Page 89 of Chameleon Killer

Neither of us discussed changing the arrangement.

We also hadn’t discussed anything that wasn’t directly connected to the investigation since I told him about Brewster.

That felt—odd.

Not hostile.

Hostility would have been easier.

Flint still made coffee before I woke up. He still left a clean towel outside the bathroom and put his keys in the same chipped bowl beside the door. If I forgot to eat, food appeared within reach without comment. If I worked too long, he shifted the lamp so the glare stopped catching my eyes.

He remained considerate in every way that didn’t require intimacy. No teasing over breakfast. No arguments about stolen toast. No quiet smile when I drank the latte exactly the way he made it.

We talked about ambulance logs, provider numbers, billing codes, and missing toxicology. We did not talk about why he stayed in the kitchen until I finished getting ready or why he waited for me beside the elevator instead of downstairs.

The distance between us wasn’t large enough to measure.

That made it impossible to ignore.

On Thursday night, I found him asleep on the sofa with one arm folded beneath his head and a file spread open across his chest. The couch was too short for him. His knees bent awkwardly over the armrest, and the blanket I had left folded nearby remained untouched.

I stood there longer than necessary.

I could have woken him, could have told him to take the bed. Hell, I could have and should have offered to trade. Instead, I removed the file from his chest, marked the page he’d been reading, and set it on the coffee table.

His hand closed loosely around my wrist before I straightened and his eyes opened. For one suspended moment, neither of us spoke. Then he released me.

“Sorry,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep.

“You thought I was an intruder?”

“I knew it was you.”

That answer did nothing useful to my pulse. I pulled the blanket over him. “Go back to sleep.”

His eyes held mine. “You first.”

Everything between us had become careful. By morning, neither of us mentioned it. That was becoming a pattern too.

At the newsroom, we worked shoulder to shoulder without touching. We finished each other’s questions but not each other’s jokes. Flint didn’t challenge my decisions unless they affected the story or my physical safety.

Apparently my judgment in every other category had become my own problem.

Fair.

Infuriating, but fair.

The Auditor’s silence filled the spaces neither of us would. Maybe he was waiting. Maybe he was watching. Maybe the purpose of his last call had never been to lead us anywhere. Maybe he’d simply wanted to see whether I would move when prompted.

I had. Didn’t that just suck to acknowledge?

“Stop glaring at the phone,” Flint said from the other side of the conference table.

“I’m not.”

“You’ve been staring at it for four minutes.”

“I’m thinking.”