Chapter 15 #2
It took everything I had to not grind my teeth. I could feel the muscle ticking in my jaw. “It wasn’t a request.”
“Neither was mine.”
We stared at each other inside the cramped front compartment while rain ticked against the roof.
Brewster was the first one to look away, but I didn’t take that as winning any prizes with him. Actually, far from it, I got the impression I was more of a nuisance to him and far less a threat.
I was fine with that—for now.
“How long?” Brewster snapped.
As much as I wanted to ignore him, that seemed to be the worst of my options. Because I didn’t want him charging in there and blowing this for Mal.
With that in mind, I said, “Three minutes.”
“What floor?” Yeah, totally won points with him. The coldness in his voice dipped into something even frostier.
Since I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I said, “Eleven, probably.”
“Probably?” Disbelief punched up the three syllables like I was an idiot.
Maybe I was, but I wasn’t gonna react to his judgment. “The elevator stopped there.” Or it seemed to. That was the only light I’d seen.
I checked my watch, then shifted to slide into the back once more—after I made sure to pocket the keys.
He followed me. “You have eyes inside?”
“No.” I settled back in front of the monitors. With the curtain closed, the low light wouldn’t escape. I checked all the monitors so I could study the building for any sign of her.
“Audio?” Brewster crouched next to me after he glared around for another chair.
“No.” And I wasn’t giving him my seat.
“Tracker?”
“No.”
His head turned slowly. “You sent her in blind.”
I ignored his icy stare and kept the temper out of my voice. I didn’t owe him an explanation and as much as I wished otherwise, she didn’t answer to him—or to me.
“She went in according to the conditions she accepted.” I didn’t like it either, but he didn’t get to criticize it.
“You mean she accepted conditions imposed by a serial offender to meet him utterly alone.” Yep, he seemed to like it even less than I did.
Too bad. So sad. “Yes.” I kept my gaze on the screens. I didn’t want to miss anything.
“And you helped her.”
“I made sure she knew the building, the exits, and the likely contingencies.” Not that I owed him an explanation.
Brewster blew out a harsh breath. “You helped her conceal an offender contact from the FBI.”
Oh, were we tallying up what we’d done? How about this? “You followed us.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“No, it’s still an answer. Just because it’s not the one you wanted doesn’t make it any less of one.”
His jaw tightened.
Good.
I wanted him irritated. Angry people revealed priorities.
“So, how did you find us?” I asked. I really wanted to know.
“I knew she had been invited.”
The answer arrived too smoothly. “No,” I said slowly. “You didn’t know. You suspected.”
“I confirmed.” He ground the two words out between his teeth. It almost sounded like he was too angry to lie.
“So, how did you do that?”
His gaze darted down to the metal cash box beneath the folding table. Brewster’s powered-off phone rested inside.
Mallory had insisted we bring it as a possible decoy. I had insisted we keep it shielded. I wasn’t going to tell him his phone was there or how we found the location. I was damn certain he hadn’t followed me.
The telling silence he refused to fill in with his answer seemed designed to pressure me into a response. I just waited.
He blinked first. “The access card.”
Hmmm. “You never saw it.”
“I saw enough on the newsroom footage.”
Interesting. Mallory had handled the card at her desk, beneath a camera installed by the FBI. The angle there would have been wrong. But there were other cameras in the newsroom…
“You enhanced the image.”
“I identified the manufacturer.”
Now that made me curious. How the hell had he identified that from a blank card? I turned the information over and filed it away for future research. Trust—but verify.
“And?”
Brewster spared me an impatient look. “And there are eleven active systems within the city limits using that series of access cards.”
“So, that got you to eleven buildings.” I waited.
“Three matched the address parameters.”
Bullshit. “You didn’t know the address parameters.”
His expression didn’t change. But it was a gap. Not proof. Not even close. It was enough to irritate me though.
“You had another source,” I said.
“I’m running an investigation.” Brewster didn’t bother to hide his irritation, but he also wasn’t meeting my gaze. He was focused on the monitors.
“That’s not the same thing,” I countered as I studied the same monitors. I could see his reflection
“It is when we are running the investigation.”
Two figures moved along the far side of the garage entrance. Dark clothes. Low profile. Tactical team, probably four to six agents staggered across the block.
“You brought company.” I wished I could have said I was surprised.
“Always have a contingency.” Brewster didn’t defend the choice. Not that he had to, I supposed. “We’re after an unsub who has killed more than a dozen men.”
“Allegedly,” I corrected him.
He shot me a look. “We know he killed those men—I know he did.”
“You don’t even know who he is, Agent Brewster.” I shouldn’t have to remind him. “Though, if we’re shifting our system from innocent until proven guilty to just guilty—then it’s allegedly.”
What I didn’t add was that if he really did know who the guilty person was, why hadn’t he arrested them yet?
“I’m taking the threat seriously, even if you aren’t. I doubt the unsub would believe otherwise.”
“No, probably not. But what he will believe is that she didn’t come alone.” That had to be bad. I had to think that because while the Auditor—allegedly—that left the card and the message told her alone, it didn’t indicate what would or wouldn’t happen if the conditions weren’t met.
“Should I point out that she didn’t come alone?” Brewster asked in a dry voice as the tactical team continued to move.
“Not visibly.” I motioned to the screens. “I’m also not about to stage a raid.”
“Semantics.” He waved a hand dismissively.
But I shook my head. “No, it’s not. It’s strategy.” It put me where I could back her up if she needed me and made sure I knew where she was if she went missing.
His mouth compressed.
I had seen that expression in men who wanted control but had been forced to accept information instead. So, what was he angrier about? That I was here and she’d trusted me? Or that she’d cut him out entirely?
I had my guess. But all I asked was, “How many agents?”
“Enough.”
“Not a number.”
“It’s the one you’re getting.”
I almost laughed. He had used one of my own answers without knowing it. “Your people breach only if I tell them.”
Brewster turned toward me. “You don’t command federal agents.”
“I command the only information coming out of this van.”
He gave me a cool look. “You have no information.”
“I know the floor.” The layout. The entry and exit points.
He wasn’t buying. “You think you know the floor.”
But, I had an ace up my sleeve. “I know her code phrase.”
Something changed in his face. Small, but immediate. “What phrase?”
“Nunya,” I said easily.
“That’s the phrase?”
I smirked. “Nun ya business.”
“Carter.”
Making my face as bland as possible, I said, “If she uses the phrase, I’ll move. If she doesn’t, we don’t.”
“We?”
I shrugged. “Well, you’re already here. Might as well be useful.”
“How do you get the message? Do we have ears on her?”
His attention shifted toward the monitors again. He studied the receiver, the timer, and the building diagram taped beside it.
Before I could answer the first question, he asked, “How long did she agree to stay?”
“When she sends it. No. And she didn’t.” I answered them in order, ticking them off on my fingers.
“You let her enter without an extraction time?”
“I tried.”
“She refused.”
“Clearly.”
“Of course she did.” The anger in his voice wasn’t aimed entirely at Mallory. Some of it was aimed at him and the rest at me.
That made two of us.
Brewster raised one hand to his ear. A nearly invisible receiver sat against his skin.
“Hold positions,” he said quietly. “No one approaches the entrances.”
A voice murmured back, too low for me to distinguish.
He lowered his hand. “You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t thank you.” And I didn’t plan to.
“You should.”
“I’ll consider it when you explain how you knew.”
His gaze hardened. “You think this is the time?”
“I think you’re in my van because you don’t want your team to know you lost control of the operation.”
“I didn’t lose control.”
“True,” I said, agreeing with him. I let him savor that surprise for a minute, then yanked the chair the rest of the way out from under him. “You never had it.”
For an instant, something appeared behind his professional restraint. It wasn’t anger. In the gloom of the van, it seemed more like panic, but he covered it quickly.
“Mallory is inside a building controlled by a man who has already killed multiple people.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “So is she.”
“Is she? Or does she only think she’s aware? That she has some real understanding of what is going on?”
Time to flip the script. “And you believe you’re the only person capable of understanding the risk.”
“What I know, Carter, is that I am the only person here trained to understand him.”
Brewster had reduced an entire federal operation to himself and the Auditor. Mallory had been right. I owed her a candy bar or something.
That didn’t mean she was safe.
It meant the two most obsessed people in the investigation were currently playing tug of war with Mallory in the middle.
“You’re too close to him,” I warned him, but I kept my gaze on the building.
He frowned as he looked at me.
When he didn’t respond, I continued, “You’ve spent so long profiling the Auditor you think every choice has to pass through you before it means anything.”
“I know his behavior,” Brewster argued.
“Do you think so?” I had to challenge that. “You are working off his crimes, his victims, and, now, his interactions with Mallory. You’re basing everything you know off his pattern and that pattern has been changing.”