Read After Ariel: It started as a game for Free Online

is you’re going? Are you driving up?’  
    ‘Driving with Pete. I’m going to miss you!’ He wriggled his eyebrows, but his naughtiness failed to divert me. No one knows better than a cop that things can go awfully wrong within seconds on the street, especially if undercover. I had only a few hours to keep him close to me and so help me, I wanted to kill him. What if the worst happened and I lost him just as I had found him again? And the girls had just gotten to know their father. How would they cope if...?
    David is nothing if not an experienced husband; after all, our second marriage to each other is the third try for both of us! ‘So what does Rosalind want to see you about?’ As a diversion, it worked for the moment.
    ‘She wants to talk to me about something personal. The house and the animals are fine, so that’s one worry off my mind, but there’s something wrong, I can feel it.’
    ‘Is John going to be there?’ John Glenwood, widower and retired policeman married our friend six months previously and we have never seen her so happy. ‘I expect he will be,’ I answered absently, as I took a box of Chateau Cardboard out of the fridge and poured myself a glass of white. David shook his head when I gestured with the cask, apologised for not getting me one and sat at the table, twirling his thumbs. He’s nervous and knows that I know what he’s up to.
     ‘Say hi to him for me, will you?’
     ‘Yes.’
    ‘So, hold the fort and give my love to the girls.’
    ‘Of course But aren’t you going to keep in touch with them yourself?’
    ‘No time. I’ll ring them when I get up there.’  He stepped forward and took me in his arms again. ‘We’ve only got a few hours,’ he muttered into my hair. I held him tightly as a wave of love and terror swept over me. I wished I could actually climb inside his skin, trap him there, and feign illness – anything to keep him with me.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER 4
    A Little Night Music
    Ariel
     
    Friday, 6PM
    If someone had asked her what she would do on her last night on earth, Ariel may well have rolled her eyes, giggled and said, ‘Listen to Miley Cyrus while, like, kissing red hot abs!’ In one respect, she would have been spot on.
    Ariel’s parents always said they could read her like a book and trusted her implicitly. Why wouldn’t they? She’d never given them any reason to doubt her word and all nefarious activities were carefully hidden. Streetwise and game for anything, she knew her parents would be shocked if they realised what she and her friends got up to when she went clubbing, but she could do anything she liked with her own money, couldn’t she? Working at Dymocks was boring and the money not much good, but she’d put her name down for Woolworths until the start of next year’s technical college courses.
    Calls were always forwarded to her mobile while she was clubbing but this time she was meeting a bloke, moreover one she didn’t really know. She felt just a little bad about deceiving them, but it was the only way. Then it came to her. They would buy fish and chips and come back here so she wouldn’t have to lie!
    She hummed as she rushed through her parent’s house, tucking newspapers under the sofa cushions, washing the dishes piled beside the sink. Cleaning the bathroom was a novel experience, as she contributed generously to the mess, but was invariably less than diligent in clearing it up. Losing interest at the halfway mark, she bundled the cosmetics on top of the vanity into the top drawer of the unit, kicked the waste basket behind the clothesbasket and headed for the kitchen, calling her friend on her mobile as she went. ‘Come on, answer, sod you, Maggie!’ she yelled. The ‘Switched off or out of range’ recording played again. I’ll bet she’s shagging Hamish. Stuff it! There was nothing as frustrating as not being able to tell her latest news to her friends, after all that’s what a mobile was for! ‘Mags, I’ve got the