Red Mist: Season 1, Episode 4: Fearless: The Red Mist Series, #4

By R T Green

Two women... two enemies. One deadly terror threat. One jealous sister.

One true love.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

An MI6 shadow assassin and a beautiful terrorist are thrown together in the midst of a terror threat, the like of which London has never seen before.

 

This is 'Fearless', the fourth episode of the Red Mist series.

It is damage limitation for Madeline and the team as they discover the threat is far from over. With a new, even more insidious horror in the mix, she volunteers to be the worm on the hook... even though for her there is more than one reason that hook is sinking into treacherous waters.

Travel with Madeline and Zana as they follow a life-threatening, perilous road, taking them to a place neither believes can exist.

 

Killing someone isn't meant to be this hard. Neither is falling in love.

 

"Romantic Suspense at its finest"

 

Imagine a TV drama with eight episodes over two seasons, telling a complete story, and bringing you a host of unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Red Mist is that gripping serialized drama, in book form. It will keep you page-turning, and episode reading!

(Each episode is its own story, but very much leads into the next one... so to get the full effect please do read the volumes in order!)

 

Do check out the Red Mist series, and everything else we do, on the rtgreen website.

 

And enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wise Owl
• Release date: Mar 23, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215412077

R T Green

The RTG mission in life is simple... to not be like everyone else! ‘Going Green’ has taken on a new meaning, in the book world at least. Whilst we applaud the original meaning (ebooks are a perfect way to promote that) we also try to present a different angle to it. The tendency these days is that if you don’t look and read like everyone else, you don’t sell books. Maybe there’s some truth in that, but we simply don’t do it. The RTG books have been described as a ‘breath of fresh literary air’, and, by those discovering us for the first time, ‘unexpectedly good’. We know many readers prefer the same-old same old, and that’s fine. It’s just not what you get from the RTG stable. Those who know about such things said it would take five years to become a proficient author... I scoffed at that. They were wise. It took six. It’s one reason why even today we remodel existing books, and will always do so. Right from the early years the stories were always good, but were put into words less well than they could have been! These days we have several series and a few standalones, the hit Daisy series most popular amongst them. In everything we do, the same provisos apply – Never the same book twice. If we can’t think up a good story, it doesn’t get written. The RTG brand is about exciting and twisty plots, a fast pace which doesn’t waste words, and endearing (sometimes slightly crazy) characters. We can never please everyone, but it works for us, and, it seems, for those who appreciate our work. Enjoy! Richard, Ann and the RTG crew

Book preview

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Season 1

Episode 4: FEARLESS

R T Green

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Other books...

Red Mist: Season 1:

Episode 1: Falling

Episode 2: Phoenix

Episode 3: Jealousy

Season 2:

Episode 5: Phantom

Episode 6: Desperation

Episode 7: Unbreakable

Episode 8: Evermore

The Daisy Morrow Series:

The first one – The Root of All Evil

The second one – The Strange Case of the Exploding Dolly-trolley

The third one – A Very Unexpected African Adventure

The fourth one – Pirates of Great Yarmouth: Curse of the Crimson Heart

The fifth one: The Terrifying Tale of the Homesick Scarecrow

The sixth one – Call of Duty: The Wiltingham Enigma

The seventh one – Christmas in the Manor Born

The eighth one – The Shanghai Shadow

The ninth one – Some Like it Tepid

The tenth one – Waltzing Matilda

The eleventh one – The Wiltingham Incident

The twelfth one – The Pointed Finger

The thirteenth one – Here Comes Santa Claus!

The fourteenth one – The Witch of Scraggy Bottom

The Throwback Prequel – When Daisy Met Aidan

The Box Set – books 1-3

The Second Box Set – books 4-6 plus The Prequel

The Third Box Set – books 7-9

The Sandie Shaw series:

Book 1 – Murder at the Green Mill

Book 2 – Christmas in Chicago is Murder

Book 3 – An American in Windsor

Book 4 – Springtime in Chicago

Book 5 – Murder on the Miami Express

Book 6 – The Family

Book 7 – Murder Most Olympic

Book 8 – Two Sisters, One Ghost

The first box set – books 1-3

The second box set – books 4-6

The Starstruck Series -

Starstruck: Somewhere to call Home

Starstruck: The Prequel

(Time to say Goodbye)

Starstruck: The Disappearance of Becca

Starstruck: The Rock

Starstruck: Ghosts, Ghouls and Evil Spirits

Starstruck: The Combo – books 1-3

The Raven Series –

Raven: No Angel!

Raven: Unstoppable

Raven: Black Rose

Raven: The Combo – books 1-3

Somewhere Only She Knows

Timeless

Ballistic

Cry of an Angel

The Hand of Time

Elsie: Mean Street

Wisp

Copyright © 2023 R T Green

All rights reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

COME AND JOIN US

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Soho, London, December 27th

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

The Previous Day

Chapter 8

Next day, the present

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

INFINITY

AND DO COME AND JOIN US

The RTG Brand

COME AND JOIN US

We’d love you to become a VIP Reader.

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Join our mail list and grab it all for free.

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INTRODUCTION

Red Mist end pic copy.jpg

THIS IS SEASON 1, EPISODE 4 of the Red Mist story. Told in eight episodes over two seasons, it follows the heart-wrenching journey of discovery of two lost souls, who could not be further apart when it comes to sides of the tracks.

Red Mist is romantic suspense at its finest, blended with espionage and a little sci-fi to keep you guessing what might possibly happen next. But at its heart it is the emotional love story of two people who, if they had not found each other, would have remained lost forever.

We’ve written the series as a chronological serial. Imagine a TV drama, with eight episodes over two seasons combining to tell the whole story, bringing you a host of unexpected twists and turns along the way.

Red Mist is that gripping serial drama, in book form. It will keep you page-turning, and episode-reading!

To get the full experience, please do binge the episodes in order!

Enjoy!

Richard, Ann, and the RTG crew

Chapter 1

LOST IN THOUGHTS OF family and enemies, I watched through the bridge windows as the tiny island of Tobago grew rapidly smaller. Then I was pressed back into the seat as the nose of the shuttle pointed to the sky and accelerated hard, giving me nothing to look at but blue sky.

Higher and higher we climbed, the incredible power of the alien craft rocketing us into the upper atmosphere in what seemed like seconds. Coop’s eyes were like saucers, a permanent and slightly silly grin on his face as his lifetime dream of flying in a spacecraft finally came true.

I poked him, jolting him back to reality. ‘Hey boss, not a good look... you still with us?’

He grinned. ‘Nah... somewhere on another planet maybe.’

‘Best Christmas present ever, huh?’

He grinned. ‘For sure.’ Then he glanced across to Zana, sitting in the pilot’s seat pressing diamond-shaped buttons on the console wrapped around her. ‘And you got your perfect gift too.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, I think so.’

He frowned, the grin fading away. ‘Am I detecting an I’m not so sure note somewhere in that sentence?’

Guess I should have just said a simple yes. ‘It’s just... she seems a bit distant. Emotionless. But yes, it’s still the perfect gift.’

He turned me away from the others. ‘You gotta give her time. She’s been to hell and come out the other side. More than once. We can all see the physical scars, but she’s gotta be suffering inside too.’

‘I’ve been to hell too, Coop. I’m suffering as well.’

He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Yeah, and I have nothing but awe-inspired admiration for how you’ve coped with more shit than a body should be able to handle. But you ain’t suffered the wrath of family members, have you?’

‘Guess not.’

‘Give her time. You’s both got hard shit coming your way, but this time I can’t do nothing except hope you’re both there for each other when the time comes.’

‘Me too, boss.’

‘Madeline...’

Zana was lifting herself from the pilot’s chair. She looked dead on her feet again, and she wasn’t the only one. ‘Madeline, please will you help me back to my quarters. I wish to rest now. The ship is on auto-navigation, flying just below the limits of the atmosphere, higher than any human aircraft can fly. We are cloaked and cannot be detected, but it will be four hours until we reach the UK. There is nothing to do until that time, so I suggest we all take the opportunity to rest.’

I put an arm gently around her waist. She wrapped hers across my shoulder and we headed slowly to the door of her cabin. As it slid aside she eased herself away from my support, looking at me with expressionless eyes. ‘Thank you, Madeline. I can manage from here.’

‘I thought... perhaps we could rest together. Be close?’

Her eyes dropped to the floor. ‘My body hurts, all over. And the bunks are small. Your body against mine will cause me discomfort, please understand that.’

‘I understand.’

The door slid to a close. In seconds I had to fight away another heartbreaking déjà vu moment.

The night I took the suitcase back to her when she’d left it in the trunk after I’d driven her back from Dawson’s Hill.

The night she’d looked at me with those same cold, emotionless eyes, and told me our relationship was over.

Chapter 2

Soho, London, December 27th

JANE DANIELS KNELT next to the body, wiping away the mist in her eyes as best she could with a hand cocooned in a latex glove. In her mid-forties, tall and slender, her hazel eyes still burned bright despite a lifetime career battling the dark side of London’s streets. The last seven years, spent as a senior detective in the Met’s murder squad, should have hardened her to the horrendous depths the pits of humanity could sink to, but there were still times it all got too much.

This was one such time. Gently she brushed the flakes of snow from the girl’s face, and eased away the matted and frozen blonde hair so she could see her better. She was young, hardly out of her teens, and anything but dressed for a cold winter’s night. The short black skirt hardly covered her butt, and the see-through lacy top was designed to make the most of the assets she’d been using to such good effect.

Daniels shook her head, knowing all too well the dark alley where the girl had met a violent and gruesome death was literally around the corner from Soho’s red light district.

She was also just as aware that the disappearance of four prostitutes in the last ten days had to make it the work of the same man.

But this girl hadn’t just disappeared quietly.

She’d fought back.

‘The area is sealed off, Jane. Forensics here in five.’

The voice of her partner jolted her away from the desolate thought-bubble. ‘Thanks, Paul.’ She glanced up to the tall slim man who’d appeared around the side of the big blue commercial waste bin that had hidden the body from view for what seemed like the best part of a day. His head was shrouded in the fur-lined hood of his Parka, which was silhouetted by a myriad of flashing blue lights dimmed to a blur by the freezing fog settling over London.

She flashed her torch over the body. ‘What do you make of this, mate?’

He crouched next to her, and then looked like he was about to throw up. ‘Jesus Christ... what kind of animal could do that?’

‘Yeah, I know. But that’s not what I meant.’ She pointed to the blood-spatters all over her body. ‘What do you think that is, mixed in with her blood?’

He frowned. ‘Dunno, without forensics. They look like blood spatters too, but... blue? Must be paint or something.’

‘You saying a tin of Dulux did this?’ She forced a smile, but there was no hint of mirth anywhere to be seen.

He shook his head. ‘Look, under the nail of her forefinger. There’s something caught in it... a bit of skin maybe?’

She peered closer. They couldn’t remove it, that was a job for forensics, but it sure looked like a scrap of skin, ripped off in the fight when she’d found the spirit that had ultimately caused her death. ‘If it is, then we’re in luck. But...’ She shone the torch right next to the fingernail. ‘It’s an odd colour. Kind of... reddish.’

‘We’ll have to let the lab deal with it.’ The com in his hand hissed into life. ‘Sir, forensics are here.’ He stood up as he replied. ‘Okay sergeant, on my way.’

Alone, Daniel’s eyes fell back to the girl’s face. She couldn’t stop a shudder, shivers of dread turning her blood as cold as the freezing night had turned the rest of her.

Murder was one thing, but whatever sick pervert committed that one took gruesome to a whole new level.

Her head had been twisted round, her face pointing in a direction that wouldn’t normally be humanly possible. Clearly that was what had killed her.

Before that she’d been savaged, the red-coloured snow on the ground around her testament to that. Her screams had been silenced, in the most brutal way possible.

Her lower jaw had been wrenched downwards, almost severing it from her face.

She didn’t get time to dwell on the horror the poor girl must have endured. Suddenly, white-suited people seemed to be everywhere, silver cases full of forensic technology clunking to the ground around her, and a canvas protective tent erected in minutes.

Assia Kapoor, head of forensics, eased her away from the body and noticed the look in her eyes. ‘You alright, Jane?’

She nodded, unconvincingly. ‘Sure... there’s a blue substance spattered over her... and we noticed a scrap of something that looked like skin caught in a fingernail...’

Assia put a gloved hand on her arm. ‘This one got to you, huh?’

She nodded, unwilling to actually say the words that would confirm it had.

The girl in white smiled reassuringly. ‘My turn now. Leave it to us... whatever story she’s got to tell, I’ll do my best to read it.’

Daniels turned away and walked slowly a little further along the alley. It was a lot less dark with the forensic team’s tripod lights penetrating the blackness. A few tiny snowflakes had begun to fall again, the glow from the lights making them appear much bigger as they drifted gently to the ground in the still night air.

She shivered again, folded her arms together, and panned her eyes around her grim surroundings. The alley served the rear entrances of the shops and fast-food outlets fronting the main street. It seemed to go on forever, a mess of doorways, waste bins and rat-infested clutter.

She glanced at her watch. One in the morning. There was little they could do until it got light, but then they could carry out the painstaking task of combing every bit of the alley. Whoever had ended the girl’s life in such a horrendous way was long gone, that much was certain. Maybe he’d left some kind of clue, but even if he had, finding it in the clutter of the alley was unlikely. The only real hope was that Assia and her team would come up with something useful.

She turned back towards the lights, her steps slow and laboured, her eyes gazing unseeing at the rough asphalt a few feet in front of her. The blue substance on the girl’s body was worrying her. So was the piece of what appeared to be skin caught in her fingernail.

Given the epic recent events, an uneasy feeling was building in her mind. MI6 had issued a confidential memo to all London police force chiefs, asking them to be aware of the remote possibility a few of the occupants of the spaceship could have survived the fall when it disintegrated.

Surely this couldn’t be connected?

Yet again she let out a shiver, which reverberated through her whole body. There was nothing more she could do, not on a dark snowy night. Forensics would need a few hours at the scene and then a few more in the lab. As soon as it got light she and her team would comb the alley, but the best thing right then would be a warm bed and a few hours sleep.

Although she was getting the feeling the dread turning her gut inside out wouldn’t make sleeping too easy.

Chapter 3

THE PHONE ON THE BEDSIDE table tried to shake itself to bits. Wrenched from a disturbed sleep that had finally graduated to something resembling decent, Jane Daniels fumbled for the accept button and mumbled a reluctant, ‘Yes?’

‘Sorry to disturb your sleep, Jane, but I need you here. Right now.’

‘Assia? You still working?’

‘Tell me about it. Something about the body got me worried. With good reason, as it turns out.’

‘What have you found?’

‘Not over the phone. Just get here, please.’

‘Okay. Give me thirty.’

She glanced to the clock as she put the phone down. Five in the morning. The team was due to begin combing the alley at seven, first light. It seemed her day had already begun, a little earlier than she really wanted.

She dragged heavy legs out of the comfort of the warm bed, grabbed a thirty-second shower and a chocolate-flavour Frijj, and a few minutes later was spraying deicer onto the Vauxhall’s windscreen.

A thick frost had added another layer of white to the snow-covered ground, but the clouds had gone, the early-morning air dead still. She grimaced at the temperature gauge on the dashboard. Minus five. It was likely going to be another day when it wouldn’t climb above freezing.

She felt her body shiver as she pressed the accelerator and the car moved forward. Maybe it was the temperature, maybe it was Assia’s urgent call.

It was impossible to know for sure.

London was deathly quiet. Something it never was. Wasn’t. Since the alien invasion that never happened, despite assurances from a government desperate to quell panic that no Calandurans had survived, Londoners seemed to have suddenly become afraid of the dark.

A home with locked windows and doors had become even more of an Englishman’s castle.

She made the lab in record time, despite the icy roads even the council salt-trucks seemed reluctant to venture onto until it got light. Assia was alone, the look in her eyes sparking another shiver that didn’t want to stop. ‘Come and see this,’ she said in a whisper, even though there was no one there to overhear.

She took Daniel’s hand, led her to an electroscope, and virtually shoved her face into the viewer.

‘What am I looking at?’

‘That’s the scrap of skin you saw under the girl’s fingernail.’

‘It looks... odd.’

‘Keep watching.’

She watched for ten seconds, and then turned to look at the Indian girl. ‘It’s... moving?’

‘Kind of. But it’s not living. Quite the opposite. It’s disintegrating.’

‘Oh shit.’

Daniels ran a shaking hand across her mouth, the petrified look in Assia’s eyes not helping it get any steadier. They both knew the implications of the truth handed to them by the tiny sliver of skin.

‘I’ve one other thing to show you.’ Assia led her over to her desk and pointed to a glass slide sitting in a tiny air-sealed container. ‘Just in case you needed any more proof.’

Daniels peered closely at the slide, just able to make out a few specks of vaguely-blue dust. She nodded desolately, and asked the question she already knew the answer to. ‘That’s the blue substance we saw on the body?’

‘By default, yes. I just about had time to try and analyse it before it decided to turn to dust.’

‘Try?’

‘None of the state-of-the-art technology here could recognise it. Which means it can only be one thing.’

Daniels words were a whisper. ‘Calanduran blood.’

‘Our girl fought for her life, Jane. With everything she had by the looks of it. Somewhere out there is an injured alien... and my guess is he’s not alone.’

Daniels slumped into the driving seat of the car, her heart beating far harder than was good for it. When she’d first knelt next the body in the alley, something in her gut was telling her it wasn’t just another violent murder. It had crossed her mind the events of five weeks ago might be connected, but it was such