Chapter 26 #3
Brewster swung the gun toward him. “Shut up.” He wasn’t an FBI agent or a scorned lover. No he was just a frightened man holding a weapon because the facts refused to fit the narrative he composed.
I stared at him. “You killed Colin.”
“He was compromised.”
“By Simon?” The lies wouldn’t stop. Would they?
“Yes.”
“No,” Simon said.
Brewster's finger tightened against the trigger. “Shut the fuck up.”
Simon didn't move.
“You wouldn’t listen to me,” Brewster said as he turned toward me. “You trusted The Auditor more than me.”
My chest hurt. “Oh, Elliot.” I wanted to strangle him.
“You don’t understand.” That was his answer for everything. He wouldn’t even give me the courtesy of having a choice.
“She understood enough,” Simon pointed out.
“She thought I killed Reardon.” Brewster dragged me closer to him, the cut of his nails into my biceps was beginning to really hurt.
“Elliot,” I told him, dropping my voice. “You did.”
“Not intentionally.” Like that made it okay?
“And Colin?” My friend.
My eyes burned. I refused to cry. Not here. Not for Brewster.
“You killed him because of me.” I swallowed on that last bit. Brewster wanted me to abandon Simon, to turn only to him—so he attacked someone I cared about to frame Simon.
“That was his fault—“ Brewster nodded toward Simon. “He was seducing you away and I needed you to see the truth.”
The truth.
I thought of Colin's office. His terrible jokes. His insistence on calling me when he thought I was getting myself into trouble. The empty place where he should still exist.
“You murdered my friend.”
“I was trying to stop The Auditor.”
“No.” My voice broke anyway. I hated him for that too. “You were trying to stop yourself from getting caught.”
Brewster's face twisted. “You don't understand what he is.”
“I understand exactly what you are.”
Everything seemed to happen at once. Brewster’s reserve cracked utterly and he yanked me into him even as Simon said my name. I wanted to twist myself free, but my head kept swimming as Brewster jerked me around and locked his arm over my chest then pressed the gun right under my jaw.
This—seemed more like a nightmare than reality.
For the first time since Simon arrived, fear broke through his composure.
He went utterly still, little more than a figure carved from the shadows, while Brewster wrenched the muzzle higher beneath my jaw. Metal ground into soft tissue hard enough to bruise.
“Elliot,” I said.
“Don’t.” The word tore out of him. Spittle struck my cheek.
And just like that, everything inside me went quiet.
I’d experienced it before. War zones. Riots. Those crystalline seconds when survival stripped away everything unnecessary. The racing pulse vanished. The trembling stopped. Even the gun digging into my skin became nothing more than information.
Distance.
Pressure.
Brewster’s arm across my chest.
Simon six feet away.
The gun.
The angle.
The moment.
My whole world contracted to what I could see, what I could reach, and what I could do before Brewster decided for all three of us.
“You don’t want to do this.”
“Stop talking.” Anger shredded the words. But beneath it was something else. Something that didn’t belong there.
Grief?
Was Brewster actually grieving?
“I thought you liked it when I talked.” I kept my voice light. Almost teasing. Reached deliberately for the cadence we’d shared in the safe house, when irritating him had been a game and neither of us had known where any of this would end.
His arm tightened across me.
“Mallory.” My name vibrated low in his throat, half warning, half plea, wrapped in a growl he barely managed to contain.
For one dangerous heartbeat, he sounded like the Elliot I remembered and that just seemed so much worse.
“I’m serious. You’ve complained about me not answering questions for weeks.”
Simon hadn’t moved. “Let her go.”
A smile twisted Brewster’s mouth. Hollow. Cold. Yet satisfaction warmed his voice. “Now you care.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No denial. Simon gave him the answer cleanly.
Brewster’s smile faltered. “You’re supposed to deny it.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what you do.”
“No.” Simon didn’t so much as blink. “That’s what you decided I do.”
The gun dug harder beneath my jaw.
I swallowed carefully.
Simon focused on me and his eyes changed, then he lifted his gaze back to Brewster. “Elliot,” he said. His voice was quiet, almost gentle. “You wanted me here.”
“Yes.”
“You have me.”
“Yes.”
“So let her go.”
“No.”
That surprised all three of us. Maybe Brewster most of all. Because if he let me go, what did he have left?
Simon seemed to understand at the same moment. “This was never about arresting me.”
“Shut up.”
“You know you can't.”
Brewster's breathing changed.
“You can't arrest me, Elliot.”
“I said shut up.”
But Simon didn’t stop. “Because you no longer have a badge.”
“Shut up.” The words crackled.
“You can't prove what you've done was necessary if I go to trial.” Simon sounded so utterly reasonable and sympathetic.
“Stop.” Brewster shook.
“You need me dead.”
The gun shifted away from my throat, toward Simon.
I might not get another chance, so I moved I drove my elbow backward as hard as I could. Brewster grunted. The gun fired. The sound threatened to deafen me.
Dropping, I escaped Brewster’s hold. Simon moved.
There was another shot.
Then another.
For several seconds, I couldn't hear anything except ringing. I’d brought my arms up to cover my head in a primitive if futile effort to protect myself.
When nothing else happened, I pushed myself upright. Brewster lay on his back not more than a foot away from me. Blood spread beneath his shirt as he stared upward, his face still a rictus of denial.
Simon stood six feet away. A gun hung from his hand.
Brewster's weapon lay near me. But I crawled toward Brewster anyway. Why? I had no idea. Instinct? History?
Stupidity.
“Elliot,” I said his name softly, half-afraid he wouldn’t answer. Half-afraid he would.
His gaze turned toward mine. For a moment, I didn’t think he recognized me, but then his mouth moved. I couldn’t hear him, not with my ears still ringing.
“Don’t try to talk.” I couldn’t hear myself properly. Maybe he couldn’t either.
His fingers closed weakly around my wrist. “He'll—” A cough interrupted him. Blood touched his lips.
“He'll what?”
His eyes shifted toward Simon who hadn’t moved. Then he looked back up at me. “He’ll make you believe…” But his voice faded, his grip loosened, and his hand fell.
I pressed my fingers against his throat. Nothing.
“No.”
I tried again. Nothing. Elliot Brewster was dead. I sat there with my hand against his neck long after there was any reason to keep it there.
Eventually the ringing faded enough for sound to return. My own breathing. Water somewhere outside.
Simon was still standing there. I looked down at Elliot. I had spent months believing he was trying to keep me alive.
Maybe once he had been. When that changed—I had no idea. In his head, I didn’t think it had and that was the worst part.
I lowered my hand. “Flint?” His name came out a croak, the tears I’d been swallowing burned.
“Alive.” Simon answered me immediately.
I closed my eyes. My whole body sagged. “How do you know?”
“I watched the paramedics take him out.”
Paramedics were good. “How bad?”
“Gunshot wound high in the shoulder. Head injury. He was unconscious when they transported him.”
I turned my head to look at him. “You watched?”
“Yes.”
“And then came here.”
“Yes.”
“For me.”
He didn't answer.
I laughed weakly. “Incomplete.”
Something almost like a smile touched his mouth. “Yes.”
I looked at the gun in his hand. Then at Brewster.
“Did he fire first?” Why did I ask? Because the truth still mattered.
“Yes.”
“At you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have another option?”
Simon considered the question, actually considered it. “I don't know.”
He glanced down at the weapon in his hand, then lowered to place it on the ground. Then he stepped back from it.
I looked at it. Then at him. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you a choice.”
“Don't.” My heart kicked.
“You were always going to have one.”
I closed my eyes. “Don't make this about me.”
“It already is.” He sounded almost regretful, yet resolute.
I hated him a little for that. Maybe more than a little. Opening my eyes, I met his gaze then picked up Brewster’s gun.
Simon watched me.
I stood on trembling legs. “Are you the Auditor?”
His eyes held mine. That faint smile touched his lips. “You named the pattern.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“No.”
I almost screamed. Even now, he wanted to parse the language. “Simon.”
“Yes?”
“Are you the man responsible for the bodies I've been investigating?”
“Yes.” The word settled between us.
Fact. No narrative required.
“Did every one of them deserve to die?”
He paused for a full breath before he said, “No.”