Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
FLINT
Something had changed.
I clocked it before I could name it—before Mallory even opened her mouth on camera the second day after she went live from the safe house. It was there in the way she held herself. Not rattled. Not euphoric.
Contained. Shut down. Quiet.
Too quiet.
She didn’t look like someone riding adrenaline. She looked like someone who’d already crossed a line and was waiting to see what bled.
I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like the way Brewster hovered just outside the frame when we wrapped. Didn’t like the way he watched her, no longer just sniffing after her but guarding her like she was his territory. Really didn’t like that Mallory didn’t look surprised by it.
I especially didn’t like the silence between them.
People who hadn’t fucked didn’t stand that close without touching and still look like they were braced for impact.
I didn’t ask.
That was my mistake.
But I knew without being told and I really didn’t want to know that.
Two days passed.
Too quiet.
The pattern had always been five to seven days. Minimum. Enough time for the Auditor to work, to curate, to construct his moral scaffolding. Two days wasn’t just fast—it was sloppy.
Reactive. A dangerous and dark suggestion that she’d gotten to him.
I was in the studio when it broke.
Not my studio. One floor down. A producer had pulled me in to look at early metrics—Mallory’s segment had legs, real ones, and the execs—Reardon in the lead—were already circling it like vultures deciding whether to monetize or muzzle.
The TV on the wall flickered.
Then split.
Then every screen changed at once. My phone buzzed at the same time, a series of rapid-fire messages coming in.
Breaking news didn’t wait for permission, they went live and they looped me in. I was watching the story even as they updated me.
A body had been discovered.
Male. Mid-to-late forties. Found in an office parking structure. Preliminary reports suggested documentation had been left at the scene.
I was already standing.
“Where?” I asked, but no one answered me. They were all staring at the screens.
The anchor said the name before I was ready.
“Sources are now confirming the victim as Colin Thorne—”
The room went very quiet.
“—a prominent legal counsel specializing in media law and whistleblower protection.”
My chest went hollow.
No.
No, no, no.
Colin Thorne didn’t just specialize in media law. He was Mallory’s attorney. Had been for years. Clean. Meticulous. The kind of man who believed systems could be bent back into shape if you applied enough pressure in the right places.
A good man.
A careful one.
The kind who didn’t deserve this.
I didn’t remember moving, but suddenly I was closer to the screen. The image shifted—crime scene tape, a blur of uniforms, a familiar ledger placed just so.
Same handwriting.
Same ritual.
The Auditor hadn’t just responded.
He’d answered.
My phone was already in my hand. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t need to.
No way this was a coincidence. I didn’t even have to speculate on that one.
Two days after Mallory went on air and told him accountability mattered?
Two days after she challenged the premise of his justice?
Two days—and he didn’t pick a random compliance officer or a mid-level bureaucrat—he picked her.
He targeted someone in her infrastructure.
Son.
Of.
A.
Bitch.
The room around me started moving again—producers talking over each other, legal scrambling, someone swearing under their breath about liability—but I wasn’t in it anymore.
All I could see was Mallory’s face when I told her.
I finally checked my phone.
Missed call. Mallory.
Text. Mallory.
Another. Brewster.
I ignored them all.
Not because I didn’t care.
Because if I answered before I had the facts, I’d say something I couldn’t take back.
The anchor kept talking.
“…sources indicate the victim may have been targeted due to legal actions connected to recent investigative reporting—”
I closed my eyes.
Of course, that was the hook they’d run with. The easy narrative. The one that put Mallory at the center of the blast radius whether she liked it or not.
The Auditor had done this before—used proximity, not guilt. Punished the circle.
This wasn’t about Colin’s sins.
This was about access to her. It was about proving a point to her. It was about reminding Mallory that every person who stood between her and him was fair game.
I exhaled slowly, then turned to the nearest producer. “Get me everything. Raw footage. No commentary. I want timestamps, angles, who broke it first.”
“Flint—”
“Now.”
They moved.
Good.
I dialed Mallory as I walked.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Flint,” she said, already tight. “You’re seeing this.”
“Yes.”
A beat.
Then, quietly: “It’s Colin.”
“Yes.”
Her breath stuttered once. Just once. She recovered fast—but I heard it.
“This isn’t your fault,” I said immediately. Too fast. Too rehearsed.
“I know,” she said. That scared me more than if she’d argued.
“I’m coming down to you,” I continued. “Don’t go anywhere. Don’t talk to anyone until—”
“I’m not in the studio,” she cut in.
Fuck. Of course she wasn’t.
“I’m at the safe house.” With Brewster, though she didn’t say that, she didn’t have to.
Another pause.
“But I want to be there. I need to be…”
I closed my eyes.
“Listen to me,” I said. “This just changed everything.”
“Yes,” she replied. Calm. Focused. Already building the next move in her head. “It did.”
Because nothing any of us said would stop her from wanting to be here, from being on the story, from going after Colin’s killer the only way she knew how.
The last thing I wanted to do was prevent her from exercising her control and her grief, even if the only place she needed to be was the last place I wanted her to have to be.
“You need an escort.”
“I’ll have one.” There was no disguising the soft exhale of surprise.
“I’ll notify security. You’ll have ours on you too. No arguments.” It came out brutal, and clipped. I was in the elevator and when someone went to get in with me, I pointed them out. I needed privacy. They raised their hands and backed out.
“I won’t argue,” she said in a voice that was far too small for this woman who knew how to make her words count.
“Mallory—” I hesitated, then said the thing I’d been avoiding for days. “Whatever’s going on between you and Brewster? Leave it outside. It doesn’t get to compromise this or you.”
“It isn’t,” she said.
I didn’t believe her, but I also didn’t say so.
“How long until you’re here?” I asked as the elevator doors opened to the floor hosting my office.
“Twenty minutes—make it twenty-five.” I didn’t miss the hesitation.
“Be in my office in thirty,” I told her. “We’re not letting this turn you into the story.”
A pause.
“Flint,” she said softly. “I already am.”
The line went dead.
I stared at my phone for a long moment, then slid it into my pocket and strode into my office. The Auditor had broken his own rules.
That meant one of two things.
He was losing control.
Or—
He’d just started a new phase, and this one was personal.
I didn’t sit.
Sitting implied waiting. Waiting implied helplessness. I started moving instead.
The phone in my hand started ringing, another call coming in even as I answered one.
I took the second one as soon as I wrapped the first. I declined the next three that tried to interrupt.
When legal popped up on the screen, I dumped them to voicemail.
Reardon’s assistant tried to corner me outside my office and I cut him off mid-sentence with a raised finger and a look that said do not test me today.
“Mallory’s not doing a follow-up yet,” I said. “Not a teaser. Not a crawl. Not a speculative panel.”
“She’s the connection—”
“She’s the target,” I snapped. “And if you turn her into clickbait, I will personally make sure your name is attached to every ethics review this network faces for the next decade.”
That stopped him.
Good.
I closed my office door and finally pulled up the raw feed. No anchors. No pundits. Just unfiltered footage from the scene. We’d gotten a damn good look before law enforcement blocked it off with partitions.
My gut churned. I knew Colin. We weren’t close or anything, but it had been a while since someone I knew personally had been reduced to “a body,” and I needed a full grip. Shaking it off, I focused on studying the footage again.
It’d been staged for discovery.
Same ledger placement. Same handwriting. Same careful alignment. But this one was cleaner. Colder. No flourish.
That was the difference.
Vincent Masters had been a statement.
Colin Thorne was punctuation.
Punishment?
I scrubbed back through the timestamps, jaw tight. The parking structure camera angle cut just before the ledger came into frame. Deliberate. The Auditor knew exactly how much visibility he wanted.
Enough to be found. Not enough to be understood without context. Mallory, though, would understand it immediately. She seemed to speak his language. That was the problem.
My phone buzzed again—this time Brewster.
I let it go to voicemail.
Not because I didn’t respect him.
Because if I spoke to him right now, I’d say something unhelpful. Possibly violent.
I was still standing when security called up.
“She’s here.”
I checked the time.
Twenty-eight minutes.
Of course she was.
“Bring her up and send her in,” I said. Then, after a beat, “And give us the room.”
“Yes, sir.”
I moved the chair behind my desk—not to sit, but to clear the line of sight. I didn’t want anything between us when she walked in. No desk. No screen. No illusion of hierarchy.
She was already on this floor because the door opened far too swiftly. Mallory stepped inside and closed it behind her. Shutting out security, the office staff, and Brewster.