Outskirts Press, INC.

Sequela: when one event causes a second or a series of events to occur

Jerome Grayson is dead; Wade Addams arrested; Jane Doe identified; Jackson Nolan committed suicide, evidently to avoid the humiliation of a trial. The entire case has been neatly wrapped up. Or so it would seem. That case also brought Grayson back to a house he felt certain he would never be welcome in again. He had been banished from this home ten years ago for being silently complicit in the drug use of his brother, Jerome; and now, for being the insturment of Jerome's death. But understanding Jerome had chosen his own fate, his parents welcomed him back. And so, Destiny has brought him together with Samantha Greene, but will She now rip them apart as seemingly unrelated events occur to the residents of Jaspar? For Steven Nolan has also come to Jaspar: His father's suicide, Jerome's death and the similarities to his own brother's suicide twelve years earlier, drive him to take up arms against Jaspar.

The door to the dimly lit room opened slowly. A hallway light, shining from behind him, disguised the man’s features and cast his shadow halfway across the room. “Captain Williams?” Alan wondered. “Yes?” the man responded warily. The gun in Alan’s hand exploded. The force of the impact propelled Williams’ body backward into the hallway . . . Steven Nolan rose from the desk chair and crossed his bedroom to the bureau. In preparation for his father’s funeral, he checked his tie in the mirror, giving it a final tug into place. Alan’s daydream buoyed his spirits. The Williamses would soon be preparing for a funeral, too. Steven inspected his reflection. His brother, Alan had inherited their mother’s gentle, blue-green eyes. Steven’s, however, were the same silver-gray as their father’s and Alan had taught him to make them flash like the flinty edge of a sword in the sunlight. His enemies would feel their icy steel – just as his father’s antagonists had felt his. Even after twelve years, the sound of Alan’s voice remained strong in Steven’s memory. “You look fine, Stevie.” He recalled his mother bursting into tears whenever he spoke aloud to Alan, and the oddest expression would cross his father’s features. He still couldn’t put a name to that expression, more than merely sad or worried. Then he would gently stroke Steven’s head and say, “Alan is dead, son. He shot himself. Remember? It’s good to keep him alive in our hearts, but he is dead now.” So Steven had learned to keep his conversations with Alan private whenever anyone else was around. Otherwise it hurt his parents. “I don’t understand why Mom made an appointment with that dumb old Fosdahl. What does she think he can do? Maybe we should just skip it, Alan. We haven’t seen him in ten years. What would he care?” “Like you said, Stevie, he can’t do anything. Wonder if the old goat’s changed. At any rate, we just have to sit in the shrink’s office for thirty minutes. Our biggest concern now is how to make Williams and Addams answer for what they did to Dad.” Steven leaned his forehead against the mirror. “I wish you really were here, Alan, to help me through Dad’s funeral the way he helped me through yours.”