"Great, this day just gets better and better," Georgie murmurs when she turns from washing her hands and comes face to face with Shandi. She folds her arms across her chest and leans back against the basin. "What do you want?"

Shandi winces at the anger in her voice. "Georgie, I know I was a bitch to everyone in school, especially to you and when I look back, I'm disgusted by my behaviour. It was so wrong to make fun of your learning difficulties and all those things I said, I never meant any of it, so I'd like to apologise for all of it and assure you that I'm not that person anymore."

"Well good for you," she says sarcastically. "I'm outta here."

"Georgie wait."

Georgie pauses by the door. "You apologised, what else is there to say?"

"That we can put the past behind us."

"Why are you doing this?"

"I think you know why. Georgie, please, let's just start afresh."

"Do what you want Shandi, just don't expect anything from me." With that, she storms from the room.

Aden swivelled on his chair back at the station, replaying his talk with Joey in his head. She was confused and understandably so. She'd made a commitment to Angelo who she cared a great deal for, yet it was obvious to him that her heart truly lay with Charlie, who may or may not be moving on with another woman. His friend was also facing some difficult decisions and whatever she decided, someone was going to be hurt and hurting others was something Joey never liked to do. He hated seeing her so lost and while he had wanted to tell her to dump her jerk of a husband and fight for Charlie, he'd instead encouraged her to think everything over carefully before making any rash decision. At least Joey had realised she wasn't happy in her marriage, he just hoped that the presence of this Shandi woman didn't influence her in any way. A knock on the door drags him away from his thoughts. "Yes?"

Charlie pokes her head in. "You got time to fill me in on what you found out about the investigation?"

"Sure."

"Where's Georgie?" she asks when she takes a seat opposite Aden.

"Running some checks for me." He spends the next twenty minutes filling Charlie in on all they'd learnt.

"So Wright borrows money from a loan shark, pays him back but couldn't afford to pay the interest, which is usually extremely high when loan sharks are involved," Charlie says.

Aden nods, "His wife said he'd become increasingly agitated in the week leading up to the fire, then two days ago, he came home with bruises to his torso, which is when he confessed all to his wife about his gambling and their debts."

"And then a fire destroys his business."

"With the insurance money, he'd have had enough to pay off all his debts."

"Except it went wrong and someone died."

"We found a suicide note in his office expressing his remorse for Kim Hargrove's death, saying that no one was meant to die."

"Are you sure he didn't start the fire?"

"From what we've gathered so far, Wright has no experience with arson and while Hargrove's death and your assault makes it look sloppier than usual, if we focus just on the fire and it's staging, then everything points to the arsonist and we've already discounted Wright from the second fire."

"Everything suggests he knew beforehand about the fire, yet he didn't start it himself. Do you think he was warned it would happen if he didn't pay off his debt?"

"Maybe."

She eyes Aden off in interest. "You have something else in mind, don't you?"

"We have an arsonist targeting random buildings, but what if they weren't chosen at random, what if he was given the targets."

"What, he was told to burn them down?"

"It seems too much of a coincidence that a man who would benefit greatly from losing his business just happens to be targeted by the very arsonist we've been looking for."

"So Wright hires him to burn down his building, it's ruled arson and connected to an ongoing investigation, which would clear Wright to get his insurance money and pay off his debts," Charlie concludes. "It's possible I suppose, but what about the other arsons?"

"Wright has shown us there may be other things at play here and all three of us thought that Harvey guy wasn't completely honest with us about the fire to his own business."

Charlie sits back. "We need to go back to all our previous fire victims again."

Aden nods in agreement. "And we need to find out who hired our arsonist."

"You don't think it was Wright?"

"If it was, then who hired him for the other fires, assuming they were all paid jobs. Unless the other owners were in on it together, then I'm leaning toward the loan shark being the common denominator, aside from our arsonist."

"How sure are you of this?"

"It's just a theory."

"One that makes sense," Charlie concedes. "If you are right and he's a hired gun, so to speak, how do we catch him? I mean, he may not even live here, he just comes to the Bay when needed and disappears just as quickly." Charlie sighs. "This is a tourist town, people come and go all the time, that's if this guy is even seen."

"Our best bet it to catch the person who hired him. Hargrove died during the course of a crime, that makes it murder and our man who hired him, is as responsible as the man who lit the flames so if we catch the employer, I have a feeling he might be willing to avoid a murder charge by giving up the arsonist."

"Ok, then if Wright's loan shark is the man behind all of this, then there must be some connection to the other fire victims, so we need to dig deeper into their lives, especially their finances and now that someone has died, they may be more willing to talk." Charlie shakes her head, still not quite believing the direction this case was taking. "Have you ever come across this before?"

"An arsonist for hire? No, though I suppose I shouldn't be surprised," Aden muses. "An assassin uses his skills for monetary gain, so there's no reason why an arsonist couldn't hire out his skill in the same way. And paid to do something he loves, I could see the appeal of that. Now, we'll go on the theory that these are paid crimes, but we won't discount other options completely. We continue to go through our list of suspects who have moved into the area within the last year, crosschecking their previous known addresses with arsons in those areas but our main focus will be identifying Wright's loan shark."

"It would have been nice if Wright had left us his name in his suicide note."

"He didn't even tell his wife in case it endangered her and he probably felt the risk was still there for her if he named names in the suicide note."

"What about his phone records?"

"Georgie checked. There was a mobile number that showed up regularly in the past week, but it's from a pre-paid phone, impossible to trace and it just rings out now."

"It was probably tossed the moment word got out about Wright's death."

"Charlie, you know the people of this town, is there anyone here who could run a racket like this?"

"Darryl Braxton," she says without hesitation. "He's an ex gang leader but he's never been done for anything, though most of his gang have been in and out of jail, even his brother is serving time for manslaughter."

"You said ex gang leader."

"He's supposedly gone legit, runs a successful restaurant and is married to the owner of the diner, who happens to be a friend of mine, but I've never bought into this bad boy comes good act. There's just something about him that I don't believe in."

"His name came up in our list of arson suspects, didn't it?"

"Only because of his age and disrupted childhood, but we discounted him as he didn't fit with the rest of the profile and he had an alibi for two of the fires. As a standover man/loan shark who put the fear of god in someone, I'd put him at the top of the list."

"Anyone else?"

"The River Boys, the gang Brax used to be leader of and who I suspect still has strong ties to."

"It keeps going back to him."

"Which creates a bit of a problem."

"Oh?"

Now that she'd started, Charlie was regretting it.

"If there is something that can affect the investigation, I need to know about it Charlie."

"If Brax is involved, then I don't think you should let Georgie work on parts of this case."

"Why not?"

"Heath Braxton is her ex-boyfriend and she used to run with the gang. She was never into the serious things they did or were suspected of doing," at least Charlie hoped she hadn't been. "But they were a big part of her life for so long, almost like family, so I think we should play it safe and keep Georgie out of it in case her loyalty and judgement is impaired in any way."

"How friendly is she with them now?"

"Actually, I'm not sure where she stands on either of them these days. Once they were almost inseparable, now she seems to keep her distance but I always worry she may feel some old loyalty to them still."

"Did she impede the investigation into Heath's manslaughter charges in any way?"

"Well no, but Sgt Harris made sure she was kept well away from the investigation."

"So Harris didn't trust her either."

Charlie winces at that comparison. "It's not that I don't trust her."

"Then what is it Charlie?"

Sighing, she shrugs. "I really don't know. There is so much about Georgie I'm not sure of and I'm just making this so much worse," her voice trails off.

"You two certainly have a complicated relationship."

"Don't I know it. Look, just forget what I said."

Aden sits back in his seat. "Most of what I know about Georgie is from all the talk I keep hearing about her and that doesn't really sound like the Georgie that I work with. Maybe she is all those things people say she is, though I have my doubts about some of it, but when it comes to work, I think she knows exactly what her job is and where her loyalties lie, which is why I won't remove her from any part of this investigation. I've also seen the value she places on family, work and trust and you've pretty much doubted her on all of that so you'd better hope she never finds out about this talk, or you could end up hurting her more than those mindless gossips around town ever could with their words."

Charlie couldn't really find a way to argue with him.

"You two are family Charlie and you really need to sort this out."

"We both know we need to talk about a lot of things, but neither of us is willing to make the first move."

"Why?"

"Georgie's not the easiest person to get to open up and maybe I'm scared what she will tell me about her childhood, I really don't know."

"Twice in one day," Martha greets Charlie and Georgie with a smile and a kiss for her girlfriend.

"We were just following up on a few things nearby and just thought we'd drop in."

"You don't need an excuse to stop by."

Charlie rolls her eyes as they kiss again.

Georgie leans against her girlfriend, resting her forehead against hers. "Thank god I only have an hour of my shift to go, I'm just about dead on my feet."

"You've been awake since yesterday."

"It feels like it."

"Shandi was back in as well, she said she apologised to you, are you going to accept?"

"If it means not having her coming after me asking for forgiveness until I do, then yes, I'll forgive her. I just don't want anything to do with her afterward."

Charlie was pleased Georgie was going to accept the apology, for both her and Shandi's sake. All that anger and animosity wasn't healthy and Shandi wasn't that person anymore. Still, she couldn't help but feel there was something else behind their animosity toward each other and for Shandi's casual enquiries about Georgie. Once she had jokingly teased Shandi that she had a thing for her cousin and she'd gotten a funny look on her face and dismissed it as absurd. But now that she thought about it, maybe something had happened which would help to explain why things got so bad between them. It didn't really matter now, she supposed, Georgie was willing to forgive her and if Shandi was interested in Georgie, she didn't stand a chance as Georgie was well and truly committed to Martha. "Geez guys, it's a public place," she teases when they kiss again.

"It's my place, I can do what I like," Martha says with a grin at her girlfriend.

"And who she likes," smirks Georgie.

Charlie just shakes her head at their antics, happy for the both of them. She looks around the room, frowning when she sees that Joey still wasn't there. "Where's Joey, did she come back?"

"Yes, but I sent her home."

"Is she ok?"

"She's confused and now she thinks there is something going on between you and Shandi."

"That's ridiculous!" she blurts out, before remembering what Shandi was wearing when Joey had come around that morning. Now seeing it as Joey must have seen it, she wished she had gone after her, instead of telling herself over and over that if it had been important, Joey would have stayed. "Oh Charlie, you're a fool," she mutters.

"I would have to agree," Martha says. "Charlie, Joey is going through a very confusing time at the moment and the last thing she needed was to walk in on your ex half naked in the kitchen."

"Nothing is going on with Shandi, she just needed a place to stay last night, that's all and her baggage was lost, so I lent her some clean clothes."

"I'm not the one who you should be telling this to." Martha chuckles suddenly, shaking her head. "It really is amazing how you're so competent in your work yet totally clueless in matters of the heart."

"Tell me about it," Charlie says with a wry smile.

Martha reaches into her pocket, pulling out a bit of paper. "She forgot her pay cheque, so why don't you drop it into her on your way back to the station," Martha suggests. "Unless you'd rather Joey keep thinking you're back with your ex," she adds when Charlie looks ready to protest.

"I just don't want her to feel like I'm pressuring her in any way."

"She was the one coming to see you Charlie." She hands Charlie the cheque. "Just drop it off and let her know Shandi is nothing more than a friend."

Charlie nods. "I'll see you back at the car Georgie."

"Do you think it's a good idea to send Charlie after Joey like this?" Georgie asks her girlfriend.

"I know you don't approve of anything happening between them unless Joey ends the marriage, but Joey's head needs to be clear so she can reach the right decision and not one based on hurt or misunderstanding. Neither of us wants her staying with Angelo just because she thinks she can't be with Charlie."

"I suppose not."

"Need me to hold your hand," offers Georgie as they pull up outside the Rosetta residence.

"Oh shut up," Charlie mutters, climbing out of the car. "I won't be long." She takes a deep breath and walks up the path to the front door. "I hope I'm doing the right thing," she thought as she raises her hand to knock, frowning when she notices the door was ajar. "Joey," she calls out, pushing the door open a little further when she received no reply. "Joey!" she cries out when she sees her lying motionless on the lounge room floor. Rushing over to her, she falls to her knees by her side, her heart racing at the sight of blood. "Oh god," she gathers her in her arms, cradling her to her. "Joey, please be ok, I don't want to lose you." She holds her close. "Joey, I love you."