We got back to the house and I paced, while Jonathan made his calls. It took some time, since his contact was actually involved in the raid, and couldn’t respond right away.
Eventually, Jonathan’s phone rang, and it took every ounce of my willpower to keep from hovering over his shoulder while he talked. When he finally finished and turned around, I could immediately tell the news wasn’t good.
“They missed Richards.”
“What happened?”
“As best they...
2018-07-23 16:41:24 +0000 UTC
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A week passed that was, thankfully uneventful, aside from the girls and I studying, and everyone else beginning the packing process. I wasn’t sure why we were starting this early, considering the house wasn’t even finished yet. Of course, when I voiced my confusion, Mom looked at me with amusement like I was a small child asking where the people on the TV went when it wasn’t on.
We were in the midst of this, when Jawarski told me she and Carter needed a few minutes. I’d ha...
2018-07-23 16:39:33 +0000 UTC
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I stood stock still for several beats, staring at the phone in her hands, my brain resisting her words. It couldn’t be ... not again. It was the incident with Judy all over again.
“Cas,” Vicki said, prompting me.
I hesitantly reached forward and took the phone from her.
“What happened?” I said into the receiver.
Moms voice came back through the earpiece, comforting me somewhat.
“Everyone’s ok. Tina and Beth are both fine.”
“What happ...
2018-07-06 19:22:40 +0000 UTC
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I was up and off to the office Wednesday before the girls were up, not that there was much for me to do at this point. We’d done several test runs of our presentation, and everything was in Douglas's hands.
“You're here early,” I said when I walked into the cleared area of one of the factory floors which we’d set up for the presentation.
“We notice a slight fluctuation on the last trial run yesterday. It wasn’t that noticeable, but I wanted to run some tests befo...
2018-06-20 20:43:56 +0000 UTC
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Celia hung out for a few more hours, and I found I really did like her, now that she was not working on getting her next fix. I can see the girl that Megan became friends with, and why she stuck her neck out for her. By the time she left to head back to school, I was over my funk about being left behind by the girls.
I was looking forward to welcoming them back when I heard their car pull up to the house, but stopped as I opened the front door, surprised to see a second car follow...
2018-06-07 18:52:24 +0000 UTC
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“What are you planning?” Whitaker asked as they got back in the car and headed home.
“That I need to find a way into the investigation.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she said. “How? You know Joe isn’t a fan of yours. Neither are a lot of the other top brass. They don’t like your methods, and they all think you're a loose cannon. There is no way in hell they’ll let you take part of an active investigation.”
“The rank and file guys I know like me,” Taylor said...
2018-05-30 19:12:29 +0000 UTC
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Since I wouldn’t be involved in hiring Mrs. Polaski to continue Tina and Judy’s education - aside from the little side note about actually paying for it - they’d agreed to work out the details of how it would all work out, together. That actually was fine by me, since it gave me one less thing to have to worry about. I was feeling proud of coming up with the idea when I’d heard she was retiring, but I'd kept that to myself. Both Mom and the girls had a way of punching holes in m...
2018-05-09 18:30:58 +0000 UTC
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Two days passed with no word from Josh. Amanda and Josh’s parents went to the cops after the ‘waiting’ period to report a missing person, but the cops didn’t seem concerned. Considering Josh’s behavior lately - especially the steroid use - they seemed to not take it very seriously. According to Amanda, they made hints that they thought he had perhaps gotten into other drugs, or just run away. They’d promised to look for him, but no one was taking that seriously.
...
2018-04-20 04:11:56 +0000 UTC
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The week went by, and I kept getting weird vibes off of Josh. Most of the time he seemed genuine, acting like the guy I made friends with the previous year. Every now and then though, that mask would slip, and I’d see a glimpse of something else. Josh had always been fairly blunt and straight forward, both when he was being friendly and when he was threatening me. This new scheming Josh had me concerned. I didn’t think he’d make this type of behavioral change on his own, especiall...
2018-04-02 21:49:16 +0000 UTC
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It was pretty late when we all got back to the house. Aside from the drive to get home, we stayed at the Center until it shut down for the night, and I have to say, I was pretty impressed with what they’d accomplished. I didn’t get to talk to the person they’d hired as a jobs councilor since, as Olivia had said, she was totally swamped. From our brief introduction, she seemed highly competent, though.
The clinic was also very impressive, and I’d met the person on dut...
2018-03-24 14:03:38 +0000 UTC
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One of the frustrating realities of life, is that just because you’re resolved to do something, doesn’t mean you can jump right into action
“… and with all of his followers gone, he won’t have the power base to cause any more problems,” I said as I finished explaining the plan we’d come up with to Jawarski, Carter and Levi.
“Finally,” Carter huffed. “I was wondering how long you were going to let this sit out there. He’s unstable enough that, as l...
2018-03-12 15:39:00 +0000 UTC
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True to her word, by the time Celia’s grandmother knocked on the front door late that afternoon, I’d stopped thinking about the ledgers Damion had brought, entirely. She’d kept us hustling for nearly four hours, getting the house nearly spotless. I had to admit, I was feeling much better. There’s something to be said for doing a little hard work, and getting something done you can look at, like a perfectly clean house and say: ‘I did that!’
Of course, Tina ...
2018-02-24 14:54:43 +0000 UTC
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Just a quick update. I know I've been putting up new chapters early in the week, but I made an outline change that basically required rewriting most of the next chapter in No Good Deed, which is putting me behind a bit. You should probably see a chapter this weekend.
Sorry for the delay.
2018-02-14 00:27:04 +0000 UTC
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Sonora Desert, Arizona, Near the Border
A soft breeze swayed the small shrubs that littered the rocky ground, signaling the beginning of the temperature dip that happened most nights. Simon Lawson thought about the rookies he’d talked to over the years, before getting a job with the Border Patrol, who’d lived in a city spilling over with concrete and people.
They were always surprised that a place that was so hot in the middle of the day could cool off so much...
2018-02-05 17:05:45 +0000 UTC
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Emily and I trudged in late Friday evening, after a very long week. Douglas’s presentation had lit a fire under Ted and Marcus; and Aaron Baxter, who’d extended his stay through yesterday. We’d spent the first two days after the presentation getting a first-hand look at both the new solar panels and the new battery.
While charts and graphs on a screen are fine for a first step, it’s all just numbers until you see it in action. Not that there was a lot of action to be...
2018-02-05 17:03:10 +0000 UTC
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It turned out we couldn’t have a company-wide meeting right away. We faced some hurdles when it came to setting it up so everyone in the new facility could participate in the company-wide meeting. Since TV stations did it every day for decades, it didn’t occur to me how difficult it would be, but Ted wisely pointed out that those were studios set up for it, and unless we wanted to install a broadcast studio and connections directly to the new facilities, we had to find another way t...
2018-01-30 14:12:19 +0000 UTC
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The new semester did start with surprises, just not the ones I expected. The teachers had stacked us with homework and additional studies over the winter break, although the girls and I sailed through that within the first week of the break. We spent the beginning of the day going over that work and talking about what the new semester would bring.
I hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but listening to the breakdown, I started to think that Mom’s idea of switching to a home...
2018-01-23 15:58:45 +0000 UTC
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“Get the others. I’ll call Jawarski and have her come pick us up. Meet me out front.”
Zoe nodded and disappeared into the crowd to find the rest of our group, while I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and headed for the front door.
“What happened, now?” was the first thing she said when she picked up the phone. “I knew I should’ve been there with you.”
“Nothing happened, come pick us up. Something’s gone wrong with Celia.”
“I told you helping her ...
2018-01-15 17:01:10 +0000 UTC
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We got the judge handed off with little problem. For now, at least, it seemed he and his wife would be safe. I promised them we’d do what we could to get the Syndicate out of his life, and mine, as fast as we could.
Any hesitancy he might have had about walking away from his life, even if only for a few days or weeks, pretty much vanished when armed men came into his home and threatened to take his wife with them to ensure he towed the line. Jawarski and I went back to my ...
2018-01-08 17:18:34 +0000 UTC
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Due to the holiday's, it's been longer than I'd like since the last chapter went up. Not to worry, you should see a new chapter of No Good Deed early next week (3 or 4 days from now).
2018-01-06 00:13:47 +0000 UTC
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Christmas Eve came around, and the group we’d all started considering part of ‘the family’ were present, plus a good collection of people who were variously attached to people in the know, but weren’t themselves privy to our secret. I’d discussed it with Mom, and she’d agreed to hold our Christmas on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning, as was traditional, to allow people who would otherwise need to spend the time with their own families to be present.
There was...
2017-12-28 19:46:31 +0000 UTC
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For the next week, things were quiet, which I should have known was a sign. If I was honest with myself, I didn’t even consider it for a second. I just relaxed and, for a few days at least, pretended I was a teenager.
Next Step was progressing, and by the end of the week, they’d started building, which was great but didn’t give us a lot to do. Work was almost on autopilot, with a lot of the staff taking off for Christmas, MilTech was dealing with everything on their Navy contrac...
2017-12-22 15:28:07 +0000 UTC
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On the way back home, I worked over something I’d been thinking of for some time, ever since we decided to get information from the judge. My main problem was, I didn’t know exactly how to go about it… or at least, parts of it.
“How would I make an untraceable phone call?” I asked Jawarski and Carter as we walked into my house.
“Why? It’s too early to bring in the Feds,” she said, suspiciously.
“It’s not for calling the Feds, although we’ll need t...
2017-12-20 19:27:07 +0000 UTC
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We returned late Saturday night from our outing to Houston. Rachel offered to ride with Jawarski, so I could ride with the girls on the way back. She said she was curious as to what being a cop was like, and wanted to ask Jawarski questions on the way back; but I was pretty sure one of the girls convinced her to switch, so I could ride back with them. Which suited me fine.
The harder part was convincing Jawarski that it was ok for me to ride back with them. Eventually, it was Rachel who won Ja...
2017-12-18 12:56:31 +0000 UTC
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As a note, the chapter of The Sword of Jupiter (Chapter 7) that went up today is the last one you'll see for a bit. I plan on working on No Good Deed exclusively until I finish it, then I'll get back to finishing The Sword of Jupiter. Since this is a new series and the Destiny Saga is ongoing, I figure it's better to get that one done first.
Sorry for those are enjoying The Sword of Jupiter, and I promise I am going to get back to it.
2017-12-17 14:04:02 +0000 UTC
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Ky walked into what he was thinking of as the throne room the next morning, refreshed, despite the small amount of sleep he’d gotten the night before. Although he could get along on very little sleep when needed, the doctors had still recommended eight hours of sleep when possible.
While he hadn’t hit that benchmark by any degree, he still felt like a weight had been lifted off him. He considered that maybe it was because he’d at le...
2017-12-17 14:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Ky helped the Emperor out of the chair with the older man gripping Ky’s forearm even after he was standing. Subtly signaling by pulling or pushing on his arm, he directed Ky out of the building the meeting had been held in and around the periphery of the large open square at the heart of the city.
Already Ky could feel a difference in the Emperor’s condition. The man was no longer putting his entire weight on Ky in order to walk and h...
2017-12-16 18:29:14 +0000 UTC
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Ky shut the door behind quietly as he left, taking one last look at Lucilla sitting on a small stool next to her father’s bed, looking equally hopeful and worried as he continued to lie, unmoving. As the door shut and blocked the two figures from sight, he turned to find Clovis next to several of the men who’d questioned his presence before seeing her father. They had been listening to Clovis whispering to them, gesticulating wildly when Ky’s eyes fell on them. The gr...
2017-12-16 18:28:02 +0000 UTC
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Carthaginian Army
Zaracas rode wearily, surrounded by officers and courtiers, near the head of the army. He was trying to keep from sliding out of his saddle. Normally, he traveled by litter, which was much more comfortable and appropriate for someone of his station. Maharbaal had been exceedingly clear that he wanted to crush the Romans before winter started in earnest and ended the campaigning season, preferably with enough time left to clean up the...
2017-12-16 18:27:13 +0000 UTC
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“I’m sorry, Lord, but I don’t understand. How could you not know about the Carthaginians?” the woman said as the small group rode northward across what the AI had confidently confirmed was the British countryside.
“Why do you keep calling me Lord?”
“Because it is who you are. You were sent by the gods. We saw you descending from the heavens on wings of fire.”
Ky could imagine that the way friction had burned off his kinetic shielding as he ...
2017-12-16 18:26:16 +0000 UTC
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