Chapter 7: The Second Late Night
I did not go home that afternoon.
Instead of returning to the kitchen where the morning had begun with four words on a watch screen, I drove back to the river district, parked in the same spot, and watched the unmarked brick building until the light began to change. Nothing happened. No familiar figure appeared. The building stayed as quiet as it had been that morning, the only difference being that a few second-floor windows were now lit. I noted the window numbers and the time, then left before full dark.
Cameron texted at 6:40.
“Still stuck at the office. Probably home around 9:30. Don’t wait on dinner.”
I read the message once and did not answer right away. Ten minutes later I sent a short reply:
“Ok. I’ll leave the door unlocked.”
I asked nothing more. I did not call. I did not perform disappointment. I only needed him to believe the old pattern still held.
I did not leave the door unlocked.
Instead I drove to the office-park parking lot, chose a space with a clear view of the main exit, and waited. At 9:17 Cameron’s car appeared. He did not turn toward home. He turned left, back toward the river district. I started the engine and followed, keeping the same careful distance I had used that morning.
This time he did not enter the brick building. He parked in front of a short-term corporate apartment complex directly across the street—the third name I had written down from the public map at noon. He went inside. Fourteen minutes later a woman came out the front door. I could not see her face clearly at that distance, but I saw the way Cameron tilted his head while speaking to her, and the way his hand rested on her back for a second before she walked to her own car. The gesture did not belong to a colleague. It did not belong to a stranger.
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I took no photographs. I did not need them.
I recorded the time, the woman’s license plate, and the direction she drove away. Then I returned home eleven minutes before Cameron, turned on the living-room lights, set a plate of cold food on the table, and sat down to wait as if I had never left the apartment.
