Shot of Silence (Justice Again Book 3) by M Comley (best contemporary novels txt) 📗

splitting up. Her two children, Jacob and Abby, were turning out to be self-sufficient and eager to help around the house. From what her friends revealed, her kids’ keenness really wasn’t matched by any of her girlfriends’ offspring.

Yes, she had an amazing life and so much to look forward to on the home front, and work was a breeze at present, too. A few months ago, her boss had sounded her out about potentially offering her a slight promotion which would bring in an extra ten grand per year. Toby had rubbed his hands at the thought of maybe doing less hours himself, but she had instantly put a stop to that train of thought.

Her aim was to work hard now, while they were at their peak physically and mentally, and squirrel the money away for the prime of their lives. She and Toby had ambitions to travel the world once the kids were off their hands and had their own exciting lives to lead.

Before that, they had Christmas to look forward to. Her mother was coming to stay on Christmas Eve. It would be their first Christmas without her father who had died of prostate cancer back in April. She was concerned about her mum who had lately become more and more withdrawn. Her mother had even refused the annual Christmas invitation, but the kids had helped in persuading her to change her mind. Things had got so bad that Grace now feared for her mother’s health. How many times had she read about couples who had spent the whole of their adult lives together, dying within a few months of each other through a broken heart?

She pushed the morbid thought aside and upped her pace. The doorman saw her coming and waved. Frank was a true gentleman, always had a great rapport with her, everyone did. Everyone got on well with Grace Hunt.

A noise erupted and Grace instantaneously went down. Frank rushed towards her. She spilt her drink and her roll on the pavement and lay there, staring at a blob of grey chewing gum stuck to the kerb inches in front of her face. Her back spasmed in pain. Oh God, what’s happened to me? Another noise sounded, and her body jolted again. She could no longer fight the excruciating pain, the numbness in her legs and back. Her eyes closed, and she drifted…

He took the shot and grinned as she fell to her knees. Good old Frank rushed to her assistance, ever the gent. He refused to let her live, to get the assistance needed to pull through. She was better off dead. The bullet had pierced her back. He’d been aiming for her spinal cord; it would have embedded itself and paralysed her instantly—that had been his intention, to knock her down so she’d never get to her feet again. She deserved this. The others deserved the fate that was awaiting them also.

So why didn’t he feel elated? Would he, in the future? Only time would tell. For now, he needed to get out of there, while he still had the chance to make a clean getaway. He packed his appropriately named .338 sniper rifle away, the one he’d obtained on the black market, so it wouldn’t be easy to trace. See, he’d thought his plan through thoroughly in order to obtain the success he was craving. Revenge. All this was about revenge at the end of the day. Sweet revenge as he liked to call it. There were many more to come, the likes London had never seen before. No doubt he would go down in history. That brought a smile to his face as he finished packing his rifle away. He cleaned up any debris, not wishing to leave any DNA yet. That would come in the future, when he upped the ante and started toying with the police.

It was all part of his well-thought-out intricate plan. A plan that had taken him over six months to put in place.

The alarm on his stopwatch beeped. He only had a few seconds left to leave his hidey-hole. He packed up the remainder of his belongings and legged it. Down the stairs from the roof of the building opposite Zedex. Once the police discovered where the shots had come from, this place would be out of bounds to him, if they ever discovered it.

He reached the bottom of the stairs, slipped his peaked cap lower, covering his eyes, and took a quick glance across the road at the dead woman lying on the pavement. Distant sirens wailed, and the traffic drew to a halt as the drivers rubbernecked the gruesome scene.

Another smile stretched his lips apart. Quickening his pace, he took a left at the corner, then a right and crossed the main road to a small car park several streets away. All in the planning…there was no way the cops would be able to track him down, thanks to all those CSI programmes he’d studied for months on Reality TV. He sniggered and wondered how many other criminals, if that’s what he was now, watched the informative programmes. Thinking about it, he supposed not that many, because too many criminals were still getting banged up daily.

Not him.

Nope, he had a lot of mayhem to cause first before he led the cops to his door. There again, all that could change with a click of a trigger. To toy with the police or not? That was the question.

What did he have to lose?

Nothing.

1

Katy munched on her egg mayo brown roll and washed it down with a gulp of coffee. “Are you ready for what lies ahead of you this week, partner?”

Charlie swallowed the piece of pasty she’d been chewing on and shrugged. “Were you? When you took your sergeant’s exam, I mean.”

“Yes and no. I thought I was, but when I got in there my brain froze.”

Charlie’s shoulders crumpled in front of her.

“You’ll be fine. I didn’t say that to scare