Chapter 13 #2
I studied the effect of my response before she had time to mask it.
Mallory McBryan was good. But she was still human.
Her breath paused—barely a catch, the kind most people never notice because they don’t know to look for it.
Her eyes sharpened, focus narrowing a fraction too quickly, pupils dilating just enough to signal adrenaline rather than fear.
A physiological response she hadn’t sanctioned yet.
She didn’t step back. Didn’t break eye contact. That mattered more than the reaction itself. Most people retreated when they felt seen that cleanly. Mallory stayed.
“You trusted me.” She said it like she was deciding whether to believe it.
She tilted her head slightly, recalibrating. I could almost see the shift as she brought her body back under conscious control—shoulders settling, breath evening, expression smoothing into something sharper and more deliberate.
She locked it down fast.
“It wasn’t about trusting me. It was about results.” The barest hint of disappointment in that faint scoff almost made me smile. It was a reasonable distinction, a tempting one.
“The results matter,” I said, limiting myself to a shrug. “But so does how you get there.”
That earned me a flicker at the corner of her mouth—not a smile, exactly. Acknowledgment. I’d seen her. She recognized that I’d seen her. Heat spiked in the space between us. Not desire. Not yet. Something closer to alignment under pressure.
“Careful,” she said quietly. “You’re starting to sound like you enjoy watching me take risks.”
I didn’t deny it. Why would I? Still, better to keep her from being too certain of her influence where I was concerned, so I let the silence answer for me.
Inevitably, the truth was simpler and more complicated at the same time: watching Mallory operate at the edge of her own certainty was instructive. It told me where she bent, where she didn’t, and what happened when adrenaline stripped away the last layers of restraint.
Her pulse was still elevated. I could see it at the base of her throat. She noticed that I noticed. That was the moment the awareness between us surfaced, filling the space around us with a dozen questions.
I stepped back then. Not retreating. But giving that space between us room to breathe. And because I wanted to see what she would do.
Control wasn’t about proximity. It was about knowing exactly when to remove it. Her gaze held mine, unblinking. The adrenaline was still humming through her—skin flushed, pupils just slightly blown. She was aware of her body now in the aftermath, aware of me in the space.
I didn’t move. She took one step closer. Not deliberate enough to be a move. Not accidental enough to be meaningless.
“You realize,” she said quietly, “that he thinks I spoke to him.”
“I realize,” I said, equally quiet, “that he thinks you spoke with him.”
That was when the edge tipped.
Her jaw tightened in resistance. Oh, she didn’t like that observation. Too bad.
“That’s not what I intended.”
“I know.”
“Intent matters.”
“Yes,” I said. We were on the same page here, but I wasn’t just going to tell her what she wanted to hear. “Just not to him.”
Her breath hitched—barely—but it did. She was riding the high now, the crash delayed. Unsurprisingly, Mallory didn’t retreat.
“You watched me,” she said. Not accusing. Not curious, exactly. The slight narrowing of her eyes told me she’d just connected two things she hadn’t meant to put together yet.
“Yes.”
“Not like the others.” The others in the studio? The unsub? Flint? The audience? There were so many others she could be referring to, but I just answered her question directly.
“No.”
She studied me for a beat, as if reconsidering the question. “How, then?”
I didn’t rush the answer. Let the space sit. Let her feel the same pause she’d just used on air. “Like someone keeping time,” I said. “You weren’t feeling your way through it. You were setting the pace.”
Her mouth parted a fraction. Surprise—clean, unguarded. She hadn’t expected to hear it put that way.
“That’s what he’s doing, too,” she said, quieter now. Not defensive. Testing.
“Agreed.”
“And you’re okay with that.”
I shook my head once. Small. Deliberate. “No.” When she said nothing, I continued, “I’m okay with watching how you move when it matters.”
That got her.
Not a step back. Not a smile. Just a stillness that told me I’d hit something honest. Her breathing slowed, matched mine without her realizing it. Mirroring—subtle, involuntary.
“You make it sound like I was taking a risk,” she said.
“You were,” I replied, keeping it to that sharp bluntness she seemed to prefer. “You don’t flinch, even when you should. Just being behind that desk and speaking to a camera didn’t make it any less of a risk.”
Her pupils widened—just slightly. Adrenaline, not fear. She caught it a second later and locked it down, jaw setting, posture tightening back into control. The moment, however, had already registered.
She exhaled through her nose. “That’s a dangerous thing to notice.”
“I know,” I said, not sugar-coating it. Mallory McBryan was a force to be reckoned with and she thrived on a challenge. Backing her off the story would be impossible.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was charged, steady. “You’re comfortable letting that happen,” she murmured, more to herself than to me.
“No,” I said, not allowing the inaccuracy of that statement to hold. “I’m comfortable letting you happen.”
The words landed heavier than I intended.
Her eyes flicked down—to my mouth, just briefly—then back up, sharper now. She was cataloging me the way she did everything else, but adrenaline made the catalog messy. Incomplete.
“You’re enjoying this,” she said.
“Careful,” I replied, some of my own amusement bleeding through. “You’re projecting.”
She huffed a quiet laugh. “Fair.” Then, more softly, she added, “I’m wired. I don’t like being this wired.”
“You always are after a clean risk,” I said. “You just don’t usually have an audience that can answer back.”
That stilled her.
She turned away, paced once, then stopped—hands fisting at her sides like she was grounding herself through muscle memory.
“I don’t regret it,” she said, almost daring me to scold her.
“I know.” The air around her was electric, and it made the hairs on my arm stand on end. Almost like the static hovering in the air before a storm broke.
“Flint’s pissed.” Understatement.
“He wants you contained.” Though I suspected I could have just stopped at the first three words. Both statements were true.
“And you?”
I met her gaze again. Held it.
“I want…” I let the two words hang there, deliberately before finishing, “clarity.”
She searched my face, pulse still racing, attraction and irritation tangled so tightly she hadn’t separated them yet.
“You’re dangerous,” she said, not unkindly.
“So are you,” I replied and the moment seemed to narrow to just the two of us. Her pupils expanded, her nostrils flared and her lips parted…
She really was quite lovely—and that was the problem.
The door handle turned.
Mallory didn’t look toward it, but she did react. I saw the shift before the sound registered—her shoulders firming, the adrenaline finding somewhere to brace. Whatever heat had been coiling between us didn’t vanish; it coalesced. Banked. Stored.
The door opened. Flint filled the opening like a villain in a horror flick. The slash of shadow seemingly more ominous because of the light behind him.
He took in the room in a single sweep: the closed door, the distance—or lack of it—between us, Mallory’s flushed face, the way neither of us moved to explain ourselves.
His eyes stopped on me. Then narrowed. “So this is where you went,” he said. His eyes flicked to the space between me and Mallory, then back to my face—measuring distance like it was evidence.
Mallory turned then, expression already reset into something cooler, sharper. “I needed a minute.”
Flint didn’t look at her when he replied. “You’ve had your minute.”
Calculation crossed his face—the quiet inventory of what he’d missed, what had happened without him, and who had been present for it. He didn’t like unanswered questions. He liked them even less it seemed when they had my fingerprints on them.
“This wasn’t the plan,” he said—eyes on me, like I was the lever.
“There was no plan,” I replied evenly. “There was a window.”
His jaw tightened. “You don’t get to decide that.”
Mallory stepped forward half a pace. Not between us—she wasn’t playing referee—but close enough to signal ownership of the space. “I decided it.”
Flint’s gaze snapped to her. Concern flashed first. Then irritation. Then something like fear, poorly disguised as control. “You went on air without clearance,” he said.
“I went on air to do my job. Report the news. Get the story,” she shot back, ticking off the items with her fingers.
Exhaling a slow and measured breath, Flint seemed to bring himself under firm control. “Did you think I wouldn’t have backed you?”
“I think,” she said, measured, “you would’ve slowed me down.”
His attention swung back to me, sharp now. “Where the hell were you? Shouldn’t you have been containing her? Instead you just, what—let it happen?”
I didn’t rise to it. Didn’t step forward. Didn’t retreat.
“Yes,” I said.
The silence that followed crackled—low, volatile.
His jaw tensed and it wasn’t hard to imagine his teeth grinding.
Flint’s jaw worked. His grip whitened around the phone.
He shifted closer to Mallory like proximity could solve this.
He was a man used to control, and he was being challenged on all fronts.
Flint’s voice dropped. “You think this was a good idea.”
“I think it was precise,” I said, as well as targeted, but I didn’t add that last word.
He scoffed quietly. “You’re enjoying this.”
Mallory inhaled sharply, like she was about to cut in.
I didn’t give her the chance.
“This isn’t about entertainment,” I said. “It’s about momentum. She set it.”
Flint looked at her again. Really looked this time. Saw the afterimage of adrenaline she hadn’t fully shaken. The way her hands were clenched, not from fear, but from restraint.
“You okay?” he asked her.
She didn’t answer right away. “Yes,” she said finally. “I am.” Not reassuring. Declarative.
He nodded once, though his eyes stayed hard. “We’re not done discussing this.”
“No,” she agreed, almost with a sigh even if she still seemed to be vibrating. “We’re not.”
His gaze flicked back to me one last time. “Next time, you loop me in.”
I met it without blinking. “There may not be a next time.”
That earned me a look—pure warning.
Mallory turned toward the door. “I’m done being managed. And I want coffee.”
Flint hesitated, then stepped to the side and opened the door for her. The noise of the studio bleeding back in.
Before she crossed the threshold, she glanced at me with a small nod of acknowledgement.
Message received, I inclined my head in turn.
Flint cut me off to join her and I followed them slowly. Their voices had already lowered into something controlled and unresolved. Flint thought the danger was the broadcast. He wasn’t even close.
The danger was that Mallory now knew exactly how it felt to be seen at full speed—and survive it.
It wasn’t just about the story for her. The story was a huge part, I recognized that.
But she lived for every beat of the story and how good it felt when she accelerated.
She wasn’t going to want to slow down again.
I didn’t see myself discouraging it. As they turned the corner toward the elevator, Flint slanted me a look.
And that was going to create a problem between us.