INHERITANCE OF SHADOW SERIES
CONSUMED IN SHADOW
The police framed him and stole five years of his life. Now he’s turning the investigation back on them one question at a time, because innocent children are still disappearing.
George Merrick is out of prison, but he’s not free.
A conspiracy put him behind bars for five years and he did not do his time quietly. He prepared. He learnt. He did the one thing that has never come naturally, he made friends and allies he can trust.
Now the mission continues and George starts reversing the roles. He tracks down the people who wronged him and begins to question them, to pull at the threads until the truth shows itself, why he was set up, who is behind it all, and how it connects to a child trafficking ring that is still swallowing lives.
This time he does not have to do it alone.
Somewhere in an unnamed African country, George and his allies push into the dark and refuse to stop, not until the patterns finally make sense and something truly awful is brought into the light.
Book Two of the Inheritance of Shadows series.
Written, in revision.
George Merrick
I’ve made my choices and I will live with them. Nobody pushed me on to this road. I walked on to it. I knew that going after the people who framed me, the people who sell children, would cost me whatever chance I had at an ordinary life. I did it anyway.
Leaving Natalia and Adel behind is the part that hurts. There is a piece of her I carry with me, quiet and steady, the way she rests a hand on my arm when my head is too loud. I keep that version of her in my mind because it is the only thing that stops me tipping over the edge. But I know there is a point coming, very soon, where I may have to do things so horrific to end this that even that imaginary version of her cannot be allowed to watch. If I let her see what I am prepared to become, I will not survive it.
As for Polish, I owe him more than I can put into a neat sentence. He watched my back in Guys Marsh when I did not understand the rules. He stopped me making mistakes I would not have come back from. I am not sure I would have made it through the five years without him. Now I have asked him to follow me to the middle of Africa. I will not say which country. I have dragged him into something violent and ugly, and I am the one who opened that door. I promised him I will get him back to his daughter when this is finished. At least one of us deserves a normal, happy life.
For me, that option is gone. That ship sailed the night a gun I had never seen came out of my boot and a jury believed the simplest story. What I have left is this. One last job that matters. One last chance to do something good before I leave this world. I am going to follow this trafficking ring to its root and cut it out, no matter what it costs me. I do not have anything else left worth a damn.
Dave Wozniak aka Polish
I owe George my life. Not just for the times he stopped me doing something stupid on the wing, or stepped between me and a blade, but for getting me out. For giving me back years with my daughter I never thought I would see. I cannot ever go back to England and truth is, I do not want to. There is nothing there for me except ghosts and paperwork.
Out here he has asked me for one favour. Watch his back while he takes this trafficking ring apart. What he never seems to understand is he does not have to ask. I have a daughter. I was a kid once, small and scared, with things done to me that should never be done to anyone. Maybe that is why I am as fucked up as I am, but it is also why this, what we are doing, is not just his mission. It is mine.
George would take it all on himself if I let him. That is the sort of idiot he is. He has already given up more than most men could survive. I only hope there is something left of him when this is all dead and buried. Until then, I am at his side. I will do everything I can to keep him breathing and help bury this thing for good.
