Page 275 of Chameleon Killer

My chest hurt. “Oh, Elliot.” I wanted to strangle him.

“You don’t understand.” That was his answer for everything. He wouldn’t even give me the courtesy of having a choice.

“She understood enough,” Simon pointed out.

“She thought I killed Reardon.” Brewster dragged me closer to him, the cut of his nails into my biceps was beginning to really hurt.

“Elliot,” I told him, dropping my voice. “You did.”

“Not intentionally.” Like that made it okay?

“And Colin?” My friend.

My eyes burned. I refused to cry. Not here. Not for Brewster.

“You killed him because of me.” I swallowed on that last bit. Brewster wanted me to abandon Simon, to turn only to him—so he attacked someone I cared about to frame Simon.

“That was his fault—“ Brewster nodded toward Simon. “He was seducing you away and I needed you to see the truth.”

The truth.

I thought of Colin's office. His terrible jokes. His insistence on calling me when he thought I was getting myself into trouble. The empty place where he should still exist.

“You murdered my friend.”

“I was trying to stop The Auditor.”

“No.” My voice broke anyway. I hated him for that too. “You were trying to stop yourself from getting caught.”

Brewster's face twisted. “You don't understand what he is.”

“I understand exactly what you are.”

Everything seemed to happen at once. Brewster’s reserve cracked utterly and he yanked me into him even as Simon said my name. I wanted to twist myself free, but my head kept swimming as Brewster jerked me around and locked his arm over my chest then pressed the gun right under my jaw.

This—seemed more like a nightmare than reality.

For the first time since Simon arrived, fear broke through his composure.

He went utterly still, little more than a figure carved from the shadows, while Brewster wrenched the muzzle higher beneath my jaw. Metal ground into soft tissue hard enough to bruise.

“Elliot,” I said.

“Don’t.” The word tore out of him. Spittle struck my cheek.

And just like that, everything inside me went quiet.

I’d experienced it before. War zones. Riots. Those crystalline seconds when survival stripped away everything unnecessary. The racing pulse vanished. The trembling stopped. Even the gun digging into my skin became nothing more than information.

Distance.

Pressure.

Brewster’s arm across my chest.

Simon six feet away.

The gun.