Flint broke first.
“She’s not a suspect, Brewster. She’s a journalist. You don’t get to treat her like she’s part of your case file.”
“Sheispart of my case file now.” Brewster didn’t even look at him. “She’s the first confirmed contact with the unsub. She’s not a suspect. She’s a point of contact.”
“Don’t talk about her like she’s a damn carrier pigeon.”
“I’ll talk about her like what she is—an active link to a killer we’ve been chasing for eleven years.” Now Brewster turned, slow and deliberate. “You want to be useful? Stop trying to be the white knight in a media badge.”
Flint’s jaw flexed.
“I’m here to make sure you don’t try and steamroll her into doing something reckless.”
“That’s funny. I was thinking the same aboutyou.”
I cut in before they could pull out measuring sticks and start swinging.
“Enough. Both of you.”
They both looked at me. Neither liked being told what to do. Too bad.
“If we’re doing this, we do it my way. I answer questions. But I’m not your witness. You want cooperation? Earn it.”
Brewster considered me for a long beat. Then—impossibly—he nodded.
“You’re not on record.For now.” He set his phone on the table, face up to show it wasn’t actively recording. “This is preliminary.”
I sat. Crossed my arms. Met his eyes. They were darker up close—gray, yeah, but the kind that flicked to charcoal when he zeroed in. And hewaszeroing in.
“Start with how you tied the West Loop murders to the Cold Creek killings.”
Straight to the jugular.
“I didn’t tie them. I noticed the way they wereuntied—too clean. Too intentional. The cuts, the way the bodies werepositioned, how the press releases were written to bury the forensic overlap.”
“You think someone’s hiding it?”
“I think someonewas. Until recently. Now, it’s coming apart. He’s escalating.”
Brewster’s jaw moved just enough to show he agreed. He didn’t say it.
“What details did you withhold from your coverage?”
I smiled, thin and sharp. “What makes you think I withheld anything?”
He leaned in, not missing a beat. “Because if you didn’t, you’re either incompetent or suicidal…”
“Careful, Brewster.” Flint made a low noise of warning. “You don’t get to interrogate her like a suspect and call it ‘strategy.’”
I ignored Flint, keeping my attention on Brewster.
“There were details. Phrases in the letters. Repetition in syntax. I reached out to a linguistic analyst at Stanford to do a deep dive. The unsub uses compound sentence structures obsessively. Long clauses. Almost academic. It’s not ranting—it’s patterned.”
“Like he’s building up to something.”
“Yes.”
Brewster glanced toward the window. Not for long. Just enough to think.
