‘And you thought there might have been a second intruder?’ he says. I pause to take a sip of the tea that Melissa had brewed for me. Police are at our house now. I imagine it wrapped up in tape. Floodlights. Hazmat crime scene investigators picking their way through the carnage.

Ambulance officers are attending to Cain. Given his head injuries and the risk of concussion, he’s going to the hospital soon. I want to go with him. I need to stay with him after tonight. It feels a lot like guilt, like I brought this on us. I can’t shake the growing knot of unease in my gut. It’s my fault.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But maybe I’m mistaken. I don’t know, it was dark. I just thought I saw movement on the camera stream.’

‘Okay, and you have no idea who the first man was?’

I glance through the door into another room where Cain is being treated by ambulance officers and interviewed at the same time. They’re going to figure out who Daniel is without me pointing them in the right direction. ‘It’s hard to know, he was wearing the gas mask, then he was all bloody and it was dark. I could know him, but I can’t be sure without seeing him properly. Something was disguising his voice too.’ It’s not a lie. Not really. It could have been someone else behind that mask.

I see Cain wince as they apply saline to a cut. After I’ve given my statement, I head to Cain who now has butterfly stitches in the gash above his eye.

‘We’re going to take you to Rotorua hospital for observation,’ I overhear the ambulance officer say.

‘She’s a paramedic,’ Cain says, pointing in my direction. ‘She will look after me.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You’d better go. I’ll come with you.’

Cain closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Alright.’

The police will look into our pasts for suspects, I suppose. Try to figure out the connection between us and Daniel. I was careful, but there was only so much I could do to cover my tracks. Phone records will link Daniel to me. He might have shown his friends a photo of me. If the police discover the connection, which they surely will, does that mean Cain will find out too? The police will look closely at Cain’s history; I read somewhere that soldiers who testify, particularly against those in their own units, often go into witness protection programs overseas, but some refuse to. Cain didn’t testify against Skelton, but he was going to. Axel was cooperating with investigators as well.

‘Mr Phillips,’ the cop says now coming back, addressing Cain, ‘when you’re feeling better we will need to see you to run through a few further details.’