Page 25 of Chameleon Killer

“That man wasn’t from corporate.”

I did not break stride. Nor did I hurry. The control I’d pressed in my pocket when I’d tucked away the pen had the elevator doors opening at the end of the corridor.

I stepped inside alone, pressing the button for a lower floor, and turned to face forward as the doors closed.

Mallory watched me from the down the hall. Her focus held no traces of fear. I was glad. I didn’t want her to be afraid of me.

The copycat had made a mistake when he used my work to hurt her. Brewster had made a mistake when he tried to silence her. And I had perhaps made one of my own by coming here.

But mistakes, properly audited, became information.

I tucked the folder into my briefcase and considered the badge number I had copied from Guy Reardon’s drawer.

Then at the floor indicator as the elevator began to descend. Mallory was asking the right questions. Now it was time to give her some answers.

Chapter

Five

BREWSTER

The Bureau taught that surveillance was a tool. It never warned that the longer you watched someone, the easier it became to mistake possession for protection. Every obsession began with the same lie: I'm only trying to keep them safe. Surveillance simply gave that lie a badge, a case file, and paperwork.

Why? Because a camera didn’t care why you watched. It only recorded that you did.

I stood behind the analyst’s chair in the temporary command room we’d carved out of a conference suite three floors below the network’s executive level in the Cartwright building and watched Mallory McBryan appear on the monitor for the fourth time in seven minutes.

She moved through the newsroom with Flint Carter beside her. I focused on their positioning for far too long before I noticed the man with the visitor badge.

It should have been the other way around. The realization landed like grit beneath my collar. I'd let myself become distracted.

“Back it up twelve seconds,” I said.

The analyst, Flores, tapped the keyboard without comment. The image jerked backward.

Mallory reappeared at the edge of the screen, her head angled toward Carter as he said something I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was made her mouth curve.

Not her broadcast smile or even her interrogation one. This was a genuine smile. Tired? Yes, and gone almost immediately, but real.

Carter had gotten that out of her.

I kept my expression neutral. “Again,” I said.

Flores replayed the clip.

This time I watched the corridor.

The consultant entered the frame from the far side of the bullpen carrying a leather portfolio. Male. Mid-forties, maybe older. Navy blazer, gray slacks, polished brown shoes, visitor badge clipped properly to his jacket pocket. He moved like he belonged.

“Who is that?” I asked.

Flores enlarged the frame. “Visitor badge says Radley Pike. Company listed as Northbank Risk Assessment.”

“Run it.”

“Already started.”

Good. At least someone in the room was watching the correct thing.