My jaw clenched.
They were turning me into a character.
I could feel the story slipping away from my hands, while all these talking heads rewrote it without me. Waiting equaled losing. It always had. And if I didn’t move soon, someone else would move for me—the FBI, Flint, the network, the public, the Auditor.
Or all of them.
I lowered the phone and looked at Brewster. “You said there’s nothing we can see.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re okay with that.”
“No,” he said simply.
More honesty than I’d been expecting. Then again, Brewster had been pretty damn blunt with me from the beginning. I respected that. I could work with that. More, I liked it. Liked him…
My pulse ticked up, annoyingly immediate, and I jerked my gaze back to my phone before it betrayed anything.
“I need to do something,” I said, quieter now. Not a demand. A confession. The room felt too small. My skin felt too tight.
Brewster didn’t move, didn’t shift in his seat, didn’t even seem to soften. He merely said, “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
My skin prickled. It wasn’t his tone—his tone was always controlled. It was the fact he’d stopped reading. The tablet sat ignored in his hand, like whatever was on it had become irrelevant.
Which meantIhad captured his full attention.
“I’m thinking I need to do something,” I said again, quieter. “Because waiting is… eating me alive.”
Brewster studied me, unhurried. After a long, almost interminably slow minute, he said. “You want to take control back.”
The accuracy of his statement made my chest tighten.
“And you want me to help you take it,” he added.
I lifted my chin. “Will you?”
A beat. Two. His eyes didn’t blink. Didn’t soften. But the air changed anyway—thick, electric, undeniable.
“Yes,” he said.
With that single word, the ground beneath us moved.
Chapter
Seventeen
MALLORY
The atmosphere in the house shifted in the late afternoon, tightening with both weariness and anticipation. Weariness for the length of the day, but anticipation for the relief of evening’s arrival.
The agents rotated again. Doors opened and closed with more care. Someone checked the perimeter twice in the span of fifteen minutes and pretended it was routine. It wasn’t. Nothing had happened, which somehow made everything feel closer to happening.
I hadn’t spoken to Flint all day.
Well, not directly. A text. A clipped voicemail. Meetings ran long. Calls stacked. Network obligations. Corporate wanted briefings. Legal wanted contingencies. Everyone wanted him everywhere except here.
Brewster, on the other hand, hadn’t gone anywhere.
