Page 14 of The Associate
By 10:03 p.m., the office had descended into silence.
The world outside the glass walls had dissolved into a darkness hours ago; only the faint traces of distant skyscraper lights remained, refracted through the slightly smudged panes. Most of the building’s occupants had vanished long before sunset, their absence leaving behind the soft hum of climate control and the dim, motion-sensor-triggered perimeter lights casting long shadows across the floor.
Samuel hadn’t noticed the quiet until this moment.
His body had long since stopped registering discomfort. The persistent ache behind his eyes had settled into something diffuse. His lower back protested with a dull throb every time he shifted his weight, but he’d stopped trying to stretch. Even the sandwich Alina had brought him sat untouched and forgotten, its parchment wrapper now slightly flattened under the heavy casebook he’d set on top of it.
He didn’t hear the elevator chime.
But he did hear the footsteps.
Samuel’s head snapped up from the screen.
Mr. Wise stepped into the dimly lit aisle between the rows of dark workstations, his silhouette sharp-edged under the sparse overhead lighting. He wasn’t carrying a briefcase. His overcoat was unbuttoned. The way he moved suggested he had come here for a specific purpose, maybe a file he had forgotten to take that afternoon.
Their eyes met across the office.
Samuel stood up too quickly.
The chair legs scraped a faint sound against the carpet as his knees locked. A dull headrush bloomed behind his eyes, swift and intrusive. His hand shot out for the solid corner of the desk, his fingers catching himself on its cold edge. His spine straightened on a reflex, every muscle pulling taut.
Gael didn’t speak.
He stood a full ten feet away, completely unmoving. His face was neutral, but there was something in the absolute stillness of it. Something quiet, assessing.
Samuel’s skin prickled, a wave of heat followed by a chill.
Not from fear. Something else.
He felt it as a distinct, physical sensation. The longer Gael stood there in silence, the heavier the air between them became. It filled the space like a barometric pressure dropping, and Samuel couldn’t help it; he shivered.
Barely. A near-imperceptible twitch across his shoulders.
Except it didn’t go unnoticed.
Gael’s gaze narrowed by the smallest, most precise degree, noting the reaction.
Then, without a single word, he turned. He walked away, his back to Samuel.
Samuel blinked, his throat tight. He didn’t sit back down right away. His hand hovered over the back of his chair. Something about the encounter felt jarringly incomplete. Slowly, cautiously, he lowered himself into the seat. His fingers curled over the cool plastic of the armrest as he tried, and visibly failed, not to glance back toward the now-empty aisle.
He frowned down at his own hands in his lap. They felt clammy and slightly uncooperative. He forced them back to the keyboard.
The screen was still waiting, the cursor blinking. And then, without warning, something slid across the edge of his vision.
A tall, clear glass. Filled with water. Beads of condensation forming on its surface.
Samuel startled violently. His head whipped up, his breath catching.
Gael stood there. Much closer now. Dangerously close. Beside his desk, his posture composed, his hand resting lightly on the top rim of the glass.
“Drink,” he said.
Samuel couldn’t look away. His eyes met Gael’s and locked there, caught in their dark stillness. His fingers moved before his thought could intervene. They wrapped around the cool, damp glass.
He lifted it, his movement slow and unsteady, and drank.
The water hit his parched throat colder than he’d expected. He swallowed once, a large gulp, then again. The heavy silence held. Gael remained exactly where he was, watching with an unnerving calm, that made hair on the back of Sam's neck stand to attention.
