Page 74 of Chameleon Killer

Interesting.

Flint reacted differently. His head turned immediately, but he didn't look at me. He checked on Mallory. Not a what do we do? But more of an are you all right?

She gave him nothing. Not a nod. Not a shake of her head. Nothing at all. Yet, he relaxed anyway. That nanosecond of interaction told me more than either of them could realize.

They had reached the point where communication and comfort no longer required signals. Not when they already possessed the kind of trust you couldn’t build overnight. However, when that trust already existed, it could deepen.

My arrival had interrupted the conversation.

Neither of them rushed to explain what they'd been discussing. In my experience, people volunteered information when they believed they controlled it. Silence usually meant they believed the information belonged to someone else.

I let my eyes drift to the board instead of either of them. “You're rebuilding Guy Reardon's timeline.”

Mallory answered. “We're trying.”

“We?” I knew who, but I still wanted to measure what they said and how they said it.

Flint folded his arms. “I'm helping.”

No defensiveness. No apology. A flat statement defining his presence and role.

Interesting.

“I see.”

Silence again. Neither attempted to redirect the conversation. Neither attempted to justify the change in focus. If they expected criticism, they weren't showing it.

I stepped closer to the board. “Previously you were trying to determine how Reardon fit the Auditor's victimology.” I let the sentence hang as I examined the information they had detailed up there. “Now you're asking why he survived.”

Neither answered. Not immediately.

Another useful datapoint. If I had made a factual error, they would likely correct it immediately. It’s instinct to correct the factually incorrect.

Shifting my attention to Mallory, I studied her fierce expression. She didn’t wear a game face so much as an assessing one. While I was studying her, she was definitely studying me.

“What changed?”

Her eyes flicked toward Flint. She wasn’t seeking permission. Maybe deflection? Then Flint answered first.

“We exhausted the previous line of inquiry.”

True, just not all of the truth.

“We needed a better question.” Mallory nodded once. Her wording choice settled somewhere uncomfortable in the back of my mind.

The Auditor liked to change the questions. As I studied Mallory’s expression I found no evidence of satisfaction or excitement. There was no gleam in her mis-matched eyes that promised she would get to the bottom of it.

Whatever this was, she was covering her tracks. Or was she?

The silence stretched just long enough to become deliberate.

Flint broke it first. “What brings you down here this early?” There wasn't a trace of hostility in his voice. No challenge or territorial posturing.

Just a perfectly reasonable question from a newsroom director who suddenly found an FBI profiler standing in his conference room before sunrise.

“I've been trying to reach Mallory.”

“I noticed.” Another measured answer from Flint, not Mallory.