Chapter 15 #2
“I’m not on the outside,” I reminded him.
“I’m right here, having this conversation with you.
One where you’ve been physically restraining yourself from punching me.
Of course, the only reason we’re having this conversation is because no way is she going to just walk out with you.
If you could have convinced her of that, I’d already be in the rearview mirror. ”
“And what exactly do you think you’re doing?” he shot back. “Because from where I’m standing, you’re not neutral—you’re indulgent. You want her isolated from friends and family. If I hadn’t insisted on being in the car, I wouldn’t be here at all.”
I didn’t interrupt. Or correct him.
“She’s intrigued you since the moment she walked into the conference room.
You enjoy her mind, her wit, and the way she sharpens it on the people around her.
You also enjoy how she reacts under pressure, how alive it makes her even when she’s crashing from the adrenaline afterward.
You didn’t protect her today—you fed that need in her to be in front of the story because it put her out there to lure in your Unsub. ”
I held his gaze. Didn’t deny it. Still… “Enjoyment isn’t the same as exploitation,” I replied.
“It is when you think it gives you permission to manipulate her,” he shot back.
“You let her do what she wanted because it suited you. Maybe you can lie to yourself that you’re just protecting her agency and harnessing her contacts as she walks straight into danger…
but don’t bother trying to sell me that story.
You have a job to do and she’s a very, very attractive means to an end. ”
“I almost hate to tell you this and burst your self-righteous bubble, but you want to be the one she looks to and gets permission from because it helps you manage your fear. Not her danger.”
“And you want her out there, every single day if you could get it, because it will keep your interest satisfied. Stay close to her, feed off her excitement, and reel in your target.” He dropped his voice, almost sounding like a narrator on a documentary.
“If something happens to her, well, she was in danger already, hopefully you catch the bastard before he kills her too.”
Of all the accusations he’d leveled at me, that one landed the closest. It sliced right down to the bone. Somehow, I’d gone from trying to keep my body language neutral, to being toe to toe with him. The air crackled with the promise of violence and neither of us were backing down.
“She doesn’t belong to either of us,” I said at last.
“That’s rich,” Flint scoffed. “Coming from the man who keeps positioning himself as the only one who truly gets her.”
“I don’t need to own her to understand her,” I replied. “You don’t need to cage her to care.”
“And you don’t need to pretend this is purely tactical,” he said. “Because if something happens to her, you won’t be able to tell yourself this was just about the case.”
I didn’t argue that.
Flint exhaled sharply, running a hand through his hair. “If she gets hurt—”
“I have no intentions of letting her out of my sight or letting anyone get close enough to hurt her. She is going to put herself out there, and we’re going to be there. Me and every other agent on this case.”
All at once, he moved away, the tension between us popping as he retreated. He paced to the door then turned to glare at me again. “For how long?”
“What?” The sudden shift had me reassessing him.
“You have all your resources here right now, you’re protecting her—for how long?
How many days do you have set for this? What if he doesn’t do anything more than he already has?
Will you be here for a few days? A few weeks?
A few months? How long before you head back to your field office or your next case and she tries to pick up her life?
How long are you going to be here, Brewster? ”
For once, I didn’t have an answer. He didn’t seem surprised.
“That’s what I thought.” On that note, he left. The door clicking shut behind him.
The sound lingered longer than it should have.
I stayed where I was, listening to the house breathe itself back into stillness. Systems humming. People moving at the edges. Somewhere on the other side of the house, Mallory was behind a closed door down the hall, pretending—convincingly—that she was resting.
Flint thought he’d drawn blood.
He hadn’t. What he’d done was identify the pressure point—and mistake it for weakness. It was good that he’d given me the heads up. It meant I could deal with it.
He was right about one thing: I didn’t have a timeline. Not in days or weeks or neat operational phases. Cases like this didn’t resolve on calendars. They resolved when leverage shifted. When someone misstepped. When momentum tipped just enough to expose a seam.
Mallory was a seam.
Not because she was fragile. Because she was precise. Because she understood timing instinctively and refused to be sidelined once she sensed the clock had started.
Flint wanted containment. Predictability. The comfort of believing that if he stayed close enough, watched carefully enough, he could keep the story—and her—inside acceptable margins.
That was never how this was going to end before we arrived. It wouldn’t end that way now. All I could do was use the situation to our best advantage and close the trap around the Unsub.
I crossed to the window and checked the perimeter out of habit, even though I already knew what I’d see. Darkness. Motion sensors. Agents in shadows. A glance at my watch told me it had been a couple of hours since we got back from the broadcast.
The unsub hadn’t responded yet. I hadn’t expected him to leap. He had to analyze her response, consider it, figure out what he wanted to say to her and how he wanted to say it.
Like Mallory, the Unsub was listening.
Whether Flint liked it or not, this wasn’t a question of if she’d step forward again—it was when, and who would be standing close enough to shape what happened next. Right now, that was me.
And I wasn’t close to done.