Chapter 8 #2
“Your unsub’s made his move. You want to protect me? Fine. You want to monitor me? Go for it. But don’t confuse me for a civilian. I’m not some shaken survivor. I’m in this.”
“You were in this,” Brewster corrected. “Now you’re part of a crime scene.”
Flint swore under his breath, low and sharp.
I turned away from both of them. My pulse was hammering, but not just from anger. There was something else stirring—unspoken, heat-laced. Dangerous.
Flint’s voice cut the air behind me. “She’s not your tool, Brewster. And she’s not your bait.”
Brewster’s reply was steady, measured. “No. She’s the leverage.”
That scared me more than anything else he’d said this morning. Was he right? God, it was still morning. It wasn’t even seven yet.
I was halfway through my second cup of coffee when Brewster changed lanes again. That should have warned me, but I was still off-balance from the last volley—what do you like on a date?—and the ripple that still hadn’t entirely cooled between the three of us.
“You’re not safe,” he said, returning with his own cup of coffee.
He didn’t preface it. No transition. Just dropped it like a hammer between us.
I didn’t look at him this time. “No one in this business is.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I sighed. “Then get to it.”
“The victims were all men,” he said, voice even. “But you’re still the one who got the finger. You’re still the one who got the note.”
“That’s a message, not a threat.”
“You sure about that?”
“I’m not the profile. You know that. They were all male. All public-facing. High-profile investigative types or law enforcement. You can’t just toss me into that mix and hope it sticks.”
“Except now it’s starting to.”
I turned to face him, arms folded tight across my chest. “You think he’s going to suddenly start killing women? That’s not a small escalation. That’s a whole new chapter.”
He tilted his head. “Unless it’s not.”
“What?”
“Unless the escalation already happened. Unless you are the shift.”
I didn’t answer.
Because the thing was—I’d wondered that too.
From the beginning, the pattern had been neat. Precise. Men in power, torn down, gutted, left in mockery of their status. But something had changed. It was hard to see it in the forensics, harder still in the victim pool.
But his tone?
The tone in the letters had changed.
They weren’t just intense or angry anymore. They were... curious. Fixated.
Yes, they’d started coming after my segment on the Cold Creek case. After I’d called out the pattern the local cops had buried. After I’d said, live on air, “someone wanted us to miss this.”
I hadn’t said it like a challenge.
But I’d meant it like one.
I made myself shrug, casual. “You don’t think it’s more likely he’s trying to scare me off the story? You said it yourself—he’s watching. He wants control. He wants the narrative.”
“Maybe,” Brewster said. “Or maybe he’s rewriting the narrative because of you.”
I held his gaze. “You sound like you want that to be true.”
Flint stepped in again, voice sharp. “What exactly are you saying, Brewster? That she’s next on the list?”
“I’m saying she’s already in the story,” Brewster said calmly. “Whether she likes it or not. Whether you like it or not.”
He turned his focus back to me.
“You didn’t ask why he only killed men,” he said. “You assumed it. You stated it. But you didn’t ask.”
I didn’t move. I didn’t blink.
“Because it’s not the question that matters,” I said. “Patterns don’t start fully formed. They stabilize.”
Brewster’s gaze sharpened.
“And what came before?” he asked.
“Noise,” I said. “False positives. Unrelated cases. The kind you don’t chase.”
His voice dropped a fraction. “And if it wasn’t noise?”
I met his eyes, steady.
“Then it would show,” I said. “And it hasn’t.”
That thought lodged like a shard of ice behind my ribs. My pulse jumped before I could hide it.
“I’m not your damn lightning rod,” I said, quieter now.
“You might be,” he replied, just as soft. “And we don’t get to control how he chooses his symbols.”
“Then why me?”
“You challenged him,” Brewster said. “You saw him. He thinks that’s a connection.”
“He’s wrong.”
“Maybe,” Brewster allowed. “Remember, connection doesn’t require agreement. You of all people, know that. You’ve made a career out of it.”
The reminder stung, because he wasn’t wrong. I didn’t just report the news. I shaped it. Found the narrative, framed the path. Shone the spotlight where others didn’t bother to look.
I was good at getting inside people’s heads.
It never occurred to me that someone might think they were entitled to it.
Flint had gone silent. I could feel him across the room, a human pressure point. He didn’t know where to land anymore—defend me or contain me.
“Are we done?” I asked finally, my voice hard.
Brewster’s eyes lingered on mine, reading every flicker.
“No,” he said.
And I knew he wasn’t just talking about the questions.
Brewster hadn’t moved.
Still seated across from me, fingers steepled in front of him like he was conducting a goddamn psychological séance.
“What?” I asked, more weary than annoyed now.
He gave a faint shake of his head. “I’m still circling something.”
“Of course you are.”
He studied me like a puzzle with one piece missing—and like maybe he already knew which piece it was.
“Do you enjoy the attention, Mallory?” He’d asked that already, or something similar. But this time, the question was slightly different, his tone even more so.
The words hit like a whisper shouted into a cathedral. Everything in the safe house went still.
Even Flint stopped pacing.
I leaned back in my chair, slowly, dragging my fingers along the rim of my coffee mug. Not because I was cold—but because I needed the grounding.
“That’s a hell of a question,” I said.
“But not a denial.”
“Would you prefer I pretend I don’t know how to use the camera?” I asked sweetly. “Or how to shape a story? Or how to let the moment stretch just long enough to get under people’s skin?”
He didn’t blink. “You’re good at what you do. That doesn’t mean the attention isn’t addictive.”
I smiled. Small. Dangerous. “You asking for yourself, or the killer?”
“Both,” Brewster said, without pause.
And that? That landed.
“If he’s watching,” I said, “then I decide what matters.”
Brewster’s mouth twitched. Not a smirk—recognition. “You sure about that?”
I shot him a look. “He’s not trying to date me.”
“Maybe not,” Brewster said, voice low and careful. “But obsession wears a lot of masks. And this one—this has intimacy written all over it.”
He leaned in, just slightly.
“So what would someone have to do to get your full attention?”
The question hung between us like a live wire. Not just about the unsub now. Not really.
I met his gaze and held it. “Stalk less. Bleed less. Show up with decent whiskey and a spine that’s not made of profiling jargon.”
That almost got a real smile out of him. Almost.
Flint finally moved again, the scrape of his boots on the floor like a gunshot. “That’s enough.”
But I was still watching Brewster.
And he was still watching me.
Because this wasn’t just about catching the killer anymore.
It never had been.