Page 49 of Chameleon Killer

“I can, but neither receives my full attention.” I stopped in front of the board.

“That explains Netflix.” The smartass comment amused me, but I pushed it aside for now.

The faded notes appeared unrelated to our case. Sarajevo. Mosul. Dakar. A list of names under a heading marked SOURCES. Several dates had been circled and crossed out.

Old investigations.

Old wars.

Old failures, perhaps.

“You keep a whiteboard at home?” I asked. “Not judging. Some people like to collect art.”

He snorted. “I collect suspicions and questions. They’re cheaper.”

I touched one corner of the board, careful not to smear anything. “You erased half of it?”

“I needed space.”

“For us?”

He brought both plates into the living room and set them on the coffee table. “For whatever you were going to do next.”

The answer caught me off guard. “When did you clear it?”

“Before the memorial.”

Eyebrows arched, I eyed him. “You knew I was coming back here?”

“No.” A faint smile curved his lips. “I just planned to make sure you did.”

“Why?” Curiosity prompted the question.

“Because I knew you weren’t done.” Simple. Matter-of-fact. Certainty. “If we weren’t here, we’d be at your place. I’ve got your back.”

The frank emotion there was almost too much. I looked away.

Flint retrieved a handful of markers from a mug on the bookshelf and offered them to me.

I chose black.

“What do you think your gentleman caller meant?” he asked. The faint thread of teasing in his voice didn’t quite disguise the tautness of irritated worry. He didn’t like the fact the Auditor reached out to me.

At the moment, I wasn’t entirely certain what to do with the emotion the contact generated so I focused on what I could do something about. I uncapped the marker. “That’s the problem.”

I wrote a sentence across the clean half of the board.

YOU FINALLY STOPPED LOOKING AT THE BODIES.

The words looked different once they occupied physical space. I underlined you twice. I thought he meant me specifically, not just us or the station.

Flint folded his arms. “He knows about the war room.”

I didn’t say anything as I studied the words.

“He knows the direction we shifted into, the questions we were asking.” The grim note in his voice wasn’t lost on me.

“We know he watches the broadcasts, and he’s hacked into our files before. He could just be following from a distance.”