4345.97 · April 7, 2025 AD
The Man Who Knows
Kelly's flat. Cluttered shelves, dried herbs, the smell of old coffee. And Noah at the kitchen table, laptop open, looking up as the door swings wide to reveal his sister—and the stranger beside her whose stillness says more than introductions ever could. Nathan has spent years hunting for Luke Smith. Noah has spent months protecting him. The flat is too small for what's about to happen between them.
Noah Bales doesn't startle easily.
Years of journalism have taught him to read people in the spaces between words—the pause before a lie, the shift in posture that betrays what silence conceals. He's interviewed politicians, executives, whistleblowers. He knows when someone is hiding something.
The man standing in his sister's doorway is hiding everything.
Nathan doesn't introduce himself. Doesn't explain why he's here. He just watches—the pale winter-blue of his eyes tracking Noah's reaction when Kelly says one name.
Luke.
The temperature drops. Noah's hands still on his keyboard. Whatever Kelly has stumbled into, whatever brought this stranger to his door, it connects to the one person Noah has been careful never to discuss. The friend who appears and disappears. The man with secrets Noah has chosen not to investigate, because some stories are better left unwritten.
But Nathan isn't asking for a story.
He's demanding access to something Noah has protected without fully understanding why it needed protecting.
The flat's cosy warmth suddenly feels like a trap. Two men. One name. And Kelly caught between a brother she trusts and a colleague she thought she knew.
