Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
MALLORY
Better.
I stared at the word until it began to annoy me all over again. The fact that his approval had pleased me at all was worse.
I pushed away from the desk and stood, more because I needed to move than because I intended to leave. Sitting there while an anonymous man graded my reasoning had started to feel suspiciously like detention.
I was far too old to play these kinds of games. “We need to establish something.”
The word vanished.
Go on.
“I didn’t come here to take an exam.”
You came for answers.
“Exactly.” I paced toward the far side of the room, then circled back toward the desk. “Which means this doesn’t work if you’re the only one asking questions and deciding whether mine deserve answers.”
Nothing appeared.
I stopped beside the chair. “You wanted a conversation.”
Yes.
“Conversations require reciprocity.”
Do they?
I sighed. “Good ones do.”
Define reciprocity.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
The cursor blinked.
I pointed at the monitor. “I am not spending the rest of the night defining words for you. The internet has a host of dictionaries. Go look it up if you want that.”
Why not?
“Because you’ll argue with my definition.” I stared at the screen, daring him to disagree.
A pause.
Probably.
I laughed despite myself. “There. See? Progress. Self-awareness.”
I sat again, but this time angled the chair slightly rather than facing the monitor squarely. It was ridiculous how much difference a few degrees made. Less interrogation room. More interview.
Maybe that was another narrative I was constructing for myself. Something to examine later.
“For this to work,” I continued, “I ask a question. You answer it. Then you ask one and I answer.”
Questions are not equivalent.
The idea of saying duh occurred to me but we weren’t that close. I rolled my eyes though. “Obviously.”
Then your proposal is inherently unequal.
“So is every conversation ever held between two people.”
Not necessarily.
“Now who’s being philosophical?”
Specific.
“Of course.”
I drummed my fingertips on the desk.
“Fine. We account for unequal questions. Either person can refuse to answer.”
Without consequence?
That stopped me. “From the other person? Yes.”
That is not the same thing.
“No.” The response came slowly because I got where he was going. A refusal was, in fact, a form of information. So was hesitation, asking for clarification, and changing the subject.
Every interview I’d ever conducted depended on the things someone didn’t say as much as the things they did.
“If either of us refuses,” I said, “the other is allowed to draw whatever conclusions they want from that refusal.”
Accurately?
“I’m not promising accuracy.”
Then what are you promising?
“Not to punish you for refusing.”
The cursor remained still.
“Same rule applies to me.”
Still nothing.
I leaned toward the screen. “That’s the best offer you’re getting.”
Several seconds passed before letters appeared.
Agreed.
I smiled. “I get the first question.”
Why?
“Because I proposed the rules.”
That does not logically follow.
“It does in journalism.”
Convenient profession.
“You invited a reporter.”
True.
I reached for the pen lying beside the notebook, twirled it between my fingers, then decided against writing anything yet.
“What do I call you?”
You already named me.
“You just spent half an hour explaining why that name belongs to me, not you.”
I corrected your assumption.
“So correct this one too. What do you call yourself?”
My name.
My lips twitched. “Which is?”
No.
I stared at the screen. “You know, for someone who just agreed to reciprocity, you’re off to a spectacular start.”
I answered.
“You refused.”
Correct.
“And I’m drawing conclusions.”
Expected.
I pointed the pen toward the monitor. “You enjoy irritating me.”
That is another question.
“No, that was an observation.” I elongated the last word to show that he wasn’t the only one who could pick on the other’s vocabulary.
Incomplete.
“Don’t start.”
I could almost imagine amusement on the other side, which was absurd because there might not even be another side.
For all I knew, the responses were routed through three countries, generated by some obscene combination of automation and anticipation, while the actual man drank coffee six blocks away.
Or six states.
Or six thousand miles.
I had no evidence he was anywhere near me. There I went again. Facts and assumptions. Dammit.
“If we’re going to continue this,” I said, “I need something to call you that you choose.”
Why?
“Because you know my name.”
You know mine.
“I know the one I invented.”
Does that make it less real?
I thought about the question. “The Auditor is real because people agreed it was real.”
Including you.
“I started it.”
Precisely.
“That doesn’t mean it belongs to you.”
No.
The answer came immediately. I frowned. “You really don’t like it.”
Incorrect.
“What, you’re fond of it?”
Irrelevant.
“So you have an opinion.”
Everyone has opinions.
“You work very hard to pretend you don’t.”
That is another observation.
“One you’re not denying.”
The cursor blinked.
“Give me a name.” I leaned back, pleased with myself.
Why?
“Because I’m tired of calling you the Auditor when you keep insisting that isn’t who you are.”
Who am I?
“Oh, no.” I wagged the pen toward the screen. “I already answered that question. My turn.”
A pause.
Then:
Simon.
I read it twice. Then tested the sound of it. “Simon.”
Yes.
“Is that your real name?”
No.
I laughed. “At least you’re consistent.”
Consistency facilitates trust.
“That sounds like something printed on a motivational poster in a serial killer’s break room.”
There was a longer pause.
You have an interesting imagination.
“I’ve been told.”
Simon remained on the screen. It was painfully ordinary.
I had expected nothing dramatic, but apparently some ridiculous part of me had anticipated a name with weight. Not something almost biblical. More mythological. Something a man choosing his own alias would select because he wanted to make a statement.
Simon was a man who filed his taxes early. Simon returned library books. Simon probably owned a sensible winter coat. Maybe that was exactly why he’d chosen it.
“Why Simon?”
My question.
I grimaced. “Right. Fine.”
What does my name tell you?
I lifted my brows, then pursed my lips so I wouldn’t smirk. “That you want me to say ‘Simon says’ at some point.”
Accurate.
I laughed. It was an assumption that he didn’t disagree with, go figure.
Now the cursor waited. I knew what I wanted to ask. The question had sat in the center of everything for days.
Still, I sharpened it before I spoke.
“Did you attack Guy Reardon?”
No.
No hesitation.
No qualification.
Nothing but two letters.
My grip tightened around the pen. “You didn’t assault him in his office?”
No.
“Did you arrange for someone else to?”
No.
“You didn’t order it?”
No.
“Pay for it?”
No.
That was technically four questions. He didn’t complain. Maybe that was an answer too. I swallowed.
“Did you kill Guy Reardon?”
No.
I stopped breathing. It wasn’t that I believed him. I didn’t. Not yet.
Belief was something you earned through corroboration, not good grammar and clever questions. But the answer fit the thing that had been bothering me.
Everything about Guy had felt—manufactured. His crime scene had been imitative rather than exact. He had survived when no others had, even if that survival had been brief. There were missing medical records. Supplemental toxicology. Fourteen pages gone.
And now the man everyone believed killed him was sitting somewhere—or nowhere—telling me he hadn’t.
“Colin?”
My question.
I clenched my jaw. “Of course.”
Why do you believe me?
“I didn’t say I did.”
You didn't have to.
“That’s convenient.”
No. Your questions changed.
I frowned. How?
Before I answered, you asked about all the ways I could have been involved in the death of Mr. Reardon, including whether I killed him.
After I answered, you asked about Mr. Thorne.
My fingers stopped rotating the pen.
You moved from verification to expansion.
I hated that he was right. “I’m testing consistency.”
Also true.
“Which means I don’t necessarily believe you.”
No.
“But?”
The cursor blinked.
You believe the possibility.
That was different and worse.
I stared at the screen. “Yes.”
Thank you.
“For what?”
Honesty.
The answer disturbed me, but I didn’t look to closely at it. I wanted to ask about Colin, but I’d already used my questions in the banter so it was my turn, so I waited.
Why did you sleep with Agent Brewster?
Everything inside me went perfectly still. Frozen. Then my pulse kicked hard once against my throat.
The pen slipped from my fingers and hit the desk with a sharp little crack that sounded obscenely loud in the soundproofed room.
For several seconds, I did nothing. Then I looked toward the corners.
The cameras.
Of course.
No.
Not of course.
How did Simon know? Who knew? Brewster. Me. Now Flint. Potentially whoever monitored the safe house.
The FBI?
I didn’t know.
My eyes narrowed at the monitor. “How do you know about that?”
You are answering my question with another.
“Because your question presumes private information you should not have.”
Should?
“Do not play grammar games with me.”
I am not.
A slow chill crawled across my shoulders. “I told Flint.”
Recently.
That wasn’t an answer, not really. It was so much worse. It implied—a lot of things I didn’t want to think about.
“How recently?”
My question remains unanswered.
I pushed back from the desk and stood. This time I did consider leaving. Not as a negotiating tactic. Actually leaving.
My chair rolled backward an inch when my knee bumped it.
The open door waited behind me.
Flint had told me if anything changed, I left. This qualified. Probably. Then again, the entire purpose of being here was to learn what the Auditor—Simon—knew.
Walking out because he knew too much seemed self-defeating. Dangerous logic, Mallory. Very dangerous.
I stared at the doorway for another moment before turning back. “You want an answer?”
Yes.
“Because it matters to the investigation?”
Perhaps.