That look—cold, restrained, lethal with patience—made my pulse jump in a way the message alone hadn’t.
The phone vibrated again, brief and deliberate—like a knuckle rapped once against glass.
You’re still explaining something we already agree on.
My breath stalled.
The room felt suddenly too quiet—the kind of quiet that came before something broke. I became acutely aware of my own body again: the hum under my skin, the ache that hadn’t faded, the memory of heat and pressure that had nothing to do with the message and everything to do with restraint stretched thin.
Brewster didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
He didn’t have to.
His stare was both warning and dare—as if he knew exactly how close I was to crossing another line, and exactly what it would cost if I did.
Brewster exhaled once. Controlled. Lethal.
“He didn’t text because you were wrong,” he said. “He texted because you were right… and now he wants to see who you’ll listen to.”
“He’s not wrong,” Flint said, though he didn’t sound like he liked agreeing with him.
The words settled between us, heavy and irreversible.
“Give me the number,” Brewster said. “We’ll start the trace.”
I lowered the phone slowly.
Whatever game was being played now wasn’t about justice, truth, or debate.
It was about the next move—and whether I made it alone, or let someone else make it for me.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
BREWSTER
The briefing room smelled like burnt coffee and recycled air—sterile enough to pretend nothing human ever happened here. Glass walls. Steel chairs. A screen mounted too high and too bright, as if clarity could be engineered by fluorescent light.
On the other side of the table, Washington had sent Deputy Director Warren Kline, Assistant U.S. Attorney Marjorie Feld, and Paul Reeve from DOJ Oversight—three suits with varying degrees of ambition and only a passing familiarity with blood on concrete.
Kline sat centered, hands folded like he’d already decided where the story ended. Reeve leaned back, eyes tracking optics more than evidence. Feld didn’t lean at all—pen poised, attention narrow, dangerous in her stillness.
They’d also sent Dr. Evan Roth, a behavioral analyst fresh enough to still believe people were predictable if you plotted them on the right axis. He kept glancing at the timeline like it was personally disappointing him.
Agent Hale sat off to my left, silent as ever. He wasn’t watching the screen. He was watching the room. Same rank. Same clearance. Same steady presence he’d had when he’dordered me to take a walk the day Mallory went live. He didn’t speak unless it mattered—and when he didn’t speak, it mattered more.
They’d brought me in to listen.
That was what they told themselves.
I took my seat without taking up space. Hands folded. Expression neutral. The kind of posture that made people talk more, not less. When men wanted to sound competent, they filled silence. When they wanted to sound certain, they overexplained.
I gave them silence.
The behavioral team stood at the front—two BAs and one of their supervisors, a woman with sharp eyes and a careful cadence. She clicked the remote and Colin Thorne’s name appeared on the screen beside a grainy still from a parking structure camera.
