Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
MALLORY
Iwoke beneath a ceiling I didn’t recognize. For one disorienting second, I lay still and listened. A refrigerator hummed somewhere beyond the bedroom. Pipes ticked softly inside the wall. Morning traffic moved several floors below in a steady wash of tires against damp pavement.
Then came the smell of coffee.
Flint.
My memory served up the answer in pieces that I could put together. The memorial. The ballroom. Guy’s face projected twenty feet high while men who had barely tolerated him praised his integrity.
The sideways glances between board members. Brewster trying to corner me near the exit. Flint steering me through the revolving doors without touching me.
Then rain.
A cold, needling Chicago drizzle that turned every passing headlight into a smear of white across the windshield.
Flint had driven me home. We had sat outside my building for less than a minute before noticing the dark sedan parked halfway down the block.
Maybe FBI. Maybe press. Maybe neither.
He hadn’t asked which possibility bothered me most, just said, “You can stay at my place.”
My answer? A little sharper than he deserved and a bit more biting. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
His eyes had remained on the sedan. “I was offering you a locked door, McBryan. Try not to make it weird.”
So I went home with him.
His bedroom smelled faintly of cedar, laundry detergent, and the clean mineral scent of rain that had clung to his coat.
The room was spare without feeling sterile.
A dresser. A chair with two shirts folded over the back.
Three books stacked on the floor beside the bed because apparently even owning a nightstand would have required too much commitment.
I pushed myself upright.
The other side of the mattress was untouched.
Flint had changed the sheets before giving me the room. I knew because the corners had been tucked with military precision and because he had mentioned, too casually, that the linens were clean. He had slept on the sofa despite my telling him twice that I could take it.
The second time, he had looked at the couch, then at me.
“You’re five foot six.”
“Five-seven.”
“In shoes.”
“You know, I could still go home.”
He pointed. “Bed’s down the hall.”
End of discussion.
I found my dress hanging from the back of the bedroom door, the fabric smoothed as much as possible. Beside it sat a folded T-shirt and a pair of gray sweatpants that would have fit two of me.
The cracked lettering across the chest read:
CARTER NEWS DIVISION
NO MATTER WHO SAYS THEY LOVE YOU—CHECK IT OUT.
(YES, EVEN YOUR MOTHER.)
I pulled it on.
It reached halfway down my thighs.
The sweatpants required the drawstring and an act of faith.
When I opened the bedroom door, I found Flint standing in the kitchen wearing dark jeans and a pale blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. His hair was damp, suggesting he had already showered. A bruise-colored shadow rested beneath each eye.
He had not slept much.
“This is a horrible thing to put on a T-shirt.”
Flint glanced toward me. "It's also good journalism.”
“Did someone at corporate actually make these?” Corporate didn’t usually have a sense of humor and I had verified that multiple times.
“Retirement gift.” His answer was almost a grunt before he took a sip of his coffee.
I just shook my head. To be fair, it was funny and also, not wrong. Trust but verify everything.
The apartment was larger than I expected and less finished. Exposed brick ran along one wall. Tall windows looked east between buildings toward a strip of silver sky. The furniture seemed to have been chosen for function and then just abandoned wherever the delivery people had set it down.
A battered leather sofa—blanket folded with a pillow neatly at one end—faced a television that wasn’t on.
The dining table had disappeared beneath newspapers, case files, two camera lenses, an unopened package of printer paper, and a chipped ceramic bowl containing loose batteries.
Framed photographs leaned against the walls instead of hanging on them.
Flint in body armor beside a burned-out vehicle.
Flint younger, thinner, and grinning with three other reporters in front of a hotel whose windows had been blown out.
Flint shaking hands with someone cropped mostly out of frame.
No wedding photographs.
No photographs of Blythe. I looked away because my observations were bordering on intrusive.
He glanced over his shoulder. “You sleep?”
“Some.” I shrugged and headed toward the kitchen.
“That good, huh?” Dry humor softened the deadpan remark.
“It was better than none.”
He accepted that and turned back to the stove.
Something sizzled in a pan. Toast waited on a plate beside the coffeemaker. Two tumblers sat on the counter, one black and one dark green. He was sipping from the dark green. The smells of espresso and foamed milk drew me in like a siren call.
“You learned to cook?” I asked, a little dumbfounded. The last time we’d been in the field, his idea of cooking had involved a microwave and pre-packaged meals.
“I apply heat to food.” He didn’t glance at me.
With a hum, I shook my head. “That wasn’t my question.” Deflection told me there was another story there.
“It’s the only answer you’re getting.”
I appreciated the dry challenge whether he meant to offer it or not. I suspected it was the former. After all, if he were to make it easy to find out the truth from him or other sources, then it wouldn’t be any fun.
I walked closer and peered at the pan of... “What is it?”
The side eye he shot me almost made me laugh. “Eggs.” The little snap on that single syllable stressed his irritation.
“Huh. They look—like they are going undercover. Or maybe Halloween.” It was the nicest description I could come up with at the last moment.
He released a grunt without comment one way or the other regarding the eggs. Instead, he pointed his spatula at the tumbler sitting in front of the seats at his breakfast bar.
“Your coffee.” When deflection failed, just change the subject. I almost saluted him with the cup.
The first sip of the latte was pure delight. It was hot and delivered a real kick at the end. Quad shot. I could have kissed Flint. I savored that taste and almost smiled before I took another drink.
I closed my eyes for a second, letting the warmth and caffeine do their work. It was, without exaggeration, the best thing that had happened to me all morning.
When I opened them again, Flint was watching me over the rim of his mug. His expression had softened into that almost-smile he wore when he thought something was amusing but didn't want to embarrass the other person by saying so.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
Too fast.
I gave him a look. “You're doing the face.”
“I don't have a face.” He turned back to the stove as if the eggs demanded his full attention.
“You absolutely have a face.”
“Tragic design flaw.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
It was easy with Flint. We volleyed sarcasm back and forth without keeping score, and somewhere between the coffee and the conversation, the knot that had lived between my shoulders for days loosened a fraction.
That definitely didn’t come from getting enough sleep—which I hadn’t. My eyes still felt like gritty pits. But it was enough to remember what normal almost felt like.
I leaned against the counter and worked on getting the life-saving fuel to my brain. The quiet that settled between us wasn’t uncomfortable. That should have bothered me more than it did.
I had spent the night in his bed.
He had slept ten yards away on a sofa too short for him.
Now he was making eggs while I stood barefoot in his kitchen wearing his clothes. There were entire relationships less intimate than this.
That thought arrived uninvited, so I drowned it in coffee.
“You should have taken the bed,” I said.
He didn’t glance back at me. “You already filed that complaint.”
Since he wasn’t looking at me, I indulged myself and stuck my tongue out at him. “Then I’m filing an appeal.”
“Denied.” He made a gesture of hammering a gavel with the spatula.
“You can’t be the opponent and the court at the same time.”
With a snort, he flashed me a grin. “This isn’t a democracy, Mal. In my apartment, I’m all three branches of government.”
“That explains the décor. Authoritarian minimalism.” I made a point of giving a dismissive sweeping look around. Though, to be fair, minimalism might be a bit too generous.
He slid eggs onto two plates. “I was going for divorced correspondent and married to my job.”
“Nailed it.” I saluted him with my coffee. But I regretted the joke before the silence draped us in the aftermath.
Something shifted in his expression. Not pain exactly. More like the momentary recognition of an old scar beneath a sleeve.
Flint picked up the plates. “Table’s unusable.”
“I noticed.”
“We can eat at the breakfast bar.”
He set one plate in front of the stool nearest me. There was only one stool and apparently that was for me. Eggs, toast, and sliced fruit. It all looked good and he’d gone to some effort to fix it.
After he set his own plate down a foot away from me, I reached for a piece of his toast.
He looked down at my untouched serving, then at the toast in my hand.
Daring him, I raised my eyebrows. “What?”
“You have your own.” Amusement and irritation muddied his tone as though he couldn’t decide which way to go.
I shrugged. “Yours looked better.”
“They came from the same toaster.” Rolling his eyes, he put another slice of bread into the toaster.
“I could have given you mine,” I said and that earned me a skeptical look but he didn’t comment.
I smiled into my coffee.
His phone vibrated against the counter. He checked the screen, silenced it, and placed it facedown.
“Newsroom?” I asked.
“Three messages from overnight. Two from legal. One from a senior vice president who suddenly wants to know why we’re spending money on investigative research.” No matter what happened in the world, the newsroom had to go on. We couldn’t afford to mourn our losses or even get angry about them.