Page 118 of Chameleon Killer

“You should.”

“I’ll consider it when you explain how you knew.”

His gaze hardened. “You think this is the time?”

“I think you’re in my van because you don’t want your team to know you lost control of the operation.”

“I didn’t lose control.”

“True,” I said, agreeing with him. I let him savor that surprise for a minute, then yanked the chair the rest of the way out from under him. “You never had it.”

For an instant, something appeared behind his professional restraint. It wasn’t anger. In the gloom of the van, it seemed more like panic, but he covered it quickly.

“Mallory is inside a building controlled by a man who has already killed multiple people.”

“I’m aware,” I said. “So is she.”

“Is she? Or does she only think she’s aware? That she has some real understanding of what is going on?”

Time to flip the script. “And you believe you’re the only person capable of understanding the risk.”

“What I know, Carter, is that I am the only person here trained to understand him.”

Brewster had reduced an entire federal operation to himself and the Auditor. Mallory had been right. I owed her a candy bar or something.

That didn’t mean she was safe.

It meant the two most obsessed people in the investigation were currently playing tug of war with Mallory in the middle.

“You’re too close to him,” I warned him, but I kept my gaze on the building.

He frowned as he looked at me.

When he didn’t respond, I continued, “You’ve spent so long profiling the Auditor you think every choice has to pass through you before it means anything.”

“I know his behavior,” Brewster argued.

“Do you think so?” I had to challenge that. “You are working off his crimes, his victims, and, now, his interactions with Mallory. You’re basing everything you know off his pattern and that pattern has been changing.”

“Patterns are far more predictable than you realize,” Brewster spoke in a flat tone. “It’s how I know she’s been keeping her interactions with the unsub from me.”

“Convenient.”

I glanced at him.

“Sometimes dressing up assumptions as evidence can make you think they’re facts if you believe them long enough.” It was why trust but verify was a standard. Don’t react. Act. Don’t take the first word on a story, but make sure you know the last.

Never take anyone at their word. Human memory was a fault thing.

The look he gave me should have put holes in the side of my head.

I didn’t care.

The timer reached nine minutes.

Mallory had been inside for nine minutes. No lights changed. No doors opened. Nothing moved.

Waiting required discipline. But mine was eroding rapidly.