CHAPTER 4:UNEASY CONVERSATION.
1626 Words
---
He came back the next day.
Cameron had known he would.
She'd lain awake half the night turning over the conversation — his mother's name unspoken but present in everything he'd said, the jaw scar, the way he'd described her with the specific precision of someone who had memorised a face they were afraid of forgetting.
His mother had known her.
Had been screaming her name.
Had died in a fire that Cameron had also been in and also survived.
She'd turned it over and over until the turning became its own kind of exhaustion and she'd finally slept — not well, not deeply, but enough.
And woken up certain of one thing.
He would come back.
Men like Dylan McCaffrey — she was building a picture of him from the fragments of yesterday's conversation the way she built everything now, from pieces — didn't leave questions unanswered. Didn't walk away from things they'd decided mattered.
He had decided she mattered.
Not in the way that was warm.
In the way that was dangerous.
---
He arrived at ten.
Same dark suit. Same controlled composure. Same way of filling the doorway without trying.
But something was different today.
She noticed it immediately — the particular sharpness of someone who had spent a night thinking and had arrived at something they hadn't had yesterday.
He knew something he hadn't known when he left.
She was certain of it.
*"You've been busy,"* she said before he could speak.
He stopped.
Looked at her.
Something moved through his expression — surprise, quickly managed.
*"Good morning,"* he said.
*"What did you find?"* she said.
He crossed to the chair.
Sat.
Studied her with that look — the cataloguing look, the one she was beginning to understand was simply how he processed the world. Everything measured. Everything filed.
*"What makes you think I found something?"* he said.
*"You came back,"* she said simply. *"Yesterday you had questions. Today you have answers. Or part of them."* She held his gaze. *"The question is whether you're going to share them."*
Dylan looked at her for a long moment.
*"You're very perceptive,"* he said carefully. *"For someone with no memory."*
*"Maybe that's why,"* she said. *"I have nothing else to work with."*
Something shifted in his expression.
Not the crack from yesterday — something different. The specific recalibration of a man updating his assessment of a variable that had behaved unexpectedly.
He hadn't expected her to be sharp.
She filed that away too.
---
*"Your admission record,"* he said. *"There are inconsistencies."*
Cameron was very still.
*"What kind of inconsistencies?"*
*"Timeline."* He leaned forward slightly — elbows on knees, hands loosely clasped, the posture of someone getting to the point. *"You were pulled from the house at eleven forty-seven pm. Standard procedure — paramedics, police, documentation. All timestamped."* He paused. *"Your hospital admission is timestamped twelve fifty-three am."*
*"That's over an hour,"* Cameron said.
*"Yes,"* Dylan said. *"It is."*
*"Is that unusual?"*
*"For a trauma case of your severity?"* He held her gaze. *"Yes. Significantly."* Another pause. *"There's also a gap in the paramedic report. Pages three and four. Standard report is six pages. Yours is four."*
Cameron looked at him.
At the cold certain focus of a man who had been pulling at threads for years and knew exactly what a loose one felt like.
*"Someone removed them,"* she said quietly.
*"Someone removed them,"* he confirmed.
The room was very still.
Cameron pressed her palm flat against the hospital blanket.
Cool. Solid. There.
*"Why are you telling me this?"* she said.
Dylan looked at her.
The question hung between them — genuine, not rhetorical. She wasn't performing confusion. She actually wanted to know. Why would a man who had arrived yesterday with cold eyes and the barely controlled fury of someone who considered her a suspect be sitting in her hospital room sharing evidence with her today.
*"Because,"* he said carefully, *"whoever removed those pages did it to protect someone."*
*"And you want to know who,"* Cameron said.
*"I've been trying to find out who for two years,"* Dylan said. *"The fire. The investigation. The way it was buried."* He paused. *"Everything that should have led somewhere — led nowhere. Every thread — cut. Every witness — silent."* He looked at her steadily. *"Except you."*
*"I'm not a witness,"* Cameron said. *"I don't remember anything."*
*"You remember fragments,"* Dylan said. *"You said so yesterday."*
*"Fragments aren't testimony."*
*"Not yet,"* he said.
The word landed with weight.
*Not yet.*
Like her memory returning wasn't a possibility but a certainty he'd already accounted for.
Like he'd built his entire plan around it.
Cameron looked at him.
*"You think my memories will come back,"* she said.
*"I think,"* Dylan said carefully, *"that someone went to significant lengths to make sure you couldn't access them."* He held her gaze. *"Which means whatever is in them is significant enough to be worth hiding."*
The room was very quiet.
Cameron thought about the word *Run* burning in her skull.
About the nurse's rehearsed hesitation.
About the missing pages.
About Dylan McCaffrey sitting in her hospital room sharing evidence with the woman he'd arrived yesterday ready to consider a suspect.
*"You don't think I did it anymore,"* she said quietly. *"You came here yesterday thinking I was involved. You don't think that now."*
Something moved through his expression.
The specific discomfort of a man who didn't enjoy being read accurately.
*"I think,"* he said carefully, *"that the situation is more complicated than I initially assessed."*
*"That's not a no,"* she said.
*"No,"* he agreed. *"It's not."*
The honesty of it — the refusal to reassure her, to smooth it over, to give her the comfortable answer — landed differently than she expected.
She respected it.
She wasn't sure she should.
---
The doctor came in at ten forty.
Cameron watched Dylan's response to the interruption — the seamless shift from the focused intensity of their conversation to professional composure. The mask sliding back into place so smoothly it was almost invisible.
*Almost.*
She saw the seam.
She was beginning to think that was significant — that she could see it when other people apparently couldn't.
The doctor spoke. Cameron answered. Standard questions — pain levels, sleep, appetite. She answered them accurately and watched Dylan in her peripheral vision.
He sat very still.
Watching the doctor.
With the look.
The cataloguing look.
*He's reading him,* she realised. *Checking whether the doctor is part of it.*
The doctor left.
Dylan looked back at Cameron.
Found her watching him.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
*"You were assessing him,"* Cameron said.
*"Yes,"* Dylan said.
*"Do you assess everyone?"*
*"Everyone connected to this,"* he said. *"Yes."*
*"Am I connected to this?"*
*"You're in the centre of it,"* he said quietly.
Cameron looked at him.
At the man who had arrived yesterday ready to consider her guilty and was sitting here today sharing evidence and still — still — not quite letting go of the suspicion. Holding it alongside the doubt. Carrying both at once.
She understood that.
More than she could explain.
She was doing the same thing with him.
*"Dylan,"* she said.
His name in her mouth for the first time.
She saw the small reaction — the slight shift, the fractional change in his expression that meant something had landed unexpectedly.
*"What actually happened that night,"* she said quietly. *"What do you think happened?"*
He looked at her for a long moment.
The question behind the question was clear to both of them.
*Do you think I was responsible?*
*Do you think I was a victim?*
*Which version of this story am I in?*
Dylan held her gaze.
And said something she hadn't expected.
*"I think,"* he said quietly, *"that you were in that house for a reason neither of us knows yet."*
Not accusation.
Not absolution.
Something in between.
Something that was — in its own careful way — the most honest thing anyone had said to her since she woke up.
He stood.
Straightened his jacket.
*"I'll come back tomorrow,"* he said.
*"With more questions,"* she said.
*"With more answers,"* he said.
He moved toward the door.
Stopped.
Turned back — just slightly, just enough.
*"The fragment,"* he said. *"The one you mentioned. The word — Run."*
*"Yes?"*
*"Someone said it to you,"* he said. *"Before the fire. Not during."*
Cameron stared at him.
*"How do you know that?"* she said.
He held her gaze for a moment.
Something moved through his expression — there and gone.
*"Because,"* he said quietly, *"my mother used to say it."*
*"What?"*
*"When something was wrong,"* he said. *"When there was danger. She had a word. One word. She'd say it and we'd move — no questions, no hesitation."*
He looked at Cameron.
*"The word was Run."*
He left.
The door closed.
Cameron sat in the silence of her hospital room with her heart hammering and one thought moving through everything else like a current beneath still water—
His mother had known her.
Had been screaming her name.
Had taught her son a single word for danger.
*Run.*
And somehow — somehow — that word had ended up burning inside Cameron's skull on the night of the fire.
Not spoken aloud.
Burning.
Like it had been put there.
Like someone had planted it.
Like someone had known what was coming and had left her the only warning they could.
She picked up the notepad.
Wrote with a hand that wasn't quite steady:
*She put it there.*
*Before the fire.*
*She knew.*
She stared at the words.
Then added — slowly, certainly, the question that changed everything:
*Which means — how long had she been looking for me?*
*And why?*
---
- Writer
