Gideon Cross, the chief operating officer, Viven had trusted longer and more completely than almost anyone else in her professional life. The revelation sat between them in the dark for a long moment before Malcolm's phone began to ring, an unlisted number lighting up the screen, with the particular menace of a call that had been waiting for exactly this moment to arrive. He answered it against his better judgment, and Gideon Cross's voice came through smooth and unhurried. A man entirely unsurprised to find himself speaking to a stranger instead of the woman he had tried to eliminate. "You don't know what you're protecting," Gideon said.
And Malcolm felt Viven go rigid beside him at the sound of that voice traveling faintly from the speaker. "I know she was almost killed tonight," Malcolm answered, keeping his tone level, though his pulse was doing anything but. "You think she's innocent," Gideon replied something almost amused, threading through the words. And when Malcolm said nothing, Gideon offered one final piece of bait before the line went dead. "Ask her what happened 7 years ago," he said.
And then there was only silence on the other end. Malcolm turned to Viven slowly, watching the color drain from what little was left in her face. "What happened seven years ago?" he asked. And for a long moment, she seemed unable to make herself answer at all. Her hands twisting together in her lap in a way that told him whatever this was, it had cost her more than money ever could.
"Someone died," she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper in the empty station. Because of you," he asked, careful not to let the question sound like an accusation, even though it plainly was one. "Because I made a choice," she answered. And that single sentence carried enough weight that Malcolm understood there would be no simple explanation waiting behind it, only a wound she had been carrying in silence for far longer than tonight had existed. Before either of them could say another word, flashlight beams swept across the boarded windows of the station, followed by the crackle of a police radio and boots on gravel outside.