Chapter 6: What Detective Reyes Already Knew
Detective Reyes was a small woman with close-cropped hair and the kind of eyes that had stopped being surprised by anything years ago.
She came into the back room ahead of the uniformed officer, looked at Nora, looked at Aleksei, and said nothing for a long moment.
Then she pulled out a chair and sat down.
"Ms.
Bennett," she said.
"I'm glad you're all right."
"She's fine," Cameron said from the doorway.
Reyes didn't look at him.
"I wasn't talking to you, Detective Hale."
Cameron stepped into the room.
The uniformed officer moved slightly to his left — not blocking him, but present.
"She ran from me last night," Cameron said.
"She gets like this.
I've been worried sick."
"Mm." Reyes opened a small notebook.
"Ms.
Bennett, can you tell me in your own words what happened last night?"
Nora looked at Cameron once.
He was doing the face — the concerned one, the public one, the one that made people say *poor man, she must be so difficult.*
She looked back at Reyes.
"He found me in the club," Nora said.
"I ran because I was afraid of him.
I sat down in the VIP section to avoid being alone with him.
He came up, told everyone I was his girlfriend and that I get confused.
He showed his badge and called me a material witness.
He said he was taking me home."
"She's confused right now," Cameron said.
"This is exactly what I mean.
She creates these—"
"Detective Hale." Reyes's voice was flat.
"You will have an opportunity to speak."
Cameron stopped.
Reyes looked at Nora.
"Did he make physical contact with you last night?"
"He grabbed my arm earlier in the evening.
Before I ran."
Reyes wrote something down.
"And you came here voluntarily?
You weren't brought here against your will?"
"I came here on my own.
I was offered a room for the night.
I accepted."
Reyes nodded.
She hadn't looked at Aleksei once.
Nora noticed that.
Reyes was very carefully not looking at Aleksei.
"I'd like to show you something," Reyes said.
She slid a photograph across the table.
It was a still image — security camera footage, timestamped, slightly grainy.
It showed a parking garage.
Cameron's car.
A woman getting into the back seat.
Nora looked at it.
"I don't know who that is," she said.
"We do," Reyes said.
"Her name is Dana Marsh.
She was a paralegal at the city attorney's office.
She went missing eleven months ago." She paused.
"The last confirmed sighting of her is this footage.
Cameron's vehicle.
The night she disappeared."
The room was very quiet.
"That doesn't prove anything," Cameron said.
His voice was still controlled, but something underneath it had shifted.
"She could have gotten in voluntarily.
I gave people rides.
I knew Dana professionally—"
"You told the investigating team you hadn't seen her in three months prior to her disappearance," Reyes said.
She still hadn't raised her voice.
"This footage is from six days before she went missing."
Cameron looked at the photograph.
For the first time since Nora had known him, he had nothing to say.
Nora looked at him.
The concerned face was gone.
What was underneath it was something she recognized — she had seen it in closed rooms, in quiet moments when he thought no one was watching.
The cold calculation.
The rapid assessment of what could still be controlled.
"I want a lawyer," Cameron said.
"That's your right," Reyes said.
She closed her notebook.
She looked at Nora.
"Ms.
Bennett, I'm going to ask you to come with me.
Not as a witness — as someone who needs to be somewhere safe while we sort this out."
Nora stood.
Cameron took one step toward her.
The uniformed officer moved.
Not fast.
Just final.
Cameron stopped.
"Nora." His voice was low.
"Whatever they've told you — whatever *he* has told you—" He looked at Aleksei for the first time since Reyes had arrived.
Something passed between them that Nora couldn't read.
"You don't know what you're walking into."
"I know what I'm walking away from," Nora said.
She followed Reyes out of the room.
Behind her, she heard Cameron say something to Aleksei — quiet, just the two of them, the uniformed officer stepping out to follow Nora.
She didn't hear the words.
May you like
But she heard Aleksei's response, calm and unhurried.
"You should have left when I told you to."
