Another pause. I leaned forward, voice quieter, more intimate.
“I write my own.”
I hit stop.
The silence afterward felt artificial. Staged. Like the set had gone dark but the audience hadn’t left.
I stood, stretched out the tension in my shoulders, and crossed to the kitchen. Despite my espresso machine, sometimes I just wanted strong black coffee. Right now, Ineededit. The coffee machine clicked audibly as I switched it on. My hands shook—not from fear, not really. From the comedown. My adrenaline crashed.
Everything in the condo was suddenly too sharp. The ticking of the wall clock. The hum of the fridge. The faint buzz of the city, still restless even at four a.m.
The hiss and slow, bitter drip.
Then—
BZZZT.
The sound cut through the stillness like a razor across glass.
My head snapped toward the intercom. The front desk.
That was fast.
Chapter
Seven
BREWSTER
Somewhere between the third and fourth homicide, I stopped hoping the unsub would make a mistake.
Hope was a luxury.
I dealt in patterns.
The call from Mallory McBryan came at 3:52 a.m., and the moment she said“a finger”, I was already sliding out of bed and sending a message for a field unit. It wasn’t the first time someone close to a case had been pulled into the blast radius, but itwasthe first time this particular unsub had taken that step.
I’d been waiting for the escalation. Now I had it.
“Let’s move,” I told the driver, barely waiting for him to stop in front of the hotel before I climbed in. I still had a phone to my ear. We weren’t far.
Chicago’s skyline bled into view through the windshield, a blur of glass and steel, glowing red at the edges like something had gone rotten in the core. The silence in the SUV was only broken by the occasional crackle of comms. I preferred it that way. Quiet gave you clarity.
We hit the front of her high-rise at 4:12. Two uniforms—local LEOs—flanked the front doors, already twitchy. They tried to step in front of me. Bad move. Chicago PD should know better.
“Agent Eliot Brewster, FBI.” I flashed my badge, sharp and fast. “You were told to expect me.”
As the men studied my badge, one of them called it in. He read off the number, then checked his phone. After a second nod, he opened the door.
My opinion of them elevated.
The doorman said nothing, just walked me and Marsden across the lobby to the elevator where he swiped his card to access the elevator. “They said you have a team coming?”
“They would be correct. I don’t want PD up there, if they don’t have FBI credentials you can verify, you don’t send them up. Any problems, call me.” I handed him my card.
“Yes, sir.”
Before the doors could close or he could walk away, I braced the doors open. “Did you receive the package?”
