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 saiddo 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.”
