Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
MALLORY
The newsroom always felt different after midnight.
During the day, it survived on momentum—ringing phones, shouted questions, assignment editors barking for updates, and producers sprinting past with coffee they never had time to finish.
Every story competed with the next one before the first was even on the air.
Evenings belonged to the broadcast. Scripts tightened. Interviews rolled in. Video editors assembled last-minute clips while reporters filed updates and the control room counted down to airtime. There was still urgency, but it had direction.
After that, if there wasn't breaking news, the building exhaled.
The bright overhead lights gave way to pools of lamplight and computer screens. The constant chatter dissolved into the muted hum of HVAC, the occasional ring of a diverted phone, the soft chatter of police scanners, and the mechanical sigh of the fax machine that somehow still refused to die.
There were always people somewhere in the building. Master control downstairs never slept. Neither did the overnight assignment desk. A handful of editors and producers lingered long after the broadcasts ended, waiting for tomorrow to become today.
I usually stayed with them.
Calls to sources started before sunrise, which meant the real work often happened long before anyone else arrived. Besides, I'd always liked the newsroom after dark. Once the deadlines were gone, you had time to stop demanding answers and start asking better questions.
Flint was across the room, arguing with someone in Records for what had to be the sixth time.
“...I'm not asking for the photographs,” he said, his tone almost viciously patient in the way only Flint could be while he slowly strangled someone with logic. “I'm asking whether the supplemental toxicology exists.”
A pause.
“I understand that's your policy.”
Another pause.
“No, I don't agree that those are the same thing.”
I smiled despite myself. Somewhere, a county employee was having the worst conversation of their week. And that unfortunate soul just hadn’t recognized they’d already lost the argument.
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes.
The whiteboard had become a monument to dead ends.
Cook County would confirm Colin's autopsy existed. They wouldn't release it.
The hospital acknowledged additional records.
HIPAA.
Guy's records were tied up in three separate systems, each insisting another department owned them.
Flint had managed to extract exactly one useful detail in six hours.
Additional toxicology had been ordered after Guy's surgery.
No one would tell us why.
I tapped the marker against my notebook.
Autopsies.
Hospital records.
Neurological assessments.
Someone had looked harder after Guy died. Someone already knew there were questions. I just needed to find whoever that someone was.
My phone buzzed.
Not a message.
Just another reminder that Agent Elliot Brewster had called.
Again. Three missed calls. One voicemail. Two texts asking me to call him.
I still hadn't listened to any of them. Part of me knew he could probably get the reports in ten minutes.
The rest of me remembered everything that had happened before—and after—we'd crossed a line that should have stayed exactly where it was.
Professional boundaries were easy.
People weren't.
Ever since that night, I'd caught myself replaying moments that probably didn't deserve a second thought. A glance that lingered. A turn of phrase or the way his voice changed when it was just the two of us.
The way he'd looked at me after I heard about Colin. Concern. Affection. Or maybe guilt.
The problem wasn't that I couldn't read people. The problem was that I no longer trusted myself to read him.
That made him dangerous in a way no serial killer ever could. I set the phone face down on the desk.
Brewster wanted to manage every variable around me—who I spoke to, what information reached me, where I went, how much risk I was allowed to take.
Objectively, I understood why.
If the Auditor was communicating with me, I had become evidence as much as I was a reporter. Maybe even bait. I could respect the strategy without surrendering to it.
Because the moment someone else decided what I was allowed to know, I stopped being a journalist and became an asset.
I'd spent my career refusing to let powerful people decide what questions I could ask. I wasn't about to start now.
Across the newsroom, Flint hung up before he strode across to the conference room we’d taken over.
“Any luck?” I asked, picking up the coffee I’d brewed and sipping it. The sludge wasn’t burnt and at least this late, I was the only one making it.
“They elevated me to their supervisor.” His bland expression didn’t say much for that individual.
“Congratulations?”
“He also said no.” Dry as the desert, he crossed to the board and added another dead end to our list. “I have a few other irons in the fire.”
With that, he went to retrieve a cup of coffee for himself. The fact he grimaced on the first swallow almost made me laugh.
Of course, he didn’t complain any more than I would. How many stories had we researched, pulled apart, and put back together fueled by coffee strong enough to put hair on your chest?
“How are you doing?” He was back in the doorway, his blue-gray eyes locked on me.
“Thinking.” I spared him a glance before I went back to staring at the board. We had so many puzzle pieces up there. We had more on the board back at his place. But each time we found another dead end, we narrowed the path we could follow.
But we were still missing something.
“Need me?” He took a sip of coffee as he waited and I shook my head.
“Not yet.” I motioned to my head. “Still—letting it cook.”
“I’m going to go provoke more specialists.” He sounded almost cheery as he saluted me with the coffee then retreated to his office. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
I looked back at the board. The names. The unanswered questions and just let it all filter through me. Sometimes if I stopped trying to see everything, I’d find the thread I missed.
An odd ring cut through the room. I frowned and glanced at the flat conference room phone.
It rang again.
And again.
Persistent. Whoever was calling seemed to know someone was still here. I debated ignoring it when it stopped ringing, only to start again a couple of minutes later.
The conference room was dark except for the city lights bleeding through the glass. The whiteboard reflected in the window behind me.
It rang again so I picked it up. “Conference room.”
Silence.
There was no static or breathing, just silence
I started to pull the receiver away to hang up when a man said, “Ms. McBryan.”
The lack of distortion surprised me. He sounded calm, almost measured, and there was no attempt to disguise his voice.
Going with my instincts, I said, “I’ve been expecting your call.”
“I know,” he said. “You’ve made progress.”
He sounded less like a killer than a professor beginning office hours.
Every instinct I possessed sharpened.
I didn't answer.
“What changed?” Was that a question?
I wasn’t sure, but I answered it anyway. “We expanded it.”
“Did you? Has that been helpful?”
“You’ve been watching us,” I said, choosing to say us rather than me.
"Would that conclusion satisfy your editor?"
No. It would satisfy me. Different standards.
I kept my voice level.
"Did you kill Colin Thorne?"
"What evidence supports that conclusion?"
The question caught me off balance. “You were blamed for it."
"I asked about evidence."
None.
Not anymore.
“I need more,” I said. “More information. More facts.”
I didn’t ask for the truth. Not again. I wanted it, but I wouldn’t ask for it.
The man spoke again. “What changed your mind?”
I swallowed. “The accusation. Accusations, I should say.”
“Explain.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shifted in the seat to lean forward, elbows on the conference room table. There were stacks of papers strewn across it, haphazardly organized, but organized all the same.
“The so-called crimes were broad in scope. Nothing pointed to specific incidences. That seemed to be at odds with evidence left at earlier scenes. Evidence attributed to you.” I tacked that last word on more out of habit. I had no way to prove any of it had been done by him.
Not without the actual evidence.
“And?”
I sighed. Lowering my hand to tap my nails against the table top. “What little I saw seemed like your work.”
“Seemed?”
“Yes. Seemed. But it wasn’t, was it?”
Another pause. Long enough that I wondered if he'd hung up. Then, he said, “Better.”
Not praise. A grade.
I hated how much I wanted a higher one. I straightened in the chair. “Why did you choose them?”
Silence.
I replayed the question and corrected myself before he could.
“Your targets,” I said.
The word settled uneasily between us.
Not victims.
Targets.
Victim implied innocence. Target implied intention—selection based on criteria I still didn’t understand.
People chosen because of what they had done, what they had taken, and what they had escaped.
But Colin and Guy had not fit.
“What made someone eligible?” I asked. “Was it the crime? The profit? The failure of the system to punish them?”
“Why do you believe I chose them?”
“Because the scenes were deliberate.”
“Many murders are deliberate.”
“Not like yours.”
A pause followed.
I had given him something he wanted, although I couldn’t tell whether it was the distinction or the acknowledgment.
“The earlier victims were selected,” I continued. “Researched. Documented. You didn’t simply kill them. You built cases against them.”
“Did I?”
“The evidence attributed to you did.”
“Your qualifiers are returning.” There was just a suggestion of a tsk in his voice.
“They keep me out of court.”
“Have they kept you safe?”
My fingers stilled against the tabletop. “That wasn’t the question.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
The quiet stretched. How did he do that? Take every question I asked, and turning it until the sharp edge faced me.
I looked at the glass wall we’d papered over. I’d even written notes on it and so had Flint.