Episode 27: "Ghosts of Christmas Past"

Summary: Amy and PJ pursue a Christmas thief with a peculiar MO. Christmas turns to tragedy for the Heelers when a storm strikes Mt. Thomas and Mark and Adam struggle with past Christmas nightmares.

Lyrics come from "No Bravery" by James Blunt, "Love Gets Me Every Time" by Shania Twain, "See the Sun" by Dido, "Afterglow" by INXS and "Superman" by Five for Fighting.

It was early in the morning when Amy awoke, her mind slowly becoming aware of the birds making a racket outside her bedroom window. It had been nearly six months since Raymond Hunt had turned Mt. Thomas on its head and she and PJ had celebrated their six month wedding anniversary just over a week ago. PJ had made quite an event of it. He'd decorated the Parlour at the pub – with considerable help from Chris – and they'd spent the whole night dancing and eating and joking. It had been wonderful.

It had taken her longer than she expected to recover from Hunt's attack. She'd forgotten that she was not quite as young and fit as she used to be. And the beating she'd received from Hunt had been thorough and hampered all of Zoe and Adam's best attempts to get her out of bed. It was nearly a month before Zoe was happy enough to discharge her – possibly because she was worried Amy would try going back to work before she was well enough if she was allowed to go home any earlier. Even when she went home, Zoe instructed Nick to arrest Amy if she even thought about going back to work. And, despite Nick's protests that Zoe had no authority over him, Amy got the feeling that Nick would do it. So she stayed away into Zoe gave her clearance to return to work.

The psychologists were almost as bad as the medics. Both Zoe and Mark continually harassed her, trying to convince her to talk to someone about 'her ordeal'. She didn't want to and didn't need to. She knew Nick was getting the same treatment over the Raymond Hunt shooting. She got the feeling she was the only one who understood why he refused to see a psychologist. They both just felt relieved it was over and that they survived and just wanted to get on with living their lives.

It had taken nearly six months for Mt. Thomas to go back to sleep. And now it was a few days out from Christmas and the town was waking back up again.

She was almost surprised by the fact that she was looking forward to Christmas. She'd allowed Dash to put decorations up in the CI office and even lay some tinsel across her desk. She'd even let PJ put a Christmas tree up at home. She hadn't bothered with a Christmas tree since she'd moved out of Lisa Craig's house.

As Amy slowly awoke, she kicked the blankets off her hard. It was a hot, muggy kind of summer. One of the hottest on record, she recalled Chris lamenting a few nights ago. She also remembered the farmers at the next table, complaining about the dry spell. They needed rain soon or they'd lose all their crops. But, with a kind of knowing smile, Dash had said that rain would come. It always did, eventually. And the farmers grudgingly took her word for it. She was from a farming family – she did have some knowledge of the weather.

Rolling over, Amy reached out to pull herself close to PJ, only to find her hand hitting the sheet beside her. That woke her up completely. She jolted up to sitting, staring at the empty space beside her with wide eyes. It wasn't like PJ to wake up before her. She climbed out of bed and padded barefoot out into the hallway. There was still no sign of PJ.

She didn't find him until she reached the front room, where PJ was just coming back inside with a broad grin on his face. It faded when he saw her. "Oh, Amez," he began, a little surprised. "I thought you were sleeping."

"Where were you?" Amy asked, folding her arms across the soft silk nightie that PJ had bought her as an anniversary present. "I woke up and you weren't there."

A sheepish grin crossed PJ's face. "I had to check your present arrived alright," he explained.

Amy looked at him in confusion. "My present?"

He nodded as he slipped around to stand behind her and covered her eyes with his hands. "I'm going to give it to you now," he declared as he began to direct her outside.

Unable to see, Amy's usual grace disappeared and she began to trip and stumble. "Peej, uncover my eyes," she told him, unable to quite stifle her laugh.

He shook his head. "Nope," he replied as his grin broadened. "It's a surprise."

She laughed again as she tried to wrestle free of PJ's arms. "Come on, Peej. You know I hate surprises."

"You'll like this one," PJ told her and refused to answer anymore questions. Eventually, Amy stopped struggling against him and allowed herself to be led along.

PJ didn't stop until they were outside. It was only then that he uncovered her eyes. Immediately, Amy's jaw dropped open. Sitting in the driveway in front of her was an old red ute. She knew nothing about cars and wasn't willing to estimate its age, but she knew it had the kind of cab that you saw in photographs of crash scenes with nothing more than a scratched paint job, surrounded by pieces of the newer car it had destroyed.

The car did need a new paint job. The red had faded considerably over time and it looked scratched in places, but it wasn't bad. It had character.

"Merry Christmas," PJ told her, taking advantage of her stunned silence to kiss her cheek.

She shook her head in shock as she approached the car tentatively. "Does it even go?" she asked doubtfully. She knew nothing about cars, but she did know that this was old. The only place she had seen a car like this was in photos of her grandparents and of her parents when they were young.

He chuckled. "Yeah, it goes. How do you reckon it got here?" he replied. He headed over to the car and patted the bonnet fondly. "Dash's niece, Macca, is a mechanic. She got it going again. Don't worry – it's roadworthy. I checked. It's got a new engine and everything…"

Amy wasn't listening anymore. She had opened the driver's side door and was sitting in the cab. It was quite comfortable, she decided. The car radio probably needed replacing and she was definitely going to get some new seat covers for it, but it was comfortable. She liked it. And it had character – the same reason why she'd bought her now written-off Vee Dub.

Amy's silence made PJ nervous. His smile faded as his tone suddenly changed. "You don't like it," he mumbled. He nodded to himself thoughtfully as he continued. "Look, I'll sort it out. Don't worry. We'll get you another car…"

Amy looked to him in bewilderment. A grin spread across her face as she leapt out of the car and threw her arms around his neck. She kissed him passionately. "I love it," she managed when she finally came up for air. "I absolutely love it."


The others were waiting in the car park as Amy pulled her new-old car to a stop outside the station. They were talking amongst themselves and laughing as though they somehow found it amusing.

Nick approaching them as PJ and Amy climbed out of the ute, appraising the car with his eyes. He seemed to approve. "Nice choice, Patrick dear," he said with a nod. "It's a 1950s model, isn't it?" He sighed fondly at PJ's nod of reply. "Oh, they just don't make them like this anymore."

Dash was grinning too as she ran a hand along the scratched and faded paintwork on the bonnet. "Macca didn't do too badly with it," she observed. "Not bad at all. The muffler could probably still do with a bit of work, but it's good."

Amy found herself fuming a little. So her colleagues had been in on it too. Chris, Zoe and Adam had probably also been party to this little present conspiracy. She watched with a smile as they gathered around her car and played happily with it. Occasionally, they offered comments – new seat covers, new radio, new muffler – but she let them go.

It was Christmas. And, for some reason, she couldn't even force herself to try to be in a bad mood.


It was later that afternoon that Nick invited himself into the CI office, neglecting as always to knock. PJ rolled his eyes, not bothering to look up to see who had entered. Even Dash had learnt the art of knocking by now. "Didn't your mother teach you any manners?" he asked, while Amy smiled a little. For all that she once complained about Nick, his sense of humour and his manners, she'd come to grow very used to him. And their camaraderie had only grown stronger since the Raymond Hunt ordeal.

Nick grinned as he leant back against the door. "I'm six foot four and I'm a policeman," he reminded them. "What do I need manners for?"

PJ laughed as he finally looked up. "So to what do we owe the honour of your visit?" he asked as he sat back in his swivel chair.

"Carols in the Park," Nick explained. "It's on tonight and I want you two to come with me."

Amy's eyes narrowed as she looked at Nick. "Why do you want us to go with you?"

Nick grinned as he turned to her. "You see, Foxtrot, Zoe and the boys have flatly refused under any circumstances to go and have threatened to torture me if I bother asking. Dash and Adam are already on their way to Melbourne to visit Adam's siblings and won't be back until tomorrow and Starry and the Boss have already said no."

Amy sighed as she felt herself caving. Nick was looking at her like a little lost puppy and, just as those piercing blue eyes of his could convince her to confide in him; they could convince her to attend Carols in the Park. "Alright, alright, we'll come," she told him. "Be ready at six-thirty for PJ and I to pick you up."

Nick looked very satisfied with himself as he left the CI office. PJ didn't look so happy – his mouth was gaping and he was looking at Amy in disbelief. "Why did you do that for?" he demanded with a shake of his head. "Have you ever been to one of these things before?" She shook her head. PJ continued. "You end up sitting out in the hot, humid night, become a banquet for the mossies and listen to a bunch of tone deaf people sing off-key all night."

She suddenly seemed to realise what she had agreed to. Burying her head in her hands, she let out a frustrated groan. "What did I get us into?"


The night was nearly as unpleasant as PJ had promised it would be. The weather was humid – holding what Dash had described a few days earlier as the promise of heavy rain. Yet, people still turned out in droves to sit on the scratchy, dry grass of the park, holding torches instead of candles due to the fire ban, and sing repetitive Christmas carols in voices that reminded Amy more of chipmunks than anything else.

But Nick seemed determined to make the night amusing. By the end of it, the focus was less on the performers on stage and more on Nick. He stood on the hill, singing carols in full opera style, complete with extravagant arm movements.

It was nearly eleven before PJ and Amy could drag him away from his eager crowd. Even then, he'd already given three encore performances of 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' and two of 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'. He seemed disappointed as PJ forced him into the back seat of Amy's ute.

"You're both spoil-sports," Nick declared, folding his arms as he sank back into the seat. "We could have stayed out for longer."

Amy replied distractedly as she reversed out of the park. "We've all got work tomorrow," she reminded him. "And the Christmas party tomorrow night."

Nick grinned, his mood suddenly bright again. The idea of the Christmas party seemed to have cheered him up considerably. It was a while before he spoke. "You know, I am very disappointed with this year's Carols in the Park."

PJ raised an eyebrow as he looked over his shoulder to Nick. "Really?"

Nick nodded firmly. "You see Patrick, Foxtrot – they didn't sing 'Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer'. You can't have Carols in the Park without singing that." Drawing in a deep breath, he gave his best impression of an opera singer as he began to belt out the song. "Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose!"

PJ sank forward, hiding his face in his hands. "Oh God, no. Not this."

"And if you ever saw it you would even say it glows…" Nick continued.

Without thinking, Amy found herself joining in. "Like a light bulb."

Nick was grinning. "That's it, Foxtrot!" he told her, hitting the back of her seat happily. "That's the spirit!" Drawing in another breath, he resumed singing. "All of the other reindeers used to laugh and call him names…"

"Like Pinocchio," Amy added, almost laughing too hard now to be easily understood.

"They never let poor Rudolf join in any reindeer games…"

"Like Monopoly."

PJ finally raised his head from his hands. "You see," he said, interrupting Nick as he began the next line of the song. "That's the part I don't get. I mean – why on earth does Rudolf, let alone any reindeer, want to play Monopoly. It's an awful game."

Nick's grin broadened. "Not when you play it Schultz style," he told them with a wink.

PJ raised an eyebrow. "Do I want to know?"

Nick continued as though PJ hadn't spoken at all. "We have natural disasters in our games," he explained. "We have floods, earthquakes and tornadoes."

"What?"

"You see, a flood is when someone pours a glass of water over your houses to wash them all away," Nick clarified, "an earthquake is when someone shakes the board to knock everyone's houses down and a tornado is when someone blows everything away."

"Sounds like cheating to me," PJ pointed out, grinning as he sat back in his seat. It was a good thing that he chose that moment to get back behind the protection the car seat offered – Nick threw his Carols in the Park programme at where PJ's head had been seconds before.

Amy gave a roll of her eyes. "Alright, come on," she told them. The tone of her voice silenced them. It was clear to both of them that they were starting to push it now. "You're worse than a couple of children."

PJ nodded and apologised sincerely. Seconds later, he caught sight of Nick pulling a face at him in the rear view mirror and threw the programme back at him. Unlike Nick, PJ's throw didn't miss.

At the reprimanding yet somewhat amused expression on Amy's face, PJ shrugged. "Sorry," he told her with a sheepish grin. "Nick was asking for it."


It was nearly nine when the phone rang on the kitchen counter where Amy was eating breakfast, that morning's newspaper laid out before her. As CI, they weren't really forced to keep rostered hours like their uniformed colleagues and for once had decided to take advantage of that. She'd been up since six, had gotten dressed hurriedly and gone for a walk to clear the sleep from her head. Once, late nights and early mornings wouldn't have bothered her. In fact, they had just been part of her routine. But she found that lack of sleep was hitting her harder as she got older.

She grabbed the phone from its cradle and raised it to her ear. "Hello, Amy Fox speaking." She was surprised at how formal her tone sounded. She didn't think that would ever change.

"Amy, it's Mark," Mark explained as Amy scratched idly at a mozzie bite. PJ had been right – the mosquitoes had had a field day with her. "We've got a cold burg you should have a look at."

Amy leant forward across the counter, grabbing a pad and pen from where they sat against the wall. "Any details?" she asked, tucking a loose strand of dark hair back behind her ear.

"Yeah, it's at 105 Blake Street," Mark explained as Amy scribbled furiously. "The owner, Elizabeth Carling, was out at Carols in the Park last night and came home this morning to find all her electrical gear gone. TV, computer, VCR, DVD player – the works."

Amy nodded as she put the lid back on the pen. "PJ and I will be out to have a look as soon as possible," she replied and after a quick goodbye, hung up the phone. She sat the note pad aside as she hurriedly finished her breakfast and headed into the bedroom.

PJ was lying in bed, stretching out in his sleep. In the night heat, he'd kicked all the blankets off so Amy had full view of his bare chest and old blue boxers. Grinning, she climbed onto the bed and kissed his lips tenderly.

It seemed to have the desired effect. He began to stir, reaching out for her blindly as he kissed her back. She pulled away a little and found herself laughing at his disappointed groan. "Get up, Peej."

"No!" he moaned, grabbing for her blindly as she climbed off the bed to finish getting ready. She was already dressed – albeit not in one of her usual suits. She'd decided it was too hot for that and was instead wearing a pair of jeans and a fitted emerald green t-shirt that matched the colour of her eyes. As PJ finally opened his eyes, he caught sight of her standing in the ensuite, tying her hair back into a ponytail so her fringe framed her face.

She crouched down beside the bed and kissed his lips again. "It's a cold burg," she teased and, before she knew it, PJ was up. The promise of a crime to solve had been too great for him to resist. He was dressed in record time, wearing the lightest pair of black paints he could find and an old lilac coloured shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He seemed surprised at the casual outfit she was wearing, but didn't comment.

He hurriedly wolfed down a muesli bar and coffee and headed out the door, a grinning Amy in pursuit. It was clear he was happy for a case to solve after a week of nothing worthy of CI involvement.


Elizabeth Carling was waiting outside her house when PJ pulled the CI car to a stop. They'd dropped by the station on the way to pick it as well as the fingerprinting kit and their folders. Elizabeth's eyes widened in delight as she saw them climb out of the car. She was a pretty young thing, probably only in her mid-twenties and with shiny blonde ringlets falling down to her elbows. She was wearing a white singlet and denim shorts that displayed every aspect of her figure perfectly as she ran forward to meet them half-way up the driveway.

PJ spoke first. "I'm Senior Detective Hasham and this is…"

Elizabeth interrupted them. "Your wife," she finished for him. "Senior Detective…oh, I suppose it'd be Hasham too, right?" She was smiling in a nervous, embarrassed kind of way as she looked to Amy.

A faint pink blush rose in Amy's cheeks. "Ah, no," she clarified. "It's, um, still Senior Detective Fox." The blush didn't fade until she walked past Elizabeth and was inspecting the house. It was an old house, probably dating back a hundred years or more. It was brick and weatherboard with a faded tin roof that was in dire need of a paint job, and a chimney that probably hadn't been used within Elizabeth's lifetime.

PJ watched Amy for a moment before turning back to Elizabeth. "I suppose you'd be Elizabeth Carling, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, but call me Lizzie. The only person who calls me Elizabeth is my mother and that's only when I'm in trouble."

PJ nodded, and gestured towards the house. "Can we have a look?"

Lizzie nodded and led PJ up the path to the front door. While PJ went inside, Amy focused on the exterior of the house. There were no forced locks, no broken glass panes, no open windows. In fact, there were no obvious signs of forced entry at all. After a few minutes of confused thought, she joined PJ and Lizzie inside.

The house didn't look like it had been decorated by a woman of Lizzie's age. It was cluttered with old black and white photographs, doilies and old knick knacks that reminded Amy of childhood years spent with her Nan. She shook the memories away before they could reduce her to tears and looked to Lizzie curiously. "How long have you been living here?" she asked.

"Only a few months," Lizzie explained. She went to pick up one of the photographs, only to be stopped by PJ's warning about disturbing evidence. "It's was my grandmother's house. She left it to me in her will when she died. It was pancreatic cancer."

PJ made a sympathetic face. It was clear he was remembering that his mother had met the very same fate years before. Shaking the thought away, he began to speak. "Do you leave a spare key anywhere?" he asked. "Because we can't find any signs of forced entry, so that indicates that whoever broke in had a key."

Lizzie frowned distractedly. "My mum has one for those times when she likes to drop in unannounced…" she trailed off as she thought. "But, other than that, I don't have a spare key. I don't leave one under a pot plant for this very reason."

Amy nodded thoughtfully before prying PJ's fingers off the fingerprinting kit. "I'll get some prints from where the gear was stolen," she explained.


PJ let out a frustrated groan as he and Amy reached the CI car. She dumped the fingerprinting kit on the back seat before looking back to PJ. She wore the same frustrated and confused expression that he did.

"I don't get it," PJ mumbled as he braced himself against the roof of the Ford Falcon. "Unless it's Lizzie Carling's mother who robbed her…it doesn't make sense."

Amy frowned as she let her hands rest against the roof of the car. As she did so, the light caught her wedding ring and brought a hint of a smile to her face. After so long of being PJ's girlfriend and then fiancée, she couldn't quite get used to the idea of being PJ's wife.

"There has to be something we're missing," she pointed out distractedly. "Some other way of getting inside that house that doesn't need a key or force…" She turned her head to look the house over, but in the process found herself distracted by something else.

It was a decoration in the neighbour's front yard. It was a large inflatable chimney with a large inflatable Santa sitting in it. When turned on, Amy imagined that the Santa would probably move up and down as though entering the chimney.

An idea struck her with such force that, for a moment, she was lost for words. She didn't speak until her gaze was back upon the Carling house. "No way on earth…" she mumbled in disbelief.

PJ looked at her in confusion. "What?" he asked. Amy didn't reply, but just pointed at the roof of Lizzie's house. As soon as PJ saw he understood. Amy was looking at the chimney.


Lizzie watched from the ground, confusion rampant in her eyes, as Amy climbed the metal ladder that PJ was holding. Despite PJ's protests, Amy had offered to climb up onto the roof with the fingerprinting kit to check out her theory. She didn't want PJ up here. No matter what PJ had said to try to convince her otherwise, she knew that PJ was infinitely more likely to fall than she was.

It was hard to get a proper foothold on the tin roof. The gloves she had to wear to stop herself from contaminating the scene made staying on the roof even harder. But she managed to not fall, despite the couple of false alarms, and she managed to dust the chimney. It didn't take long to find the evidence she wanted.

"Bingo," she mumbled and her voice, no matter how soft, met PJ's ears.

"What have you got?" he asked, looking as though he was ready to bolt up the ladder to join her. However, he managed to restrain himself.

Amy went to lean over to tell him, but soon regretted it when she began to slip. Careful not to ruin her find, she grabbed hold of the chimney to stabilise herself. "I've found a print!" she called down, her heart still racing from another near-accident. She continued dusting for another few minutes and found a few more prints before finally climbing down.

Getting down was almost harder than getting up. At one point, she nearly ended up sliding right off the roof and crashing to the ground next to PJ. But, somehow, she managed to maintain her footing well enough to get down the ladder and onto the ground without any injuries.

PJ looked at her worriedly, but she ignored him for the moment. "There's at least three prints up there," she explained, a little breathless. "They're all pretty clear. We'll have to get Forensics up there to lift them, though. It's hard enough just staying upright."


Nick began choking on his coffee as he heard PJ and Amy explain their case. From her desk nearby, Dash was laughing, tossing her head and letting her newly-cut shoulder-length hair fly around her face. Ringo was smiling a little from where he stood behind Nick, patting him on the back to try to clear out the coffee. According to Nick, it had gone down the wrong way.

"You're kidding me," Dash said, bringing her knees to her chest as she curled up in her swivel chair. "So we've got some reverse Santa running around, climbing down chimneys and stealing electrical gear and somehow getting it back up the chimney."

Amy shook her head as she sat down on the edge of Dash's desk. "He doesn't have to get it back up the chimney," she explained. "Once he's inside the house, he can unlock the door from the inside. We've found some more prints on the back door. He just walked out the door."

"And he didn't even think to wear gloves?" Nick asked in disbelief as the coughing finally subsided enough for him to speak. "I mean, even the dumbest criminals wear gloves these days, courtesy of CSI."

PJ nodded as he folded his arms across his chest. "Well, if he's not on record, his prints mean nothing unless we catch him. Besides, he probably figured that bare hands made it easier to climb up on the roof without killing himself in the process."

"How did this guy know she wasn't home?" Ringo asked as, realising Nick was alright, he headed back to his desk.

Amy shrugged. "We don't have all the answers yet," she explained. "Maybe he knows her and knew she'd be at Carols in the Park and then spending the night at a friend's place. Maybe he just sat outside her house until she left. There are a lot of maybes at the moment."

Dash nodded thoughtfully. "I can check the records, see if anyone's seen this MO before," she offered enthusiastically. "I can't imagine there'll be a very long list."

PJ nodded before turning to Nick. "You were wrong last night when you kept singing about Santa Claus coming to town," he pointed out with a half-smile. "He's already here."


The Christmas party was already well under way when Mark arrived, a case of beer in his arms. Amy and PJ had been forced to host it this year. With his divorce coming through, Mark had been forced to sell the house he'd once shared with Penny and split the profits and was now living in a small one-room flat in town. And with some big party at the pub that was going to substantially increase Chris' income, the Imperial had been off limits. So Amy and PJ had reluctantly agreed to hold it.

Music was blaring out from the CD player sitting on the plastic garden table. Mark winced a little. He had lost touch with popular music over thirty years ago. It was all just noise to him. Biscuits and dip were sitting on the table near the CD player, surrounded by any number of half-empty beer bottles and wine glasses.

Amy caught sight of him and smiled. She headed over to him, passing Nick on the way. She paused at the sight of the Sergeant standing in front of the fan they'd brought out from inside, his shirt abandoned on a plastic white chair. She made a face. "Oh come on, Schultzy!"

Nick grinned as he looked over to her. "Sorry, Foxtrot," he apologised as he grabbed his shirt and pulled it back on. "Early Chrissie present for you."

She rolled her eyes as she continued over to Mark. She relieved him of the beer, dumping the box over near the esky. "Thanks for coming," she told him. Something about her expression was pained and Mark had to laugh at it. It was obvious that she was already seeing where this party would end up.

And Amy was right. By ten, the yard was littered with empty bottles, bottle caps and packets of various snack foods. The music had gone off hours ago out of respect for the neighbours. Amy and PJ were just out of town enough for the nearest neighbour to not be living on top of them, but they knew that none of them needed the PR disaster of having noise complaints made about a copper's party.

Dash and Adam had finally gone home at nine, saying that they needed to pick Phoebe up from Charlie's at some respectable time of night. Dash, as always, had avoided alcohol, saying that she 'could never have enough water'. And as the night wore on, it had become very clear that Dash was the only really sober person there. None of them got very drunk though. Zoe hadn't forgotten the lesson Amy's hen's night had taught her and Mark was dropping half of his colleagues home. And Amy had never been a big drinker.

Nick, however, had no such qualms about drinking. At one stage, he looked down to his empty beer bottle and looked infuriated. "Oi!" he called, waving the bottle high. "Who drank my beer?!"

Zoe gave a roll of her eyes as she hit her husband over the arm. "You did," she reminded him. "And on that note, I think it's time we got going."

Mark nodded as he stood up, stretching his back from the hours spent sitting in one of the plastic chairs. "I agree," he declared. "Anyone who wants a lift home with me had better get ready quickly."

Mark's offer saw the rest of their colleagues clear out. They'd be leaving their cars at Amy and PJ's and picking them up when their blood alcohol levels would allow them. Once they'd gone, PJ and Amy just looked at each other. They'd stayed the soberest of them all. They knew they'd have the clean-up job and they still had the robbery at Lizzie Carling's to investigate in the morning.

PJ groaned as he finally climbed to his feet. "I'll go get the garbage bags," he promised and returned with two large black plastic bags. He handed one to Amy and they began to clean up.

She laughed a little as she crouched down to clean up the pile of bottles that Nick had dumped on the ground. "Do you reckon we could charge Sergeant Schultz with littering?" she asked.

PJ grinned. "I don't know, but I do now know why I always left these disasters up to the Boss or Chris to organise. Our colleagues are pigs."

"I agree," Amy told him with a smile.

The two continued cleaning for a few more minutes before PJ lost interest in it entirely. He abandoned his garbage bag and headed over to Amy, gathering her up in his arms. She looked at him with an expression of surprise and disbelief.

"I've got an idea," PJ declared as he carried her towards the house. "Let's leave the cleaning and blackmail a certain very drunk Sergeant to do it tomorrow when his hangover has got him nice and pliable."

She laughed as she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his lips. "So," she began with a grin. "If we're leaving the cleaning to Nick, what are we going to do?"

PJ kissed her neck and whispered his reply in her ear. "Oh, I'm sure we'll think of something, my gorgeous wifey."

At this, Amy escaped from PJ's arms and grabbed a cushion from the couch. She threw it at him and it hit him in the chest. He shot her a wounded look. "You called me wifey," she pointed out and found herself laughing as PJ wrapped his arms around her again, pressing his lips hard against hers.


Amy was dozing lightly at her desk when the phone rang. It was mid morning and only half their colleagues had fronted for work. Dash, Mark, herself and PJ had showed, none of them sporting the hangovers that they knew Nick and Ringo most likely had. Nick had apparently been busy last night trying to drink them all under the table, while Ringo had pushed himself to the limit. She expected they might show later in the day once their headaches were under control and they'd downed several Beroccas.

They'd heard back about the burglary. The prints were very clear, but their thief wasn't on record. Which meant that they were close to square one.

She answered the phone and a grin spread across her face. "Oh, Jonesy! How are you? Oh…"

PJ chose that moment to return from the mess room, a packet of sea salt flavoured chips in his hand. He stopped, hand half raised to his mouth at the mention of Jonesy's name and sat down at his desk. A few minutes later, Amy finally managed to wrap up the conversation and sat the phone down. She was wearing a grin.

"What did Jonesy have to say?" PJ asked as he sat back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his head. He didn't really need to ask. He'd been expecting to hear from Jonesy for a few weeks now.

"He's finally stopped admiring his offspring for long enough to make a phone call," Amy explained. "Tess gave birth to a little girl."

He nodded slowly as a hint of a smile crept across his lips. "What have they named her?"

She hesitated for a moment. She knew what PJ would think of when he heard the name. "Joanna Grace Jones."

Amy was right. Instantly, PJ's mind was sent back to Jo Parrish and Grace Curtis and moments long past. Those moments lingered in his mind for a few seconds before he shook himself back to the present and his wife sitting opposite. "Joanna Grace," he mused as his smile broadened. "If she's got even a bit of the women she was named for in her, she'll be brilliant."

Seeing the distant look in PJ's eyes, Amy climbed to her feet and crossed the office to perch herself on the corner of her husband's desk. "Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.

The distance lingered for a moment before fading into a bright sparkle and PJ reached out to pull Amy into his lap. He kissed her neck and cheek passionately as she giggled, half-heartedly trying to free herself from his grasp.

"Peej!"

The door opened, but neither detective realised until they heard Mark clear his throat loudly. "If you two weren't such a good team, I'd have you split up, you know," he told them with a roll of his eyes. "I can suddenly see why everyone has always said that in-office relationships can have an effect on work."

Amy and PJ broke apart and Amy flushed bright red as she slipped back over to her own desk. "Sorry, Boss," she apologised quickly. Tidying her hair, she dared herself to meet his gaze. "You wanted to speak to us?"

"There's been another burglary, same MO as the Carling burg," Mark explained. "The complainant is a Michael Frederickson of 11 Penthope Road. He was staying with his mother last night and came home to find all his electronic gear gone."

PJ raised an eyebrow and looked over to Amy. "I don't suppose he has a chimney, does he?"

A grin spread across Mark's face. "First question I asked him."


Michael Frederickson's house was that of a typical twenty-something bachelor. The burglar had taken his television, computer, DVD player, VCR and PlayStation, but had left his assortment of mouldy pizza boxes, empty beer bottles and men's magazines.

The MO was exactly what they had been expecting – no obvious sign of forced entry and prints aplenty around where the items had once been. They decided to leave the chimney dusting for Crime Scene. Neither of them particularly wanted to chance staying upright on that roof now it had started sprinkling.

It was starting to drizzle in earnest by the time PJ and Amy finished and climbed back into the car.

"Looks like Dash was right," Amy mumbled as she tried to flatten the frizz in her usually neat, straight hair.

"Does that surprise you?"


Dash was busy at her desk when the buzzer sounded from the reception area. She headed out to answer it and found herself standing opposite a man of about thirty wearing a rain-spotted red t-shirt and denim shorts.

"Can I help you?" she asked as she leant across the desk.

He held out an old wallet. It was fairly plain black leather. Dash took it hesitantly.

"I found this on a bench in the park. Someone must have dropped it," he explained. "There's no money inside. I probably would have kept it otherwise."

Dash couldn't help but smile. An honest man. She opened the wallet and began to dig through it. There was no sign of any identification – no credit cards, no driver's licence, not even a library card. It had been emptied and dumped. But as she dug through, she found herself surprised to find a scrap of paper.

She pulled it out and studied it with narrowed eyes. It was an envelope that someone had written on, a list of some sort. Her eyes widened as she realised what it was. She was so captivated that she didn't notice the man opposite talking to her.

"Can I go?" he asked, as Dash finally snapped back to attention.

She nodded, thanked him and watched him leave before heading back into the muster room. Her mind was still whirling with the gravity of her discovery. It wasn't just any old list of addresses. It couldn't be. Not when the first two on the list had just been burgled and her own house was down as the next target.


PJ and Amy were both very interested by Dash's discovery. Amy studied the list, marking each on an old, worn town map, while PJ frowned distractedly. It was PJ who spoke first. "Your house has a chimney, doesn't it, Dash?"

Dash nodded. "It was part of the attraction of the place," she replied as she leant back against the CI office door. "I never imagined it would make me a target for a burglar. I don't know who could know Adam and I are going to spend Christmas night at Charlie's. I don't remember telling anyone other than you guys."

Amy shrugged thoughtfully. "Have there been any reports of missing wallets lately?" she asked, looking up from the map. At Dash's shaking head, she sighed thoughtfully. "Our thief might not report it. He might have realised that we'd work out what that list was."

PJ nodded as he intertwined his fingers behind his head. His frown deepened. "We're looking for someone who knows that these houses have chimneys, knows he can gain access through them and knows when the owners are going to be out." He looked across to Amy before looking up to Dash. "Who would know that?"

"Hairdresser?" Dash proposed with a shrug. "People confide in them a lot. I know my mum always said that they were better than a shrink and a lot cheaper too."

Amy shook her head. "We need to find someone who has had access to these houses and knows about the chimneys. Maybe a builder or someone with access to the house plans."

"Some of these houses are old," Dash pointed out, nodding to the list under Amy's left hand. "I doubt they ever had a house plan at all, let alone one that survived. I know my house doesn't."

PJ switched his gaze between the two women before something hit him and a grin spread across his face. The glint in his eyes was unmistakable. "What about a real estate agent?"

Amy nodded thoughtfully. She'd caught PJ's train of thought perfectly. She looked up to Dash. "Would you be able to give us a list of the real estate agencies in Mt. Thomas?"

It was PJ who replied. "Not plural," he told her as he climbed to his feet. "There's only one real force in real estate in Mt. Thomas anymore."

Dash grinned as she added, "Celia Donald."


Celia was adjusting something in the window when Amy and PJ arrived. Her grin broadened, showing the wrinkles around her eyes. She'd never admit it, but age was finally starting to take its toll on the once youthful face and was even sending streaks of grey through her short dark curls.

"Ah, Senior Detective Hasham!" she exclaimed, opening the door for them. "And Senior Detective Fox! It would be too much to hope that you're after a new little love nest?"

PJ chuckled nervously as Amy offered a weak smile. "Ah, not quite, Celia," he replied as he pulled the crumpled envelope out of his pocket. "We just need to ask you about these properties…"

Celia took the list from PJ's hand and raised an eyebrow. "Some of my nicest properties," she told him. "Ah, Dash's house! How is she enjoying it?"

"Fine, as far as I'm aware," Amy answered, turning back to Celia. She'd been busy admiring some of the other houses Celia had available for sale. "We need to know whether these properties were ever looked after by Donald Real Estate."

Celia read through the list once again before nodding. "Yeah, all of them were," she replied. "Some quite a while ago, though, but they'd still be on the computer somewhere. Not that I know how the use the darned thing…"

There was a crash from somewhere behind the front desk that caught Amy and PJ's attention. They followed Celia back into the stationery room, where a woman of about twenty-five was crouched over a split box of note pads. She was clearly a Donald relation – she had Celia's hair and complexion.

Celia looked exasperated. "Vivien!" she cried. "You really should watch where you're going!"

Vivien turned red and looked away. "Sorry, Aunty Celia," she apologised and promptly began cleaning up as Celia led Amy and PJ back out to the main office.

"That's my niece – my brother's daughter," Celia explained. "Poor girl. My brother drank their savings away after his wife died and left Vivien with nothing. I figured the least I could do was give her a job. Unfortunately, I don't think she's very good at it…"

Amy interrupted, realising that letting Celia continue talking would end up with them still there at New Year's. "Well, thank you for you time, Ms. Donald."

"Celia, please," Celia told her as Amy and PJ left.

PJ frowned as they headed back to the car. "So someone connected to Donald Real Estate is breaking into houses," he mused. His eyes lit up as he looked to Amy with a smile. "How would you feel about staking out Dash's house tomorrow night?"


Christmas Day dawned over Mt. Thomas as a humid, overcast day that held the promise of rain – and lots of it. An occasional roll of thunder or flash of lightning in the distance told the town what it was in for.

For Mark Jacobs, the day was making him feel distinctly uncomfortable. Christmas had not turned out the way he had planned. Freya had decided to spend her Christmas break with her uni friends in Melbourne. Mark wasn't too surprised. They had never been particularly close before Penny had walked out and getting to know one another was never going to be easy.

Besides, even Mark didn't relish the thought of spending Christmas in his dingy little flat. Part of the divorce settlement had been selling the house and splitting it fifty-fifty. Unfortunately, house prices had gone up a lot since Mark had last visited a real estate agent and had been rather limited in what he could afford. The two-bedroom flat was all he could manage. It wouldn't be too bad if he decorated it properly, he supposed, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. He was the only one who was going to see it anyway.

After a quick Christmas phone call to Freya, Mark dressed hurriedly and headed out into the living room. A photograph caught his eye and, for a moment, his heart almost physically ached. Seeing the forty year old photograph of him and his brother brought back memories that he didn't particularly relish.

So, grabbing his umbrella, he decided to head over to the Imperial Hotel and see how Chris and Ringo were spending their Christmas.


Adam was not holding up much better. It was hard for him to watch Dash fuss over Phoebe opening her presents without thinking of the little boy who would never again open his Christmas presents. But, knowing that Phoebe didn't know about Wade and not wanting to worry Dash, he put on a brave face for their sakes and forced a smile. He knew why his son's memory was hitting him harder this Christmas than most. Tomorrow would be the fifth anniversary of his death.

He tried not to think about it too much. He had vowed to enjoy this Christmas – the first with his daughter – and he intended to do that. He knew Wade would never have wanted him to be miserable for the rest of his life and, besides, Phoebe deserved a good Christmas.


It was Christmas night when PJ and Amy found themselves sitting in Dash and Adam's living room, trying to hide their impatience while they waited for their thief to appear. In the end, they settled down on the couch and watched some daggy Christmas movie on Channel Seven. Amy snuggled closer to PJ as they heard the sound of rain on Dash's roof.

"These kinds of Christmas movies used to be a family tradition when I was a kid," Amy told him with a half-laugh. "Brendan and Damian would wake me up at about five in the morning to open presents, then we'd spend the rest of the day watching crappy Christmas movies. Occasionally we'd have a water fight in the backyard."

PJ laughed. "The Hashams were a bit insane at Christmas, too," he told her. "Mum would take us to Christmas mass and then we'd spend the rest of the day surrounded by Hasham relatives that we didn't even know." He grinned as his eyes became distant. "Christmas is always so magical when you're a kid. It's sort of sad how it loses its appeal."

Amy nodded sadly as she looked over to the tree. Dash had apparently gone all out. It was a large tree, covered almost completely in coloured baubles, tinsel and an assortment of Santa decorations, with a star topping it off. It made her smile a little. "You know this is our second anniversary, don't you?" she asked, turning her emerald gaze to meet PJ's eyes.

He nodded as he tightened his grasp on her and kissed her forehead gently. "I know," he told her with a smile. With a gentle hand, he swept the hair from her neck and ran a hand along the tiny trace of a scar. Over the last two years, it had faded to the point that it could only be seen by someone who knew to look for it. Amy flinched a little at the memory of the attack. "I finally worked out what mattered that night."

She offered him a half-smile as she raised a hand to his to lower it from the scar. "We've come a long way," she reminded him. "Everyone has. Things seemed so much different then."

"That's because they were," he replied, kissing her cheek tenderly. "But the past makes us who we are. Truth is, we wouldn't change it for anything."

She smiled as she kissed his lips, only to be disturbed by footsteps outside. They shared a puzzled stare, until they heard the sound of a ladder being placed against the side of the house. Amy and PJ climbed up off the couch and waited, sharing a smile, until they heard their burglar climbing down the chimney. They pressed themselves against the wall either side of the fireplace and waited.

The thief didn't notice them at first. In fact, he didn't notice them at all until PJ pounced, grabbing him in one smooth gesture. He struggled for a moment, before realising that he was gone and giving up.

Amy stepped forward, arms folded across her chest and a grin on her face. "Well, hello Santa," she said. "How nice of you to drop in."

PJ pulled back the balaclava and for a moment was speechless. They'd been expecting a man and their thief was actually a woman with dark curls. It was Vivien Donald.

"Or should it be Mrs. Claus," PJ added and led Vivien to the unmarked police car parked out the front of the house next door.


Vivien didn't speak as PJ turned on the tape recorder in the station's interview room. "Interview commenced between Senior Detective Hasham and Vivien Donald on the 25th of December at the Mt. Thomas Police Station." Smiling over at Amy, he added. "Also present is Senior Detective Fox." Abandoning the tape recorder to sit down next to Amy, PJ shrugged. "So you want to explain why Senior Detective Fox and I caught you sneaking down someone else's chimney?"

"I was just dropping in on a friend…" Vivien began, but didn't get a chance to finish.

"Well, that's funny," Amy interrupted, "because Senior Constable McKinley has never heard of you or invited you around. And she certainly didn't give you permission to enter her house via the chimney."

Vivien shook her head. "I don't have to say anything," she told them firmly.

PJ raised an eyebrow before shrugging. "If that's what you want," he replied. "Vivien Donald, I am charging you with burglary…"

Panic flashed through Vivien's face. "Wait, wait!" she cried. "You can't just charge me!"

A half-smile crossed Amy's face. "We can," she pointed out. "We caught you in the act. I'm willing to put money on your prints matching those at the scenes of the other burglaries. You have access to your aunt's records. You could find out about these houses easily."

PJ looked at her sympathetically. "It can't be easy, having your father drink away your savings."

Vivien's expression became pained and tears shimmered in her eyes as she met PJ's gaze. "Dad went right off the rails after Mum died," she explained. "Losing her hurt him too much. The only thing that made him feel better was getting off his face. It meant he could forget for a little while."

"Losing a parent is never easy," PJ sympathised. "My father died when I was a teenager. It was hard."

Vivien nodded. "I missed Mum," she whispered as tears began to trickle down her cheeks. "I missed her so much. And then Dad had to go and drink everything away. Not mention bloody Aunty Celia thinking she's doing me a favour."

"You didn't want to go into real estate?" Amy queried.

"No!" Vivien snapped as she combed dark curls back from her eyes. "I wanted to be journalist. But Aunty Celia wouldn't hear a thing of it. She told me not to be so bloody stupid and to take advantage of a good thing. I think she just wanted an heir because she just realised she'd never bothered procreating."

PJ nodded understandingly. "So is that why you starting breaking into houses? To get the money to do what you wanted to do?"

Vivien was nodding and agreeing with PJ before she realised what she was doing. Realising that there was no way out, she began explaining. "Getting access to the files was easy. Aunty Celia doesn't really know how the use the computer. She's been paying people to deal with it for years. Then…all I had to do was ask around. In a town like Mt. Thomas, at least someone seems to know what everyone else is up to. Chris Riley was a good source." Seeing the look on PJ's face, she quickly added, "She didn't know what I was doing. I just worked the conversation around to the topic and she let it slip. It's not her fault."

"What about the wallet?" Amy asked. She pointed to the wallet and list which were both in their own evidence bags on the table.

Vivien sighed despondently. "Someone must have nicked it out of my handbag. I didn't think you'd work out what the list was, but just in case you did, I didn't come forward to report it missing."

"But you still went ahead with the robbery?" Amy asked in disbelief, shaking her head.

Vivien shrugged. "I guess I got too cocky. I never thought you'd work out the chimney thing. That's why I did it. That and I thought it was a little funny."


Amy was dealing with Celia Donald in the reception area when Vivien was correcting PJ's spelling of her name on the charge sheet.

"No 'A'," she told him with a half-smile. He simply stared at her blankly. "It's Vivien with an 'E'. As in Vivien Leigh."

PJ raised an eyebrow. "Vivien Leigh?"

Vivien laughed a little. "Yeah, you know…Gone with the Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire…must be before your time, then."

He returned her laugh. "I do know who Vivien Leigh is; you might be surprised to know."

Amy had appeared in the doorway and smiled at PJ's comment. "Oh, I don't know, Peej," she said. "I thought your knowledge of Hollywood stars stopped at Bruce Willis."

PJ and Vivien turned to look at her. PJ's grin broadened at the playful twinkle in Amy's eyes, while Vivien's faded at the sight of her aunt.

Celia sighed as she looked at her niece. "I'm sorry," she said. The little tears in her eyes conveyed her sincerity. "You should have just told me to shove it instead of doing this."

A hint of a smile played on Vivien's lips. "You'd have understood?"

"Contrary to popular belief, I do have a heart, Viv," Celia told her as she wrapped an arm around her niece. "I do love you."

Recognising Celia and Vivien's need for privacy, Amy and PJ slipped out of the interview room. They shared a smile. Even experienced coppers like themselves loved a happy ending – or as happy as it got in their job.


The rain kept up through the night. By ten, a severe storm warning had been issued, although a little late for the residents of Mt. Thomas. Christmas night and the morning of Boxing Day saw the officers dragged out of bed at all hours, adding calls to fallen trees and debris breaking windows that really should have been dealt with by the SES. But they did it anyway. It seemed that in Mt. Thomas, the police would always be the first preference in times of need.

Despite the howling wind outside, the officers found themselves at work on Boxing Day. The power had been taken out, but the phone lines were still working and so the calls kept coming. Dash and Ringo barely had time to sit down all morning.

Nick didn't come in until midday and was passing a weary hand across his eyes as he flopped down at his desk. Amy was sitting at Dash's desk, a torch lying at her right arm to compensate for the lack of lights and the dark stormy sky outside. She smiled at him. "You seem tired," she told him.

He laughed a little as he tried to shake the water from his hair. "Yeah, the boys were up half the night playing their new Nintendo Wii or whatever it's called."

"So Christmas went well?"

He thought for a moment and nodded. "Yeah, it was good," he replied. He laughed again. "Only complaint we got from the twins this year was that Zoe had refused to buy them some computer game they'd begged for. She reckoned it was too violent and was going to affect their behaviour."

Amy chuckled. "Video games don't affect kids' behaviour," she told him. "If they did, I'd spend my free time running around darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music."

Nick stared at her blankly before a knowing smile spread across his face. "Ah, Pac-Man!" he exclaimed. "Foxtrot, I must admit I didn't pick you for a video game player."

She grinned. "Hey, I grew up as part of the golden age of the video arcade, remember?" she reminded him. Nick chuckled and Amy looked to him thoughtfully. "So where are the boys now?"

"At a mate's place," he replied. "Zo had to go to work too."

Amy nodded and went to head back to her office, only for the phone to ring. She groaned as she grabbed it. "Mt. Thomas Police Station, Senior Detective Fox speaking…" As she listened, Amy's smile faded quickly. "Look, ma'am, you'll have to speak a little slower, I can't quite understand…oh God, okay…we'll be out there as soon as we can…Yep, just hang in there, okay? Bye."

As Amy hung up the phone, Nick fixed her with an inquisitive stare. "What's happened?"

She looked at him with a pained expression on her face. "Your boys have gone missing."


The station was empty when Mark emerged from the mess room to find the phone ringing. He cursed under his breath as he grabbed it from the receiver. "Mt. Thomas Police Station, Senior Sergeant…" He paused as he recognised the voice. He'd recognise it anywhere. "Chris?"

Chris sounded upset and panicked and Mark couldn't say no to her request for help. As soon as he'd calmed her down a little, he hung up the phone and raced out of the station without stopping to transfer the phones through to St. Davids or even leave a note for his colleagues for when they got back.

Chris was soaked by the time Mark arrived, holding his hands above his head as though they might somehow keep the rain out. She was tearing down the stairs, carrying a bucket of water. "The bloody ceiling's leaking in room five," she lamented. Her eyes were red, but it was hard to tell whether or not she'd been crying because tears mingled with rainwater. "One of the windows is gone…the place is bloody flooding."

Mark gently took the bucket from her hands and grabbed her shoulders. It seemed to calm Chris down a little, but did nothing for the pounding of his heart. Ever since the wedding, the mere sight of Chris kept sending his heart into a flutter. He couldn't quite understand why. The only person who had ever had anything near this effect on him was Piper Morris.

"It'll be alright," he told her gently, running a hand along her cheek to try to dry it. She simply stared at him from beyond her limp, water-straightened curls with wide, almost disbelieving blue eyes.

She broke away from his hold and Mark drew in a deep breath to steady himself. Each howl of wind, each crash of thunder brought back memories that he had never told anyone about, a fear that he had never known before or since.

"Okay," he declared. He headed over to close the door and, realising that the wind wouldn't let it stay closed, pushed a table up against it. He then motioned to the smashed window. Either wind or flying debris had taken it out. "Is there a mattress I can borrow from upstairs?"

Chris frowned for a moment, a little flustered, before nodding. "Yeah, I suppose you could use the one from room five, it's already soaked…"

She had scarcely finished before Mark was bolting up the stairs. He returned with the water-logged mattress. With a little help from Chris, he shoved it up against the window and used another couple of tables to keep it there.

"That ought to hold," he mused, before looking over to Chris. It was only then that adrenaline seemed to relinquish its hold on her and she collapsed back against the bar, shivering. He was at her side in a heartbeat, wrapping her up in one of the towels she had brought down from upstairs to try to clean up with. "Are you okay?" he asked worriedly. "You're shivering."

She nodded firmly as she tried to wriggle out of Mark's hold. She'd made up her mind not to fall in love again and now it seemed her heart was doing its hardest to change her mind. "I'm fine," she lied. But she knew she wasn't. Mark knew too and headed around to the other side of the bar to pour her a glass of brandy. "I hope you're going to pay for that."

He pushed the glass into her hand and she took it gratefully. The alcohol seemed to help warm her a little, but her wet clothes were still winning.

"Maybe I should run you over to the hospital," Mark suggested, his eyes still regarding her in concern. "You're still shivering."

She fixed him with a pointed stare that silenced Mark. He got the impression that she'd happily fight him if he made that suggestion again. It was part of the fiery nature of hers that he had fallen in love with.


Tara Hobson was waiting in the living room, wringing her hands when Amy and Nick arrived. She was barely able to get up to let the two police officers in. While Nick seemed too much in shock to function properly, Amy wasn't so impaired and noted everything about the little living room. It was full of photographs of Tara, her husband and their two children – a boy of about Nick's sons' age and a girl about the same age as Dash's daughter.

"About what time did you notice they were missing?" Amy asked as she sat down in the chair opposite the couch where Nick and Tara sat, each looking as worried as the other.

Tara looked up at her, a little flustered. "Not long after Zoe dropped Travis and Trevor off," she finally managed to choke out as she began chewing on a fingernail. "I couldn't find the twins or my kids. I checked the yard, everywhere. They're gone."

"And what are your little ones' names?" Amy asked.

Nick replied before Tara could. "Cody is eight – the same age as my boys. Bianca is four."

Amy nodded and wrote the names down on her notepad. "Do you have a recent photo we could borrow?"

Tara pointed to one on the coffee table next to Amy's chair. The detective picked it up and stared at the little faces looking back at her. She shook herself back to attention and offered Tara a reassuring smile. "We'll do everything we possibly can to find them, Mrs. Hobson. I promise."

Tara fixed her with an agonised stare. "Will that be enough, Senior Detective Fox?"

Amy knew that this was the time she was supposed to instil Tara with the utmost confidence in the police, but she simply couldn't. Not when Tara's eyes told her that she already knew the truth, and certainly not when Nick's piercing blue eyes were seeing right through to her soul.

"I don't know."


Zoe felt the colour drain from her face as Nick spoke. She could barely speak enough to finish the call. The whole world suddenly seemed to be moving way too fast and she just wanted to return to when things were normal. She was trembling by the time Adam entered her office, his hands in the pockets of his plain black pants.

"Zoe?" he asked with worried eyes. "What did Nick want?" When Zoe didn't reply, Adam's mind began to whirl. "Has something happened? Has someone been hurt?"

For a moment Zoe couldn't reply. Finally, she looked to him with a broken expression on her face. "The boys are missing," she explained. "And so are the kids they were with."

Adam nodded slowly before fixing her a sympathetic expression. Inside, he felt as though his stomach was tying itself into knots. It seemed unthinkable to him that this should happen on the fifth anniversary of Wade's death. And, as Zoe looked into his eyes, he knew that she was thinking the same thing. Other than Dash, Zoe was the only person Adam had trusted with the story of his son.

Zoe suddenly seemed to come to life. She grabbed her car keys from her desk and hurried off down the corridor. Adam called after her. "Where are you going?" he asked.

She stared at him pointedly. "I have to find my sons."

Adam raced after her. "Then I'm coming with you."


They seemed to drive around aimlessly. Neither of them knew where to start looking. Even Adam, with all his prior police experience, wasn't sure what to do. It didn't seem likely that the kids would have gone down to the local store to buy lollies. Even eight year old boys weren't fond of this kind of weather.

In the end, their lead jumped out at them. Zoe only just saw Cody Hobson in time to stop the car to avoid hitting him. He stood in the middle of the road, his t-shirt clinging to his skin and his blonde hair plastered over his head. He was crying and yelling and waving his arms around and raced over to Zoe as soon as she had opened her car door.

"They're down there! They're down there!" he shouted, grabbing Zoe's hand and trying to forcibly drag her towards something off the main road. The visibility was poor, but she thought she just made out a little girl clinging to a tiny, shaking kitten a few metres away.

"Who's down where?" Adam asked, crouching down to Cody's level.

Cody stared at him as though he was stupid. "Travis and Trevor!" he cried. "Bi saw this kitten through the window and went after it and they decided to come help me find her. She was in the drain. We managed to get her out, but then there was this big wave and…"

Zoe didn't stop to hear the rest. She pulled her arm free from Cody's grasp and raced over towards the storm water drain. She was screaming her sons' names, but the sounds were nearly drowned out by the thunder and rain.

Adam followed her over to the drain entrance. It was a hole in the ground with a ladder leading down to the rushing, swirling water below. It brought back nightmares, memories that he had tried so hard to suppress. Suddenly, he could hear Wade's desperate cries again as though it had only been yesterday and not five years ago.

Before he knew what was happening, Zoe was climbing down the ladder.

"What are you doing?" he demanded, snapping back to attention.

She fixed him with a stare that said more than words ever could and carefully began to make her way along the drain. Before long, she was out of sight.

Adam felt his heart in his throat. This was everything he was scared of. This was why he never went to the beach anymore, why he gave even swimming pools a wide berth. Water had ripped his little boy from his arms and had haunted his nightmares for five years. The idea of going after Zoe was terrifying, but he knew he couldn't do anything else but follow her. Just as Wade had needed him, the twins needed him now.

He turned to Cody, who was standing next to his sister and looked simply stunned. Adam grabbed his mobile out of his pocket and checked it. Despite the rain, it still worked. He pushed it into Cody's hand.

"Do you think that you can be really brave for me right now?" he asked. At Cody's nod, Adam pointed to the phone. "I need you to call someone for me. A man named Nick. His number is in that phone. Tell him to come here now and bring help."

Cody nodded and opened the flip-phone. He began to search the phone book. Adam cast him one last encouraging glance before lowering himself into the hole and climbing down into the swirling, angry, dark water below him.


Nick was trying to clear a broken tree limb from the road in front of their car when his mobile rang. Amy looked at it for a moment, not quite comprehending that it was actually ringing. She was too cold and too much in shock to really take anything in. She was already soaked to the bone.

She grabbed Nick's mobile and read the name on-screen. It was Adam. She looked to Nick for a moment, contemplating calling him back, before deciding to answer it herself. "Adam?"

"No." It was a child's voice that replied. "It's Cody Hobson. You're not Nick."

Amy frowned, a little confused and relieved at the same time. "No, I'm Amy Fox, I'm a Detective. We're looking for you. Your mum's worried about you."

"Dr. Hamilton and the man with her are down in the drain," he explained in a breathless, hysterical voice that nearly blew out Amy's eardrum. "Trevor and Travis are down in the drain…a big wave took them away…"

Panic rose within her and she felt a lump in her throat. "Where are you Cody?" she asked, trying to keep her voice level and calm. She needed the boy to remain calm enough to talk to her. "Which drain are you talking about?"

"The one…" Cody was sobbing now, Amy realised as she tried to comb her dripping hair back from her eyes. "The one near the main road near the National Park. Mum and Dad always said never to go near there, but we had to find Bianca…"

"Is Bianca okay?"

"She's okay, we got her out in time," Cody replied, hiccoughing a little. "Please hurry."

Amy nodded, before remembering that Cody couldn't see her. "We'll be there as soon as we possibly can, promise," she vowed. She reassured Cody again and hung up just as Nick returned to the car.

He recognised the look in her eyes. "Oh God," he mumbled.

She looked to him before her auto-pilot took over. "Just drive, Nick," she told him firmly. "I'll tell you where to go. Zoe and Adam have found them."


Chris poured herself another glass of brandy. It was helping, if only with keeping her nerves under control. As she put the lid back on the bottle, she noticed Mark was standing over near one of the unbroken windows, staring out into the storm with eyes that shone with a pain Chris couldn't quite explain or understand. She poured him a glass too.

"You should come away from there," she told him as he turned to her. "I don't particularly want to end up with an unconscious man on my hands if another window goes."

Mark forced a smile for her sake and crossed the room to her. He took the glass and gulped the alcohol down in a single mouthful. It didn't really help. His problem went much deeper than the cold. But he thanked her anyway before sitting down on the floor, his clothes already too wet for the flooded floor to have any effect.

As he leant back against the bar, Chris sat down beside him. She looked at him worriedly. Something about the look in his eyes concerned her. "Is something wrong?" she asked.

He didn't look at her. He couldn't. He knew that if he met her gaze even just once, he'd end up spilling everything to her. But, somehow, the idea of telling Chris didn't seem so bad. Maybe he had hung onto the fear for too long.

"Mark?" Chris' concern had deepened and she laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "You can talk to me you know."

He acted as though he hadn't heard her. "I might get another drink," he said, but as he tried to climb to his feet, he slipped and fell back against the bar again.

Chris looked at him sympathetically. "I think you should talk to me," she told him. She gave a thoughtful shrug. "Sometimes the barmaid's better than the booze."

Mark looked to her and forced a smile at her. But the smile wavered as he met her gaze. He had been right first time – that look was going to make him tell her everything. "Storms scare me a little," he finally admitted. "That's all."

He should have known that wasn't going to satisfy Chris. "Why?" she asked, pulling the towel tighter around her shoulders.

"You'd remember Cyclone Tracy, wouldn't you?" he asked quietly as little tears pricked up in his eyes. "You would have only been a kid then, but you might remember."

Chris nodded. She did remember waking up that Christmas and coming downstairs to find half of Mt. Thomas staring, transfixed, at the news reports on the television in the Parlour. She remembered the news footage of the devastation and she definitely remembered the stunned look on Tom Croydon's face when she had finally convinced him that she was old enough to handle whatever had happened up there.

"I remember," she replied, shuffling closer to them so that their bodies were just centimetres apart.

Mark nodded at her. He sighed despondently at the memories that were now tumbling out. "My older brother, Kevin, had moved up to Darwin a few years before," he explained. "He said it was a boom town. He used to always say how much he loved it. The only thing he didn't love was the heat."

She suddenly worked out where Mark was going with his story. "You were up there visiting him at Christmas 1974, weren't you?" she asked hesitantly, almost dreading the answer.

"Yeah," he finally told her, nodding slowly. "I had Christmas holidays. I wanted to see this place Kevin kept going on about. I went up a couple of weeks before Christmas. And, truth is, I liked the place. I mean, apart from the heat." He paused for a moment, a half-smile crossing his face as he continued to stare into Chris' mesmerising eyes. "I remember when they first put out the cyclone warnings. I worried. I'd never seen anything like it before, but no one else was fazed. Kevin told me that they'd had a cyclone warning not long before, but it had just turned away and gone out to sea. Besides, it's a little hard to be scared of something named after your great-aunt."

Chris smiled a little at Mark's comment. But it faded as the pain returned to his eyes anew. "What happened?"

Mark sighed as he let his head fall back against the side of the bar. His mind was spinning was noise, but it wasn't the noise of the storm raging around them. It was in memory of a very different storm many years before. He tried to shake himself back to the present, but it was hard.

"We were at a Christmas party," he explained, "but I made Kevin leave early. It was getting way too windy. It was probably a good thing we left when we did, because the wind was already so strong that it practically pushed our car back to his place. We thought being inside would be enough, but then the windows and louvres went. We followed the instructions on the radio and hid in the bathroom." The memories were making his breathing uneven and his voice strained. "And, ah…I guess that alright for a while, but the house was just going completely around us. But then this bloody piece of metal came from nowhere and impaled Kevin."

Chris' mouth dropped open in horror and she found tears of her own playing in her eyes. "Oh God, Mark…"

"It was pitch-black, I couldn't see anything," he continued, trembling a little now from a mixture of the cold and the old fear. "The house has completely gone around me. I had to cling to the stair railing to get outside." He began to gesture the shape of his brother's house with his hands. "There was this little brick shed thing under the house. I thought I could hide in there, but one half had already gone. I couldn't find the car. I couldn't find anything in the dark. All I could do was crawl up against the one remaining wall and pray to God that it would be over soon." He stared at Chris with an expression that almost bewildered Chris in its intensity. "I thought that we were the only ones with the problem, Chris. I lost track of time. I just kept praying for light so I could find the house next door and get inside." He sighed as he composed himself again. "I was okay behind that wall during the first wind. It was after it changed direction that things got worse."

Chris was tempted to ask him how it was possible for things to get worse than a dead brother, a disintegrated house and a cyclone, but she didn't. She knew her place in this confession. Mark was telling her because he knew she'd just listen and let him talk. She reached out and wrapped her arms around his and let her head rest on his shoulder. It seemed to comfort him and he managed to continue.

"I couldn't move during the eye. I was just too scared. I know some people were moving though. It was so quiet…you could hear people screaming and crying and calling out for people. Some people actually thought it was over. Some of those people were caught out when the second wind hit. Some of died because they'd left their hiding places." He looked at her and reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek. He didn't want her crying on his account. "The second wind sent all the debris at me. It just kept cutting me and cutting me…"

He paused, thinking for a moment before pulling himself free of Chris' grasp. Slowly, he unbuttoned his shirt. As soon as it was off his shoulder, he heard her let out a little strangled cry.

Chris hadn't been prepared for what Mark had shown her. His whole torso and upper arms were covered in faint white scars. She raised a tentative hand to trace the longest one. It ran across the whole width of his upper back and most of his upper right arm. He flinched a little, but not because it caused him pain.

For a moment, she was rendered breathless. When she finally remembered to breath, she choked out, "Oh, Mark."

"When daylight came, I realised how badly I was hurt. Some of the cuts even went down to the bone. It took me half a day to find the hospital. Without any landmarks or street signs, even life-long residents were lost. When I got there, they were out of anaesthetic. All they could do was clean the wounds and stitch them up as best they could and put me on one of the evacuation flights. I was just lucky I got one to Melbourne." He offered her a half-hearted smile. "I recovered. I went back to work. I got on with my life. And I've never spoken about this since."

Chris raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "Not even to Penny?" she asked in a whisper. "I mean, she must have seen the scars…"

Mark nodded slowly. "She did notice," he admitted, "but I couldn't tell her. It just…didn't feel right. I told her they were from an accident. I think she assumed it was a car accident and never asked again." He sighed despondently. "I always sort of hoped she would. I always sort of wanted to tell someone."

Chris smiled at him encouragingly. "Well, now you have," she told him gently. "Do you feel any better?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "A little," he decided. "I think that it has something to do with the fact that it was you I told."

She nodded slowly, before suddenly realising she was actually cold. She was freezing. She hadn't noticed how cold she'd gotten due to her horror at Mark's story. Mark noticed too and reached out to pull her into his arms and against his bare chest.

"Are you okay?" he asked, running a hand along her cheek and brushing damp curls back from her face. "You're shivering more than anyone else I've ever met."

She nodded. "I wish you'd stop saying that," she mumbled and, before she even realised what was happening, she was kissing him hard and he was kissing her back.


Amy couldn't keep up with Nick as he raced over to the storm drain. He didn't even stop to talk to Cody and Bianca. Amy did though. She reassured them as best she could – and wasn't very convincing – and took them over to the police four wheel drive to get them out of the rain. They were thoroughly soaked and the kitten in Bianca's arms was simply terrified.

By the time she returned to the drain, Nick was already gone. She could feel her heart in her throat as she looked down into the dark, gushing water. She didn't think she – let alone the twins – stood a chance in that. But she didn't give it a second thought and climbed down after him. Nick was her friend and so were Zoe and Adam and she could leave them or the boys down there without at least trying to save them.

The water nearly swept her away the minute she lowered herself into it. She had to grab hold of the ladder rungs to stay upright. It was deeper than she'd imagined and darker too. She was suddenly very glad she was taller than average, or otherwise she would have been underwater by now.

She didn't know where to start. She tried wading against the rush, but got nowhere and instead tried to go with it. She kept one hand against the side of the drain, hoping it might stop her from getting lost down there. After a few metres, her hand hit thin air and she realised she could hear yelling.

The drain branched off and Amy could just make out a grate at the end. There was a tiny figure clinging to the grate, having climbed up near the top to avoid the rising water. He was crying out for help. Amy waded through the water towards him. It was one of the Schultz twins, but she couldn't tell which.

His crying became more frantic as Amy reached out to touch his back. "I want my Mummy!" he screamed.

"It's okay!" Amy replied, almost screaming to be heard above the water. "It's Amy! Remember me?" He nodded slowly. The water lifted her from her feet for a moment and threw her up against the grate hard. Her body cried out in pain, but she pushed the sensation back. There were bigger things to worry about. "Okay, mate, just grab onto me, okay?"

"I can't!" he cried. "I want my Mum and Dad!"

A rush of water went past and Amy swallowed a mouthful. She began to cough. "It'll be okay, alright? You've got to grab onto me, okay? We'll get out of here! Your Mum and Dad are down here and they'll find your brother, but you've got to come with me, okay?"

He stared at her with teary eyes for a long moment before nodding. "'Kay," he finally managed and wrapped his arms around Amy. Holding onto him was harder than Amy had thought. She'd underestimated how much an eight year old boy could weigh, especially one who had inherited Nick's tallness. But, somehow, she managed to battle the rush back to the main drain.

She wished more than anything else that everything would quieten down just a little. Between the water and the boy's screams, she couldn't hear herself think. Everything seemed to be moving far too fast and she could barely hang on. Fighting the water back to the ladder was harder than it had been first time around and she just couldn't move anywhere. She knew she had to – the water was up to her shoulders – but just keeping the boy's head above water was taking all her strength.

She just couldn't fight the water. A new rush came through, knocking her off her feet and pushing her under. In the shock, she had lost her breath and now was swallowing water as her lungs desperately tried to find air. She couldn't even try to swim, not with the boy in her arms. But even that didn't last long, because the water ripped him from her arms.

For a moment, her heart stopped and she forgot momentarily that her own life was in danger. She wanted to cry and scream, but she couldn't do anything. Her own predicament returned sharply and she tried to fight the water, but it was no use. Her chest was hurting from the lack of air and she was getting dizzy. Her energy was going and she just couldn't fight anymore.

The last thing she could remember before unconsciousness claimed her was being thrown against the side of the drain and choking out PJ's name.


When she came to, Amy was coughing harder than she ever had before, sending water gushing onto the grass beside her head. She was lying down and the rain was hitting her worn and bruised body hard. It took her a few minutes before she realised that someone was holding her shoulders tightly and leaning over her.

"PJ," she managed between coughs.

The voice that replied wasn't PJ's, but familiar all the same. "It's not PJ, Amy. It's Adam."

Sure enough, her vision began to focus and she could see Adam's face against the dark clouds above. She blinked a few times to make her eyes adjust. After the darkness of the drain, even the overcast sky was too bright for her.

Her memory came back to her with sudden clarity. She tried to jump up, only for Adam to have to catch her to stop her from falling back down again. Adam pulled her against his chest to keep her upright.

"Hey, take it easy," he warned her. "You nearly drowned down there."

She shook her head. "I had one of the twins," she choked out. "I don't know which one. I couldn't hold onto him. The water ripped him right out of my arms…"

Listening to Amy made Adam recall Wade's death. It was all he could do to hold back the memories so he could keep it together.

"It's alright," he reassured her gently. "Nick and Zoe will find them." Even as he said it, he knew he was lying. Between being down there himself and the tsunami, he was well aware of how futile fighting water could be. As it was, he'd never quite understand how he had managed to see Amy and get her back onto solid ground. "I'd say you've still got a little bit of water on your lungs, but you should be okay. I've called an ambulance."

Amy didn't have much choice but to accept Adam's reassurances and stay still. But she knew she wouldn't go in that ambulance.


Things weren't much better for Nick. He was taller than Amy and heavier too, but that only offered a little more stability. He had to fight his way through the water, holding his arms out wide. Like Amy, he kept one hand on the side.

He took a different branch off the drain. It led to a rusty gate which was bolted together with a thick chain. His eyes lit up as he realised that Zoe was there on his side of the gate, her back to him as she struggled with it. His heart sank just as quickly when he realised that her arm was covered in blood and it was trapped in the gate.

"Zoe!" he called, yelling to be heard above the din. Zoe seemed to hear him, but didn't reply. As Nick got closer, he could hear her sobbing. "Zo! Oh, thank God, Zo…" He was so relieved to find her that for a moment, he forgot about the twins and Adam and Amy.

"I had Travis!" she told him between sobs. "He was on the other side of the gate. I had him…but the water washed him away!" She nearly collapsed against the gate.

Nick felt his heart pounding more heavily in his chest. He had to fight the fear to get Zoe out. "It's okay, we'll find them. They're tough, they'll be okay." He grabbed both sides of the gate and jarred them hard. He had to break the chain to get Zoe's arm out.

She let out a cry of pain. "Nick!"

"Sorry, Zo," he apologised. "But I've got to break this chain somehow. Okay?"

Zoe nodded reluctantly and bit down hard on her bottom lip to stop herself from crying out. She had to close her eyes tight when Nick tried to force the gate again and again. He was getting increasingly frustrated, swearing and yelling in anger.

In the end, it wasn't Nick that freed her. A new rush of water came sweeping down the pipe. It was stronger than the last and threw Nick up against the gate as the chain finally broke and it swung open. He clung onto the gate desperately to avoid being swept away and reached out to grab for Zoe. For a moment, he thought he had hold of her hand. But he'd missed it by centimetres.

As he watched her disappear in the swirling water, instinct kicked in. If nothing else, he had to save his wife. He could survive anything just as long as he had Zoe there beside him.

He found the strength to battle the water back to the ladder and clambered up. Adam helped him up the last couple of rungs. He took a few moments to look around himself. Amy was sitting in the front seat of the police four wheel drive, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Even in his daze, he could see how bad she looked.

But anger overrode concern and he grabbed Adam's shirtfront. "What the bloody hell are you just doing standing here?!" he demanded.

Adam tried to wriggle free of Nick's grasp, but couldn't. His old colleague was too big for him. He waved an arm towards Amy. "She nearly drowned down there, Nick," he explained. "I was keeping an eye on her until the ambos got here. She's at risk of secondary drowning and I didn't want to leave the two kids with a woman at risk of that."

That seemed to calm Nick down and he nodded. He pointed to the drain. "I took the first branch to the left," he told Adam. "Where does that come out?"

Adam thought for a moment, desperately trying to remember. Finally, it came to him. "This way…" he mused, taking off through the muddied scrub. Nick followed closely behind. Amy watched them go with tired eyes before climbing out of the car and heading after them, nearly losing her footing several times through fatigue and clumsiness. The blanket that had only minutes ago been keeping her warm in the dry interior of the police car was now soaked and lay abandoned on a tree branch.

Adam finally stopped at a little creek. Water was gushing out of the end of the storm drain, rushing over the three figures lying in the mud. Nick shoved past him and dropped to his knees at Zoe's side. He gently shook her shoulder, fearing the worst, and felt his heart start to beat again as she stirred. She was covered in blood from the arm injury and coughing from the water she'd swallowed, but she was still breathing. Carefully, he pulled her up into his arms and carried her back to Adam.

He set her down again on the ground and stayed with her for a moment before drawing in a deep breath and turning back to the drain. A few metres away from where Zoe had been lying were the boys, Travis lying half on top of his brother. Pure shock and terror stopped Nick from running over to them. Deep inside, part of him already knew what he was going to find when he stooped over the bodies of his boys and checked their pulses.

He finally reached them and checked them over. They weren't breathing. There was no pulse. Their bodies were cold and Nick immediately knew. His little boys were gone. All the reassurances had meant nothing. Yet, he couldn't cry. He was too exhausted physically and mentally to cry.

Somewhere in the distance, they could hear sirens. Adam closed his eyes tightly as he held back the tears. Help was too late. As it always seemed to be when it really counted. He left Zoe and jogged back through the scrub to where the ambulance was parking.

Meanwhile, Amy had been watching, feeling as though none of this could be anything but a dream. She felt dizzy, had an awful headache and her throat felt raw from the effort of coughing. But, somehow, neither her pain nor Nick and Zoe's were real.

She hadn't realised she was on auto-pilot until she collapsed down into the mud, bringing her knees close to her chest as she watched Nick clean the dirt from his sons' faces. She caught a glimpse of his eyes for just a second and they scared her. They weren't the piercing blue eyes of the Nick Schultz she knew.

And I see no bravery, no bravery
In your eyes anymore
Only sadness


PJ, Dash and Ringo were in the muster room when Amy and Adam finally arrived. The trio had returned from the various non-police-work related call outs that had occupied them for most of the afternoon and were now cleaning up the puddle below the leaking roof. The station, like the pub, had been ill-prepared for heavy rain.

They were sharing a joke at Ringo's expense when the two entered, both wrapped up in layers of the thick blankets that the ambulance officers had given them. None of the others noticed their appearance until Amy finally spoke up. "PJ?"

PJ's eyes darted to her and immediately widened with concern. He hurried over to her – nearly slipping on the puddle in the process – and combed the damp hair back from her eyes. There was a darkness in them that he couldn't begin to describe. "Amy?" he asked, looking her up and down. He let his gaze flicker to Adam, who was being fussed over by Dash. "What the hell happened?"

Adam didn't reply. His throat felt as though it had closed up. Instead, he led Dash away to the mess room and left Amy alone to deal with the questioning.

Ringo didn't move from where he knelt on the floor, wringing the towel he had been using in his hands. His knuckles were white from squeezing it too hard. "Amy?" he asked, his voice quieter than PJ's. "What happened?"

She glanced to him briefly before looking back to PJ. She suddenly realised just how exhausted and sore she was as she fell into his surprisingly warm chest. After so long of being wet and cold, she had forgotten that it was actually supposed to be summer.

The surprise was written all over his face. He held her, blue eyes shining as his mind whirled with the effort of trying to work out what happened. It was at that moment he heard Dash's cry from the mess room. It confirmed his worst suspicions. Someone wasn't coming home again.

"Who?" he asked quietly, trying to suppress the tears that were threatening to spill out over his cheeks. He didn't allow himself to try to work out who it was. Thinking of any of his friends as a corpse hurt too much and he couldn't make himself feel anymore pain than necessary.

It was a while before Amy could speak. She was too tired and too drained emotionally to make her mouth form words. When she finally spoke, it was in a voice that sounded more like that of a five year old girl than a thirty four year old woman.

"Nick and Zoe's sons," she replied. She expected herself to start crying, but she couldn't. She didn't have the strength left.

She could hear PJ's despondent sigh and see Ringo's shoulders slump. Tragedy had hit Mt. Thomas once again.


Mark was too busy kissing Chris to hear his phone ringing at first. The rain had begun to die away, but neither of them had taken any notice. He felt drunk, but the alcohol had had nothing to do with it. He was drunk on a kind of passion that he had never really known before. Even Piper Morris had been unable to bring about this feeling.

The phone was ringing for the sixth time when Chris finally pulled away, offering him a slight smile. "You'd better answer it," she told him. Mark nodded and grabbed his phone. Chris sat back, running a trembling hand back through her hair. She'd spent enough time around coppers to know that they had to answer their phones.

She couldn't hear what Mark was saying, but she could tell that it was bad. His expression had gone from deliriously happy to devastation in less than a few seconds. He was standing at the other end of the public bar, massaging the bridge of his nose. His eyes were closed and Chris swore she could see tears shimmering on his cheeks.

When Mark finally hung up, he headed over to Chris and as their eyes met, she realised what had happened. For a moment, she swore her heart stopped. "Oh God," she whispered, shaking her head slowly. "Oh God, not again. Not again, Mark." It was a few minutes before she could bring herself to ask the dreaded question and receive the dreaded answer. "Who?"

"Travis and Trevor Schultz," he replied, his voice sounding foreign in his throat.

Chris closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. She may not be a very good Catholic, but she was still a Catholic. She was crying when she turned her eyes on Mark again. "Poor Nick and Zoe," she whispered as she ran a shaking hand back through her damp curls. "They loved those boys so much. What happened?"

Mark's voice sounded as though he was being choked. "They drowned while rescuing a little girl from a storm drain."

She nodded slowly before sighing. "I suppose you should go," she told him. "They'll need you at the station."

He thought for a moment and nodded. "Yes, I suppose they will need me, won't they?" The way he spoke betrayed his uncertainty and fear to Chris. She felt sorry for him. He was hurting. Just the thought of Nick and Zoe's pain was affecting Mark. He turned to her and offered her a forced smile. "I suppose we'll end up here soon enough. You'll be alright, won't you?"

Chris nodded. "Of course," she replied. She was barely holding back her tears. "Go to your team. They need you."

Mark nodded and slipped out into remnants of the storm without another word. Once he was gone, Chris was able to gather herself together sufficiently to think. Nick and Zoe were going to need a lot of support to get through this. The team was going to have to do what it did best – come together around friends in need.

Then a very different thought hit her and it was one she was ashamed of thinking after such a tragedy. Despite all her vows not to let love get in the way again, it had. She'd fallen in love with Mark Jacobs and now she was simply in too deep to turn away.

Frustrated with herself and everything else, she kicked a chair over and it skidded across the floor.

Love gets me every time
My heart changed my mind


PJ was sitting alone in the corridor when Nick emerged from Zoe's hospital room. His head snapped up at the sound of the door and he offered his old friend a sympathetic smile. "How is she?" he asked gently.

Nick didn't move for a moment. It was nearly a minute before he could force his tired, grief-stricken body to sit down in the plastic chair beside PJ. Even then, he couldn't bring himself to meet his friend's gaze. PJ's sympathy would break him. "She's been sedated," he explained. "Mercifully, she's asleep. She doesn't know yet. I don't have a clue how to tell her." Nick sighed for a moment before speaking again. "Tell Amy and Adam thank you for me. I think I did nothing but make them feel guilty before."

"They understand," PJ reassured him. "They both know you well enough by now to be able to understand what goes on inside your head."

Nick nodded slowly. "That makes me feel a little better," he said with a half-smile. "At least I know I haven't ostracised a couple of my dearest friends." He began to wring his hands as he tried to fight back the emotions. He hadn't been expected for the intensity of his grief. After losing Jennifer and Zoe, he'd thought that nothing could ever quite hurt him that much again. He'd been wrong.

"You can talk, you know," PJ suggested with a shrug after several minutes of silence. "It might help."

Nick almost laughed. "I'd howl at the moon if I thought it would help," he replied and turned to meet PJ's gaze. It had the very effect he had been dreading. He drew in a deep breath. "I never thought something like this could happen again," he confided. "I've already lost a wife and a child…the chances of losing the boys…not after all the tragedy we went through to have them."

PJ nodded in understanding. He remembered Nick mentioning the miscarriages over a year ago when Amy had lost the baby. "The three miscarriages."

"I didn't mind whether or not Zoe and I ended up having children," Nick explained, barely responding to PJ's comment. "But Zoe did. She felt like she had to experience motherhood. But miscarriage after miscarriage…" He trailed off as he regathered his thoughts. "By the time she fell pregnant with the twins, we weren't even telling my parents anymore…" He sighed and let his head hang back. "Oh God, they'll be devastated…Dad barely coped after last time, this will destroy him…"

Nick jumped up and almost ran to the payphone at the end of the corridor. He picked up the receiver and began to dial. Half-way, he stopped as horror flashed across his face.

"I can't remember my parent's phone number," he mumbled, his hand trembling slightly.

PJ approached him, hands in the pockets of his pants. He pulled a hand out to pat Nick's shoulder soothingly. "It's alright, mate…"

"No it's bloody not," Nick grumbled, squeezing the receiver as though he was trying to crush it in his fist. "I grew up in that house; I've known that phone number all my life and I can't bloody remember my own parent's phone number…"

Nick seemed close to breaking down as PJ tried to pull him away from the phone. "Look, it's alright…"

Nick didn't speak for a while. It wasn't until he was sitting back next to PJ again that he could bring himself to talk once again. "I wasn't like this after Jennifer and Zoe died," he told him in a shaking, wavering voice that didn't really belong to him. "It was like…my whole body just went into autopilot for the first forty-eight hours. I could just function enough to do what had to be done. But this time…" He paused as tears began to find their way down his cheeks. "…I can't even think."

PJ nodded in sympathy and rubbed Nick's back gently. Nick began to cry, sobbing heavily into his hands. There was nothing more PJ could do than hold his old friend while he cried. Tears of his own filled his eyes as he found himself thinking about Travis and Trevor Schultz. Another two lives taken long before their time should have been over.

A little while later, a woman in a white gown emerged. Even without speaking, she commanded Nick and PJ's attention and the two looked up at her with red eyes. "Mr. Schultz?" she asked.

Nick nodded. "That's me," he managed to mumble as he pulled himself free of PJ's grasp.

"We need you to identify your sons' bodies," the woman in the gown told him, pausing hesitantly. "I'm sorry, but it has to be done."

It was a long time before Nick could speak. "I don't think I can," he replied simply. "I don't think I can face it."

The woman frowned a little, before nodding towards the morgue far down the corridor. "When you're ready, we'll be waiting," she told him. She went to leave, before stopping to speak once more. "They look very peaceful, Mr. Schultz. Like they're sleeping."

As she disappeared back to the morgue, Nick shook his head firmly. "Trevor and Travis were never peaceful," he told PJ. "They were always so…lively and vibrant and full of energy. Zoe and I could never keep up. It was probably a good thing that they were so independent. We'd never have managed if they weren't."

It was a long time before PJ could even try to reply. "Identifying a loved one isn't easy, mate," he sympathised. "But it has to be done. I think some part of us needs to do it. We can't believe it otherwise."

Nick wanted to yell at him, to demand to know what made PJ think he had any right to tell him what to do, but changed his mind. PJ may not have children, would never have any, but he understood more than most how intense grief could be.

In the end, he choked out what he knew was a weak response. "I can't do this, PJ. Even if they do look like they're sleeping. I can't look at them, knowing they'll never wake up, knowing they'll never keep us up all night playing video games, knowing they'll never play a practical joke on us." He shook his head and his face took on an expression PJ could only describe as broken. "I can't."

PJ nodded slowly. "Yes, you can," he reassured him in an encouraging voice that made Nick feel confident in spite of himself. "You can do this because you're not alone. I'll be there."

Somehow, the thought of having PJ at his side made Nick feel better. After a few minutes thought, he nodded. "Okay," he replied. Slowly, he climbed to his feet and let PJ guide him down the corridor to the morgue where his sons lay.

Come on, take my hand
We're going for a walk
I know you can

When they reached the morgue, there were two trolleys on which two tiny figures lay, covered by plain white sheets. PJ heard Nick's strangled little cry and found it hard to contain his own grief. This wasn't right. Nothing about this was right. The boys should have been burying their father in some time long in the future. Not this.

Nick ignored everyone else around him and carefully pulled the sheet back from one of the trolleys, then did the same for the other twin. The two looked even more alike in death. Nick couldn't escape the realisation that these weren't his boys. These were just shells.

Still, he couldn't stop the tears from falling or the all-consuming sobs from leaving his lips. The woman had been right – they did look like they were sleeping. In a way, he was glad. He didn't think he could have handled anything else.

He gently cradled a boy in each arm and pulled them to his chest. He held them for what seemed like hours, but was in fact only minutes. He couldn't stay there, holding them. They didn't squeeze back, they didn't cry out for him to stop being embarrassing. His boys simply weren't there anymore. And it seemed that there was something at his shoulder, telling him to let them go.

So he carefully laid each back on their trolley, kissed them each once more and slowly pulled the sheets back up over their faces. He stood there for a moment, whispering a goodbye, before he turned back to one of the morgue workers.

He nodded. "That's them," he mumbled and slipped out of the room.

As soon as the door was closed, he broke down completely. His legs gave way beneath him and he collapsed back against the wall, crying with an intensity he never had before. He wasn't aware of anything else, not even PJ's arms as he pulled his old friend into his arms.

All he was aware of was that his baby boys were gone and that he was going to have to find some way of telling Zoe that she was no a mother with no children.

Do you remember telling me you'd found the sweetest thing of all?
You said one day of this was worth dying for


It was quiet at Charlie McKinley's farm when Dash and Adam arrived. Neither of them had spoken since Adam had told her of Travis and Trevor's deaths. There seemed to be nothing that could be said. They could almost feel Nick and Zoe's pain. They were both parents and Adam was already acutely aware of the pain of losing a child.

Charlie was waiting in the living room, reading a book by the light of a candle. It cast flickering shadows on the walls that only added to the unnaturalness of everything that had happened that day. Dash couldn't quite trust that anything around her was real. It all felt too surreal to be anything but a bad dream.

"Phoebe's asleep," Charlie explained, "and Macca and Kirsty are out visiting friends. I think they couldn't face you two."

Dash nodded in understanding as she stopped at the kitchen. Without thinking, she began to make herself a cup of coffee. She normally rejected caffeine on health grounds – part of the efforts she was taking to prevent the cancer from coming back for round two – but tonight was an exception. If it wasn't for the fact that she knew she had no tolerance for alcohol, she would have happily downed some of Charlie's scotch to try to blot this night out. She never again wanted to see that mental image Adam had described. Nick and half-dead Zoe and their dead sons and Amy half-drowned and Adam left with no idea of what to do.

No, she never wanted to see that again.

When she returned to the living room, Adam was gone. Dash swallowed down a mouthful of the coffee before turning to Charlie. "Where's Adam?" she asked quietly.

Charlie looked at her with his tired eyes through his thick-rimmed glasses. "Phoebe's room, I think," he replied. He'd scarcely finished speaking when Dash had abandoned her coffee and headed down the hallway after Adam.

Charlie had been right. Adam was in Phoebe's bedroom – it had once been Ian's, Dash reflected numbly – and was crouched down beside the bed. Phoebe was still asleep and took no notice of Adam gently combing the dark strands of hair back from her face. By the moonlight through the window, Dash could see that he was crying silent tears.

She knelt down beside him and wrapped her arms around his torso. She buried her face in his shoulder and let her own tears fall. Together, they cried while their daughter slept on, completely unaware of the tragedy that befallen Mt. Thomas.

Here I am
Lost in the light of the moon that comes through my window


Chris was sitting alone, drowning her sorrows in a glass of brandy when Mark returned to the pub. He seemed to have aged in the last hour he'd been away. The sight broke Chris' heart and reminded her of just how strong their bond was now.

He forced a smile for her sake. He pointed to the empty bottle on the bar. "You didn't drink all of that, I hope."

"Well, it wasn't abducted by aliens, if that helps you narrow it down," she replied with a shrug.

"You'll get drunk if you're not careful," he commented as he drew up a stool beside her.

She simply laughed at the suggestion. "I'm Irish, remember? I can handle alcohol better than everyone else put together." A silence fell between them and it was several minutes before she could bring herself to ask the hard question. "How is everyone?"

"Barely holding on," he replied. He passed a hand across his weary eyes as he spoke. "PJ is with Nick at the hospital, Dash and Adam have gone home, Ringo doesn't know what he's supposed to do and Amy's simply in shock and should probably be in hospital." He sighed as he let his gaze meet Chris'. "I just keep thinking about Freya. I keep wondering what would happen to me if I ever lost her. I barely know my own daughter, but she's still the most precious thing in the world to me."

Chris nodded and climbed to her feet as she pulled Mark's head against her chest. She rocked him gently as she tried to soothe him. "It sounds like you're feeling the most natural thing in the world," she reassured him before burying her crumbling expression of calm in Mark's soft grey hair.

In between the longing to hold you again
I'm caught in your shadow, I'm losing control


Ringo sat alone in the muster room, keeping his face buried in his hands. He didn't know where to go or what to do. He'd considered going home to the pub a few times, but had immediately dismissed the idea. This was one time when he didn't want Chris Riley to talk to and, besides, he knew Mark had already gone there. So he stayed in the muster room, trying to forget what had happened.

He'd had plenty of his own experience with grief. He'd lost the only sibling he had ever felt close to, not to mention the feelings of loss associated with the mother he couldn't remember. But he couldn't even try to imagine what Nick and Zoe were feeling right now. It pained him even to consider it.

He knew Amy was having a rougher time of it than he was. She was sitting in the CI office, wrapped up in blankets with a once-hot coffee sitting in front of her. She didn't speak. She didn't even move, except to cough every now and again. He considered going in there to talk to her, but kept changing his mind. Perhaps she felt the same way he did? Perhaps she just wanted to be left alone?

Frustrated, he began to massage his temples. He could remember everything he'd ever been told at the Academy, including the lectures on handling grieving relatives. But nothing had prepared him for this. Nothing ever could have prepared him for this kind of pain.

Here I am
Lost in the ashes of time
But who wants tomorrow?


Zoe had never felt so sore or tired before in her life. She didn't know how long she'd been asleep. She was barely aware of where she was. She tried to make her mind stop whirling as she rolled over in her hospital bed, stuffing the pillow further underneath her head.

Her arm cried out in agony as she moved. She cast her blurred gaze over to it. It was bandaged thickly from the shoulder to the elbow, yet she could still see spots of dried crimson blood showing through. She winced and tried to hold back the tears.

The pain seemed to bring her memory back sharply. Almost all at once, she remembered being down in the drain, searching desperately for her sons. She remembered finding Travis and hoping beyond hope that she could hold onto him. She remembered the despair when she realised that the water had taken him away.

"Nick," she called in a weak voice scarcely louder than a whisper. But he didn't appear in her line of sight. He didn't take her hand and reassure her. He didn't tell her that everything was okay.

And suddenly she knew.

She knew with the certainty that only a mother could have that her sons hadn't made it out alive. She knew that Nick would tell her when he finally reappeared. And she dreaded that more than anything else. She didn't know if she could bear to see the grief in his eyes.

She began to cry silently as she stared blindly ahead. And her heart slowly and painfully broke in her chest.

Touch me and I will follow in your afterglow
Heal me from all this sorrow
As I let you go


Amy sat alone in the CI office, trying to focus her attention on stopping the shivering from running through her body. It wasn't so much that she was cold – now it had stopped raining, it had begun to feel more like summer again – but from the shock. She kept reliving the moment when the Schultz twin – she still didn't know which one – had been ripped from her arms. She couldn't understand how she had let him go.

Adam had tried to reassure her that it wasn't her fault. PJ had too, but she hadn't believed either of them. She couldn't believe that it wasn't her fault she had let the boy go. He had been completely dependent on her to save his life and she had failed miserably. She wouldn't have even been able to save herself, except for Adam's intervention.

It was enough to make her doubt everything she'd ever thought about herself as a copper. If she couldn't save herself, what chance did she have of saving anyone else?

She wished that she could vent her emotions somehow, that she wasn't too tired and too exhausted to cry.

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees


It was a couple of days later when Nick finally decided to drop in at the station. He'd spent most of those couple of days with Zoe, lying beside her and holding her as they cried. Eventually their tears ran dry and they just lay there in silence.

He'd called his parents too, as well as Zoe's mother. He'd gotten the reactions he'd been expecting – Zoe's mother blamed him, confident that somehow Nick was at fault; Elizabeth Schultz was brought to tears, then stepped in to offer to do whatever necessary to ease her son's burden; Klaus Schultz simply couldn't speak. It had been an effort to speak to all three, yet he somehow felt better when his task was over.

Mark met him in the empty muster room. He offered him sympathetic blue eyes. "How are you?" he asked. He hadn't seen Nick since the tragedy. No one other than PJ had been brave enough to face him, and even then PJ had only done it once.

Nick forced a smile for Mark's sake. "Holding in there," he finally answered. He nodded towards Mark's office. "Can we talk?"

"Of course," Mark agreed and led Nick into his office. He shut the door behind his Sergeant before clearing a spot on his desk and sitting down on it. He gestured for Nick to sit, but he remained standing. "What did you want to talk about?"

"I need some time off," Nick said bluntly. He looked at Mark with eyes that betrayed his true vulnerability. "Zoe and I need to get away for a while. We were going to visit Zoe's mum in Melbourne, then head up to Sydney for a while to visit my parents."

Mark nodded without thinking. "I'll have to run it past Inspector Barnes," he explained, "but I imagine that it won't be a problem. How much time were you thinking of taking off?"

Nick simply shrugged. "I'm not sure, Boss," he confessed. "Zoe and I will be back when we're ready."

The Senior Sergeant considered Nick for a moment before nodding once more. "Of course," he replied. "That's fine. Everything will be waiting for you when you return."

Nick forced a smile. "Thank you, Boss," he told him and went to leave. He was nearly out of the door when he stopped and turned back to him. "Where is everyone?"

"Ah…" Mark paused, trying to remember. The storm clean up had kept his members so busy that he had lost track. "PJ and Dash are attending a couple of looting cases and Ringo is giving the SES a hand. Amy's around here somewhere…mess room, I think." At Nick stare, he elaborated. "She really shouldn't be at work at all. She's still far too weak. She'll probably be glad to see you, though."

Nick nodded and slipped away to the mess room. Sure enough, Amy was sitting at the table, half-empty coffee cup in one hand and her head in the other. She looked so tired and Nick could have sworn he could see tears on her cheeks.

It took him a few minutes to find the words. "Mark said you'd be here."

Her head snapped up and she turned her emerald eyes to him. They didn't have the enchanting quality Nick was used to, though. Now, they were simply too tired to do much enchanting at all. "Nick," she breathed, a little shocked by his appearance. Almost as soon as she said the name, she lowered her gaze. She couldn't face him after what had happened down in that drain. Not after she had let his son go.

"You look awful," he told her, pulling a seat up next to her.

"I'm fine," she lied, still not meeting his gaze. "Just some bruises. I didn't even have much water on my lungs." She smiled half-heartedly. "I probably owe Adam Cooper my life. To think he was such a little dweeb at the Academy…"

Nick smiled. It was a genuine smile this time, not one he forced for the sake of those around him. He found himself wondering – and not for the first time – why Amy had this kind of effect on him. He doubted if she even knew she was doing it.

"You knew him at the Academy?" he asked, his grief momentarily set aside as curiosity took over. In hindsight, he couldn't work out why he'd never guessed before. Amy Fox and Adam Cooper were the same age and had both joined up at the age of nineteen – it wasn't hard to join the dots.

She nodded. "He was a royal pain in the arse back then," she told him. "I suppose you already knew that – you had to work with him – but he was even worse back then. I think he made it his mission in life to score a kiss from every female recruit." She almost laughed at the memory. She didn't realise what she'd let Nick do – she'd distracted him from the pain gnawing away at his heart. "I probably owe him that kiss now, though."

Nick chuckled. "I wouldn't let PJ hear you say that," he warned her with a smile. "He can get mighty jealous and I don't think Dash wants her beau missing any teeth."

Amy returned his smile before it faded as she finally dared herself to meet his eyes. They made her guilt return with a vengeance. "And how are you?" she asked quietly.

He'd been dreading that question. He couldn't lie to Amy like he could with Mark. Just as he had gotten under her skin and uncovered her pain, she had gotten under his. She would see through any lie he might try to tell.

"Not good," he finally answered. His shoulders hunched as he spoke. "It seems like this is never going to end. Everyone keeps turning to me, like I have all the answers, but I don't. All I know is that a few days ago, I was celebrating Christmas with my sons and now I'm going to be starting the New Year without them."

Amy nodded slowly, her eyes brimming with tears as Nick spoke. For the umpteenth time since Boxing Day, she saw the nameless Schultz twin being swept away from her grasp. She tried to shake the memory away, but she couldn't. Without even realising it, she started crying, choking out apologies between sobs.

Nick wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close, his own tears forgotten as he watched Amy cry in earnest. Something hit him hard, a realisation that struck through his own pain and made his heart almost physically ache. She blamed herself. Amy had put the deaths of Travis and Trevor on her own conscience.

"You're not to blame for this," he told her, tightening his grasp. "You nearly got yourself killed down there. If anything you're a hero. You probably deserve a commendation." He watched her carefully, but his words didn't appear to change the way she felt. She kept sobbing and apologising as she covered her face with her hands. "We can't always make a happy ending."

It might sound absurd
But don't be naïve
Even heroes have the right to bleed

She shook her head. "You don't understand!" she wailed. "You'll never forgive me…"

Nick couldn't help but think that Amy hadn't been more wrong about anything before in her life. He didn't even know what she had done wrong, but he had forgiven her already. "I could never hate you," he reassured her gently. "Nothing could be as bad as this."

"I had one of the boys, Nick," she finally confessed, burying her face in his old t-shirt. "I found him at a grate. He'd climbed up above the water. I coaxed him down…I had him, Nick. I just couldn't fight the water…it ripped him out of my arms…" She looked up from his shirt to meet his gaze. "What sort of a useless bloody copper am I? I couldn't even save myself, let alone anyone else. Truth be told, I should have drowned with them."

He shook his head. He couldn't blame her. He couldn't even force himself to feel bitterness towards her. He buried his face in her hair and kissed her head gently. "You must have had Trevor," he told her softly, his voice muffled by her silky chocolate locks.

Bewilderment stopped her tears momentarily. "What?"

"Zoe found Travis," he explained. "She couldn't hang onto him either. What power do we mere mortals have against the rage of Mother Nature?" He paused reflectively before reaching up to brush strands of fringe back from her eyes. "I couldn't even tell my own sons apart, I don't know how Zoe managed it in all the chaos down there."

Her tears continued to fall silently. "I couldn't hold onto him, Nick," she whispered. "Your son drowned because I couldn't save him. I wasn't strong enough."

Nick shook his head. "No, Foxtrot," he told her, the nickname slipping from his lips without him even realising it. "This isn't your fault. I don't blame you. If anything, I'm grateful."

Her expression became one of confusion. "Grateful?"

He nodded. "I knew Travis died knowing his mother was trying to save him," he explained. "I was scared Trevor died feeling like he was alone and no one cared enough to help him. But he didn't. He died knowing you were down there and willing to risk your life to rescue him." He combed the hair back from her face once again as her tears began to run anew, this time brought on by a different emotion. "You went down there, knowing you might be killed, knowing that these weren't your children and you had no obligation to them. But you still went down there."

She began to sob again as she buried her face in his t-shirt. He could feel her tears soaking through the fabric and clinging to the skin of his chest. He buried his face in her hair once more to try to hide the tiny smile on his lips. He'd never really realised before just how strong their friendship was.

He squeezed her tighter. "I'll be indebted to you for the rest of my life."

It was only half an hour later, when Amy had managed to pull herself together, that they broke apart. The remnants of her coffee were cold by then and the others were returning to the muster room.

Sighing, Nick rose to his feet. "I suppose I ought to be going," he told her with a half-smile. "I don't think I can handle Dash McKinley today. I can barely handle her any other day." Amy weakly returned his smile. His expression became one of concern. "You'll be okay now, won't you?" he asked.

She nodded quickly. The last thing she wanted was Nick troubling himself over her. "I'm fine," she reassured him. "Thank you for that, Nick."

He nodded and kissed her cheek tenderly before leaving the mess room and slipping out the back entrance without being seen or heard by Dash, PJ, Ringo or Mark. Once he was gone, Amy turned back to her coffee and stared at the cold liquid for a few seconds before jumping to her feet and pouring it down the sink. With a deep breath, she began fixing herself another one.

Nick's words still rang in her ears and made her feel distinctly better. They helped alleviate her guilt and made her feel a little hopeful. Over time, her bruises and Zoe's arm would heal. The emotional scars might take a little longer, but they'd heal too eventually.

And, in the meantime, life would go on in Mt. Thomas.


Next episode... "Persona Non Grata"

Amy relives her painful childhood when her uncle is released from prison and the locals form a vigilante group. The new Probationary Constable makes an impression, and Nick and Zoe begin to move on with their lives.