I didn’t realize I’d stopped breathing until my chest burned.
Onscreen, Rather concluded, “We’ll continue to follow this story…”
Flint muted the channel and gave me a look. “Thoughts?”
“It doesn’t sound like him. Did we get a letter?” I pivoted to look at the producers around the room.
“We’re checking already,” Flint said, his own phone in hand now as he studied the screens.
The language was wrong. Not inaccurate—wrong.
Carefully vague. Loaded with implication. Phrases designed to travel faster than facts. “Sources say.” “Developing.” “May indicate.” Words that sounded authoritative without committing to anything that could be sued.
“This isn’t a leak,” I murmured, talking aloud. “It’s not from him either.”
Why I knew this? I had no idea. His communications had all been… pithy. Sharp. To the point. That letter hadrambledfrom the sound of it.
Flint raised his brows at me—did I need him right this moment? I shook my head and waved him back to his call. If we’d gotten a letter, I wanted to see it. I wanted to read it in its entirety.
I felt the edges of the pattern press in around me, ugly and deliberate.
The unsub wasn’t accelerating. Based on the tense expressions the agents wore, I was pretty sure this hadn’t come from them. So—who was using this moment to manipulate and what was their target? The story? The unsub?
Me?
My phone buzzed.
Then again.
Then again.
I didn’t even need to look to know what it was—my followers, my inbox, my DMs lighting up like a switchboard. The same cadence as before, only it seemed louder and far more insistent. Pulling it out, I glanced at it anyway.
The messages stacked across the scene.
Same sentence structure. Same punctuation habits. Same clipped sympathy, same urgent insistence thatnowwas the moment.
You were right. This is what accountability looks like.
They’re finally listening to you.
Don’t stop now.
It made my skin crawl. The letter that had been sent to the other networks was amplifyingmyreporting.Mymessaging. The social media posts, the private messsages—they were something else entirely. They weren’t responding to the reporting from any of us, but reacting to what they wanted me to do next.
“They want me to go live,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. They were trying to forcemeout there. Flint pivoted to stare at me.
“What?”
“They want me to support this—” I gestured to the screens and ignored the sudden silence rippling across the room as the producers quieted. I had everyone’s attention, including Sterling. “They want me to validate this and support the messaging.”
To his credit, Sterling seemed far more concerned than irritated when he glanced in at us. Then he was at the door and stepping inside.
“Ms. McBryan,” he said through the door. “We’re getting chatter too. Not just press.”
“Define chatter,” I said.
He hesitated.
