Chapter 15 #4
His gaze remained fixed on Mallory. “I can trace the feed.”
“He just took over the monitors in here to beam us this interaction, I’m pretty sure he can tell when you decide to track him.”
Brewster sighed. “That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t.”
“It means whatever you find will be what he wants you to find.” I shrugged. “If you want a wild goose chase, you do you.”
“Every signal originates somewhere.”
“Every story does too. That doesn’t make the first source reliable.”
His jaw worked once. He lowered his hand.
On the screen, Mallory looked directly toward the unseen man. “Did you kill Colin Thorne?”
Straight to it. No warm-up. No negotiation.
The voice answered with a question. “What evidence tells you that I did?”
Mallory’s hands flexed on the chair arms.
Brewster’s breathing changed.
Mallory said, “The scene was designed to implicate you.”
“Designed by whom?”
“That’s what I’m asking.”
“No. You are asking me to validate a conclusion you no longer believe.”
“You are avoiding a direct answer.” Silence followed. Mallory didn’t look away from the screen. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
One word. No qualification. No evasion.
Brewster’s face emptied.
The voice continued before Mallory could respond. “I did not kill Colin Thorne.”
Mallory’s mouth parted slightly.
Brewster said nothing.
Neither did I.
On the feed, Mallory recovered first. “And Guy Reardon?”
Another pause.
“No.”
Brewster looked away from the screen, a frown tightening his brows. Was it killing him to not be the one in there asking the questions?
Mallory leaned forward. “Then who did?”
“You are still asking for conclusions before you have completed the work.”
“You brought me here,” she reminded him with just a sliver of impatience in her voice. She did not like to be led around by the nose.
“To determine whether you were capable of asking the question without being led to it.”
“Congratulations,” she said, spreading her hands. “I asked. Now answer.”
Something in the silence that followed felt almost amused. Then he said, “You already asked the man who knows.”
Brewster went rigid beside me.
My attention shifted from the screen to him. His expression remained controlled. Too controlled.
The Auditor had used the same phrase from the invitation.
The wrong man. The man who knows. That did not make Brewster guilty. It made him relevant.
Very relevant.
Mallory said, “You mean Brewster.”
The profiler’s gaze snapped back to the monitor.
“I did not name him,” the Auditor replied.
“You didn’t have to.”
“Interesting.”
“What does he know?” Their questions collided one over the other.
But his finished a beat after hers. “What do you believe?”
So she ticked off her answer. “I believe he has access to the full case files.”
“True.”
“I believe he knows what was missing from Guy’s hospital records.”
Silence. Mallory recognized it by the way her eyebrows raised.
“That’s true too,” she said when he continued to not answer.
“Is it?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Making me build the accusation for you.”
“A responsible accusation should survive construction.”
“And an honest source should answer questions.”
“I am not your source.” The five words were so hard they were almost brittle.
“Then what are you?”
The monitor inside the room brightened. Mallory’s face changed. She recognized something on the screen we couldn’t see.
The voice said, “That is the question Agent Brewster has spent years answering incorrectly.”
Brewster reached for his earpiece. This time I caught his arm before he touched it. “Wait.”
His head turned with lethal slowness.
“He knows we’re here,” I reminded him.
“You don’t really know that.”
The screens in the van went black. Not gray. Black. Then white text appeared across all three at once.
MR. CARTER.
My name vanished. A new line replaced it.
YOUR CONCERN IS UNDERSTANDABLE.
Brewster stared. The words disappeared. Another name appeared.
AGENT brEWSTER.
The next sentence arrived one letter at a time.
YOURS IS NOT.
Brewster stopped breathing. The speakers crackled. The Auditor’s voice no longer came from the live feed.
It came directly into the van.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “since neither of you understands the meaning of alone, you may as well listen.”
The video returned.
Mallory remained seated beneath the light, unaware that the audience had expanded.
Or perhaps she knew.
With Mallory, certainty was always dangerous.
On the screen, she tilted her head.
“Who are you talking to?”
The Auditor paused, then said, “The men who have decided that they own your attention.”
Brewster’s face became a mask. My own pulse hammered hard enough to hurt.
Mallory looked beyond the camera, as if she could somehow see through walls, rain, and distance to where we sat.
“Flint?” My name in her voice. It was a question, not an accusation and she didn’t seem afraid.
The promise I’d made her dug in between my ribs. I’ll bring you home. I leaned toward the screen even though she couldn’t see me.
“I’m here, Mal.”
It was a whisper. But then the Auditor answered for me. “Yes,” he said. “He is.”