Mitchell had changed clothes since she'd seen him earlier—why would he do that if he'd just woken up?
Around noon, Björn made sandwiches that no one ate. Ingrid excused herself, ostensibly to use the bathroom but actually to examine Marcus's room. The door was unlocked—strange, given what Yuki had said about Marcus trying doors in the night.
The room was obsessively neat, everything arranged at right angles. Marcus's clothes were folded with military precision. His toiletries were arranged by height. On the nightstand, a notebook lay open, filled with strings of numbers and letters—cryptocurrency wallet addresses, Ingrid realized. Some were crossed out violently, others circled multiple times.
The last entry, written in a shaky hand, read: "They know. Final transaction tomorrow. If something happens, check the—"
The sentence ended mid-word.
"You shouldn't be here."
Ingrid turned to find Priya Sharma in the doorway, her usually mild expression replaced by something harder.
"Neither should you," Ingrid replied evenly.
Priya stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. "I need to tell someone," she said quietly. "Marcus wasn't here for wellness. He was hiding."
"From whom?"
"From everyone he'd cheated. Do you know what a rug pull is? In crypto terms?"
Ingrid shook her head.
"It's when developers abandon a project and run away with investors' funds. Marcus did it three times under different identities. Small investors, people who couldn't afford to lose. Some lost their life savings. One man in Bangladesh killed himself."
"How do you know this?"
Priya's laugh was bitter. "Because I helped him build the smart contracts. I thought we were creating something revolutionary. By the time I realized what he was really doing, it was too late. I was implicated."
"So you came here to...?"
"To convince him to return the money. Or at least some of it. He laughed at me. Said the weak deserve to lose to the strong. That it was evolution."
Before Ingrid could respond, a scream echoed through the lodge. Both women ran toward the sound, finding the others gathered in the meditation room. Elena Volkov stood in the center, pointing at something tucked behind a singing bowl.
It was a phone. Marcus's phone, judging by the distinctive gold case.
"But all phones were supposed to be locked in the digital detox vault," Dr. Hassan said weakly.
Ingrid picked up the device carefully, using her sleeve to avoid leaving fingerprints. The screen was cracked but functional. It was still unlocked, showing a cryptocurrency trading app. The transaction history showed a transfer initiated at 3:47 AM—approximately an hour before Marcus's body was discovered. Fifty million dollars, moved to an unknown wallet.
"Someone forced him to transfer the money, then killed him," James Mitchell said, his voice hollow.
"Or he transferred it himself, and someone killed him to prevent him from moving it again," Elena countered.
Ingrid studied the phone more carefully. There were no messages, no calls. But the photo gallery... she opened it, finding dozens of screenshots. Documents, emails, chat transcripts. Marcus had been gathering evidence, but against whom?
One name appeared repeatedly: "Nakamura."
Yuki Tanaka's sharp intake of breath was audible. Everyone turned to look at him.
"Nakamura was my partner," he said slowly. "Marcus destroyed our company. Nakamura couldn't handle the shame. He... he took his own life six months ago."
"So you came here for revenge," James Mitchell said.
"No!" Yuki protested. "I came here to heal. I didn't even know Marcus would be here until I arrived."
"That's not true," Sarah Okonkwo interjected. "I heard you on the shuttle from the airport. You were on the phone, saying you'd finally found him."
Yuki's face crumpled. "Alright, yes. I knew. But I didn't kill him! I wanted to confront him, to make him acknowledge what he'd done. But murder? Never."
"Then who did?" Dr. Hassan demanded, his composure finally cracking completely. "Who killed a man at my retreat?"
Ingrid set the phone down carefully. "Let's think about this logically. The murder required several things: knowledge of Marcus's habits, access to the pool's control system, the ability to disable the safety override, and possibly the skill to force or trick Marcus into making that transfer."
"That could be anyone here," David Kim said. "We're all tech people except for Dr. Hassan and Björn."
"Are you?" Ingrid asked, looking at Björn. "Just a retreat assistant?"
Björn's jaw clenched. "I don't know what you mean."
"Your hands," Ingrid said. "They're calloused, yes, but not from manual labor. The calluses are on your fingertips—from typing. And your watch tan line shows you usually wear a smartwatch, not the simple analog watch you have on now."
Silence fell. Björn stood frozen for a moment, then his shoulders sagged. "My name is Björn Eriksson. I'm... I was a cybersecurity specialist. I lost everything in one of Marcus's schemes. My reputation, my savings, my fiancée. I took this job to disappear, to start over. When I saw Marcus's name on the guest list last month, I thought..."
"You thought what?" Ingrid pressed.
"I thought maybe I could hack his accounts, recover what he stole. But I didn't kill him. When I checked the pool this morning before dawn, to adjust the temperature for the sunrise session, he was already dead."
"You found him before I did?"
Björn nodded miserably. "I panicked. I ran. I didn't want to be blamed."
"But you had already hacked his accounts," Ingrid said. It wasn't a question.
"I tried. But someone else got there first. The security on his wallet had already been breached when I accessed it around 3 AM. Someone had installed a keylogger weeks ago."
"Weeks ago?" Elena leaned forward. "But we've only been here three days."
"The keylogger was installed remotely," Björn explained. "Through an email attachment. Someone had been planning this for a long time."
Ingrid felt the pieces clicking into place. "Show me the email."
Björn hesitated, then pulled out a tablet from behind a cushion—clearly, the digital detox rules had been thoroughly broken. His fingers flew across the screen, pulling up Marcus's email account.
"Here," he said. "Three weeks ago. An attachment supposedly containing investment documents from..." He paused, his face paling. "From Mitchell Ventures."
Everyone turned to James Mitchell, who had gone very still.
"James?" Dr. Hassan said uncertainly.
James Mitchell smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Very clever. Yes, I sent that email. But not to kill him—just to monitor him. Marcus stole more than money from me. He stole my reputation, my credibility. I needed evidence to expose him."
"But you got more than evidence," Ingrid said. "You got access to his cryptocurrency wallets."
"Even if that were true, why would I kill him? With him dead, those assets are locked forever."
"Unless you forced him to transfer them first," Elena said.
"To where? Check my accounts, check everything. I haven't received fifty million dollars."
Ingrid was studying the transaction on Marcus's phone again. Something was bothering her about the wallet address. It was familiar somehow...
"Dr. Hassan," she said suddenly. "You said you had debts. Large ones?"
The wellness coach stiffened. "That's hardly relevant."
"It is if you're about to lose this retreat. If you're desperate enough to..."
"To what? Murder a guest? Destroy everything I've built here?" Dr. Hassan laughed bitterly. "Yes, I have debts. This retreat was supposed to be my salvation, a place for healing in a toxic digital world. But the construction costs, the marketing... I'm three months from bankruptcy."
"Marcus offered to invest," Sarah Okonkwo said suddenly. "I heard him at dinner two nights ago. He offered to buy majority stake in Aurora Wellness."
"He offered to steal it," Dr. Hassan corrected. "For a fraction of its worth. He wanted to turn it into some sort of crypto trading retreat, a place where tech bros could plot their schemes while pretending to meditate."
"So you killed him?"
"No! I refused his offer, yes. We argued. But kill him? Never."
Ingrid was barely listening. She was staring at the wallet address, at the pattern of numbers and letters. There was something...
"Priya," she said suddenly. "You said you helped Marcus build smart contracts."
Priya nodded warily.
"So you would know how to create a wallet that looked legitimate but actually redirected funds?"
"In theory, but—"
"And Sarah, you're a fintech consultant. You would understand international money movement, how to hide transactions."
"What are you suggesting?" Sarah's voice was cold.
"I'm suggesting that one person couldn't have done this alone. The technical knowledge required, the physical access, the timing—it required collaboration."
"That's absurd," David Kim protested. "We barely know each other."
"Do you?" Ingrid asked. "Or is that just what you want us to think?"
She stood, pacing now, the old rhythms of investigation taking over. "Let me tell you what I think happened. Marcus Chen was a predator, someone who destroyed lives for profit. Several of his victims discovered he would be here—not by chance, but because one of them had been tracking him, waiting for an opportunity."
She looked at Elena. "You've been investigating him for months, haven't you? Following his movements, documenting his crimes."
Elena nodded slowly. "For an exposé. But I didn't—"
"You didn't kill him. But you shared information. With someone who had lost even more than money." Ingrid turned to Yuki. "Someone who had lost a friend, a partner."
Yuki's hands were shaking. "Nakamura was like a brother to me."
"And when Elena told you Marcus would be here, isolated, without his usual security, you saw an opportunity. But you needed help. Technical help." She looked at Priya. "From someone who knew Marcus's systems intimately."
Priya had gone very pale. "You can't prove anything."
"Can't I? The keylogger was sophisticated, but it had a signature—your signature, Priya. The same coding style you used in the contracts you built for Marcus. Björn can confirm this, can't you?"
Björn nodded reluctantly. "The code structure is distinctive. If you know what to look for..."
"But even with access to his accounts, you needed him to authorize the transfer. That required physical confrontation." Ingrid looked at David Kim. "You're not really a blockchain developer, are you? Your hands, the way you move—you're trained in combat."
David's expression didn't change. "I was in the Korean special forces before I got into tech. So what?"
"So you were the one who confronted Marcus in his room. Forced him to make the transfer. But something went wrong."
"He laughed," Yuki said suddenly, his voice breaking. "Even with a knife at his throat, he laughed. Said we were amateurs. That the money would be traced, that we'd all go to prison. That he'd destroyed better people than us."
The room had gone completely silent except for the howling wind outside.
"So you killed him," Ingrid said softly.
"No," Priya said. "We didn't plan to kill him. We just wanted the money back, to return it to the people he'd stolen from. But after the transfer..."
"He said he'd already alerted his security team," David continued, his military bearing now obvious. "That they were already tracing the transaction. That we had maybe an hour before they locked down everything."
"So you panicked," Ingrid said. "You needed him unable to communicate with anyone, to reverse the transfer or identify you."
"It was my idea," Elena said suddenly. "The pool. Make it look like an accident. He was drunk, we could say he'd had too much wine..."
"But you had to ensure he'd actually die," Ingrid continued. "So you tampered with the temperature controls. Who did that?"
Silence.
"I did," Sarah Okonkwo said finally. "My uncle died because of Marcus Chen. Lost his pension to one of those rug pulls. I'm not sorry."
"You all did it," Ingrid said. "Together. Each playing a part. Elena gathering intelligence, Priya providing technical access, David handling the physical confrontation, Yuki managing the distraction, Sarah ensuring the method."
"You can't prove it," James Mitchell said. "Even if everything you've said is true, you can't prove it."
"Can't I?" Ingrid picked up Marcus's phone again. "Marcus was paranoid. He recorded everything." She touched the screen, navigating to the voice recorder app. "Including his final confrontation."
The recording was scratchy but clear enough. Marcus's arrogant voice, then others—threats, demands, the discussion of the transfer. And finally, desperately, Marcus saying: "You're all on camera. The room has hidden surveillance. My security team will see everything."
"There are no cameras," Dr. Hassan said. "I don't allow surveillance at the retreat."
"Marcus didn't know that," Ingrid said. "But his killers did. They'd been here for days, had time to check. They knew they were safe."
"So what now?" Yuki asked, his face streaked with tears. "You call the police? We all go to prison?"
Ingrid was quiet for a long moment, looking at each face in turn. These weren't hardened criminals. They were people pushed beyond their limits, seeking justice in an unjust world.
"The police will come when the storm clears," she said finally. "What you tell them is your choice. But consider this—the money Marcus stole has been returned to a wallet that, if Priya coded it correctly, will automatically distribute funds to his victims. The man who destroyed so many lives is dead by misadventure, a tragic accident caused by a malfunctioning pool heater in a storm."
"You're letting us go?" Elena asked, incredulous.
"I'm retired," Ingrid said simply. "I'm just a guest here for insomnia treatment. I saw nothing conclusive. The steam from the pool, the snow, the early morning light—it all made things very unclear."
Dr. Hassan stepped forward. "But my retreat—the reputation—"
"Will be that of a place where a tragic accident occurred during an unprecedented storm," Ingrid said firmly. "Nothing more. Unless someone chooses to say otherwise."
The group exchanged glances. A silent consensus formed.
"It was an accident," James Mitchell said finally. "Marcus had too much to drink. The pool controls malfunctioned in the storm. A terrible tragedy."
"Terrible," others echoed.
Björn cleared his throat. "I should check the generator again. And perhaps... ensure that any electronic records of the pool's temperature settings were unfortunately corrupted by the power fluctuations."
"That would be prudent," Ingrid agreed.
As the group began to disperse, each lost in their own thoughts, Elena approached Ingrid.
"Why?" she asked simply.
Ingrid looked out at the storm, which seemed to be finally beginning to ease. "I spent thirty years putting people in prison. Some deserved it, some didn't. The law and justice aren't always the same thing."
"And Marcus?"
"Marcus Chen was a virus in the system. Sometimes the system develops its own antibodies." She turned to Elena. "Your exposé—I assume you'll still write it?"
"Every word. The world should know what he did."
"Good. The dead deserve truth, even if they don't deserve mercy."
Two days later, when the police finally arrived from Reykjavik, they found a group of shaken but cooperative witnesses to a tragic accident. The pool's digital controls had clearly malfunctioned—the memory was corrupted, showing impossible readings that suggested a storm-related electrical failure. Marcus Chen's blood alcohol level was elevated. His time of death corresponded with the worst of the storm, when anyone who might have helped would have been asleep.
The investigation was perfunctory. Accidents happened, especially when wealthy tourists ignored safety guidelines.
The guests departed Aurora Wellness one by one as flights resumed. Ingrid was among the last to leave, having finally found the sleep that had eluded her for so long. Whether it was the mineral waters, the mountain air, or the strange peace that came from choosing justice over law, she couldn't say.
At Keflavík Airport, she encountered Priya Sharma at a coffee stand.
"The distribution is complete," Priya said quietly. "Seventeen thousand victims received compensation. Not everything they lost, but something."
"And the authorities?"
"The wallets were designed to self-destruct after the transfers. There's no trail back to anyone."
Ingrid nodded. "Then it's finished."
"Is it?" Priya asked. "There are others like Marcus. Many others."
"Yes," Ingrid agreed. "But that's not my fight anymore. I'm just a retired detective with insomnia."
Priya smiled sadly. "I don't think you ever really retire from seeking justice."
As her flight was called, Ingrid reflected that Priya was probably right. But for now, she was content to return to Stockholm, to her quiet apartment and her books, carrying the secret of Aurora Wellness like a stone in her pocket—heavy, but necessary.
The storm had passed. The bodies, literal and metaphorical, had been buried. And somewhere in the digital ether, seventeen thousand people had woken up to find a small piece of their lives returned to them, courtesy of a man who had died in hot water, surrounded by the people he'd burned.
Justice, Ingrid thought as the plane lifted off from the icy runway, came in many forms. Sometimes it wore a judge's robes. Sometimes it wore a police uniform.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it wore the face of ordinary people pushed too far, seeking balance in an unbalanced world.
The plane banked over the North Atlantic, leaving Iceland behind. Below, the Aurora Wellness retreat was already accepting new bookings, its reputation oddly enhanced by the tragedy—there was, after all, no such thing as bad publicity in the wellness industry. Dr. Hassan had even received an offer from a legitimate investor, moved by the story of his struggle to create a place of healing.
The others had scattered to their corners of the world, bound together by a secret that would either destroy them or make them stronger. Only time would tell which.
As for Marcus Chen, his death made headlines for exactly three days before being replaced by the next scandal, the next tragedy, the next spectacle. The cryptocurrency community mourned him briefly and insincerely. His victims did not mourn him at all.
And in Stockholm, in a small apartment overlooking the harbor, Ingrid Larsson finally slept peacefully, her dreams untroubled by questions of law or justice. She had made her choice at Aurora Wellness, and she would live with it.
After all, she thought as consciousness faded, everyone had to live with their choices.
Even the dead.