Page 93 of Chameleon Killer

It was an office building near the river, mostly vacant since a development dispute had stalled renovations two years earlier.

Public enough to reach. Empty enough to control.

“You said the wrong man,” Flint murmured.

“What?”

“The message.” He pointed to the first line. “Not the wrong question. The wrong man.”

I read it again.

You asked the wrong man about Guy Reardon.

Brewster.

The Auditor knew we had questioned Brewster about Guy’s records. Or he wanted me to believe he knew. Either seemed likely and considering the eye he’d been keeping on me, I’d have been surprised if my meeting with Elliot had gone unnoticed.

“He could have surveillance in the building,” Flint said.

“The office has been swept.” Repeatedly.

“By Brewster’s people.”

I looked up. “And by ours, don’t you have our security guys sweeping the offices twice a day?”

Flint didn’t say anything else. But his troubled expression had me leaning back in my chair as he propped a hip against my desk. It was just the two of us in the newsroom at the moment.

The news crew was down one floor in the studio for the last nightly news broadcast, everyone else was out pretending to have a life. But not us.

“You think Elliot is involved?”

It came out a little sharper than I meant it, but Flint just gave me a measured look before he responded.

“I think someone knew what happened in a closed office.”

“That’s a stretch,” I argued. “If you know me and you know the FBI profiler assigned to the case, then the two of us talking in private doesn’t mean they needed an ear in there to assume we were discussing the Auditor.”

“But the specific content?” Flint squinted.

“He doesn’t have specific content.” I tapped the page with its four lines. “He says I asked the wrong person. Not the wrong question which was what he said before. Now he’s discussing who I went to—or in this case at least who came to me.”

I glanced toward one of the cameras. The little green light never went off. It was trained on us where we sat which meant whatever was on the letter would get noticed. So would our discussion.

“Either way, the allusion to that discussion doesn’t make Brewster the Auditor.”

Thankfully, he didn’t comment on me switching from Elliot’s first name to his last.

“Never said it did.” His answer was a little too pat. He was still ticked at me.

I leaned forward to open the envelope and pull the access card out all the way. A thin strip of white tape had been fixed to the back.

One word had been written across it.

Alone.

Flint saw it and his expression immediately went flat. “No.”

“You already said that.”