Page 177 of Chameleon Killer

I pointed toward the identical number outside.

“Apparently we're both going to have to get more specific.”

Something dangerous flickered across his expression. Then vanished.

Simon would have liked that answer. The mental head pat I gave myself annoyed me so much, I turned away.

“Take me somewhere secure,” I said. “Then you can show me what you think happened.”

“What we think happened?” Brewster repeated.

I looked back at the dead monitor. “No.” I corrected myself. “What Simon wanted you to think happened.”

The room went silent.

Fuck.

Flint's head turned toward me. Brewster didn't move at all. I had spent the last several minutes refusing to give them anything Simon had given me.

Then I'd handed them the one thing I hadn't intended to surrender. It was a calculated strategy to deliver it like an error. It would test Brewster and Simon.

Brewster spoke first. “Simon?”

I stared at the black screen. For the first time all night, the cursor didn't appear to save me. Lifting my chin, I said, “We’re done. And I want my lawyer.”

Even if it couldn’t be Colin. Maybe especially because it couldn’t be Colin.

“Mallory—“

“Agent Brewster.” The interruption came from a female agent I didn’t know or recognize. “She’s asked for her attorney. Questioning can continue downtown.”

Yes. It could.

Chapter

Twenty

MALLORY

By two seventeen Sunday morning, I had acquired an attorney, three cups of terrible coffee—with some antacids to combat the stomach burn—, and an increasingly detailed understanding of how many law-enforcement agencies could claim to be in charge of the same investigation.

Apparently, the answer was all of them.

The Chicago Police Department owned the building. The FBI owned most of the equipment currently cluttering the conference room. Cook County had sent someone from the State's Attorney's Office who spent most of his time standing in the hallway talking quietly into a phone.

Homeland Security had been mentioned twice for reasons no one had bothered explaining to me.

Nobody seemed particularly happy about any of it. Especially the Chicago police. The room we occupied had probably been designed to hold six people comfortably.

There were eleven.

Flint sat to my right, close enough that our elbows occasionally bumped when either of us shifted. He was also positioned between me and everyone else. Flint had said very little since we arrived downtown, which concerned me more than if he'd spent the entire drive swearing.

Across from us sat Brewster. He seemed to have recovered. The furious man from the twelfth floor had disappeared beneath a clean white shirt, rolled sleeves, and a professionally neutral expression. His tie remained missing. His jacket hung over the back of another chair.

If I hadn't seen him before, I might have believed the calm.

A woman I hadn't met before sat beside him. Mid-forties, maybe. Dark hair cut bluntly at her shoulders. CPD badge clipped at her waist.