Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
MALLORY
My FBI babysitter was gone when I woke up. The house still ran. Agents still rotated. The locks still clicked with mechanical reassurance. Coffee still appeared on the counter like a small, impersonal miracle.
It just wasn’t his.
The mug was wrong. Too light. The coffee was slightly weaker. Whoever had made it hadn’t noticed how I took it, or maybe he had and simply didn’t care to remember.
That was when I noticed the man standing by the window.
“Morning ma’am,” he said, turning with the kind of careful neutrality that came from training. “Agent Sterling. I’ll be covering until Agent Brewster returns.”
Returns.
The word implied temporary absence. Not a departure from routine. It also suggested pre-planned. Which meant he could have told me, he just didn’t.
There was also no note, just the professionally distant Agent Sterling. I suppose he was his own kind of note. Still, didn’t feel normal, not when Brewster had basically been attached at the hip since I got to this place.
It also didn’t feel accidental, either. Particularly not after he indicated we were going to be a team and we made a plan just the night before.
As for Sterling, he looked all of twenty-five if he was a day, and I was pretty sure I was being generous.
If he’d said he was in his freshman year of college, I would have believed him—with that baby face and boyish haircut emphasizing what was missing: weight, history, the lived-in edges Brewster carried without trying.
I nodded. “How long?”
“Unclear, ma’am,” he said. “He’s tied up downtown.”
No explanation. No reassurance.
Of course he was.
I spent the morning executing the plan Brewster and I had built together—emails to marketing, a carefully worded request to Brandon that sounded bored, mildly concerned, perfectly normal. Sterling observed from a distance, logging times, tracking contacts, never commenting.
He only asked questions when procedure required them—what did I want for lunch for example. The moment I answered, he nodded, thanked me politely—ma’aming me to death—then stopped speaking. Frankly, he had the personality of a brand-new dishrag. Too clean. Too perfect. Too… empty.
The clip went live at noon right as my lunch was delivered by another agent. This one at least bore the look of weathered experience. The sub sandwich with chips and a cold, unsweetened ice tea. I had to give my stomach a break from the coffee before it ate a hole through it.
I didn’t watch the clip or follow any of the notifications as they began to pop up—mostly when I was tagged. That restraint cost me more than I expected. I’d actually opened a game of Sodoku on my phone to distract myself and swiped the notifications off and away each time they showed up.
Turning them off wasn’t an option. Not when I needed to stay on top of the information.
By mid-afternoon—and level 355 on the game—my phone buzzed.
Deadline Daddy:
You alive?
I stared at the screen longer than necessary and had to swap to the message thread because I’d automatically just swiped the notification away. Giving myself a little shake, I blinked and typed in my answer.
Me:
Still breathing.
Dots appeared. Disappeared. Then—
Deadline Daddy:
Reardon’s being twitchy. FBI has been in and out a few times today. You staying quiet on purpose or is someone gagging you?
That was Flint. Always seeing the board. Always impatient with silence.
Me:
Don’t worry. I’ve got a handle on it.
A beat.
Deadline Daddy:
Mallory.
I closed my eyes. The man knew me too damn well. I’d let my answer slip through a filter of tired. In focusing on not reacting so hard, I’d actually given myself away. Mentally kicking myself, I blew out a breath.
Familiar and safe, Flint and I went back too far and for too long to worry about lying to each other.
I could call him a jackass and he could retaliate with a familiar bitch and we rolled with it.
He had always been a safe choice. Attractive, intelligent, and wildly familiar with my habits. Very little that I did surprised him.
Considering our history, you’d have thought we were already lovers.
The fact the thought crept out of the back of my mind told me I was way more off-kilter than I realized.
Long before he’d been my boss, we’d covered wars together—literal and metaphorical.
We knew each other’s tells, drank each other’s bad coffee, shared hotel rooms separated by a wall and a lifetime of unspoken lines.
He’d been married once. I’d known his ex-wife—well enough to understand why it hadn’t lasted. The same reason my one engagement hadn’t. The job didn’t just intrude. It consumed. And Flint had never learned how to set the story down.
Neither had I.
That was the problem.
Deadline Daddy:
Come on. Talk to me.
I stared at the message and sighed. We were better off not talking for the moment. Especially if he was in the mood to call me out.
Deadline Daddy:
Look, I talked to Brandon. I get it. It’s only been a few days. We can work something out.
Since the screen was open to his message, there was no mistaking that I had read them. Or at least seen them.
Deadline Daddy:
I have a plan. We’ll keep you relevant without dangling you out like bait.
My jaw tightened. Keep me relevant. That probably shouldn’t have felt like an insult, but holy shit, did it.
Me:
Not now.
Deadline Daddy:
When?
I didn’t answer.
Deadline Daddy:
Mallory.
Me:
Talk to me when you get the ratings for this week.
I regretted the message the moment I sent it. It was biting, a little too biting, and it definitely revealed my aggravation. Flint wasn’t the problem here. Annoyed with myself, I flipped back over to the game and went for the next level.
The house felt wrong without Brewster. Too quiet. Too hollow. Sterling shifted positions periodically. He would walk through the house, then return to the kitchen. When I went to the living room, he took up a post there.
It made my teeth ache. Late afternoon bled into evening. The notifications increased. It looked like one of the clips might have gone viral. Ignoring the desire to check out which one also cost.
Then the door opened.
Despite passing level 500 on the game, I couldn’t miss the sound of the door closing or the soft shush of shoes on wood floors. The air pressure shifted.
“Sterling,” Brewster said. Calm. Controlled. “You’re good to go.”
The other agent nodded once, efficient, and disappeared without a backward glance.
And just like that, the house seemed to take a deep breath and energy seemed to rush in to fill the hollow corners.
Brewster didn’t look at me right away. He set his jacket down on the back of a sofa and took the time to roll up his sleeves. I kept filling in the latest board, though I was aware of each step he took.
“You did it,” he said finally.
“Yes.”
When he stared at me after that single word, I spared him a glance. What did he expect? We made a plan. I executed the plan. Now I waited without checking or responding to anything. I wasn’t the one who went off script and disappeared for the day without so much as a sorry, gotta go.
“Any response yet?”
I was almost finished with the level, so I worked through the next handful of combinations.
“Mallory?”
Glancing up, I met his gaze. His eyes were sharp. Heated.
“Any response yet?” The repeat of the question almost amused me. Someone didn’t like being ignored.
“Not that I’ve seen.” A pause. “Then again, I haven’t been looking.”
Another long beat.
“Flint?” he asked and, for just a brief moment, impatience flickered across his face.
I didn’t pretend. “He texted.”
“And?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
Something unreadable crossed Brewster’s face. Approval? Possession? Relief?
“Good,” he said. Again.
I bristled. Again.
“Stop saying that like it’s a reward system.”
His gaze held mine. “Then stop doing things I approve of.”
I laughed once—short, breathless.
“The clip’s already moving,” he continued. “Small accounts first. Commentary without context. Exactly what we wanted.”
“Meaning he’s likely seen it.”
“Yes.”
The space between us narrowed without either of us stepping forward. Awareness thickened. Every nerve lit.
“You left,” I said quietly.
“I came back.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“I didn’t see you.”
That was prevarication at its finest. “Not the same thing.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
Silence stretched—charged, dangerous.
“You’re angry,” he said.
“With you?” No, I let my mouth curve slightly. “No.”
“With yourself?” he countered.
I shrugged. “You’re hardly the first mistake I’ve made. Don’t worry, Agent Brewster. I’m an adult. I’ll be fine.”
That did it.
He crossed the room in three strides and stopped too close.
No touch. Just presence. Then he all but hauled me up out of the chair.
Heat radiated off of him and there was no mistaking the surge of electricity where his hands connected with my arms. He raised one—stopped short of my jaw, like he was deciding whether he trusted himself.
“You aren’t doing this alone,” he said softly.
“No?” I raised a brow. “I must have missed the part where you were here or included me in on your plans.”
“We had a plan,” he said slowly, repeating my words. “You executed it flawlessly.”
Tilting my head back, I kept my gaze on his.
“Would my being present have changed that in any way?”
"Don’t patronize me, Brewster,” I said, irritation feathering through my anger and cooling my tone by several degrees. “You left another agent in charge of my detail and disappeared without a word.”
“I had work to do and meetings to take,” he said, his expression turning grim even if his eyes seemed to grow even hotter. “I was advocating for you, just like I said I would.”
“Yay for you?” I deadpanned. “Cutting me out of the loop doesn’t say teamwork.”
“I trusted you to handle it,” he said, then raised his eyebrows. “Was I wrong to?”
“I’m not the one who disappeared.” The line snapped between us.