Page 69 of Help Me Remember

“So, fall in line and be a big girl while Mommy and Daddy argue in the kitchen?”

The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched. “More or less.”

“You take over talking to her, Dylan,” Eric said, picking up his sandwich. “I might end up liking her, and then my reputation would be shot.”

“I see his attitude toward cops hasn’t changed,” Officer Fitz said, watching Eric eat, but I noticed she barely tensed at his gesture.

“He wasn’t lying to you,” I said as I wrapped my hand around my drink. Unlike with Eric, however, her entire body seemed to hone in on what I was doing, refusing to relent until I set the cup down.

Okay, she had clearly decided which of us was the one to keep her eye on.

“Not about that,” she said, glancing between us. “But don’t think I believe you were truthful either.”

“I guess that depends on what part you’re talking about,” I told her.

“Which parts were true?”

I cocked my head, noticing the way Eric chewed slower and glanced between us. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was starting to treat this conversation like a sports match where he could bounce his attention back and forth. Either he believed me when I said she wasn’t here to start trouble right away, or all the stress from the past couple of days had finally tipped him a little closer to being nuts.

“I don’t remember who I am, though I’ve remembered little things here and there. I know my name is Dylan, or at least it was.”

“Was? Who else were you?”

I could feel Eric’s eyes burrowing into the side of my head, and I wondered what he’d been thinking. We had left my other name, Riley, out of all discussions with the officers. Of course, her partner had either known that name or at least had a way to recognize my face before he called in his leash holders.

“Riley,” I finally said, taking a gamble to see how she would react.

I wasn’t sure if I should be surprised when I saw her shoulders lose a measure of their tension. “You know the name, don’t you?”

She eyed me warily. “I do now. I got a call after you tried to burn down half the station. Thanks for that, by the way. I’m pretty sure we’ve all lost our holiday bonuses from that little stunt so they can fix the damage.”

“I can explain that, and if you tell me your story, I will,” I said, ignoring the look of surprise on Eric’s face.

“Right, and I’m supposed to believe that?” she asked with a suspicious gaze.

I shrugged. “I’m not exactly in a trusting mood at the moment either. I’ve spent longer than I’d like trying not to be killed by people who, quite frankly, I’m not even sure why they’re trying to kill me. The only person in the whole world I trust right now is sitting beside me.”

“I want to understand,” she said in a tight voice, harsh in its demand. Yet I could see the truth in her eyes. Whatever had been happening on her end, it had left her desperate to understand.

“You’re breaking a lot of rules to try to understand,” Eric said with a frown.

“Maybe we both try to trust each other,” I said with a shrug. “Not completely. Neither of us is that stupid. But enough to explain how we both got to this park at this exact moment.”

Officer Fitz’s eyes darted between Eric and me, her mouth thinning. I could only imagine the internal war in her thoughts as her desire to understand battled with the duty I suspected she believed in quite strongly.

“After we got the fire put out, the whole place was chaos,” she finally said, her hand never moving from her gun. “I knew you’d stolen a car, and there was an attempt to find you…and another car had been seen going after you.”

“That didn’t strike you as weird?” Eric asked sarcastically.

“Of course it did, but I didn’t know what was going on. That’s all I knew and what you’d told me. And sorry, you set fire to the station and stole a car. I wasn’t going to take you at your word,” she said, and I could appreciate how unabashed she was about that fact. “Matt was being really quiet and—”

“Sorry,” I interrupted. “Matt?”

“Oh, Officer Patterson.”

“Fucker,” Eric muttered with uncharacteristic fury.

“I’ll explain more on that in a minute,” I told her at her curious expression.

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