4338.209 · July 28, 2018 AD
Through the Mirror
There's a room in every station that doesn't appear on any public floor plan. Cold, cramped, forgotten—a place where detectives watch interviews unfold through glass that shows everything and reveals nothing. Charlie Claiborne has stood in that room hundreds of times. But he's never watched a detective walk into an interview and have his composure shatter the moment he sees who's waiting. Karl Jenkins knows Louise Jeffries. And now Charlie needs to know how.
July 28th, 2018. Hobart CIB. The observation room.
Charlie stops Karl outside Interview Room Three. Palm to chest. Weight behind it. The kind of gesture that bypasses argument and lands directly in the part of the brain that understands consequences. Louise Jeffries asked for Karl by name—not a detective, not the department, but him specifically. That means something. Charlie needs to know what.
So he watches. Through glass designed to show everything while revealing nothing, he watches Karl walk into that room and discover who's been waiting for him. The shock is genuine. The history between them is written in every glance they think no one else can see—too much familiarity, too much tenderness, walls crumbling in real time.
Louise tells her story: her brother Jamie, silent for four days. Her son Kain, sent to check on him, now missing for two. And then a name surfaces—Luke Smith, Jamie's partner—and something cold settles in Charlie's chest. Because he knows that name. Knows what it connects to. Knows that this case just became something far more complicated than missing persons.
The interview ends. Karl's mask slips. And Charlie decides it's time to find out exactly what his detective has been hiding.
