Page 34 of Chameleon Killer

His mouth twitched and while it wasn’t quite a smile, it was close enough. I speared a piece of chicken when he wasn’t looking. Politely, he pretended not to notice.

That was Flint. He was a pushy bastard. Hell, he knew just how to push my buttons but when it came to work… Well, there was no one else I’d willingly share this story with.

We settled into the familiar silence punctuated by the occasional scratch of his sharpie on the board or the slurp of sucking down another noodle. We didn’t have to fill in the blank spaces with meaningless conversation. Years of working together in the newsroom and the field allowed us to communicate via shorthand.

Rising, I set aside the carton and plucked one of the Sharpies out from behind Flint’s ear and moving down the loose timeline we’d been building. We’d started with the first identified victim tied to the unsub.

But I backtracked that a little further and added another date. There were other victims and bodies. Not all had been found so we were putting together a puzzle without all the pieces. That was okay, I just needed to see what the shape of the missing parts were.

Outside, somewhere beyond the covered windows, the newsroom continued chasing deadlines. A part of me wanted to be out there, doing the dance, and racing the clock to my sources. But the rest of me stayed glued in here.

We were parsing this story, one fact at a time. There was a key we weren’t seeing.

Yet.

I backed up a step and looked at the board again. So many names and photographs. We’d verified most of them, but some were only suspicions on my part because they fit the pattern. Especially when I had so many stories that refused to fit together no matter how many times I rearranged them.

Flint took the marker from my loose fingers and put the cap back on it. "Talk to me."

"I don't like coincidences." I was still staring at the board, my gaze going from one name to the next, one detail to the next. Patterns were there, but there were troubling gaps that were too large to see not just the shape of the missing pieces but how many were missing in the first place.

He let out a faint huff that could have been a grunt or a humorless laugh or just a sound of acknowledgment before he said, "I know."

Sliding a glance at him, I sighed. "I mean I really don't like coincidences." I emphasized each of the last three words. It would have been more accurate to say I hated coincidences, but that wasn't a game I wanted to play right then.

Flint folded his arms, the black Sharpie still resting loosely between his fingers. He leaned one hip against the edge of the conference table, broad shoulders filling the space without ever seeming to dominate it. At six-foot-three, he'd always looked as though he belonged in front of a camera—or carrying one through a war zone.

Time and too many investigations had traded the polished television look for something more rugged. Dark blond hair threaded with the first hints of silver scattered through it, a day's worth of stubble shadowing a jaw that had become more stubborn with age, and warm brown eyes that had long mastered the art of reading a room.

Those eyes found mine, calm as ever. Flint didn’t have to be the loudest person in the room no matter how much fun it was to infuriate him to the point he yelled. No, he didn’t have to force others to hear him. Not when he listened harder than most people talked, and somehow, after all these years, he still looked at me as though whatever I was about to say was the most important thing he'd hear all day.

"Neither do I."

I tapped the end of my pen against the legal pad. "Guy."

"What about him?" Flint snagged the sesame chicken container and used a pair of chopsticks to take a bite before he offered one to me.

Needing a couple of minutes to flesh out the idea that was forming I accepted the bite without comment. Chewing thoughtfully, I trailed my gaze over the actual timeline and the dates…

“How hands-on as an executive was he?” I’d met him, but corporate ass-kissing wasn’t my preferred way to butter the bread.

Flint snorted. “He treated the newsroom like a line item. As long as it didn’t cut into the bottom line, he didn’t really pay much attention.”

“So—quarterly earnings, advertisers, and shareholder calls?” That seemed to fit the image he projected in the few meetings I’d had with him. Definitely fit his interest in the all hands we’d had after the Auditor reached out.

Flint nodded slowly. “More or less.”

"So eighteen months ago..." I looked up at the board again. "...he started getting more involved."

Flint stopped chewing.

I continued. "He approved expanding the investigation. He doubled our travel budget and he signed off on forensic accounting consultants." I needed all of them to test my theories on the Auditor’s choices.

Those accountants had also helped me figure out what the Auditor was doing.

"He authorized outside legal support,” I continued. “You told me you had to get corporate to sign off on it and it was him, right?”

Another nod from Flint as he shifted his attention to the board. "He approved the request for additional researchers."