That Paper

“You spend years burying the past—deep, careful, deliberate. And then one day, it walks into the room holding something you thought you'd burned.”

The door had barely closed behind Louise and Sarah when the atmosphere shifted—an almost imperceptible drop in air pressure that made the room feel smaller, more enclosed. The kind of change you only notice when you're already on edge. I remained standing, every muscle still locked in readiness, my mind scrambling to process the implications of what I’d just heard. Kain. Jamie. Missing. And now—me, tangled in the centre of it all.

The door opened again with mechanical indifference.

Sergeant Claiborne entered with his signature precision, every step measured, every movement purposeful. He didn't so much walk as occupy. The interview room, already claustrophobic, seemed to shrink further around him. The fluorescent lighting caught the silver in his cropped hair, turning it into a harsh halo—less divine than judicial.

His face was unreadable. But his eyes? His eyes held the quiet menace of a man who had already drawn his conclusions and was simply waiting to confirm them. There was no kindness in that gaze, only an analytical sharpness that stripped layers faster than I could replace them.

"So, what do you think of her story?" he asked, voice deceptively casual. "Do you believe any of it?"

The question lingered, a deceptively simple sentence freighted with implications.

I could feel the temperature rising beneath my collar. He hadn’t asked about the facts of the case. He hadn’t asked for a summary. He’d gone straight to the heart of it—my judgement. My belief.

I stood at a precipice, every possible answer a risk. Say too much, and I’d expose a past I’d buried deep. Say too little, and I’d look like a man hiding something. Claiborne wasn’t just watching. He was measuring. Calculating. Studying the rhythm of my breath, the twitch in my jaw, the slight delay before I spoke.

"I don’t know," I offered, keeping my voice neutral. "It doesn’t really make much sense at the moment."

I paused, searching for something procedural, something safe.

"I’ll do a background check on Luke Smith. See if I can find any connection with–"

I stopped.

Too late.

The fragment of that sentence—any connection with...—hung in the air like smoke from a starting gun. I hadn’t said the name. But the implication was there. The direction of my thought process exposed like an unzipped body bag.

Claiborne’s stare intensified. Grey eyes fixed to mine, unblinking. I felt like I was being peeled open. There was something already formed in his mind, a hypothesis that needed only the barest confirmation.

"I agree," he said, voice cool. "You sure you don’t think you’re too close to this one, Jenkins?"

The blow landed harder than I’d anticipated. Not a shout. Not an accusation. Just a precise incision.

My pulse spiked. Blood roared in my ears. Beneath the fading hangover, adrenaline surged like fire through my veins. The clarity was painful. Cold and sharp.

Shit. He knows.

The thought struck with the force of a bullet. And once it hit, the questions followed in a chain reaction: What does he know? How much? Who told him? Did Louise say something without realising? Had someone else dug into my records?

But no—there were no records. I’d been meticulous. My past in Queensland was compartmentalised, sanitised. I'd built a clean persona before relocating to Tasmania. I’d maintained distance. With Louise. With Jamie. With that entire chapter.

So how?

Claiborne’s gaze didn’t waver. I took an unconscious step towards the door, driven by instinct—a desire to escape the suffocating scrutiny.

He tracked the movement. Silent. Still.

The room tightened around me, the silence turning brittle.

Then, the voice came again. Measured. Calm. Lethal.

"Be careful, Karl. These are dangerous times, and we have to deal with dangerous people."

It wasn’t a threat. It was something worse.

A warning.

And then his hand moved. Slowly. Deliberately. He extended it toward me, fingers curled into a tight fist.

I stared, every nerve strung tight. Time elongated. A ripple of nausea passed through me—not from the hangover, but from the knowing. Before he opened his hand, I already understood that something irreversible was about to occur.

Claiborne uncurled his fingers with deliberate grace.

In his palm lay a small, torn, scrunched-up scrap of paper.

My heart seized.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

That paper. That paper.

Recognition struck like a mallet to the ribs. Its texture. Its tear pattern. I’d folded it, once, with shaking hands. I'd shoved it deep into a pocket. I’d thought it had been destroyed.

It was a relic.

A ghost.

And it should not exist.

Fifteen years collapsed into a single, disorienting moment. The sound of gulls, distant sirens, Louise’s laughter, Jamie’s silence—it all returned, uninvited and overwhelming.

"Does Louise know?" I asked, barely managing the words. My voice was hollow. Barren.

"No," Claiborne said quietly, shaking his head.

A flicker of relief—sharp, immediate—sliced through the panic. But it brought no comfort. Only a new kind of fear.

If Louise didn’t know… how did Claiborne?

He stood there, holding the scrap like a detonator, and I understood something unspoken but absolute: this wasn’t a game. It wasn’t curiosity. Claiborne had just shown me his hand, and it wasn’t a bluff. He knew something. Maybe not everything. But enough to end me if I didn’t handle this case perfectly.

I stood frozen, pinned like a specimen under glass, the rules of the game rewritten while I wasn't looking.

Outside, the station functioned as normal. Phones rang. Boots squeaked. Paperwork rustled.

But here, in this room, everything had changed.

The case was no longer just professional.

And the stakes were no longer just about finding Jamie and Kain.

They were about surviving the past.