Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
MALLORY
Three days passed before the Auditor contacted me again.
In that time, Brewster called eleven times and I answered four. The first six calls had been demands for the return of his phone. I’d powered it off so he couldn’t track it and played dumb.
I wasn’t proud of that.
I also wasn’t sorry.
Two of the calls involved updates on Guy’s medical records, neither of which explained the missing fourteen pages. The hospital blamed a data-migration error. The insurer claimed the treatment codes had been entered incorrectly.
Brewster called it a discrepancy.
Flint and I called it confirmation.
The pages were missing, and no one could—or would—account for them.
We requested billing statements through a source in hospital administration and tracked down the ambulance crew that had brought Guy in.
One paramedic remembered him because Guy had regained consciousness briefly and refused pain medication.
He’d relented only after being assured it wouldn’t compromise a toxicology screen.
The official records contained no toxicology results.
By Thursday, we’d added two more boards to the conference room.
By Friday, Brewster had stopped asking me to turn over his phone and started asking whether the Auditor had contacted me again.
He had not.
On one level, that worried me. I couldn’t assume he was unaware of our progress. The Auditor had made it clear he’d seen the boards. He knew what questions we were asking.
Maybe he didn’t feel the need to correct us.
Good thing?
Bad thing?
I wasn’t entirely certain.
That worried me more than the calls.
I was still staying at Flint’s apartment.
He was still sleeping on the sofa.
Neither of us discussed changing the arrangement.
We also hadn’t discussed anything that wasn’t directly connected to the investigation since I told him about Brewster.
That felt—odd.
Not hostile.
Hostility would have been easier.
Flint still made coffee before I woke up. He still left a clean towel outside the bathroom and put his keys in the same chipped bowl beside the door. If I forgot to eat, food appeared within reach without comment. If I worked too long, he shifted the lamp so the glare stopped catching my eyes.
He remained considerate in every way that didn’t require intimacy. No teasing over breakfast. No arguments about stolen toast. No quiet smile when I drank the latte exactly the way he made it.
We talked about ambulance logs, provider numbers, billing codes, and missing toxicology. We did not talk about why he stayed in the kitchen until I finished getting ready or why he waited for me beside the elevator instead of downstairs.
The distance between us wasn’t large enough to measure.
That made it impossible to ignore.
On Thursday night, I found him asleep on the sofa with one arm folded beneath his head and a file spread open across his chest. The couch was too short for him. His knees bent awkwardly over the armrest, and the blanket I had left folded nearby remained untouched.
I stood there longer than necessary.
I could have woken him, could have told him to take the bed. Hell, I could have and should have offered to trade. Instead, I removed the file from his chest, marked the page he’d been reading, and set it on the coffee table.
His hand closed loosely around my wrist before I straightened and his eyes opened. For one suspended moment, neither of us spoke. Then he released me.
“Sorry,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep.
“You thought I was an intruder?”
“I knew it was you.”
That answer did nothing useful to my pulse. I pulled the blanket over him. “Go back to sleep.”
His eyes held mine. “You first.”
Everything between us had become careful. By morning, neither of us mentioned it. That was becoming a pattern too.
At the newsroom, we worked shoulder to shoulder without touching. We finished each other’s questions but not each other’s jokes. Flint didn’t challenge my decisions unless they affected the story or my physical safety.
Apparently my judgment in every other category had become my own problem.
Fair.
Infuriating, but fair.
The Auditor’s silence filled the spaces neither of us would. Maybe he was waiting. Maybe he was watching. Maybe the purpose of his last call had never been to lead us anywhere. Maybe he’d simply wanted to see whether I would move when prompted.
I had. Didn’t that just suck to acknowledge?
“Stop glaring at the phone,” Flint said from the other side of the conference table.
“I’m not.”
“You’ve been staring at it for four minutes.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Your constant use of that defense is beginning to sound a lot like the boy who cried wolf.” His tone was dry, but the humor didn’t quite reach his eyes.
I looked at him across the spread of hospital records. “Are we going to keep doing this?”
“Researching?” The response was almost too innocent. Flint could not sell that to someone who didn’t know him, it would never fly with me.
“You know that isn’t what I mean.”
The muscle in his jaw shifted once. “Do I?”
There it was. The smallest cut in the coolness of his voice and as sharp as the edge of tone.
I sat back. “You’re angry.”
“No.”
Eyebrows raised, I chose the high road and didn’t just say bullshit. “Well, you’re doing a very good impression of it.”
Blowing out a breath, Flint glared off into the distance for a split second before he focused on me again. “I’m not angry about what happened with Brewster.”
“That qualification is doing a lot of work.” Maybe I shouldn’t poke the bear, but the cool, precise distance from Flint was just—not normal.
And I didn’t like it.
He capped the highlighter in his hand. “I’m concerned because you can’t tell whether your judgment around him is professional or personal.”
Even expecting the answer it still stung. “I told you that because it mattered.”
“I know.”
“Yet, now you’re punishing me for it?”
His expression hardened. “Is that what you think this is?”
“I think you’ve barely spoken to me about anything except the story for three days.”
“We have a story and leads.”
“We had it before.”
The silence expanded. Beyond the paper-covered glass, the newsroom carried on without us.
Flint glanced away first, then down at the records. “You wanted space.” The words were almost too quiet, I had to strain to hear them.
“I never said that.” Did he really think that I’d wanted him to back off?
“No.” He shot me a sideways look, then flipped to a different page on the table. “You made it clear I’d crossed a line by asking questions.”
“You didn’t cross a line,” I said with a sigh.
“Then what did I do?” He lifted his head then and met my gaze. “What?”
Made me feel seen. Made me account for something I wanted to file away as a mistake. Made me wonder whether the professional neutrality on his face had concealed something far less neutral underneath.
None of those answers were safe.
“You were right,” I said instead because in his way, he had been. Another reason I’d wanted him to have the truth of it all.
Flint’s gaze lifted. “That isn’t an apology.”
“Well,” I said with a huff and a hint of a smile. “It’s the closest you’re getting before coffee.”
His mouth almost curved.
Almost.
The tension loosened by a fraction, then settled again. Not gone, but… better.
Flint picked up the next file. “Then let’s find out who removed fourteen pages from a dead man’s medical history.”
I followed his lead because it was easier than asking what, exactly, we were working toward.
Three hours later, at nine fourteen on a Friday night, an envelope appeared beneath my keyboard.
No one saw who put it there.
That should have been impossible.
The Cartwright building required badges at every employee entrance. Visitors signed in downstairs, passed security, and wore temporary credentials that changed color after twelve hours. The loading dock had cameras. The elevators required access above the lobby.
Flint had added two guards after the first call.
The FBI had added four cameras.
The envelope still waited beneath my keyboard as if it had always belonged there.
Cream paper.
My name was typed in the center and there was no postage or return address. He’d hand delivered this—somehow.
Flint stood behind me while I photographed it from every angle.
“You’re not touching it,” he said.
“It’s on my desk.”
“Just being there doesn’t mean you have permission.”
I didn’t need him getting all protective of me. “I wasn’t asking.”
His hand closed around my wrist before my fingers reached the edge. While not painful, his grip was firm and the contact halted us both. His thumb stroked over the skin above my pulse.
We stared at each other for an impossibly long moment. When I looked at his hand, however, he released me immediately.
“Gloves,” he said in a rough, almost hoarse voice.
He had a point, so I opened the second drawer down on my desk and pulled out the box of nitrile gloves. I kept them on hand for a lot of things—like if the fridge in the break room was smelling particularly ripe.
“You should call him,” he said, watching me with a closed off expression.
I didn’t have to ask who. “I will.”
“Before you open it.”
“I’ll call him after.” Easier to ask for forgiveness.
“Mallory.”
“The Auditor—at least we presume it was him—put this on my desk. Whatever was on the outside is already compromised.” If the Auditor left anything for them to find. I didn’t believe that was all that likely.
Flint bit off a swear word before grinding out, “That isn’t the point.”
“Of course it isn’t,” I said with a shrug. “He either expects the FBI to take it before I can read it, which means it has nothing.”
Head tilted back, he exhaled a long ragged breath. “I am going to regret asking this, what is the or? You said either, so what is the or?”
“Or he knew I would see it first and what’s in here is something they will never tell me.”
He just stared. “You don’t know that.”
“And I won’t until I open it and see what it is. Maybe it’s not from him at all. In its own way, that envelope is Schrodinger’s clue and it was sent to me.”