After The Knock A Samantha Leary Short Story

This story contains themes suitable for adults. Please proceed only if you are 18+

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By J.E. Nickerson

”Some people follow the path they’re given until it stops feeling like a choice and starts feeling like something they can’t undo.” ~Samantha Leary

Chapter 1

Samantha sat at her desk, the glow of the monitor washing across her hands and the scattered papers near the keyboard. The apartment stayed quiet in the steady way it did when the night had settled in and nothing in it needed attention.

Steven had texted earlier that he was working late with a client. It wasn’t unusual. The message sat on her phone beside her, face up, already absorbed into the rhythm of the evening.

The file she had started on Vireon Capital remained open on the screen. Financial records broken into fragments. Statements Craig Vireon had delivered in front of Congress. Testimony repeated in different rooms, different wording, but never quite saying more.

Samantha opened a new tab and typed his name into the search field. Images of the man filled the screen—dark suit, slicked-back hair, a smile set in place rather than given. She had seen him before in business coverage, in the kind of profiles that used careful language. Discipline. Expansion. Stability. Words that held their shape no matter what sat underneath them.

She opened the transactions folder Greg had sent her.

Sales and money transfers tied to names the investigation had already flagged as shells moved down the page. Then another. Then another, spaced just far enough apart to avoid drawing attention on their own.

She stayed with them longer than she needed to. Long enough for the entries to stop reading as separate transactions and start settling into something continuous. Not random. Not isolated. Something that held its shape the longer she looked at it.

She scrolled further.

The same structure repeated across different timestamps, clean enough in isolation to pass unnoticed, but harder to ignore when held together.

She scrolled back up and read it again without changing pace.

Then opened the chart beside it.

The revenue graph held steady at first, then dropped. It didn’t come back up. It fell again, then ran flat near the bottom.

She kept both windows open, moving between them

The filings showing higher rates of returns than the investigation had revealed.

Transactions catalogued. Hidden. Foreign and domestic holdings in companies where money disappeared 

Her phone lit up on the desk without a sound. She didn’t look at it right away. It lit again, the screen brightening against the surface, and this time she looked. Unknown number.

She answered without turning away from the screen.

“Leary.”

A pause on the other end, controlled.

“Stop working on Vireon Capital.”

Her hand stayed still on the mouse. Threats weren’t new. Harold Laker had told her to stop looking for his wife. It hadn’t stopped her. City council member Becker Stevens had filed a lawsuit after she uncovered his taxpayer-funded visits to Suzie’s Hunny Girls. That hadn’t stopped her either.

“This isn’t a conversation I’m going to have,” she said.

“You’re inside something you shouldn’t be touching.”

Her cursor moved once, opening another entry.

“This isn’t going to go the way you think. And any threats made against me will be entered into the official record.”

“Close it.”

The voice stayed even. Certain.

Samantha didn’t move.

“I’m looking at a CEO moving assets before a collapse,” she said. “That’s not something you ignore.”

A longer pause.

Silence stretched. 

“I mean it Ms. Leary. Close it.”

The call ended. Silence followed, but it didn’t settle cleanly. A knock came at the door. Controlled. Direct. Measured.

Samantha didn’t move immediately.

Another knock followed after a moment.

It was too late for Krissy to drop in unbounded. And none of Steven’s family was in town. 

She set the phone down and kept her eyes on the file. She continued to scroll through the records.

Another knock came. The insistent pounding pulled her attention from the file. 

She stood and crossed the room.

The knock came again as she reached the door.

She opened it.

Chapter 2

A man stood there in a dark coat, damp at the shoulders from the night air. He was in his early forties, built solidly without being bulky, the kind of frame that suggested endurance more than force. His face carried the wear of long hours rather than age alone—slight shadow under the eyes, jaw set in a way that looked practiced rather than emotional. His hair was short, not styled. 

His gaze didn’t rush. It settled, took in the desk behind her, the faint glow still spilling from the monitor, the quiet order of a space that hadn’t expected interruption.

Then it came back to her. Harry Frobisher. She remembered when he had first contacted her. An employee in the financial department of Vireon Capital

He didn’t speak immediately.

Samantha didn’t step aside.

Her eyes held his. Styling him. She had given him her card, not her address. 

The silence held long enough to feel intentional rather than uncertain.

He took a deep breath “I can’t do this anymore. Close the file.”

Samantha didn’t answer right away.

Behind her, the screen still held the open record.

The air outside pressed against her face and chest. the warmth of the apartment behind her chilled. 

“I already have people telling me that,” she said.

“That’s not the same thing,” he replied.

He stepped inside without waiting for permission, not rushing, not forcing, just entering as if the space had already accounted for him.

The door remained open behind him until Samantha finally closed it.

The click sounded small, but it changed the room.

He didn’t look around again. His attention stayed forward. On her. 

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Samantha said, backing up keeping her gaze on him. 

“I didn’t have another place to go,” he said.

That stopped the room in a different way than the phone call had.

Samantha moved past him slightly, not turning her back, keeping him in her peripheral vision as she walked toward the desk. She didn’t sit. She stopped beside it.

“You’re connected to this,” she said.

He didn’t answer immediately.

When he did, it was quieter. “Not the way you think.”

Samantha looked at the screen again. The file still open. The pattern still visible. The Craig’s photo filled the screen. His smile didn’t reach his eyes. It was practiced as if hiding more than the investigation had already uncovered.  

“What am I missing?” She asked.

He didn’t move closer.

“That you’re not supposed to be the one who sees it,” he said.

The air in the room tightened slightly after that—not because anything changed, but because something had been named without being explained.

Samantha finally turned fully toward him.

“Then who is?” she asked.

He held her gaze for a moment too long before answering.

“The people who already know what happens next. The people who can make it go away.”

Silence followed again, heavier this time, not empty.

Outside, the night city continued it’s rhythm.

Inside, the apartment had cooled. Samantha felt her stomach clinch. She reached toward the desk. Closed the laptop. 

The sound was soft, final in a practical way rather than an emotional one.

For a moment, she paused. Cataloging the way his presence changed the feel of the apartment.

Then she looked back at him.

“I’m still going to follow it,” she said.

He didn’t look surprised.

He just nodded once, as if that answer had already been filed somewhere before he arrived.

And in that moment, neither of them moved to leave.

The laptop stayed closed.

Samantha’s gaze stayed on him. The room felt different with it shut, like the glow had been removed from something that was still active underneath.

Samantha didn’t sit down. She stayed near the desk, one hand resting lightly against its edge, eyes still on him.

He hadn’t moved either. The coat was still on his shoulders, damp at the edges from the night outside, like he hadn’t decided yet whether he was staying or leaving. But nothing in his posture suggested he was preparing to leave.

“You said I’m not supposed to be the one who sees it,” she said.

He exhaled once, slow.

“That’s correct.”

“Then why am I seeing it at all?”

That made him pause. Not long. Just enough to measure what answer could be given without creating a second problem. He took a deep breath. He had turned to her because she understood how investigate things without exposing sources. 

But they had found out who was working with her anyway. 

“Because someone didn’t control the timing,” he said.

Samantha watched him.

“That’s not an explanation.”

“It’s the only one you’re going to get right now.”

A silence settled between them again, but it wasn’t empty. It carried the weight of decisions made elsewhere.

Samantha turned slightly, glancing toward the door he’d come through. It was still closed now. Locked or not, she didn’t check.

“What happens when I publish this?” she asked.

His eyes lifted a fraction.

“You won’t.”

She looked back at him.

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It was.” He said. Voice heavy as if something had been decided before he arrived. 

The way he said it made the room feel smaller, not because he had raised his voice, but because he hadn’t needed to.

Samantha moved past him toward the kitchen, not breaking eye contact fully until the last possible moment. She poured water she didn’t immediately drink. The glass stayed in her hand.

“People don’t show up at my apartment to tell me what I won’t do,” she said.

“You’re not just reporting this,” he said.

She stopped.

That time, she looked at him directly.

“And what am I doing?”

He didn’t answer right away.

When he did, it was quieter.

“You’re touching something that has already been handled once before it reached you.”

Samantha held the glass without drinking.

“Handled how?”

A beat.

He didn’t answer.

That silence was the first honest answer she’d gotten.

From the desk behind her, her phone lit again. No sound. Just the screen waking in the dark.

She didn’t look at it immediately.

It stayed lit.

Then dimmed.

Then lit again.

Samantha didn’t move toward it. Instead, she set the glass down slowly on the counter. “You came here to warn me,” she said.

“No.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what I’m actually looking at.”

A slight shift in his expression—something close to frustration, but controlled before it became visible.

“I’m telling you enough to stop,” he said.

“That’s not how I work,” she replied.

He looked at her for a long moment.

Then nodded once again, like that was also already expected.

“I know.”

The quiet that followed didn’t belong to either of them anymore.

It belonged to what was outside the apartment.

Samantha took a breath. Her eyes following his hand as he reached into his coat pocket. The lights above them caught the metal of the gun he withdrew.

“They told me my family was going to die if I didn’t stop.” He said. His finger tracing the outline of the trigger. 

The room tightened before anything moved.

Samantha saw it in his face first—not emotion, not panic, but a settling. Like something had clicked into place that couldn’t be reversed.

“Don’t,” she said. “You don’t want to do this.” Her voice stayed level, but it carried through the space anyway.

He didn’t respond. His eyes stayed on the gun rubbing the grip with his thumb as if it was somehow foreign.  

His attention had gone somewhere she couldn’t reach.

Samantha stepped forward.

The distance between them suddenly mattered in a way it hadn’t seconds before.

“They gave me two options.” His voice barely rose above a whisper.

“Stop—” she said.

His eyes dragged over her. “They said they’d kill my family.”

The words sat between them.

“I’m not a murderer.”

He raised the gun, opened his mouth, and slid the barrel between his teeth until the front sight pressed against the roof of his mouth. His jaw clamped down around the metal.

Samantha lunged forward, hands outstretched to knock it away. “No—”

The gunshot cracked through the apartment. The pressure wave punched straight into her chest and drove through her skull. Her ears filled with a high, endless ring that swallowed every other sound.

Blood and soft matter exploded out of his open mouth and the back of his skull. Warm spray hit her full in the face—thick ropes of it across her eyes, her nose, her open mouth. The copper taste flooded her tongue.

The gun dropped from his fingers and clattered across the floor.

His knees gave way all at once. He dropped to the floor the sound heavy, body folding into a loose heap at her feet. His head struck the floor with a wet thud. Blood poured from the exit wound and from what remained of his mouth, pooling fast beneath his cheek and spreading toward her feet.

Gunpowder burned in Samantha’s nose, mixed with the hot iron smell of blood. 

Her chest jerked in short, shallow pulls that never filled her lungs. Her legs locked. She could not step back. She could not wipe her face. She could only stand there, dripping, staring at the ruin of his head and the dark pool creeping across the floorboards.

The ring of the gunshot drilled deeper. The room held only that sound and the slow, heavy absence where his breathing had been.

She didn’t go to him at first.

She couldn’t.

The space between them felt wrong to cross, like it no longer belonged to the same version of reality she had been standing in a second earlier.

Her eyes stayed fixed for a moment longer than she could measure.

Then she turned slightly, not away from him fully, just enough to break the direct line of it, as if that would make the sight stop replaying in her head.

A tremor ran through her body as she moved to the desk. The phone Sat face up still.

She picked it up. Fingers wet, still trembling. Barely able to hold onto it. 

She continued to stare at it. Her mind still processing what had happened. She looked back at Harry. 

She had to call someone. The police. No not the police. 

Greg.

The apartment behind her felt too still now. Not quiet in the normal sense—absent. Empty of momentum, like something had ended without announcing what came next.

Samantha finally moved, one step back, then another, creating distance before she allowed herself anything else. Her legs trembled as if unsure if they could withstand her weight. 

She looked down at the phone. She knew the case had just changed shape completely.

Chapter 3

Samantha didn’t move. The sound of officers moving through the apartment, the flash of cameras and the low voices cataloging the scene didn’t reach her. 

She heard Greg’s voice drift through the apartment. 

His presence didn’t fully register as something separate from what had already happened. It was just another shift in weight inside a space that already felt wrong. This was the first time he had ever seen her apartment. She stared at the floor. Red stains on the wood showed where she had been. The sticky feeling on her feet had dried. Crusted over since she had called Greg. 

The police had already taken her photo. She wrapped her arms around herself. Standing near the wall without realizing she had ended up there. The phone was still in her hand, but her grip had loosened to the point where it no longer felt like she was holding it on purpose.

Greg didn’t look at her as he walked into the room.

He was looking at the space beyond her.

The part of the room she hadn’t been able to go back into.

His expression tightened, just slightly, and then he exhaled through his nose like he was forcing something into order before it could spill outward.

“Samantha.” His voice didn’t register at first. “Samantha,” Greg said again. Not harsh. Steady.

Her eyes flicked to him, then dropped back to the floor. The faint outline of her footprints still there, but the room kept shifting underneath it.

“I need you to tell me what happened here,” he said quietly.

She swallowed. It didn’t settle.

Officers continued to weave through the apartment.

“He came here,” she said. Her voice was uneven from the start. “Harry Frobisher. He wasn’t here for an interview. He came to tell me something.”

A pause.

“He said they gave him a choice,” she continued. “That they had his family. That he wasn’t a murderer. He… he.”

Her breath caught once, sharp.

“And then he…”

Another pause, longer this time.

“He shot himself,” she said quietly. The memory of his body crumpled on the floor. The way she had rushed toward him. It all flashed through her mind. 

Greg nodded slowly. He typed it all into his phone. Then he reached a hand toward her arm, paused, and let it drop.

Samantha hugged her arms tighter across her chest. The dried flakes of Harry’s blood and brain matter cracked under her fingers. Her skin crawled where the clumps had dried against her blouse and inside her collar. She twitched her hands away from her ribs, then pressed them back, harder.

Her vision blurred at the edges. Heat surged up her throat. Her stomach clenched without warning.

The phone slipped from her grip and clattered to the floor.

She pitched forward at the waist. Sour vomit surged out of her mouth in a hot rush, splattering the floor between her feet and speckling her toes. She stayed bent there, hands braced on her knees, chest heaving. Each shallow breath pulled in the sharp stink of bile mixed with the thick, metallic reek still soaked into her blouse. A string of saliva and vomit dangled from her lip, swinging with every ragged inhale.

She could not straighten. She could not wipe her face. The wet warmth of Harry’s blood still clung to her skin beneath the fabric, shifting every time she moved.

“Stay there,” he said, voice level, the same steady tone he used when they worked a scene together. Not harsh. Not soft. Controlled.

Samantha didn’t respond. She didn’t nod. Her hands stayed braced on her knees, arms locked, body still bent forward. The vomit speckled her skin and the floor between her feet. Harry’s blood and tissue clung to her blouse, her arms, her face in stiff patches and drying flecks.

Greg scanned the room once — the blood on the cabinet, the dark pool still spreading on the floorboards, the gun lying where it had fallen. His jaw tightened for half a second, the only crack in the professional mask. He’d never been inside her apartment before. The space felt too intimate now, too raw.

He took one careful step closer, careful not to track through the mess, and crouched slightly so his eyes were closer to her level without crowding her. “I’ve got you, Sam. Just breathe with me for a minute. Slow. In… out.”

His hand hovered near her shoulder, not quite touching, giving her the choice. The dried flakes on her skin pulled tight every time she shifted. The copper-and-bile smell still clung thick in the air between them.

A thin string of vomit still dangled from her lip.

Greg kept his voice even. “You did what you could. Right now we focus on getting you through this. We’ll handle the clothes as evidence — get you something clean. Don’t move until the techs clear you. Okay?”

Her eyes shifted, but not toward him fully. More like the room had become too difficult to focus on in one place at a time.

Greg moved away slowly speaking to officers, voice low and clipped, giving instructions she didn’t track in sequence.

Fragments that barely registered. 

“—scene secure—”

“—make sure you photograph Ms. Leary.—”

“—I want units outside—”

But none of it formed into something she could hold.

Her attention kept slipping back to the same point in the room without her choosing it.

Not studying it.

Not analyzing it.

Just returning.

Like the rest of the space had temporarily stopped offering alternatives.

Her breathing stayed steady, but shallow, like her body had decided not to change pace even if everything else had.

Greg’s voice shifted again, closer now, but still not aimed at her.

He was coordinating, controlling the room without asking it to wait for her to catch up.

That should have meant something.

It didn’t fully arrive.

Samantha blinked once, slower than normal, and only then did she realize her hand had started to lower on its own. The sudden desire to be held by Steven came unbidden. She closed her eyes. He wasn’t there. Wouldn’t be home for several more hours. And this was what he would walk into. 

She felt the phone brush against her foot. Still warm. Still real.

The sound of movement outside the apartment—footsteps in the hallway, distant doors, muffled response—started to build the world back outward again, but it didn’t reach her at the same speed.

Greg turned slightly, finally looking at her directly. Not sharply. Not emotionally. Just checking if she was still present enough to remain in the room.

She met his eyes for a second.

It didn’t hold.

Her gaze drifted again.

“I was talking to him,” she said, but it didn’t sound like a continuation of anything. Just something that had been left unfinished inside her and came out anyway.

Greg didn’t interrupt.

Samantha swallowed once, like her body remembered something it needed to do but didn’t attach meaning to it.

“He was right there,” she added, quieter.

Then she stopped.

Because anything after that didn’t come in words yet.

Greg watched her for a long moment, then turned slightly away again, back into control of the scene, because that was the only part of the room still functioning at full speed.

Samantha stayed where she was.

Not moving into grief.

Not moving into analysis.

Just suspended in the moment that had not finished processing itself.

And for the first time, the case didn’t feel like something she was following.

It felt like something she had been standing inside when it changed direction without warning.

Samantha Leary Psychological Thrillers

The moment doesn’t end here. It never does.

For Samantha, this is where it begins—where instinct starts to press against the surface, where something unresolved refuses to stay buried.

If you felt that shift—the quiet sense that something isn’t right—you’re already inside her world.

The story continues in the Samantha Leary series, beginning with the prequel.

Step into the series on Amazon