Chapter 10: The Third Night
I left the house at 7:05, twenty-five minutes after Cameron texted that the team was “still buried” and he would be home late again. I did not answer the message. I simply drove to the corporate apartment building in the river district and parked two blocks away, choosing a space that gave me a clear diagonal view of both the entrance and the small side lot where the woman’s car had been the night before.
The building was quiet. Most of the windows were dark. At 7:41 a silver sedan pulled in—the same license plate I had recorded. The woman stepped out alone. She was tall, dark hair pulled back, wearing a coat I had never seen in our shared closet or in any photograph Cameron had shown me. She carried a small paper bag from the café on the corner. She did not look around. She walked straight to the entrance, unlocked the outer door with a code, and disappeared inside.
May you like
I stayed in the car with the engine off and the seat reclined just enough to stay less visible. The dashboard clock moved slowly. At 8:19 Cameron’s car appeared. He parked farther down the street this time, walked to the same entrance, and entered the code without hesitation. The door closed behind him. No lights changed on the visible floors. I did not need them to. The pattern had already repeated with clean precision: the false late-night claim, the detour, the same building, the same woman arriving first.
I waited until 9:26. Neither of them came out. I started the engine, drove home by a longer route, and arrived with enough time to turn on the same lamps, set out another plate of food that would go cold, and sit in the living room as if the evening had been spent exactly where he believed I had spent it. When his key turned in the lock at 10:07 I was on the sofa with a book open to a page I had not read. He smelled of the same unfamiliar soap. He spoke of the project’s final push. I listened at the required level and said almost nothing.
