4338.214 · August 2, 2018 AD
What Sarah Saw
Detective Sarah Lahey knew something was wrong before they even arrived at Jeffries Manor. Her partner Karl had been obsessing over this case for weeks, and when the call came in about Luke Smith, he was wound too tight. Sarah escorted the distressed homeowner inside, checked on an elderly woman upstairs who mistook her for someone else, then heard a motorbike engine. When she reached the shed, both Karl and Luke had vanished—no bodies, no blood, just impossible absence. Her official statement captured the facts but omitted what she was really thinking, the impossibility she witnessed, and the moment she realised her partner had crossed into somewhere she couldn't follow.
Detective Sarah Lahey and her partner Karl Jenkins had been chasing this case for a week—missing persons, disappearances that made no sense, a suspect who kept slipping away. Their relationship had deteriorated into something toxic, all secrets and compromises. When the call came in that Luke Smith was trapped at Jeffries Manor, Sarah knew Karl was wound too tight. Something felt wrong before they even arrived.
Sarah escorted the distressed homeowner Louise Jeffries inside while Karl approached the shed alone. She checked on Louise's grandmother Thelma upstairs—a confused elderly woman who called Sarah by her grandmother's name, Jane. Then Sarah heard it: a motorbike engine starting up outside. She ran to the shed, weapon drawn, expecting to find Karl with Luke in custody.
The shed was empty. Both men were gone. No bodies, no blood, no explanation. Just absence where two people had been moments before. Sarah had to write a statement that made sense to Sergeant Claiborne, that followed procedure, that didn't sound insane. But what she wrote and what she experienced weren't the same thing.
This quest follows Sarah from the moment she gets the dispatch call through her collapse in the dirt at Jeffries Manor—not the sanitised version in her witness statement, but the reality she lived through. The toxic intimacy with Karl. The observations she couldn't include in official records. The impossibility she witnessed but couldn't explain. The moment she realised her partner had crossed into somewhere she couldn't follow.
