Chapter 25 #2
He would have recognized every warning sign in someone else. In himself, he merely identified them as necessary, a part of the job.
Denial, after all, was not merely a river in Egypt.
Mallory made it worse.
She questioned him. Resisted him. Stopped trusting him.
Then she did something Elliot Brewster could tolerate even less than being wrong.
She began discovering the truth without him.
A man could pursue answers obsessively and still remain rational. A man who needed another person to validate those answers as pure truth had introduced ego.
And ego corrupted everything.
Mallory had seen it. Her desire for truth overwhelmed her need to cover for others, to buy a story, or to just accept anything at face value. I should have accounted for what Brewster would do when she did.
Carter entered the newsroom. The camera showed him crossing quickly toward the conference room they had claimed as their space.
Then he stopped. Someone approached him. A man in a dark jacket. I enlarged the image.
Not Brewster.
Carter said something. The man answered. Carter looked toward the elevators. Then back.
The man produced something from his pocket.
Carter recoiled.
I zoomed tighter.
Gun.
“Flint.”
The shot was almost anticlimactic. The weapon barely moved. Carter’s body jerked and he slammed into the edge of a desk.
Employees screamed.
The gunman grabbed Carter's jacket and drove him toward the service corridor.
From the angle, it would look chaotic.
A robbery. An altercation. Maybe even wrong place, wrong time—a little harder to sell considering it was the newsroom. But it was also random violence inside a building that had seen more than its share of chaos lately.
Except random men did not enter secured media buildings while someone simultaneously looped the surveillance network.
Carter wasn’t down, if anything, he might be staggered but he was already recovering. He hit his assailant.
Good.
The gunman staggered.
Carter hit him again.
Better.
He had a powerful left.
Then the man drove the weapon into Carter's temple.
Carter dropped.
I stopped breathing. The gunman looked around. Then ran. Carter remained on the floor.
For three seconds, nothing happened.
Four.
Five.
Screams had turned into people calling his name as they converged.
I enlarged the image.
Blood.
Too much to determine the source. His chest moved. I tracked it.
Once.
Again.
Alive.
For now.
I changed feeds.
Mallory.
The garage was looped. The service elevator. The street.
“Where are you?”
No answer, naturally.
I began killing the false feeds one by one. I didn’t bother restoring them. If they were merely looped they were useless. Black screens were more honest.
Lobby.
Gone.
Garage.
Gone.
Elevator.
Gone.
Service entrance.
Gone.
I found one camera Brewster’s device had missed. An obsolete analog unit overlooking the freight corridor. It was hard wired into the system and had no bluetooth.
Low resolution. No audio. It had probably been forgotten by everyone except maybe the maintenance guy who just dealt with it out of routine.
The image stuttered and then stabilized. The freight door opened. Brewster stepped out.
Alone.
For one moment, I thought I was wrong and made another mistake. Then he turned, reached inside and dragged Mallory into view as he hoisted her into a fireman’s carry.
My hands stopped on the keyboard.
She was unconscious. Her head and arms lolled, slack as though a puppet with her strings cut. I backed the video up a handful of frames to zoom in on her face. There was blood on her forehead near her hairline, not much, but enough.
Something inside me became very quiet.
Brewster shifted his grip. Mallory’s hand moved, it was a faint twitch. Barely. But there. Was she conscious?
I didn’t think so. Reflex, perhaps.
He carried her down the corridor while I watched. I could have triggered the fire alarm, locked the doors, called the police, released the elevators.
I could have shut the entire building down.
All viable options. But each and every one introduced unknown variables. Brewster had already demonstrated he was willing to use violence against Carter. Against Mallory.
I did not know whether he was armed. I did not know what he had done to Mallory. I did not know what contingency he had prepared if interrupted. I did not know if Carter’s shooter worked for him or had just been arranged.
Uncertainty changed the calculus.
So I waited. I had never been a fan of waiting, but rushing could cost far too much. Brewster had reached the service exit. There he opened it. The external camera remained compromised.
But—I had alternatives. I’d paid for the tools to access the traffic systems, municipal feeds, private security, even the parking structure. According to the reference I’d gotten—doorbell cameras on bluetooth feeds should also be available.
It had taken time and I’d done it more to flesh out a puzzle. I would like to say I was unaware of the need for them, but I didn’t lie to myself. A lifetime spent in service to a task gave me good instincts.
My gut had said to cover all contingencies.
So I’d done that.
People imagined surveillance as a collection of eyes. It was far more like memory, than eyeballs. Modern cities had been designed to remember almost everything. They were being upgraded each and every day to increase that storage space and access to the constant flow of data.
A camera across the alley caught him emerging. Mallory was still over his shoulder and he walked—no running for our profiler—he just carried her to the dark sedan parked illegally just beyond the loading zone.
Not his Bureau vehicle. He always had been a clever boy. He opened the trunk.
I leaned closer. “No.”
Mallory McBryan disappeared into the trunk of Elliot Brewster's car. For several seconds, Brewster stood with both hands resting on the metal.
With his head bowed, he looked tired—almost defeated. Then he straightened and looked directly toward the camera I was using. One he should not have known existed much less that I was using it.
He smiled. It was broad or triumphant. No, it was the smile of a predator who had their prey in sight.
I leaned back in the chair. Brewster kept his gaze fixed for far too long to be accidental. He knew I was watching.
His mouth moved. The camera had no audio, but it didn’t matter. I read his lips.
Come find her.
He gave it a beat, then he said it again.
Three times over the course of sixty-three seconds. He wanted no question about the gauntlet he was throwing down.
Then he got into the car.
For the first time in a very long while, I experienced an emotion I had no immediate interest in naming.
The sedan pulled away. I acquired the plate. Six keystrokes later, it pulled up as false. I tracked the vehicle through the intersection.
Lost it.
Found it again two blocks later.
Lost it again.
He had planned the route. None of this was spur of the moment. It made me wonder how long it had taken him to lay out this trap. That would be useful information.
Later.
I opened the newsroom feed. Paramedics had reached Carter. He remained unconscious. One paramedic held pressure against his head while another cut open his shirt.
Blood at his shoulder. Not center mass.
Good.
The shot had caught him high. Ideal. Probably survivable. Mallory would ask. I wanted an answer when she did. I watched until they loaded him onto a stretcher.
After verifying once more that he was alive, I closed the feed.