Page 288 of Chameleon Killer

Whether I believed he would have killed me if I'd tried to detain him.

I didn't know.

Whether I could have stopped him.

Maybe.

Whether I'd deliberately allowed a confessed killer to escape.

That one had taken me a while. Alisha had objected to the wording. The FBI had rephrased.

I finally answered anyway. I had a gun. He didn't. He stood there waiting. I turned my back.

Nobody asked the next question. Maybe because they didn't need to. Maybe because they already knew. I could have told him to stay. I hadn't.

That was mine.

Not Simon's.

Not Brewster's.

Mine.

I'd stopped trying to turn it into anything else.

“Mal.”

I blinked.

Flint stood beside his desk, watching me.

“What?”

“You disappeared.”

“I’m right here.”

“You know what I mean.”

I did. I picked up my coffee.

“Simon?”

The name didn't hurt anymore. That concerned me sometimes. “Yes.”

Flint waited.

He'd gotten very good at that. Maybe he'd always been good at it and I'd only recently learned how much silence he was willing to give me.

“I was thinking about the interviews.”

“The FBI?”

I nodded.

“You told them the truth.”

“Yes.”