“I don’t go back on the air, at all.”
That startled him. “So how do you plan to move the conversation?”
“Well, since we both decided he’d already chosen an elegant method, I thought I might lift the page right from his book… or my transcript as it were.”
Now I had his full attention. “How?”
“I’ve been thinking about it since I found the message,” I confessed. “It’s how I work out problems, let them percolate in the back of my brain while I focus on other things.”
Why I felt the need to explain that, I wasn’t sure, but details mattered.
“He annotated the transcript of the broadcast where I delivered a message to him. Not the broadcast where I called out his actions or even gave him the name Auditor.”
That earned me a disgruntled look and a long sigh. “Naming a serial does nothing to help catch them, it just sensationalizes them and makes ratings.”
Not willing to entertain that particular argument at the moment, I returned to discussing my plan. “His choice was minimalistic. He didn’t cross out or try to replace my words, but answered it.”
Leaning back in his chair, Brewster transferred his gaze from me to the ceiling. I could almost hear the gears turning and the whine of the wheels as he considered my words.
“That tells me… that he is opening that dialogue and that he believes we were having a conversation. Now, I’m not a psychologist…”
“I agree with your assessment,” he said, waving that off. “Continue.”
I almost snorted at the command in his tone, but accepted it for the hurry up that it was. “It also tells me that he’s unhappy—” I considered that word choice, then just went with it. “Unhappy,” I repeated, “with the interruption.”
“Perhaps,” Brewster murmured. “I suspect it goes a bit further than that, however.” He refocused his attention on me. “Yes, he doesn’t like that someone interrupted your conversation, but I have a feeling that he resents the implication that someone else ispreventingyou two from talking.”
“That someone else being you, Flint, and the FBI,” I pointed out. That only earned me a droll look.
“You don’t include your network in that?”
“With Reardon frothing at the mouth over ratings and ad share revenue?” I snorted. “What do you think?”
He grunted and the lack of a verbal confirmation spoke a lot louder than words.
“Based on that, I don’t think this message is about escalating anything.” I pursed my lips, then said fuck it and finished my thought. “Maybe I’m being arrogant, and I don’t mind that particular accusation. I think he just wants to talk to me—and not publicly.”
“No, he made his response to you intimate, behind closed doors almost. If you go on the air, you turn his communication into spectacle.” The speculative expression on Brewster’s face turned grim.
“That’s what I thought,” I said slowly. “He’d hate if I did that, particularly when he went to such trouble to reach out to me in a way that didn’t flag anyone else.”
“Whether he thinks you did it or not, he’d likely want to punish someone for it.”
That was the first-time punishment entered the conversation. “If he thought it was me making it a spectacle,” I said slowly. “I think he would be angry. But if he thinks it’s?—”
My phone buzzed on the desk between us.
Flint.
I didn’t pick it up right away, instead I focused on Brewster. “If he thinks it’s someone else, then he might react…” Honestly, I wasn’t sure how he would react. Look for another method to get to me? Get rid of the obstacle?
The last was more than enough to make me pause, especially when my phone buzzed again.
“Flint?” Brewster hadn’t glanced at my phone, but he’d definitely clocked my pause.
“Yes.”
“What does he want?”
