Chương 7
Another pause.
“You sound like you already decided.”
I looked out the window.
The city lights had started appearing one by one.
“I did.”
Sarah sighed.
“You always were stubborn.”
“I prefer determined.”
“You also once tried to repair your own flight helmet.”
“It worked.”
“It almost fell apart.”
“But it didn’t.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
For the first time all day, I smiled.
A small one.
The kind nobody online would notice.
The kind that belonged only to me.
After we hung up, I received a message from Officer Reeves.
A single sentence.
We found the camera footage.
My heart started beating faster.
Then another message appeared.
There is something you need to see.
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Something about the wording bothered me.
Not because it was dramatic.
Because Officer Reeves was careful.
He was the kind of person who chose words after thinking about the consequences.
There is something you need to see was not a phrase someone used casually.
I called him.
He answered immediately.
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Can you come to the station?”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Is it bad?”
A pause.
“I don’t know yet.”
That answer was worse than yes.
I grabbed my jacket.
The drive took twenty minutes.
I spent the entire time trying not to create a story before I had facts.
That was something the military had drilled into me.
Do not fill empty space with assumptions.
Assumptions got people killed.
But my brain ignored the lesson.
It kept returning to the same question.
Who knew I would be there?
The police station smelled like coffee, printer paper, and old carpet.
Every government building had a similar smell.
A strange mixture of work and exhaustion.
Officer Reeves met me near the entrance.
He looked like he had not stopped working since yesterday.
“You came alone?”
“Yes.”
He nodded.
“Good.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Good?”
“I wanted to talk before anyone else did.”
That sentence made my attention sharpen.
“What happened?”
He motioned toward a small interview room.
Inside, there was a monitor and a folder.
No dramatic setup.
No television version of a police investigation.
Just a tired officer, a computer, and information that might change everything.
He sat across from me.
“We reviewed the available footage.”
“From the restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
He clicked something on the computer.
A video appeared.
It was not from the front window.
It was from a camera pointed toward the side entrance.
The quality was poor.
Grainy.
But clear enough.
The timestamp showed the afternoon before Tyler arrived.
A man entered.
I leaned closer.
My chest tightened.
It was the person Lisa had described.
Older.
Quiet.
Moving like someone who wanted to be unnoticed.
“He was there for forty-three minutes,” Reeves said.
“Doing what?”
“Watching.”
The word landed heavily.
The man sat at a table near the wall.
He did not use his phone much.
He did not eat.
He barely moved.
Then Tyler and his friends entered.
The man looked up.
Not surprised.
Waiting.
I watched the screen.
Tyler walked in laughing.
The older man stood.
They spoke briefly.
The audio was not clear.
“Can you enhance it?”
“We tried.”
The answer was immediate.
Which meant they had already thought of it.
The video continued.
The man pointed toward the dining area.
Toward the window.
Toward me.
I felt something cold move through my stomach.
“Stop it.”
Reeves paused the video.
The man’s finger was frozen on the screen.
Pointing.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I looked at the image again.
There was something familiar about him.
Not his face.
His posture.
The way he stood.
The way he looked around a room before making a decision.
Military people noticed things like that.
Years of training changed how you saw strangers.
You noticed exits.
Hands.
Distance.
Threat.
But this man was not familiar because I knew him.
He was familiar because he moved like someone I had known.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
Reeves opened the folder.
“There is more.”
He removed a printed page.
Not a photo.
A report.
“We found another camera.”
“Where?”
“Across the street.”
My eyes moved to him.
“The footage from the restaurant was not enough.”
He placed the paper down.
“This one caught his vehicle.”
I looked at the image.
A dark sedan.
Nothing special.
No obvious markings.
No reason anyone would remember it.
“That vehicle is registered to a company.”
“What company?”
He hesitated.
I noticed.
“What?”
He looked at the folder.
“Parker Defense Consulting.”
The room went silent.
For a moment, I thought I had heard him wrong.
“My family?”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“Not yours.”
I frowned.
“My last name.”
“Yes.”
The air felt different.
A coincidence.
That was what my brain wanted to call it.
But my instincts rejected it.
“Who owns it?”
Reeves looked at me.
“Charles Parker.”
I stared at him.
The name meant nothing.
And somehow that made it worse.
“Do you know him?”
“No.”
“Any relatives?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“That’s what we thought.”
“What does that mean?”
He opened another file.
“Charles Parker served in the Air Force.”
My stomach tightened.
“How long?”
“Six years.”
“Role?”
“Intelligence support.”
The phrase was vague.
Too vague.
“After leaving, he started several private companies.”
I looked back at the screen.
The man sitting in the restaurant.
Waiting.
Watching.
“Why would someone connected to an intelligence contractor care about me?”
Reeves did not answer.
Because he did not know.
That was the part I respected.
He did not pretend certainty.
“He was not directly involved in the assault,” Reeves said.
“How do you know?”
“Because we don’t have evidence of that.”
I nodded slowly.
“What do we have?”
“Evidence that someone with a connection to him was present before the incident.”
“And that’s it?”
“For now.”
May you like
I leaned back.
For the first time since this started, I felt something besides anger.
