Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
brEWSTER
Itold myself I was going alone.
That was the plan I gave Washington. That was the plan I gave the team. That was the plan I repeated in my head as I pulled on my jacket and checked my weapon. I knew it was a lie each time.
Mallory stood in the doorway watching and made no effort to downplay her presence.
She didn’t say anything at first. Just watched me the way some people did when they were putting together a story in their head.
However, this was Mallory, she was silent, alert, and more than likely three steps ahead of my potential responses before she even asked the questions.
“You’re going to the scene,” she said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
She tilted her head. Just slightly. The expression that followed wasn’t defiant—it was worse. Calculating. Patient. Like she’d already accepted the answer and was working around it.
“You can tell me what you saw later,” she said. “Or you can let me see it myself and not have to translate.”
I didn’t respond. I grabbed my keys instead.
“That body is part of my story,” she continued. “Whether I’m on air or not.”
I turned then. Met her gaze. Held it.
“That body is part of an active federal investigation,” I said. “And I will not have you anywhere near it.”
She folded her arms. “Currently, I am cooperating with your protection. Unless you plan to arrest me and charge me with something, I can simply stop cooperating.”
And by stop, she meant, walk out that door and follow us to the crime scene
“Mallory…”
“We know that hiding me isn't going to work. It’s not going to protect me in the long run.” Not that she wanted to be protected. She was too damn hungry for her story.
“I think you showing up at a crime scene is going to make him notice you even more…” I raised my brows.
“Best case, he knows you’re still out here and he can identify who has your leash.
” In this case, me. Something flickered across her face.
Awareness. Worry. “Worst case, he thinks you’re actively cooperating with us and that makes you his enemy, not his ally. ”
That would not only result in us losing our only connection to the Unsub, but could cost Mallory her life if he truly turned on her.
Then she said quietly, “You can’t keep me in the dark and expect me not to go looking for light.
” Head canted, she dared me with those eyes of her.
Those eyes that saw too damn much and were too damn sensual.
Eyes a man could lose himself in… “Elliot, I need to do this. I’m not pretending to be law enforcement, but if it’s him…
then he could very well have sent a message only I’ll get. ”
A message she could just as easily see via crime scene photos and video. She didn’t have to be there in person. I exhaled through my nose. Slow. Controlled. The way I needed because this next decision was going to come back to bite me in the ass.
“Give me your phone and get dressed,” I said. “Warm. Neutral. Dark pants, cream or white shirt, dark jacket. No jewelry.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “That’s a yes?”
“Get changed, I’m leaving in three minutes if you’re with me or not.”
Without another word, she handed me her phone and was already moving before I finished speaking and back at the two minute, thirty mark.
I didn’t tell the team she was coming.
I told them she was asleep.
One agent stayed behind. Young. Reliable. Bought the lie because he wanted to. Everyone else moved like we always did—efficient, contained, focused on the perimeter and the press.
Mallory came down the back stairs in an FBI windbreaker two sizes too big and a ball cap pulled low over her hair. I handed her gloves without comment.
She took them. Our fingers brushed.
She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to, we were both well past the point of no return. She rode in the back with me, saying nothing and keeping her head down. I passed her sunglasses before we got there, then slid my own on before I climbed out of the back of the SUV.
The scene was cordoned tight. Media pushed back a full block farther than usual. Too clean. Too quiet.
That was his signature too.
I guided her through the line with my hand at the small of her back. Not intimate. Not gentle. Directive. She let the agents close around her without complaint, head down, posture mimicking theirs. She learned fast.
I stopped her well before the body.
“Here,” I said. “You don’t move past me.”
“I won’t,” she said. This time, I believed her.
The victim lay beneath a tarp near a municipal records annex—one of those buildings no one noticed until they needed something buried. Mid-forties. Male. No visible trauma beyond what the Unsub wanted seen.
First on scene began a recitation of identity, reading us into what they had so far. Vincent Masters. Compliance officer. City level. Not high-ranking. Not low either.
Useful.
I lifted the tarp just enough to confirm identity. The paperwork would come later. The story was already here.
Ledger placed neatly beside the body. Copies of internal audits. Highlighted discrepancies. Red ink. Careful handwriting.
He hadn’t rushed.
“He wants us to read it,” Mallory said softly behind me.
“Yes.”
“He always does.”
I glanced back at her. She hadn’t moved closer. Her eyes tracked everything anyway.
“Mid-level,” she murmured. “Important enough to matter. Disposable enough to delay outrage.”
“Hmm,” I said, aware she wasn’t talking to me, but to herself as she sorted the data. I didn’t ask how she knew.
The medical examiner cleared his throat. “Cause of death pending, but prelim suggests poisoning. Slow onset. Administered over time.”
The Auditor liked patience. He liked the death to come on his schedule. But this was a first…at least in this case.
“Fast track the toxicology,” I told him. “I want to know what, how much, when it would have to have been administered.” Was this from before Mallory’s message or after? Had Masters always been doomed to this particular death or had he been another kind of message?
Mallory’s jaw tightened. Just once.
I stepped in front of her again—not to block the body, but the implications.
“That’s enough,” I said quietly.
She nodded. No argument. No pushback.
We left the same way we came—quiet, covered, unnoticed.
As we crossed back through the line, she leaned closer and said under her breath, “Thank you.”
I didn’t answer. Because if I did, I might have said something I couldn’t take back.
On the drive back, she stared out the window. Didn’t take notes. Didn’t ask questions. Just processed.
I told myself I’d done the right thing. Given her context without exposure. Knowledge without access. Trust without recklessness.
I told myself that as the SUV took a long, alternate route around then we traded for another vehicle that I drove with Mallory in the passenger seat. We didn’t discuss anything even when I pulled into the safe house drive and straight into the garage.
Before I even left the car, I dismissed the agent inside because I was back. They reported no activity and that Miss McBryan had slept the whole time I was out. Leaving that, I motioned her out of the car only after the outer door of the garage was closed.
Once we were inside, she stripped off the hat and the jacket to hand to me. Her eyes were full of questions and her expression was tense. We’d spent several hours at the scene despite how swift it had seemed, but she didn’t just disappear to her room.
“You’re not going to sleep,” I said.
“No.”
“Instead, you’re going to replay every detail.”
She shrugged. “He’s never used poison before.”
“I know, it’s possible this is a copycat, taking advantage of the case…”
The skeptical look she wore matched my own read on the situation. “The method bothers me because this feels like a correction for a correction.”
I hesitated. “Explain.”
“It’s been my supposition that he’s been punishing people for their fraudulent acts. For their own crimes. Justice seeking. It’s punishment and sentence.”
“Agreed.” That had been my read.
“Poison doesn’t fit the methodology he’s used. But usually, it’s been… more brutal.” She almost grimaced on the last. He’d removed all the fingers on the right hand of one of the accountants he’d slain and left them next to the body.
“He’s also not used the same method to deliver the kill with each death.” That was something that had helped us keep the presence of a serial quiet.
Or had until Mallory linked the victimology.
“Just because he hasn’t used it, doesn’t mean it’s out of character.”
Another skeptical look.
“Mallory, he kills. That’s what he does. The only thing poison tells us right now is that he is creative and working to keep us off balance. Once we have a full background on Masters, the type of poison and when it was administered, we’ll know more.”
“But why switch to poison? That feels… pointed.” She folded her arms, and looked far less defensive this time and more focused.
That gave me pause. Rather than hash this out in the hall, I motioned her toward the kitchen. Food had been delivered for lunch, but since I left orders for them to not disturb her, the food waited on the counter.
“How does it feel targeted?” I asked as I moved to get coffee started. I had a paper cup gut at the moment, but I’d been drinking sludge for most of my career. One more cup was not going to kill me no matter who made it.
She didn’t answer right away.
Mallory leaned back against the counter, arms folded, gaze unfocused—not on me, not on the kitchen, but somewhere several steps removed, searching for the thread to tug in her story.
“The kind of poison,” she said slowly, “will tell you if it was a proximity of over time or a single, dramatic act. It will tell you if Masters was a target of convenience or a target of overcorrection.”
I poured water into the coffee maker and watched it fill, the sound grounding in a way nothing else was.