Getting Even with the storyline; a sneak preview into what is coming with this book – the chapters and episodes so far. But just a peek, mind you!
Episodes 1 and 2:
Getting Even with the Central Characters
Bernie:
Imagine you’re a returned war veteran and that you spent your last active year of combat service in the Middle East. You were in the guerrilla force that went in ahead of Desert Storm in Iraq and Kuwait to clear the way, to engage the rebels and enable the coalition forces when they arrived, to have a safer run into the country. You lived off the grid for a year, scrounging food and waging an underground war against a battle-hardened and ruthless enemy that looked just like everyone else, except they intended to kill you if they could find you.
And then you come home and find you can’t readjust to society, of course. Who wants to employ someone whose primary skill is taking down enemy rebels. You drift and finally take a job with a crooked businessman who is really only looking for a fall guy for a robbery he’s planning. But you sense the trap and make a run for it, grabbing the nearest car – that happens to have the money in the boot. You find the money, hide it and hope you don’t get found. But they do find you and torture you. You know you’re dead as soon as you tell them where it is. So you summon your inner commando strength and say nothing. They make life hell for you.
You become homeless in the big city; your only friends are the myriad of other homeless people, the doctors, tradies, junkies, abandoned kids and street people of all sorts who call the streets home; they become your family. The crooks still follow you and beat you, hoping you’ll lead them to the money. You learn there are corrupt cops chasing the money too. You pray this misery will stop. One day, you get caught out in a massive hailstorm; you hope this will be the end for you. You wait for the Gods to take you home….!
Paul:
Imagine now that you own a hardware store in the city fringe and your bank loans officer has right royally screwed you over. He wanted your business – cheap, so he seduced your wife away from you, hoping the divorce would force you to sell the business, but you hung on. He eventually left and his punishment was your two-timing wife. But you are tied to that bank and you need a bigger loan to keep going. The manager refuses your application and you leave there, furious and walk out into a terrible hailstorm. The end is near for your business.
But just up the road, you see the figure of a frail man, lying in the hail. You know he will die if you don’t stop to help. You bundle him into your car knowing that no matter how bad your situation is, this is worse.
And so a beautiful friendship begins.
But what does an ex-commando or a hardware store owner know about safely retrieving and using money from a robbery years before? They look for help with some university students – law and accounting graduates, while they still have their ideals.
Samantha – Sam for short:
Here is one smart lady – just completing her accounting degree, a computer whiz and a natural with figures, she happens to be gorgeous, early thirties and doing battle with a nasty and brutal husband who she’s trying to divorce.
Julie:
Another very smart lady – a law graduate, with a mind for remembering case law and legal strategy. She’s a natural too – natural beauty, early thirties and also trying to divorce an equally nasty husband.
Another great friendship is born when they meet!
Paul and Bernie recruit these ladies into their circle to sort out their money and business issues, and to help them get the money back into circulation. Bernie is old enough to be their father, but Paul is smitten with the two ladies. How will they structure their business arrangements? How will they deal with the ladies’ vicious husbands and convince them to leave them alone?
And who will fall in love with whom?
So much can happen when people are getting even with the cards again. Working together, using their unique talents, they find ways to give Karma a helping hand to sort out their individual challenges. They realise that they now have a team and resources that can really make a difference to so many other people from the homeless and disadvantaged community, who also need a hand with getting even with life, to start over again.
Sam and Julie move into Paul’s big house; they form a very tight knit team, working together to make a difference in their local community.
Episode 3:
Getting Even at Luxury Leather
Leoni is the CEO of this luxury leather goods manufacturing company nearby in the city fringe, being cruelly victimised by the founder of the company for being gay. He blackmails her into paying his gambling debts out of the company profits and causes the company to start to fail, so she gets the blame. Bernie suggests the company would be a great way for them to assist the homeless people in the community, with employment by day and shelter in the underneath carpark at night. How can they do this? How can they also ensure that the founder gets his just desserts and the homeless people get somewhere safe to sleep at
Romantic feelings are running hot in the big house, but who is feeling what for whom?
Episode 4:
Getting Even with the Toy Soldiers
What do child soldiers from Africa do when rescued and left to their own devices in a trusting and
Paul and Bernie, Sam and Julie share the house and every experience brings them closer – to a boil-over of emotions. They recreate their new lives amongst the ongoing challenges of rebuilding their community.
Episode 5:
Getting Even with the Trust Fund Terror Kids
College kids with Daddy’s big limousine cruise the streets looking for victims – teenage girls to rape and bash and leave for dead in the back streets out of sight. No witnesses to tell tales, how will they ever be found? It will take an underground network such as Bernie’s homeless community, to locate them. Sam, with her computer skills, tracks them down once they get some details. Bernie’s friends capture them and deal out justice when no one else can.
An engagement is announced – but who asked who for their hand in marriage? And what did they say?
Episode 6:
Getting Even with Drug Dealers in our schools.
Bored kids are a natural target for drug dealers, but how do you track the drugs back to the source? When a lethal batch is sold into the school community, it takes the underground network all their resources to locate the source and pass the details onto the police, to prevent hundreds of kids dying. Sadly, not all can be saved.
The wedding date is announced – but who is getting married?
Episode 7:
Getting Even with banks for farmers in the drought
Drought is a major cyclical problem for farms, but what if a banker was systematically using it to send farmers broke and buy up cheap land? Sam and Julie use their legal and accounting wizardry to turn the tables on a crooked bank manager. They make friends with some amazing people living on farms in the country – a perfect escape for some of their homeless friends who need refuge, and a great way to get farm hands to work around the farms.
The big old farm house is also an ideal place for a honeymoon – but whose honeymoon?
Episode 8:
Getting Even with Organised Crime Extortion Gangs
When you are a small business and a gang demands protection money, what do you do? Especially when you see your neighbour’s business burnt, with them in it!
More to the point – who can fight this sort of underground muscle?
It takes a team of specialists who know what it’s like to be part of the underworld to do battle in the underworld. Working with their
A police officer long since thought to have been killed in a drug lab explosion reappears from within the homeless community. Who is he and why was he ambushed? Is there still a corrupt core of police in the unit?
The wedding plans are coming together – it’s now only two weeks away!
Episode 9:
Getting Even with the Gang Lords
Internal power struggles within a Middle Eastern crime gang threaten
Episode 10:
Getting Even with a Pimp in the Sex Trade
A naïve young girl is tricked into working off a fake debt for a creep who sells her to his vicious friends for fun, until she escapes and steals a client’s car. She runs into Sam and Julie who take up her case and marshal the forces necessary to turn her life around.
The wedding happens today – but who is getting married? What is the amazing twist? You won’t see it coming! It truly is the wedding of the 21st century!
Episode 11:
Getting Even with The African Queen
While the honeymooners are away, an African Tribal Queen sets up a drug dealing business in their community, while raiding high cashflow restaurants and businesses for cash. It’s up to the team to rid themselves of the combined scourge of drugs and voodoo to make the streets safe again.
Episode 12:
Getting Even with Street Racing Hoons
Street racing hoons kill children playing in the street but no one knows who they are or where they came from. It takes an underground network that sees everything to bring them to justice and uncover a massive drug operation at the same time.
Now that the honeymooners are home, there’s going to be the pitter patter of little feet in the big house again… But whose?
Episode 13:
Getting Even with a Pedophile
Living amongst them, invisible, he preys on the little children. But the watcher is being watched. Justice as only the streets can dispense is coming to him. With little babies on the way within their family, there’s a special significance with this monster’s crimes.
But can they catch him in time to save his victim?
Episode 14:
Getting Even with Corruption in the big end of town
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Mayor has two elderly ladies who own a prime development block murdered so he can put his dummy company in to turn it into a multi-million dollar development, depriving the community of open space, gardens, and parkland. But greed has its own price. High technology can be turned against itself. Is that how these deeds can be undone? Can the community get its parkland and gardens back? Or will obscene amounts of money buy its way out of trouble again?
Episode 15:
Getting Even with Domestic Violence and the Dark Web
Many people are homeless because of domestic violence. This time, the partner threatens to sell the children on the dark web child sex market. Can smart use of the dark web technology and plenty of animal cunning outwit him and save the children?
What hides in the dark isn’t necessarily all bad, but it’s not all good either. Is there someone or something that can see in the dark, to save the children?
Episode 16:
Getting Even with starting again after jail
Many people make mistakes and end up with a period in jail. Rightly or wrongly. However, it’s a challenge to reenter the community and workforce when your record says you were a criminal. When a young guy tries to start his life again on the right foot, and a bunch of crooks wants to use his desperation for a job to set him up as a stooge in a criminal plan, he needs help from perhaps the only people who could have helped him, to get the chance to start over again for real. Will they be in time? Will a romantic spark save this young man from a decision that might cost him his life?
Episode 17
Getting Even with Natural Therapies
Two young girls, starting out in a natural therapies and massage business, lose their parents in a horrific car accident. They become easy targets for would-be gangsters wanting to set up their own unnatural therapies and massage business.
Who can save them? Will they survive the violence but still lose their new small business?
Episode 18
Getting Even with Buried Treasure
When you arrive as a refugee from a country where the government steals your money from your bank, where do you put your savings? When time marches on, how do you un-bury your treasure?
A community garden is the centre of a power struggle between drug lords, police and the community gardeners caught in the crossfire!
Episode 19
Getting Even with Identity Theft
When your identity is stolen, you may lose your money, job, car and house. Your whole life disappears and it seems like you are the criminal! How do you recover from that?
Homeless, broke, mugged into the bargain, Kim loses everything but learns what really is important in life as she learns to rebuild with nothing. Is it possible that from the depths of despair, even as deep as this, love can light the way?
Episode 20
Getting Even with the Russian Mafia
A chance meeting at a pre-natal class with a very pregnant lady from the Ukraine with no English language at all alerts them to the possibility of an underground sex slave ring in their city. Almost ready for a birth within their own family, Paul and his team must act fast to find this lady again before it is too late.
How many more women are there? And what will the Russian Mafia do to protect their empire? Almost anything it seems.
In the midst of the battle for survival, the waters break and regardless of the circumstances, new life is coming. But the mothers could die unless help arrives fast!
What will happen? What will the next season start with, a birth or a funeral?