COPYRIGHTS Copyright David Lake 2015 The moral right for DAVID LAKE to be asserted as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 All Rights Reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retreival system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. This book is a work of fiction. Names, Characters, Businesses, Organisations, Places and Events are either the product of the Author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. British Library Cataloguing- in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 9781780256160 Publisher EDWARDS
TABLE OF CONTENTS Copyrights Prologue Acknowledgements The Music Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7
Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Thanks To : About Paul Millns
TEARS OF GLASS David Lake
TEARS Of GlASS
PROLOGUE 8.02 pm. Oval Office, White House. March 23rd 1983 President Ronald regan speaks to the Nation on Television and Radio. Extracts from; ADDRESS TO THE NATION ON DEFENCE AND NATIONAL SECURITY My fellow Americans, thank you for sharing your time with me tonight. The subject I want to discuss with you, peace and national security, is both timely and important.Timely, because I have reached a decision which offers new hope for our children in the 21st Century........ ........I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development programme to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic Nuclear Missiles.
..........My fellow Americans, tonight we are launching and effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. Thank you, goodnight and God Bless you. Ten Years After... Ronald Wilson Reagan Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be able to speak to you today on this tenth anniversary of the announcement of the Strategic Defence Initiative....... As you know, however, critics of SDI from the very beginning have been all too eager to denounce the program........The threats have not disappeared – many new threats, in fact, are rapidly emerging ..... Thank you again. God bless you, and may God bless America. Ten weeks later ... A battered Mustang left the track and headed for the City, leaving in its wake the smell of bourbon and the sounds of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. Young picked the guts out of ‘Cowgirl in the sand’ with a rusty nail and hung them with precision on electric strings of barbed-wire. For Sally Carys, Macsen, Rhiannon, Auryn and Alexis And for Paul
Cover Photography
Eric Howard www.erichoward.eu Royal Photographic Society Gold Medal Cover Concept Tears of Glass Website Praxima
Black Ink Design Alex Drillsma –
www.tearsofglass.co.uk
www.praxima.co.uk
Research and Legals
Auryn Lake-Edwards
Music
Paul Millns www.paulmillns.com
‘Superb Singer/Songwriter’
Time Out
‘A voice burning with emotion’
Edinburgh Evening News
‘A charismatic performer, deeply involved and impeccably phrased.’ Daily Telegraph THE MUSIC 14 tracks - 14 Chapters Many are the original Artiist's Demos https://soundcloud.com/tears-of-glass-1 Chapter 1
TEARS OF GLASS The car moved fast against the rain. It pitched and rolled and dipped hard at the hairpins. It had seen better days, but then so had the driver. The thunderstorm had moved on and the squalls were tiring. Soon the heat would come. He reeled in the silvered road, one hand on the wheel, one around a can of beer. The cigarette had almost burned to the filter when he spat it out. The wind carried it away. The wipers smeared the last of the rain into neat arcs, the drops on the periphery remained static and the air stank of it. The Mustang hissed onwards, down through the low hills and all alone. He lit another cigarette, slowed slightly and lobbed the can into a roadside bin;
straight in, it didn't touch the sides. The Mustang moved off at speed, the hood was down and the driver was wet. He didn't seem to care. ‘Take her out.’ The metallic voice clipped the words neatly, and spat them down the line. The recipient mumbled a reply which was lost in the rumble from the overhead freeway. ‘Yes,’ the first voice concurred. ‘The man too ... No loose ends.’ The receivers were carefully replaced. In a more acceptable part of town, a wasted young lady was also completing a call. She ended her excuses and moved over to the dressingtable. Just the lips to do and she'd be finished. She'd missed him, but the message she'd left would probably bring him around at some time during the evening and she wanted everything to be perfect. Other men appreciated the effort, but he seemed happy enough in her company whatever the circumstances. He had a touch of naiveté, a childlike quality that took everything as he found it; he was easy to please. He also pleased her. She brushed the long hair straight to the waist. It was so pale as to be almost steel. Her head was on one side, like a bird studying a crack in a tree. The fierce brush strokes tugged at it; the resulting rhythmic jerking enhancing the impression of the bird trying to figure where the insect was. Her eyes fixed straight ahead, sightless, while her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking about him too much. Men didn't usually get to her like this, although most would have liked to get to her any way they could. He was starting to change the situation quite dramatically. She was, for the first time, losing absolute control over an affair. He was oblivious to this, sensitivity not being his strong point. She gave herself a mental slap and turned to more practical matters in the mirror. She chose the dark purple lipstick and worked it expertly, turning her upper lip into a sharp bow. When its companion was finished, she pursed and puckered them together, sat back and admired the result. Outside her window, the storm had left a dirty lemon light, turning the distant hills’ bleached shale to burnt umber. Rain was rare, especially at this time of year, and she missed the seasons of Europe and the melancholy of the temperate. Climate and habitat dictate the characteristics of a population, or perhaps people are attracted to areas that reflect their personality. Here, the shrub clung tenaciously to sandy rock, and individual plants and scrub, spiky,
tough and bitter, survived in isolation; fiercely competitive, never achieving an easy integration. No homogeneous swathes of vegetation graced the landscape, and the animal life, mainly reptiles, survived in a state of permanent mutual suspicion. It was a land of extremes, especially inland, away from the coast. The furnace of the day, and the cold of the night; over millions of years the stress breaking up the rock to sand. The natural plant and animal life was directly descended from the time when dinosaurs had no enemies except each other. The present inhabitants shared similar characteristics in that they would devour anyone at the first sign of weakness, but the stresses imposed by just being were enough to crack many of the new arrivals. ‘Take it easy. We’ve plenty of time.’ The rat-faced passenger peered through the rain spattered windshield and started to ease his fingers into black leather gloves. His companion at the wheel was already fixed up. The Rat retrieved a Beretta semiautomatic from the glove-box and carefully screwed the silencer in place. It was only a .22, but a head shot would do the job, and with no messy exit-wounds to hinder the Cleaners. ‘We won’t be needing that,’ said his companion. ‘Insurance,’ said the Rat. Towards the coastline, the cooling breezes off the Pacific evened things out a little, and the permanent smog over the urban sprawl induced a womblike feeling of stability. The natural colours under this umbrella were more muted than those on the inland side of the Sierras, but the colours created by the population were primary, often with a neon core to shout their presence. The individuals were the same.
End of this sample Kindle book. Enjoyed the preview? Buy with i-Click or See details for this book in the Kindle Store