A Drop of Silence

“You can fix a window, clean a room, rewrite a report — but blood always finds a way to keep talking.”

After what felt like an eternity of waiting, the familiar sound of Sarah's footsteps finally approached—measured, purposeful, unmistakably hers even from a distance. My head lifted from its slump as she returned to her desk. Her presence, once grounding and reassuring, now carried an edge I couldn't quite place, something sharp beneath the surface. There was a tension coiled beneath her movements, a deliberateness that hadn't been there before—or perhaps it had always been there and I'd just been too blind to see it.

"I see you got your gun back," she commented casually, her eyes flicking toward the holster at my side before returning to her screen with studied indifference. Her voice was even, almost too even, like someone reading from a script written to avoid confrontation at all costs.

I didn't answer immediately. My stare was heavy, intent, and searching. I needed answers—no, I deserved answers after everything. The air between us prickled with expectation. I kept hoping she'd meet my gaze and offer something more than surface-level observations, something real.

"They didn't find anything," she began, finally breaking the silence that hung like smog between us, thick and choking. Her tone was tight, her words clipped with that same ambiguity I'd come to dread, that refusal to say more than necessary.

I furrowed my brow, trying to reconcile this with the chaos I'd witnessed less than twelve hours earlier, with the body I'd hidden. "So, you didn't go inside?" I asked, suspicion crawling up my spine like ivy, slow and invasive.

"No," she said simply. She slid into her chair with grace, the chair wheels hissing across the floor. Then she looked up, her eyes pinning me to the moment with uncomfortable intensity. There was a flicker of something behind them—uncertainty? Apprehension? Knowledge?

"Oh," she added, like an afterthought, though nothing about her delivery suggested it was casual. "And the broken window has been fixed." Her gaze lingered, watching me closely, measuring my every blink, every micro-expression, every twitch of reaction.

I felt a jolt in my gut, an involuntary flinch of surprise that I tried desperately to mask. My thoughts whirled. Who fixed it? When? Who knew to fix it? How? The room seemed to tilt slightly, gravity shifting beneath me.

"Are you spying on me?" I blurted, the accusation leaping from my mouth before I could haul it back, before reason could intervene. The second it was out, I regretted it. But it was already in the air—bitter, irretrievable, hanging there like smoke.

Sarah's face paled visibly, colour draining from her cheeks. She blinked, once, slowly, deliberately. Her entire body seemed to pull inward, guarded now, defensive. "No," she said, the word flat and hard, defensive in a way that suggested I'd wounded her. Then she turned deliberately back to her computer, her posture stiff, her back forming a quiet wall between us that felt impossible to breach. The sharp click of her keyboard resumed, each keystroke sounding like a door slamming shut, like punctuation on the end of our conversation.

"Sarah," I said, softer now, the name catching in my throat. I hated this—this coldness, this space where warmth had once lived however briefly. There had always been friction between us, sure, but beneath it had always been something else. Something real. Something that felt like partnership, like trust.

"I have a report to finish," she said, voice like ice—smooth, hard, unyielding, final. It cut more effectively than a raised voice ever could, the coldness more painful than anger.

I let the silence spool out, tense and jagged. Minutes passed, heavy with the weight of things unsaid, accusations unvoiced. The hum of computers and distant phones did nothing to ease the growing chasm between us that seemed to widen with each passing second.

Finally, I spoke again, quieter this time, more careful, testing the ice. "Sarah." Still she didn't look at me. Her fingers moved, robotic, typing what I could only assume were details from her interview with Gladys, words I'd likely never get to see. "Luke arrived in Adelaide this morning," I said, casting the words into the silence like a rope, like an offering. I didn't know what I hoped for—concern, surprise, a bridge back to the connection we used to share before everything went wrong.

She didn't respond immediately, but I saw the faint hesitation in her hands, barely perceptible. A pause in her typing that lasted only a heartbeat. A breath held, then released. Whatever her thoughts were, she kept them locked behind her expressionless face, and I was left watching her profile for signs of what came next, for any indication of what she was thinking.

---

Exhausted and weary, both mentally and physically, from a day that seemed to consist of nothing but clashes with Sarah and the elusive pursuit of Luke Smith while my own guilt gnawed at me, I was on the verge of leaving the station. My bones ached with the weight of too many unanswered questions and too much concealed truth, and the dull throb at the base of my skull pulsed in time with the flickering fluorescent light overhead. I reached for my jacket, the routine motion almost meditative—grab jacket, switch off monitor, escape into night.

Just as I began to gather my things, the shrill ring of the desk phone pierced the silence of the nearing end of the day. The sound was jarring, a final jab from a day that refused to end cleanly, refused to let me go.

"Ah, shit," I muttered under my breath, my eyes automatically drifting toward Sarah's desk. She, too, appeared to be wrapping up, collecting her files with the quiet efficiency of someone who didn't want to speak to me any more than I wanted to speak to her. Our earlier exchange still hung in the air between us, thick and unresolved, like smoke that wouldn't clear.

Reluctantly, I turned back and snatched up the receiver, noting the interstate number flashing red on the display. My gut clenched, instinct warning me before the voice even spoke, before I knew what news was coming.

"Detective Jenkins," I said, trying to keep my tone steady, professional, though weariness threatened to leak through the cracks in my composure.

What followed was less a conversation and more a download of dread. The voice on the other end—a calm, measured officer from the Adelaide branch—unfolded a fresh set of complications like a grim storybook, each detail another page I didn't want to turn. Names, times, observations. None of it good. I felt each word settle over me like silt on the floor of a deepening lake, pulling me down, layering over my already-strained focus until I could barely breathe under the weight.

I didn't interrupt. I didn't ask questions. I just listened, pen in hand but not writing. Because what else could I do? This wasn't a case any longer—it was a contagion, spreading outward in concentric ripples, each wave larger than the last. One missing person, then two, then five. And now? Now it felt like it was circling back around, tightening its grip, including me in its web whether I wanted to be there or not.

"Thank you for the update. Good night to you too, sir," I said eventually, my voice clipped and impersonal. Not because I didn't care—but because I cared too much. Because if I let the emotion into my tone, I wasn't sure I'd be able to contain it, wasn't sure what might spill out.

The handset clicked softly as I replaced it in its cradle. The sound, so small, felt seismic, final.

I stood there, frozen for a beat, my hand still resting on the receiver as if maintaining contact might change what I'd just heard. My mind churned, the implications knotting tighter with every breath, with every attempt to make sense of it. Outside the windows, the last light of day had bled from the sky completely, leaving only the pale glow of streetlamps and the vague, oppressive dark that pressed against the glass. The station around me was still—too still. What few officers remained moved like shadows through the corridors, blurred by fatigue and fluorescent glare that made everything look washed out, unreal.

A sense of foreboding, thick and visceral, settled over me like fog rolling in off the Derwent, cold and impenetrable. The puzzle pieces weren't just failing to fit—they were moving of their own accord, rearranging the picture in ways I didn't recognise, didn't understand, revealing something darker than I'd imagined.

I closed my eyes briefly, just to breathe, to find centre. To re-centre. But even behind closed lids, all I could see were names and faces—Jamie, Kain, Nial, Adrian—and a corridor under a stairwell, sealed off by secrets I could no longer bury, secrets that would eventually surface like bodies in water.

"Well, you look grim," Sarah's voice suddenly cut through my reverie, pulling me back to reality like a snap of elastic to the skin, sharp and sudden.

I hadn't noticed her approach. She must have crept up silently, the way she did when she wanted to listen in without being seen, when she was being a detective rather than a colleague. Likely trying to catch the tail end of my call. Her presence, once something reassuring—a quiet affirmation of partnership and shared resolve—now felt like an unwelcome encroachment into space I needed to myself. I stiffened instinctively, heart still heavy from the phone call, from the new information that changed everything.

"Who was it?" she asked, her tone edged with curiosity but not unkind, almost gentle.

I couldn't help myself. A little bitterness crept in, unfiltered, petty. "I thought you weren't talking to me," I muttered, the childishness of my words landing harder than I meant, exposing wounds I'd meant to keep hidden.

Sarah frowned. It was subtle, but I caught it—an inward tug of tension, a flash of something like hurt. She was clearly weighing whether to keep the silent war alive or give in to the tug of her instincts, to be the detective she always was. I saw it in the flicker of her eyes, the way her hand hovered near the back of her chair but didn't commit. The detective in her was always stronger than the grudge-holder. It was a trait I admired, even when it annoyed the hell out of me, even when it made me look petty by comparison.

"Just tell me," she said bluntly, all preamble dropped, the professional mask sliding back into place. The mask of distance she'd been wearing cracked just enough to let her focus show through, to let the investigator take priority over the wounded partner.

My own face hardened, the weight of the update still anchoring me to my chair like ballast. "That was Detective Santos from the Adelaide CIB," I said, hearing the weariness in my voice as I spoke the name aloud, as if naming it made it more real. "They called to provide a courtesy update."

Sarah didn't speak. Her gaze was fixed and expectant, green eyes intent. She gestured slightly with one hand—a silent prompt to continue, to stop drawing it out.

"There's not much to say, really," I began, exhaling slowly, buying time. "When they arrived at Luke's parents' house, there was nobody there. They've got an officer watching the property now, but there's been no sign of anyone coming or going. Both family cars are still at the house. No sign of forced entry. Nothing disturbed."

Sarah leaned in slightly, the subtle shift of her posture betraying how invested she still was, even through all the personal ice we'd stacked between us like a wall. The case still mattered more than our damaged partnership.

"They questioned the neighbours to see if they had seen anything suspicious," I continued.

"And?" she asked, leaning forward properly now, eyes alight with that spark. That spark she always got when there was a new trail to follow, when the hunt was on—it hadn't dulled one bit despite everything.

"Well—" I hesitated, knowing how little there actually was, how tenuous. "The only thing remotely useful is from the elderly woman across the street. She said a young man matching Luke's description arrived at the house before lunch in a taxi. She didn't see or hear anything unusual after that. No one left the house. Nothing."

"Well, that's great," Sarah said, grasping at the potential in the statement, her voice lifting slightly.

I shook my head slowly. I could feel the weight of it pressing against the corners of my thoughts, the wrongness of it. "Well, not really. All it implies is that Luke really is in Adelaide and maybe went to his parents' house. Anything beyond that is circumstantial at best."

"But?" she pressed immediately, honing in on the hesitation in my voice with that uncanny ability she had.

"What do you mean 'but'?" I tried to brush it off, mildly taken aback at how easily she still read me after everything.

She cocked her head, a knowing half-smile flickering across her face that almost looked like the old Sarah. "I see a 'but' on your face. You should know you can't hide your suspicions from me by now."

A reluctant smile tugged at the corner of my mouth despite everything, despite the wall between us. It faded quickly, reality reasserting itself. I let out a sigh. "But it doesn't make any sense," I admitted.

Sarah's expression sharpened, features focusing. I could see her shifting back into her analytical mode, stripping away the personal to get to the professional, becoming pure detective.

"They did a thorough search of the property and all they found was a single drop of fresh blood on the shed door."

"Fresh?" she repeated, her voice a little higher now, the excitement there again—bright, probing, hungry for meaning.

"Apparently, it was still wet when they found it," I confirmed, the detail sitting uncomfortably in my mouth. "They've taken a sample and rushed it to the lab. Forensics are now going to spend the next forty-eight hours combing through the house and garden for human remains. Or… anything, really."

"That is very bizarre," Sarah murmured, more to herself than to me, thinking aloud. Her brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line as she digested the detail, turning it over in her mind.

I nodded slowly. "Whatever Luke is up to, he's been incredibly calculated so far. We just need something to crack this open. One thing that holds up in court, one piece of evidence that's undeniable."

There was a long pause between us, heavy and contemplative. A lull in the storm. We both knew what it felt like to chase ghosts, to grasp at shadows that dissolved the moment you thought you had them.

"Perhaps you're right," Sarah said eventually, her tone subdued, her energy slipping back down into that space between frustration and fatigue, between hope and resignation.

We sat there in the dimming office, the brief flicker of hope guttering out once more like a candle in wind. Around us, the office had returned to that muted twilight hush, a place of silence and reports, of thoughts unshared and leads unexplained. The air between us wasn't as cold as it had been earlier, but it wasn't warm either. Just neutral. Professional. Empty.