Page 112 of Chameleon Killer

Chapter

Fifteen

FLINT

Waiting was a skill.

I had learned it outside embassies, inside armored vehicles, beneath stairwells while gunfire moved through buildings one floor at a time. I had waited for sources who never arrived, extraction teams that came hours late, and correspondents who insisted they needed one more shot before abandoning a position everyone else had already decided was indefensible.

Waiting required discipline and control. It was never supposed to involve watching Mallory McBryan walk alone into a building selected by a serial killer for a private meet and greet.

That demanded so much more from me. Too much. The digital clock on the dashboard changed to 11:47 p.m.

Mallory stood beneath the awning across the street from the building where her meetup was scheduled, one hand in the pocket of her dark coat. Rain silvered the shoulders and darkened the loose strands of hair that the wind had pulled from her pony tail.

Thankfully, she’d gone for street wear in jeans, a turtleneck and coat with flat-soled boots. It was a contrast to what she wore when she was anchoring on the nightly news. No suit. No heels. No carefully applied cosmetics. It set the terms of this sit down. She was all business and she was here to get the story, not a date.

Good.

Unfortunately, she had rejected the ballistic vest I’d acquired through a source in private security. According to her, the vest constituted a visible betrayal of the word alone.

I didn’t argue, because that would have just wasted time. So, I inserted a pair of thin kevlar panels in the front of her coat.

Making her a little safer was not something I would apologize for. The coat hung fine and she hadn’t commented on any shift in weight. As for the rest? She was stunning all on her own.

She turned her face toward the building.

Nineteen stories of black glass rose above the river. It’s unfinished upper floors disappeared into a low-lying cloud. The weather was turning drearier and drearier. That combined with the most of the exterior lights having been switched off gave it an almost gothic feel. The law office on four and the logistics company on seven were dark.

A single light remained visible o the eighth floor, river side. The same floor I’d found the temporary camera placed. Predictable, I supposed, since wait, I had predicted it.

Professional as always, Mallory never looked in my direction. She knew where I would be watching and didn’t make any kind of show to check for where I was located.

I flicked my gaze back up to the building as she tilted her head upward. It was natural to glance where you target was looking. So, we agreed that we couldn’t underestimate the Auditor’s reach even if we should also not credit him with the power of some supernatural boogeyman.

With that in mind, we theorized that the Auditor might have access to the street cameras, the building’s security systems or even a telescope lens on another property. None of those seemed to be a stretch when you considered that he had gotten an envelope onto her desk despite all the layers of security that should have rendered the act impossible.

Assuming he could see everything was the only sensible approach.

I sat behind the wheel of a gray delivery van parked just a half block west of the building. I’d borrowed the van from the owner of a catering company who owed me for keeping his son’s name out of a corruption story I broke over a decade ago.

To be fair, his kid wasn’t one of the driving forces behind the scandal and had been swept up in it. But, my keeping his name out had been a choice I made for him and his family, not the story.

We’d removed his company logo from the doors. A standard gray/white van marked by street dirt and streaked from the rain probably looked more like a serial killer vehicle without the signage. However, Tim had threatened me with bodily harm if I got his business in trouble with my investigation.

Reasonable.

I’d kitted the back out for some low-tech surveillance. A folding table, three monitors, a receiver designed to catch short-range transmissions and enough improvised spy equipment to get me detained in several countries. I’d added two first-aid kits, bolt cutters, climbing rope, a fire axe, and a Glock-19 with extra magazines.

Nothing back there was connected to Mallory. No wire. No tracker. No active signal the Auditor might scan and expose her. That had been my agreement.

The burner phone she carried would only send if she pressed the emergency key. It was as close to a panic button as we could manufacture in the short amount of time we’d had. Even then it wouldn’t do more than make a single call with a location burst and die right after.

She’d objected to it. I’d objected to everything else. So we compromised. Shockingly, a skill we both said we possessed and were hard-pressed to prove.

Two minutes later, at 11:49, I stopped breathing as she crossed the street. At the main entrance, she paused just below the dead security camera over the doors. The black access card he’d sent her appeared in her hand.

She held it to the digital reader next to the doors.