Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
THE AUDITOR
Inoticed her absence while I was doing something else. That was what bothered me later—not that she was gone, but that I hadn’t been aware of it.
I was at the table, sleeves rolled up, papers spread in a loose order that only looked chaotic if you didn’t know how to read it.
A map half-folded. A list I’d already revised twice.
Notes in different inks, not for emphasis but for memory.
The coffee beside me had gone cold because I’d forgotten it was there.
That happened when I was focused.
The television was on in the background, volume low. I didn’t need the sound. I read faster than they spoke, and captions were cleaner than voices anyway. The screen flickered through the usual cycle—analysis, speculation, concern dressed up as authority.
That was when it registered.
She wasn’t there.
Not teased for later. Not referenced as “continuing coverage.” Not even filling space while someone else talked around her work.
She was simply… gone.
I stopped writing. The pen hovered over the page.
I didn’t rush the thought. Rushing was how you missed things. I finished what I was doing first—drew a line through a name, shifted a page, aligned the stack with the edge of the table. Only then did I lean back and give the absence my full attention.
It had been a week.
Seven days since she’d looked straight into the camera and spoke to me.
That wasn’t an accident.
She hadn’t misunderstood the exchange. I knew that. You didn’t deliver a line like that by instinct alone. You didn’t hold silence the way she had unless you respected it. Unless you understood that a conversation had started.
Mallory understood. It was why I enjoyed her so much. Sharp, intelligent, savvy—she knew how to maintain a conversation.
Which meant she hadn’t chosen to disappear.
The television kept cycling. A panel now. Too many people, not enough restraint. Her image filled the screen behind them—paused mid-expression, eyes sharp, mouth caught between words.
I watched their mouths more than I listened.
They were circling her. Sharks always showed up when blood might be in the water. They talked about her tone. Her posture. Whether she’d crossed a line. Whether she’d known she was crossing it.
One of them said she looked provocative.
Another called her reckless. Another called her brave. Someone else suggested manipulation, as if recognizing intelligence was an accusation.
They dissected her like she wasn’t in the room.
Like she couldn’t hear them.
Like she wasn’t meant to.
That irritated me more than it should have.
I didn’t like the voices when they weren’t hers.
Not because they were wrong—most of them were—but because they were loud. Loudness was what people reached for when they didn’t understand what they were seeing.
She had understood. Someone else had decided she shouldn’t speak anymore.
I muted the television.
The silence settled back in, familiar and welcome. I stood, took the cold coffee to the sink, poured it out without ceremony and washed out the cup before leaving it to dry in the dish rack. When I came back, I didn’t sit right away. I paced instead, slow, thoughtful, hands clasped behind my back.
Isolation? Protection? Network covering their ass? Caging her.
That was what they were doing. Caging her.
Not punishment. Not protection. Containment. Someone had stepped between us and decided to end our conversation.
That annoyed me.
Conversations didn’t end because a third party got nervous. That wasn’t how they worked. That wasn’t polite.
I wasn’t angry. Anger wasted energy.
But I was disappointed.
I’d expected to continue our dialogue. Expected she’d wanted the same thing. Not compliance—I’d never mistaken her for that—but persistence. The kind that understood once you set a tempo, you didn’t abandon it halfway through.
Unless you were forced.
That thought stayed with me.
I sat back down and adjusted one of the papers, straightening it against the table’s edge. The pen tapped once. Twice. Then stopped.
I didn’t need spectacle. This wasn’t a rupture that required drama. It was a correction. A reminder.
I thought about her phrasing—not the words themselves, but the shape of them. The cadence. I revised it in my head the way I always did with things I respected, tightening what was already precise.
Then I wrote.
Not much. Just enough.
I didn’t send it where anyone else could see. I wasn’t interested in witnesses. I placed it carefully, where it would only register if you were already paying attention.
Where she would notice.
When it was done, I leaned back and let the tension ease out of my shoulders.
There. We were going to open our conversation again where no one else could mute it.
Whether she answered immediately or not was up to her. I wasn’t unreasonable. She might need time if they were monitoring her. I could wait.
But not forever.
Because silence could mean many things. Thoughtfulness. Strategy. Even respect.
But gagging her? Forcing her silence?
That was something else entirely.
And I had never been good at tolerating people who mistook control for authority.