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’renotdoing 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 ajob.”
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’renot.”
“And you think locking me in here makes you the gatekeeper,” I replied. “Itdoesn’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.”
