“That’s never good,” I added.
He closed the door behind him. “Off the record?”
I almost smiled.
“Give us the room,” Flint ordered and the producers suddenly burst into action. Calls were ended, material grabbed up and they trailed out, until all that was left was me, Flint, and the three agents in the closed room. “Off the record,” he confirmed.
Sterling nodded. “We’re seeing alotof internal alerts. Accelerated. Someone’s pushing information into the system thatappearsto be federal action. It’s triggering responses.”
Appears.
Cold bloomed through me. “But none of it is legitimate?”
“Yes and no,” Sterling said carefully, a muscle ticked in his jaw. He wasn’t angry, he wasreallyworried. The strain around his eyes and the way his lips flattened confessed that. “The material we’re seeing looks like we generated it, and it’s beingfed into our system and out to other law enforcement—they are acting on it.”
“Oh shit,” I whispered and sat in a chair one of the producers had abandoned.
“He’s not killing faster,” Flint said slowly. “He’s going to point the finger at someone else.” It sounded like he was testing the theory.
“But this is a complete and total change from his M.O.” Except… was it? He had to be educated enough to handle sophisticated systems. Intelligent enough to weed through the noise and identify the troublemakers. Savvy enough to distinguish real leads from false trails.
Was this a change? Or was he just widening his scope?
“Whatever this is,” I said slowly, “whether it’s the unsub or someone trying to use this story for their own gain, whatever is coming isn’t a body drop. They are going to take people down, publicly. It’s going to force accountability from a lot of different companies and individuals without any kind of due process.”
Fraud clothed in justice. That didn’t make it fair or right, even if the targets were legitimate. Fruit of the poisonous tree and all of that.
My stomach turned.
“And if I go on air right now,” I continued, “they get exactly what they want.”
Sterling swallowed. “Ma’am?—”
I held up a hand. “I’m not going live.” No way in hell would I back a story without fact checking it to hell and back. “But, Iamstaying.”
Flint gave me a firm look. “Then get to work, McBryan, we have a story to tear apart.”
Yes, we did.
Whatever the next mistake was, it wouldn’t belong to me. It wouldn’t be committed by hijacking my voice to back their version of the story.
I left Flint then and headed for my office. I needed the space and the quiet to think and to work. After the agents cleared the room, they moved to stay outside. I didn’t have any windows in here, which made it pretty damn secure.
No sooner did I pull up my computer and log in than my phone buzzed.
With a long sigh, I turned my phone over. The screen lit.
And everything in me went very still.
Oh shit.
Chapter
Thirty
THE AUDITOR
The broadcast broke early.
