Just when we thought things were getting normal, on Saturday morning before we left the house, another pickup towing a trailer showed up. It looked like our pickup and trailer, if we’d let hippies decorate the outside.

Chapter 2

Marilyn went and stood on Coppergate and tried to visualise the scene. There was something wrong if the carnage was just a byproduct of a targeted hit. The Ram must have been waiting nearby, with a spotter in the Walk. If there was forward planning, the killers had to know, in advance, that the target would be there at that time, which meant a meeting had been set up.

The next day comes with a heaviness I don't recognize at first - not the cramping, which has mostly eased, but something underneath it. Behind the sternum. In the legs when I stand. I eat breakfast and drink coffee and it doesn't lift the way tiredness lifts with caffeine. Just sits there, systemic, the whole body running slightly below its usual output.

---

When Samantha wants to help Jenna, she finds out her friend is the victim of a three hundred year old family curse...and a whole lot more.

“There’s no room,” I announced. “We’ll have to take it all back.”

Chapter 1

Detective Inspector Marilyn Houseman and Detective Sergeant George ‘Ginger’ Kidman walked into the murder team office, with the rest of the team stopping to look at them. Marilyn smiled and they all cheered.

“Terry Hanson got twenty-five years for each murder, consecutive, with the judge appalled at the brutality. That’s on top of the five that he got for smuggling and possession of illegal firearms. He’s unlikely to be out in our lifetime.”

Morning light finds him asleep in his clothes, barely rested. He packs both devices into his messenger bag and heads for the closest repair shop.

The bell jingles as he enters. A technician glances up from behind the counter — early twenties, a name tag reading ETHAN. His eyes skim past Caden's shoulders, landing somewhere around chin level. "Help you, ma'am?"

Caden's breath hitches. He sets the laptop and phone on the counter.

"Sir," he says, his pitch higher than expected, higher than a man's should be. He coughs, tries again. "Biometric lockout."

Paybacks Can Be So Difficult

I had built my realty business up from a single office to well over three hundred offices, now I needed to sell the business or find some investors badly before I had to declare bankruptcy.

The recent downturn in the economy had hit my company hard, causing me to curtail activities severely. It had not reached the point of laying off personnel yet, but another couple of weeks without an infusion of money would make that a necessity.

Noise; lots of it. I’m cold: I must have shivered as someone wrapped a warm blanket around me. Drift away again…

Noise again, light… My mother’s voice:

“I think he’s coming around.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Male, foreign, heavily accented.

“Ah; you back to us, yes?”

“Grunt”

“Whatyouname?”

“Huh?”

“He’s asking you for your name.”

Mother’s voice again.

“Name… Aisling…”

“It’s his stage name…”

Opening eyes, lights on ceiling, a man standing over me, white coat, stethoscope.

Chapter 6

Marilyn walked with her to the stairs. She held out her hand.

“See you later, Brightman. I’m heading back to my office to plug a new name into our searches. We’ve been trying to get the names of the robbers that Anderson was with out of the records for a week. They all went into juvenile and the records sealed. We’re looking at another avenue, but I believe that we now have the one we really wanted.”

She went up to the team office and stood by the ‘Rascal Wall’.

II. The Hearing

“What are we to do with you, Aylesea?” Pyotr Wylock asked as he stared at me. I answered his question with silence.

I stood in the center of the council chambers, my hands shackled. The men in the council looked bored…except for Feederk Wydosk, who stared at me with disdain from the far side of the table.