Chapter 22 #2
“This call,” I said slowly, “this is them threatening to replace you if you keep pushing it?”
He didn’t deny it. Which was… telling.
“You’re willing to lose your job for this?” I asked, softer than I meant to.
His gaze held mine. “I’m willing to lose my job to keep you alive.”
My throat tightened. It would’ve been so much easier if he’d said he was doing it for the case. Easier if he’d been clinical.
He wasn’t.
My phone buzzed then.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again.
Brewster’s gaze flicked down, then back up. “Flint.”
I didn’t bother pretending. I grabbed the phone and answered the call before it could ring a third time.
“Mallory,” Flint’s voice came through immediately, clipped and tight. “Tell me you’re seeing this.”
“I’m seeing it,” I said.
“Good.” No, not good. “Reardon is losing his mind. Legal is in conference. The network wants a statement. I’ve got three producers trying to rewrite your career in real time.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, masking my own unsettled feelings beneath as professional a tone as I could muster. “That sounds like a Tuesday.”
“This is not a joke,” Flint snapped. “There’s a body.”
“I know.”
A beat.
Then, and I swore Flint’s voice dropped into bestial territory as he growled, “Where’s Brewster?”
I didn’t look at him. I could feel him anyway—standing too close, listening like he always listened.
“He’s here,” I said.
“Put him on,” Flint demanded.
Brewster held out his hand without a word. I hesitated long enough to make it obvious I didn’t like being told what to do by either of them.
Then I switched the phone to speaker without releasing Brewster’s gaze.
One corner of Brewster’s mouth curved. “Flint.”
“Don’t ‘Flint’ me,” Flint said, voice sharp. “You want her back on air.”
Not bothering to deny it, Brewster merely said, “Yes.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“That’s not an argument.” Brewster’s expression didn’t change.
“It’s a warning,” Flint shot back. “You put her back on camera and whatever happens next becomes her fault in the eyes of every asshole with a keyboard and every executive with a spreadsheet.”
Brewster’s gaze flicked to me. Then away again.
“I’m aware,” he said.
“Then why are you pushing it?”
“Because he’s already forged this connection—because she has,” Brewster replied. “Because he’s already talking to her. Because keeping her silent isn’t going to keep her safe. Not if it only makes the Unsub work harder to get to her.”
Flint’s breath hissed. I could picture him pacing, hand in his hair, already five steps ahead and furious that he wasn’t ten.
“You think you understand him,” Flint said. “You think you can predict him.”
“I think she can reach him,” Brewster said, calm and brutal. “And I think you’re afraid of what happens if she does.”
A sharp silence.
“You’re making her the story.” Flint’s voice dropped. Lower. More dangerous.
“She already is,” Brewster said with a dismissive shrug in both his body language and his tone. “You’re just pissed because you can’t control the narrative.”
I swallowed hard. Neither of them were wrong, which was the problem. They were both right in different ways, and I was standing in the crossfire.
“Mallory,” Flint said, voice rough with restraint, “talk to me. Not him. Me.”
Brewster’s gaze snapped to mine. Not jealousy, exactly. But I wouldn’t call it friendly.
I forced my voice steady even as I tightened my grip on the phone. “I’m here.”
“Are you going back on air?” Flint demanded.
“I never wanted to be off the air,” I reminded him.
“That wasn’t my question.” The snap in Flint’s tone was arctic and could have frozen Lake Michigan.
I looked at Brewster. He didn’t look away. “Washington hasn’t decided,” I said carefully.
Flint’s laugh was humorless. “Washington never decides. They stall until the choice makes itself.”
Brewster’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue the point.
“If you do this, you do it with me.” Clearly not done, however, Flint continued, “You do it with the network. You do it with your team.”
I didn’t reply to that, because I had sent a message to the Unsub without him or my team. I’d kept it from him. Currently, I had no reason to regret that decision.
Flint exhaled, controlled. “Call me the second you know anything.”
“I will,” I lied.
He hung up and for a moment, I just stared at the phone in my hand. It was warm to the touch, like it held all the volatility of that conversation ready to explode.
The quiet after was like standing outside in the aftermath of a fierce storm. Brewster didn’t speak immediately. He stepped closer. Not fast. Not aggressive. Just… inevitable.
The space between us narrowed until my body noticed before my brain could make a decision about it.
“You didn’t tell him,” Brewster said.
It wasn’t a question.
“No,” I said.
Something moved across his face—approval, maybe. Relief. Possession. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
“Good,” he said anyway.
I bristled. “Stop.”
“Stop what.”
“Stop rewarding me,” I snapped. “I’m not—” I cut myself off, because the rest of that sentence didn’t help either of us.
Brewster’s eyes stayed on my mouth for half a second.
Then back to my eyes.
His voice lowered. “You want him to think he has access. You want him to think you’re still in control.”
“I am in control,” I said, even if right now, I couldn’t have said whether the him Brewster discussed was Flint, the Unsub, or him. Maybe it was all three. Or none of them… I had no idea.
Brewster’s mouth tipped slightly. Not a smile. A dangerous acknowledgement.
“Then act like it.” He may have murmured the reprimand but it still hit like an open palmed slap. The air thickened, charged and electric. He raised his hand and cupped my jaw without his previous hesitation.
The connection was almost instantaneous even as the memory of his mouth on mine flashed so fast it made me dizzy.
“Don’t,” I breathed, and didn’t know what I was telling him not to do.
Brewster’s eyes darkened, but he didn’t let me go. The caress of his fingers moved up from my jaw to my cheek.
He said, “We’re running out of time.”
I was positive he wasn’t discussing the case right now. He took a step forward, compressing the space between us until we were chest to chest.
My phone buzzed again.
Once.
It was still in my hand.
A new notification.
An email.
I turned it over, not withdrawing from Brewster, but intimately aware of his nose almost brushing my cheek as I scanned the screen.
Subject line bland enough to be meaningless:
RE: Archive QA Follow-Up
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
With a swipe of my thumb, I opened the screen then the email.
It was short. No flourish. No threat.
Just a single line, formatted the way a bored employee might write a note to another bored employee.
You’re learning. But you’re still being managed. Tell me who’s holding your leash.
Under it, a time stamp. A reference to the clip. Not the public post—something deeper. Something internal.
My blood went cold. I looked up slowly.
Brewster was very still and his face had gone unreadable. I shifted the angle of the phone so he could read it too. Of course, I would show him. I’d made that choice when I didn’t forward the message, screenshot it, or tell anyone else.
Then, because I’d made the choice already—because the moment I didn’t forward the first message, the moment I didn’t screenshot it, the moment I didn’t tell anyone else, I had chosen him—
“He wants me,” Brewster said quietly.
I blinked. “What.”
“He’s asking for your leash-holder,” Brewster continued, voice calm and lethal. “He’s not asking because he’s curious. He’s asking because he wants to punish whoever is between you and him.”
My skin prickled.
“You report to people,” I whispered.
Brewster’s gaze locked on mine. “But I’m the agent in charge.”
The room seemed to tilt.
I thought of the new body. The timing. The message. The way the Unsub had written managed like it was an insult.
Then the way Brewster had kissed me. How I kissed him back.
Outside the office, the safe house was quiet. Too quiet.
Inside it, the pressure rose.
Brewster stepped closer—just enough that I could feel the heat of him without him touching me.
“We have to decide,” he said.
“Decide what,” I asked, though I already knew.
“How much we’re willing to give him,” Brewster said. “And what we’re willing to lose when we do.”
My pulse thudded once, hard.
Because the answer my body wanted and the answer my brain could afford were not the same thing. Somewhere out there, a man I couldn’t see had just reminded me he knew exactly how to pull a thread—until something came apart.