CHAPTER 56
I found work a little bit of an anti-climax after that, and it took me a little while to calm down. Life had been edge of the seat for so long I was finding it difficult to relax in the office. Fortunately, or not, Jon and the New Chums had been piling up the information on Mersey View’s former staff and ‘guests’, and their computer skills were well above mine. I had expected a great pile of A4 paper, and instead received two USB memory sticks.

“Staff on the red one, Diane, and inmates on the blue. Set them up as spreadsheets, so if you get into Excel and…”

Elizabeth gets a first look into Amber's life outside her online presence and by all accounts Amber's life was everything hers wasn't. From supportive parents to no lack of clothing - how was it this kid turned to the underbelly of the internet and why? Is there's something brewing between Elizabeth and Paul?

Something to waste time on a Sunday with. Enjoy!

After a tragedy, Charlie and his small family move from the West Coast to the East and to a small and idyllic, dairy community to start anew. Soon he starts to realize the town seems a bit odd and the things there not so right, including himself.

When among Dragons... Chapter 14 Acceptance

by Machara and Chryos Stormwing

Special thanks to
my love Chryos who creates this with me
and Gabe as my editor and friend

Looking at the glimmer of the embers in the fireplace which were now almost gone Garrus gathered his thoughts before heading up after Drew. Back in his room he looked around to find Drew lying on his bed, rolled together in the fetal position close to the wall, holding a pillow to his head, sobbing.

Elizabeth navigates the clues and a suspicion that someone knows more about her past than she'd like. The hunt for Amber reveals a dark side that cuts too close for comfort.

CHAPTER 54
I caught up with Deb in one of the little patches of green around the outside of the court, where she and Kimberley were wrapped round a sobbing Charlie, Paul, Paula and Candice not too far away, as the former high-flier-to-be puffed frantically on a cigarette, and I wondered how her addiction was treating her at that exact moment. Blake was at my shoulder.

“You’ll be thinking how lightly you got off, won’t you, love? Compared to the others?”

I reached for his hand, and it was there, along with a little of my resilience.

Notes: Sorry this took so long. On top of my usual issues, I got a head cold that hung around for at least two weeks and decimated my energy to do things. I'm still not fully recovered, but I'm about 85 to 90 percent recovered.

I do not own this. J. K. Rowling does. This is just fan fiction. No money is being made. Not by me, anyway.

CHAPTER 53
“All rise!”

Finally, our day had come. All the research on the home hadn’t stopped, for I had what Alun was calling my minions still digging away, but this day was for me and Charlie. Get this out of the way, and we’d have Tiff’s to follow. We were quite a crew, almost all of the team, including Sammy, with Deb, a girl she introduced as Kimberley, and PC Welby. The tension in the three from the house was clear, and I could see how involved Paul Welby was in his work. Another one of our sort of copper.

Ingrid sort of pushed it a bit too hard and she’s hit that whole wounded animal mode and she just curls up on the couch and Giselle just sort of watches and she likely wanted to climb in there with her but Ingrid literally has her back to us and herself buried into the couch.
Giselle’s world weary little hurt sigh’s kind of heartbreaking.
I pick her up. “C’mon sweetheart you come with me and we’ll take a nap.”
She gives me this sad and hurt and sleepy nod and plants her face in my shoulder.
Her little fingers are wound into my shirt just too hard.
I use my phone and I text Holly to tell Tay because he’ll never look at his phone right now and I set the alarm and slip into bed with my daughter and roll to my side cradling her and pull the sheets over both of us into the best snuggle I can manage.
I love my daughter...I love her so much it hurts when she hurts.
I really want to be the best mom that I can be.

CHAPTER 52
“I was never a real boy, and that didn’t go down at all well in Connah’s Quay. Not the done thing there; men are men and sheep bloody run away to England. I am babbling, aren’t I?”

“No, Deb. You tell it your way”

We had left the café, and the airlock room was cleared for us by the girls. I had sent Blake off to look at some more properties, just to get him out of the way while the older woman gave me her potted biography.

CHAPTER 51
I won’t belittle the real pain and suffering we were told about, but it became routine after a while. I don’t mean that we got blasé, rather that each case Paul brought us went through what was becoming a very smooth and practised system.

Each one was, in the end, similar, and as the similarities piled up, so did the list of ‘further to’ charges awaiting Dai Pritchard, Bob Evans, one call-centre worker and two civilian employees in Cardiff and Swansea’s control rooms.

CHAPTER 50
I rang Deb as Blake drove, and she was on form.

“They been buried yet?”

“Not yet, Deb. But we’ve issued the shovels”

There was quite a pause,

“Will my girls be safe?”

Liger picture: Photo Courtesy of Myrtle Beach Safari
Two Wolves: Published: MARKO

A raindrop falls directly onto a boy in an ebony black leather tunic with hems and seams of shiny silver. He wears a belt of silver with a belt buckle of an eagle with fists crossed into an X behind. On his chest is a Velcro patch of a red shield. His face was smooth and pretty, and his body so small and petite that the tunic he wears was a baggy on him. He wasn’t always that way, but due to recent events. His body is turning that way.

The man in front of him wears the same tunic and belt. Only on his chest is a silver shield with silver fists crossed X, and a star on the top.

I'm sorry this is a bit late. I kept feeling dissatisfied and re-writing. It felt too passive. Finally, as I lay in bed waiting for sleep, I realized a solution. I started on it first thing this morning. This is the result.

The Angel of Chicago

Part Seventeen: Probative Action

by

Rodford Edmiston

Conversations, divine and inane...

Bian
(Bee-Onn)

Book 2 - The Reluctant Princess

by Erin Halfelven

Flight Lieutenant Second Class Jason Cole is the fifth generation in a long line of military family members and the third of the current generation. Unlike his older brother and sister Jason cannot be fitted with a bio-A.I. This one fact will led him on the greatest adventure of his young life.

CHAPTER 48
I was home, in several different ways, including the return to my flat in Cardiff. Mam and Dad understood, just as they could see how I was healing, and why. Each day was a reminder of how the way my work is depicted on large and small screen is so completely wrong.

It isn’t boring, though it sounds like it should be, for it involves an awful lot of reading, inwardly digesting and cross-referencing. I imagined Sean’s boys felt much the same, and the closest experience I can give as an example is in solving a particularly complex cryptic crossword. Everything is there; you just need to find out why.