Chapter 5 #2
“If Radley Pike checks out as false, if he accessed Reardon’s office under fabricated credentials, and if he came into contact with McBryan, we have grounds to reassess her risk level.”
Sykes didn’t relax. “You mean grounds to control her.”
“I mean grounds to keep her breathing.” The answer was sharper than I intended. Mallory had a real talent for making people sharper than they intended.
Even when she wasn’t in the room.
Expression full of doubt, Sykes unfolded her arms. “Full victimology in five,” she said. “Conference room B. You need to be there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And Elliot?”
I didn’t answer.
“If this becomes about her instead of the case, you won’t see it until it’s already cost you both.” She left before I could respond.
Probably wise.
I turned back to the monitors.
Flores cleared his throat. “Preliminary search on Northbank Risk Assessment is clean.”
“Clean how?”
“Registered LLC. Website. Business line. State filings. Insurance categories. Looks legitimate.”
“Looks?” I honed in on that word.
“Looks.”
Good. At least Flores understood the difference.
“Dig deeper.”
“Already am.”
I moved to the conference table and opened the latest folder with the updates on the victim profiles.
Photographs stared back.
Daniel Price.
Roger Corbin.
Branson Kellerman.
Samuel Pritchard.
Gerrald Garcia.
Colin Thorne.
Guy Reardon.
Men whose lives had been reduced to chronology, patterns, and markers. My job was to see what connected them.
The Auditor selected targets—in this case only male—who seemed to believe that their fraud would remain invisible. They were middle management and had multiple access points to the funds and the numbers.
Men who touched ledgers, inventory, payroll, procurement, contracts. Men who knew exactly how to move money without ever looking like they had taken it.
The first deaths had been deliberate.
Spaced apart.
Documented.
Then the pattern accelerated. The deviations with Colin Thorne and Guy Reardon were not enough to derail the investigation. They were close to Mallory, a prime player that had opened a dialogue with the Auditor.
I would bet my last paycheck she was still communicating with him. She’d shown me his messages and I’d seen when she’d returned one. Now, she shut me out with the rest of the FBI.
The Auditor wanted her attention and she was going to give it to him because it would get her access to him. Carter seemed ready to back her plays all the way into an early grave.
No matter how I looked at this case, Mallory McBryan was right at the center and it made her vulnerable.
Only one of us had federal authority to do anything about it.
Me.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I answered without looking away from the photographs. “Brewster.”
A pause. Then a distorted voice, low and flattened by software. “You’re watching the wrong door.”
The line went dead. I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at the screen.
Flores looked over. “What?”
“Get telecom on this,” I said.
He reached for the phone. I didn’t hand it over immediately.
Wrong door.
My gaze moved back to the frozen security image of Mallory and Carter in Guy Reardon’s office.
Then to the consultant in the elevator.
Then to the reception desk downstairs.
Wrong door.
No. Not wrong. There were too many doors, too many people near her, and far too many variables to account for.
That was the problem with Mallory McBryan. Everyone thought they had a claim. The public, her network, the killer, and her boss.
Even Mallory herself, reckless enough to believe her autonomy mattered more than survival.
I closed the victimology folder. “Where is she now?”
Flores checked the live feed. “Still in the building.”
“With Carter?”
A beat.
“Yes.”
I adjusted my cuffs. Control the asset, control the strategy, and control the investigation. People survived when someone made hard decisions before panic or, worse, an attack made them all moot.
Mallory didn’t have to like my choices or even understand them. She only had to stay alive long enough for me to end this.
“Pull her phone location,” I said.
Flores glanced up. “We have authorization for that?”
“We have an active threat.”
“Do we have—”
“Pull it.”
He hesitated.
Then turned back to the keyboard.
Good.
I had no doubt that Sykes would object, then complain to our superiors. Mallory would be furious and Carter would run interference.
None of that mattered.
Not if I was right.
And I was right.
A minute later, Mallory’s location appeared on the screen, a small blue dot inside the Cartwright building.
Another dot populated nearby.
Flint Carter.
Their signals overlapped.
I stared at the screen for too long.
Flores pretended not to notice.
“They’re together,” I said.
The room hummed around me—monitors, servers, fluorescent lights, the quiet machinery of an investigation that had already moved too slowly.
I looked at Mallory’s blue dot then at Carter’s.
If the Auditor wanted her attention, he would come closer. If he wanted leverage, he’d come closer. Hell, if he wanted her, and I wouldn’t doubt that, he would eventually have to get close to her.
Since Carter kept placing himself between Mallory and the investigation, he would draw fire whether he understood it or not. Maybe that was the whole point. He read the situation and backed her plays so she would let him stay there to play guard dog.
They were wrong. His proximity alone wouldn’t protect her. All it did was expose him as a target. And if Flint Carter couldn’t understand that, I would remove him from the equation too.
She would hate me for it. People often hated the person who kept them alive. I could live with that.