Chapter 15
Chapter
Fifteen
FLINT
Waiting was a skill.
I had learned it outside embassies, inside armored vehicles, beneath stairwells while gunfire moved through buildings one floor at a time.
I had waited for sources who never arrived, extraction teams that came hours late, and correspondents who insisted they needed one more shot before abandoning a position everyone else had already decided was indefensible.
Waiting required discipline and control. It was never supposed to involve watching Mallory McBryan walk alone into a building selected by a serial killer for a private meet and greet.
That demanded so much more from me. Too much. The digital clock on the dashboard changed to 11:47 p.m.
Mallory stood beneath the awning across the street from the building where her meetup was scheduled, one hand in the pocket of her dark coat. Rain silvered the shoulders and darkened the loose strands of hair that the wind had pulled from her pony tail.
Thankfully, she’d gone for street wear in jeans, a turtleneck and coat with flat-soled boots.
It was a contrast to what she wore when she was anchoring on the nightly news.
No suit. No heels. No carefully applied cosmetics.
It set the terms of this sit down. She was all business and she was here to get the story, not a date.
Good.
Unfortunately, she had rejected the ballistic vest I’d acquired through a source in private security. According to her, the vest constituted a visible betrayal of the word alone.
I didn’t argue, because that would have just wasted time. So, I inserted a pair of thin kevlar panels in the front of her coat.
Making her a little safer was not something I would apologize for. The coat hung fine and she hadn’t commented on any shift in weight. As for the rest? She was stunning all on her own.
She turned her face toward the building.
Nineteen stories of black glass rose above the river.
It’s unfinished upper floors disappeared into a low-lying cloud.
The weather was turning drearier and drearier.
That combined with the most of the exterior lights having been switched off gave it an almost gothic feel.
The law office on four and the logistics company on seven were dark.
A single light remained visible o the eighth floor, river side. The same floor I’d found the temporary camera placed. Predictable, I supposed, since wait, I had predicted it.
Professional as always, Mallory never looked in my direction. She knew where I would be watching and didn’t make any kind of show to check for where I was located.
I flicked my gaze back up to the building as she tilted her head upward. It was natural to glance where you target was looking. So, we agreed that we couldn’t underestimate the Auditor’s reach even if we should also not credit him with the power of some supernatural boogeyman.
With that in mind, we theorized that the Auditor might have access to the street cameras, the building’s security systems or even a telescope lens on another property.
None of those seemed to be a stretch when you considered that he had gotten an envelope onto her desk despite all the layers of security that should have rendered the act impossible.
Assuming he could see everything was the only sensible approach.
I sat behind the wheel of a gray delivery van parked just a half block west of the building. I’d borrowed the van from the owner of a catering company who owed me for keeping his son’s name out of a corruption story I broke over a decade ago.
To be fair, his kid wasn’t one of the driving forces behind the scandal and had been swept up in it. But, my keeping his name out had been a choice I made for him and his family, not the story.
We’d removed his company logo from the doors. A standard gray/white van marked by street dirt and streaked from the rain probably looked more like a serial killer vehicle without the signage. However, Tim had threatened me with bodily harm if I got his business in trouble with my investigation.
Reasonable.
I’d kitted the back out for some low-tech surveillance.
A folding table, three monitors, a receiver designed to catch short-range transmissions and enough improvised spy equipment to get me detained in several countries.
I’d added two first-aid kits, bolt cutters, climbing rope, a fire axe, and a Glock-19 with extra magazines.
Nothing back there was connected to Mallory. No wire. No tracker. No active signal the Auditor might scan and expose her. That had been my agreement.
The burner phone she carried would only send if she pressed the emergency key. It was as close to a panic button as we could manufacture in the short amount of time we’d had. Even then it wouldn’t do more than make a single call with a location burst and die right after.
She’d objected to it. I’d objected to everything else. So we compromised. Shockingly, a skill we both said we possessed and were hard-pressed to prove.
Two minutes later, at 11:49, I stopped breathing as she crossed the street. At the main entrance, she paused just below the dead security camera over the doors. The black access card he’d sent her appeared in her hand.
She held it to the digital reader next to the doors.
Nothing happened.
A sick clock began to tick down in my head.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then the reader flashed green. The little bolt of emerald light in the darkness dumped a ruthless amount of adrenaline into my system.
She disappeared inside and I started the timer. No communication unless she initiated it. No entry unless she used the code phrase. No intervention just because I got nervous.
All rules which had seemed so much more reasonable ten hours earlier while we were still in my apartment. I second-guessed every choice I’d made, beginning and ending with, why am I letting her do this?
The answer never changed though. I was letting her do anything. I was respecting her choices, even if I didn’t think there was a snowball’s chance in hell of her coming out of this unscathed.
The front lobby remained dark. After what seemed like an eternity, a pale rectangle appeared deeper inside as an elevator opened. The light revealed Mallory crossing toward them. She appeared in silhouette for a split second, then she disappeared again as the doors closed.
The eighth-floor light went out at the same time. I leaned closer to the monitor even though it showed me nothing except the building’s exterior.
“Come on, Mal.”
The light reappeared on eleven. Then out again.
So not eight or one of the likelier floors. Eleven had been a possibility. I checked my notes. It had an unfinished office suite with incomplete walls and an active electrical permit. It also had no tenants and no scheduled work for another month.
I lifted the headphones to my ear. Static whispered a greeting. There was no signal yet. Not that I had expected one.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t annoyed anyway. The clock ticked over to 11:52. Movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. A dark sedan rolled past without slowing.
Government.
Clean bodywork, standard plates, tinted rear windows, and as nondescript and plain as a black sedan could be. It continued down the block and slowed further before turning into the public garage across the street.
I frowned.
A second vehicle arrived thirty seconds later. This one a dark utility van. Like the van I was sitting inside, it had no visible markings but it pulled into the same garage.
“Dammit,” I murmured. A third car stopped just two blocks east. A dark compact SUV. Driver remained inside and the lights all went out at the same moment.
This wasn’t a coincidence. It was too orderly and coming hot on the heels of her going inside? Making sure the monitors were dimmed, I eased back into the front and used binoculars to study the garage entrance just in time to see a man in a navy suit emerge from the pedestrian stairwell.
Even at this distance, I recognized the posture and the stride.
Brewster.
When he crossed beneath a streetlamp, he had one hand near his coat. It drifted repeatedly as though he was just one moment away from drawing his weapon. He moved with his head on a swivel. He scanned the facade, the roofline, the doors, parked vehicles, and even the building across the street.
Likely scanning for surveillance positions. He swept his gaze past the van I occupied, and I lowered the binoculars after his head turned. I didn’t want even a suggestion of movement giving me away.
Then he looked directly at my van. For three seconds, I didn’t breathe and he didn’t move. Then he shifted his trajectory and walked toward me.
Fuck.
My.
Life.
I reached over and unlocked the passenger door before he could knock on it. He opened it two seconds later and climbed inside without waiting for an invitation. The interior light remained off even when the door opened.
A damn good precaution that Mallory had called me paranoid for. I grunted something unintelligible because you could never be too paranoid.
Rain beaded across the shoulders of Brewster’s overcoat. His tie was gone, his collar open and his expression was not friendly. He glanced from me to the curtain separating the back and he tugged it to the side to investigate all the surveillance equipment.
Only then did he look at me. “Where is she?”
“Good evening to you too.”
“Where?”
I debated ignoring him but his presence was already a problem. “She’s inside.”
He stiffened. “You let her go in there?”
“I don’t let Mallory do anything.” I didn’t bother to soften the implied asshole in my voice. If he wanted to take the insult to heart, well more fucking power to him.
“I’m sure that distinction will comfort everyone at her funeral.”
I curled one hand tighter around the binoculars until the metal bit into my palm. It grounded me long enough to remind me not to punch the dick.
“Get out.” The words came out hard and unyielding.
“No.” Brewster’s response was equally inflexible.