Chapter 24 #2
“I already do,” I replied. “And Flint and I will handle the story and the angle. We’ll read you in, but we’ll make the final calls.”
His jaw tightened and for a moment, I could have sworn real irritation came to life in his eyes. Oh well. “Ms. McBryan…” he began almost icily, but his phone buzzed and everything in his expression shuttered as he checked the screen. “I have to take this.”
Without another word, he stalked out of the kitchen with the phone to his ear. It was definitely stalking out. His days of sharing information seemed to be over. Fair enough.
My days of cooperating blindly were done.
I didn’t follow him. That alone told me how far things had shifted. Instead, I kept working.
I refined the angle. Tightened the language.
Stripped out anything that could be dismissed as speculation and left only what could survive legal review and public scrutiny.
Masters’ role. The ledger. The pattern. The silence around accountability.
I built it the way I always did—layered, defensible, sharp enough to draw blood without naming the knife.
An hour later, the doorbell rang.
Not the chime. The bell.
Intentional. Assertive. A man announcing himself.
I didn’t have to look up to know it was Flint.
He came in hot—camera case in one hand, shoulder rig slung like a threat, coat still on. He scanned the room the way he always did when he was already mentally rolling tape, eyes cataloging light, angles, exits.
“Jesus,” he muttered. “This place looks like a bunker.”
“It is,” I said. “You brought the camera.”
“Of course I brought the camera.” He set it down and finally looked at me properly. His gaze sharpened. “You look like hell.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
He huffed a laugh, but it didn’t stick. “You sure you want to do this here?”
Before I could answer, Brewster appeared in the doorway, then stopped.
The air changed immediately.
“Flint,” Brewster said, tone neutral, clipped. “You weren’t cleared.”
“Funny, pretty sure I got in and that wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t cleared.” Flint straightened, squaring off like this was a negotiation he’d prepared for. “Besides,” he added with an unfriendly smirk, “I was invited.”
“No,” Brewster said. “You were tolerated.”
I closed my laptop slowly. “He was invited by me.”
Brewster’s jaw tightened. “Mallory—”
“We are not doing this in the studio,” I continued, standing. “And we are not doing it outside with a press scrum and a satellite truck.”
“That gives him access,” Brewster snapped. “You go live from a secured location and you hand the Unsub a front-row seat.”
I stepped closer. “He already has one.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” I said evenly. “It’s worse for you because you can’t control it.”
Flint looked between us, then raised both hands. “Okay. I don’t care about the testosterone contest, but if we’re doing this here, I need to know what kind of interference I’m dealing with.”
“You’re not doing it here,” Brewster said flatly.
I didn’t look at him. “We are.”
“This is not a studio environment.”
“It’s a controlled one.”
“This is an active safe house.”
“And I’m an active journalist,” I shot back. “With a job.”
His irritation broke through then—sharp, unmistakable. “Your job doesn’t override security protocol.”
“It does when your protocol is failing,” I said. “A body dropped anyway. He escalated anyway. Silence didn’t slow him down—it redirected him.”
Brewster took a step toward me. “You think you’re baiting him. You’re not.”
“And you think locking me in here makes you the gatekeeper,” I replied. “It doesn’t. It just makes you my most visible leash holder.”
That landed.
Flint cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, I agree with her.”
Brewster didn’t even look at him. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“We go live controlled,” Flint continued, unfazed. “One camera. No commentary crawl. No live questions. Just Mallory delivering context. We don’t name the pattern, but we don’t deny it either.”
Brewster shook his head once. “You’re not thinking like law enforcement.”
“No,” Flint said. “I’m thinking like someone who knows how narratives move.”
“And I’m thinking like someone who’s watched bodies pile up when people get reckless.”
“That body,” I said quietly, “was already dead.”
Silence snapped tight.
Before Brewster could respond, another voice cut in.
“That’s enough.”
Agent Hale—mid-forties, same level as Brewster, same calm authority—stood in the doorway. Based on his expression, he’d been listening longer than any of us wanted to admit.
“Hale,” Brewster acknowledged, stiff.
Hale’s gaze moved between us once, then settled on Brewster. “You’re too close.”
Brewster bristled. “I’m in charge of this detail.”
“And right now,” Hale said evenly, “you’re not thinking clearly.”
“That’s not your call.”
“It is when the SAC is already questioning your judgment.”
Flint whistled softly. “Well. That’s comforting.”
Hale ignored him. “Brewster, take a walk.”
The room went dead quiet.
Brewster stared at him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Hale said. “Five minutes. Cool off. Let us handle logistics.”
Brewster’s gaze flicked to me. Dark. Controlled. Dangerous.
“I’m not leaving her,” he said.
“I’m not asking you to,” Hale replied. “I’m ordering you to step back.”
For a moment, I thought Brewster might refuse.
Then his jaw flexed once.
He turned sharply and left the room without another word.
The door didn’t slam. It didn’t need to.
Flint exhaled. “Well. That was fun.”
Hale looked at me. “You ready?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “You go live in twenty.”
As Flint started assembling the camera, my phone buzzed.
One notification.
Unknown sender.
I didn’t open it.
I didn’t need to.
Whatever line I was about to cross, the Unsub already knew I was standing at it.
While I wasn’t alone this time, I was also not going to be protected. Not anymore.
Twenty minutes later, I was mic’d.
No studio lights. No familiar desk. No graphics package humming in the background. Just a single camera, a neutral wall, and Flint adjusting the frame with the kind of care that told me he understood exactly what we were risking.
“This is tight,” he murmured. “No wide shots. No movement.”
“Good,” I said. “We don’t need it.”
Flint paused, then nodded. “Thirty seconds.”
I took a breath.
Not to calm myself—never that—but to center. To let the ache in my body settle into something usable. To let the weight of what had already happened anchor me instead of destabilizing me.
The red light blinked on.
We were live.
I looked directly into the lens.
Not past it. Not around it.
Into it.
“Good evening,” I said quietly. “I wasn’t scheduled to be on air today.”
No chyron. No theme music. Just my voice.
“But early this morning, a body was discovered outside a municipal records annex. His name was Vincent Masters.”
I let the name sit.
“He worked in compliance. City level. Not an elected official. Not a whistleblower. Not someone you would recognize. And that matters.”
I leaned forward slightly—not toward the camera, but into the moment.
“Because before he was a role in a system, he was a person. A man with a routine. A badge on a lanyard. A desk drawer full of pens that never worked and paperwork that always did.”
A beat.
“And now—whatever he did, whatever he knew, whatever he signed or didn’t sign—he will never answer for it.”
I held my gaze steady.
“That’s not justice. That’s silence. That’s an ending that cuts off the only thing that actually holds a system together: accountability.”
Another beat, quieter.
“We have mechanisms for this. We have courts. Investigators. Prosecution. Sentencing. Due process. Fraud—financial misconduct—doesn’t come with a death penalty. It comes with evidence and consequences.”
I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t need to.
“And when someone decides they’re allowed to skip all of that—when they decide a ledger is a verdict and a body is a conclusion—what they’re really doing is erasing the very thing they claim to stand for.”
I let that settle, then continued.
“Authorities have not officially linked Mr. Masters’ death to the ongoing federal investigation into financial misconduct and audit manipulation. They are correct to be cautious.”
“But caution doesn’t mean blindness.”
I folded my hands in front of me, fingers interlaced. Stillness as strategy.
“At the scene, documents were found. Records. Ledgers. Marked discrepancies. The kind of evidence that suggests someone wanted the process examined, not hidden.”
Another pause.
“Mr. Masters was not a headline name. He was a functionary. A gatekeeper. Someone who could delay or advance scrutiny with the stroke of a pen.”
I let my voice soften—not emotionally, but deliberately.
“Someone, somewhere, believed he had already done enough damage.”
I could feel the room listening now. Not just viewers—agents, analysts, the people who understood what I was saying without me having to spell it out.
“This is not about putting on a show,” I continued. “This is not about fear. This is about pattern.”
I lifted my chin slightly.
“Patterns don’t exist to scare us. They exist to be read.”
A breath.
“If you’re watching this and wondering why I’m not in the studio—why this feels different—it’s because it is.”
I leaned closer.
“This investigation didn’t start with a single body. And it didn’t just start today.”
I held the camera like a conversation.
“To the people who handle records. Who sign off quietly. Who assume no one is paying attention—I want you to understand something very clearly.”
My voice dropped.
“Someone is.”
I let that land.
“As for the person who wanted these records seen—who believed that process matters even when the outcome is violent—I hear you.”
Not accusatory. Not flattering.
Honest.
“But conversations don’t belong to only one side.”
I sat back slightly, reclaiming distance.
“If accountability is the goal, then scrutiny comes with it. For everyone.”
A final pause.
“I’ll continue to follow this story. Carefully. Publicly. And without shortcuts.”
I held the gaze one last time.
“Because the truth doesn’t need permission. It just needs light.”
The red light blinked off.
Silence.
Flint exhaled slowly behind the camera. “Jesus, Mallory.”
I didn’t turn around yet.
Somewhere in the house, I felt it—the shift. The pressure changing direction. I knew, with absolute certainty, that the Unsub had been watching. And worse—
I knew he’d understood exactly what I was offering.
Not defiance.
Dialogue.
Because this time, I’d invited him onto my stage.