“Does that bother you?”
“No,” he said. “It confirms something.”
Disliking how precise that sounded, I reached for the coffee pot, poured myself a cup, and took a slow sip. It tasted awful. I drank it anyway. Bad coffee was just a fact of life, like bad weather, terrible accommodations, and uncooperative interview subjects.
“Nothing’s happened,” I said. “No response. No escalation.”
“Not yet.”
“You think that’s a failure?”
“I think it’s a filter.”
That word again.
“Everyone thinks silence is passive,” Brewster went on. “It isn’t. Silence is active. It forces others to decide whether to fill it—or respect it.”
“Which do you think he’s doing?” I asked.
Brewster didn’t answer immediately. He looked past me, toward the hallway.
“He’s deciding,” he said finally.
That shouldn’t have made my pulse jump.
But it did.
I checked my phone again, more out of habit than anxiety. Still nothing.
“Flint would hate this,” I said.
“Yes.”
“You don’t.”
“No.”
I looked at him then. Really looked.
There was no triumph in his expression. No hunger. No heat. Just focus. A narrowing of attention that felt unsettlingly similar to my own when I knew a source was about to crack—not because I pushed, but because I stopped.
“You trust me,” I said slowly.
Brewster’s mouth curved but it wasn’t a smile.
“I trust your instincts,” he said. “I don’t trust your conclusions.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It should be.”
I laughed quietly, then sobered. “If this goes wrong?—”
“It will,” he said calmly.
I stared at him.
He didn’t soften it.
