by M A Comley
SHOT OF SILENCE
Justice Again #3
M A Comley
Jeamel Publishing Limited
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author M A Comley
Published by Jeamel Publishing limited
Copyright © 2020 M A Comley
Digital Edition, License Notes
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Acknowledgments
Thank you as always to my rock, Jean, I’d be lost without you in my life.
Special thanks as always go to @studioenp for their superb cover design expertise.
My heartfelt thanks go to my wonderful editor Emmy Ellis, my proofreaders Joseph, Barbara and Jacqueline for spotting all the lingering nits.
Thank you also to my amazing ARC group who help to keep me sane during this process.
And finally, thank you to Jo and Sue from my ‘readers’ group on Facebook, for allowing me to use your names in this book.
To Mary, gone, but never forgotten. I hope you found the peace you were searching for my dear friend.
Also by M A Comley
Blind Justice (Novella)
Cruel Justice (Book #1)
Mortal Justice (Novella)
Impeding Justice (Book #2)
Final Justice (Book #3)
Foul Justice (Book #4)
Guaranteed Justice (Book #5)
Ultimate Justice (Book #6)
Virtual Justice (Book #7)
Hostile Justice (Book #8)
Tortured Justice (Book #9)
Rough Justice (Book #10)
Dubious Justice (Book #11)
Calculated Justice (Book #12)
Twisted Justice (Book #13)
Justice at Christmas (Short Story)
Justice at Christmas 2 (novella)
Justice at Christmas 3 (novella)
Prime Justice (Book #14)
Heroic Justice (Book #15)
Shameful Justice (Book #16)
Immoral Justice (Book #17)
Toxic Justice (Book #18)
Overdue Justice (Book #19)
Unfair Justice (a 10,000 word short story)
Irrational Justice (a 10,000 word short story)
Seeking Justice (a 15,000 word novella)
Caring For Justice (a 24,000 word novella)
Savage Justice (a 17,000 word novella Featuring THE UNICORN)
Gone In Seconds (Justice Again series #1)
Ultimate Dilemma (Justice Again series #2)
Shot of Silence (Justice Again #3)
Clever Deception (co-written by Linda S Prather)
Tragic Deception (co-written by Linda S Prather)
Sinful Deception (co-written by Linda S Prather)
Forever Watching You (DI Miranda Carr thriller)
Wrong Place (DI Sally Parker thriller #1)
No Hiding Place (DI Sally Parker thriller #2)
Cold Case (DI Sally Parker thriller#3)
Deadly Encounter (DI Sally Parker thriller #4)
Lost Innocence (DI Sally Parker thriller #5)
Goodbye, My Precious Child (DI Sally Parker #6)
Web of Deceit (DI Sally Parker Novella with Tara Lyons)
The Missing Children (DI Kayli Bright #1)
Killer On The Run (DI Kayli Bright #2)
Hidden Agenda (DI Kayli Bright #3)
Murderous Betrayal (Kayli Bright #4)
Dying Breath (Kayli Bright #5)
Taken (Kayli Bright #6 coming March 2020)
The Hostage Takers (DI Kayli Bright Novella)
No Right to Kill (DI Sara Ramsey #1)
Killer Blow (DI Sara Ramsey #2)
The Dead Can’t Speak (DI Sara Ramsey #3)
Deluded (DI Sara Ramsey #4)
The Murder Pact (DI Sara Ramsey #5)
Twisted Revenge (DI Sara Ramsey #6)
The Lies She Told (DI Sara Ramsey #7)
For The Love Of… (DI Sara Ramsey #8)
Run For Your Life (DI Sara Ramsey #9)
Cold Mercy (DI Sara Ramsey #10)
Sign of Evil (DI Sara Ramsey #11)
I Know The Truth (A psychological thriller)
The Caller (co-written with Tara Lyons)
Evil In Disguise – a novel based on True events
Deadly Act (Hero series novella)
Torn Apart (Hero series #1)
End Result (Hero series #2)
In Plain Sight (Hero Series #3)
Double Jeopardy (Hero Series #4)
Criminal Actions (Hero Series #5)
Regrets Mean Nothing (Hero #6)
Sole Intention (Intention series #1)
Grave Intention (Intention series #2)
Devious Intention (Intention #3)
Merry Widow (A Lorne Simpkins short story)
It’s A Dog’s Life (A Lorne Simpkins short story)
Cozy Mystery Series
Murder at the Wedding
Murder at the Hotel
Murder by the Sea
A Time To Heal (A Sweet Romance)
A Time For Change (A Sweet Romance)
High Spirits
The Temptation series (Romantic Suspense/New Adult Novellas)
Past Temptation
Lost Temptation
Tempting Christa (A billionaire romantic suspense co-authored by Tracie Delaney #1)
Avenging Christa (A billionaire romantic suspense co-authored by Tracie Delaney #2)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Keep in touch with M A Comley
Prologue
“Run along now, kids, do what your father says, and I’ll see you all later.” Grace kissed her two children and her husband, Toby, goodbye and raced back to work.
They’d been shopping for Christmas presents for their extended family. The children had broken up for the holidays, and Toby was looking after them for a few days until Zedex closed down for their annual two-week break. She was exhausted and in desperate need of some rest and relaxation; however, she knew that wasn’t likely to be on the cards. Not with two children aged eleven and thirteen to keep her on her toes.
Toby was a taxi driver. He’d been doing flexible hours for the last couple of days so he could look after the kids. She had to laugh at the strain already showing in his features when they’d met up for an early lunchtime shopping trip. The children had pleaded with them to go to McDonald’s for a burger. She’d declined, told them to carry on and said she wasn’t hungry. The second her family dipped out of sight around the next corner, she’d slipped into the baker’s up the road from her firm and bought a tuna mayo roll and a coffee that she would indulge in back at her desk.
She smiled as she walked the fifty feet or so back to work, pleased with what they had accomplished in such a short time. All the presents were now bought, all that was left on the agenda in that department was to wrap them. She’d
do that the day before Christmas Eve—she was a meticulous planner, organised at work as well as at home, to the extent it drove Toby to distraction.
Grace loved her life—there was nothing not to love about it. She had a good husband; so many of her friends were either divorced or in the process of 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 you. You go about things differently to the way I did back in the day. You have nothing to fear. You’re intelligent, confident, astute and methodical in your thinking. All the key attributes they’re looking for, plus…”
Charlie held up her hand and finished the sentence off for her boss, “And I have good genes.”
Katy covered her mouth and laughed. “That, too. I bet Lorne’s excited, isn’t she? I keep meaning to bloody ring her. You know how it is, once you get home from work all you want to do is chill out with your man.”
“Lucky you.”
“What’s up? Don’t tell me things are bad between you and Brandon right now?”
“All right then, I won’t. Let’s just say they could be better.”
“What’s the problem?” Katy set her roll down and pushed it aside.
“It’s just that on the last case, we worked a lot of overtime, and he sulked because I was never around.”
“Tell him to grow up. No, sorry, you don’t need me slagging him off, stoking the fires.”
“You didn’t. I told him the same, that’s when the problems started. I don’t think he’s cut out to be a copper’s husband.”
“Nonsense, of course he is. All you have to do is point out the pros and cons to this job.” She could tell Charlie was trying to suppress a snigger. “Something I said?”
“Pros and cons to being a copper. Where the hell do you begin to keep things balanced? From where I’m sitting, the cons far outweigh the pros, more’s the pity. Extremely hard getting the positives across to a partner, and before you say that, AJ understands only because he’s a former copper…”
“All right, I won’t say that then. I know it must be hard for you both. Get the sergeant’s exam out of the way, and he’ll be chuffed to bits about your promotion.”
“You think? I’m unconvinced about that. We’ll see how things go for a few weeks, and then…”
“Then what? You’re engaged to him, Charlie. My advice would be to have a serious chat, work out in which direction your lives are going. To me, you seem reluctant to continue, am I right?”
“I suppose I’d call myself confused at present. Anyway, enough about me, how’s AJ’s new business doing?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow, his first paid job is today.”
“Oh wow! How exciting. What is it?”
“A kids’ party for a twelve-year-old.”
“I’ll keep everything crossed for
all of it to be a huge success. I’m sure it will be. So glad his parents decided to invest in the business.”
“We’re classing it as a setting-up loan. As soon as AJ has enough funds in the bank, he’s going to repay them. They’re really not the type to sit back and not interfere, so we have that to look forward to, until we can pay them off.”
“Good idea. I think I’d do the same if Mum ever got involved in a business I wanted to set up.”
“Really? I couldn’t imagine Lorne interfering.”
“No, I don’t think she would. My pride would want the business to be all about me and not who was backing me. Does that sound bad?”
“Not at all. It makes a lot of sense. In our case, we know that AJ’s parents will hinder us and try and have their say on how things should be run. The last thing we want is the business, or the funding, should I say, to cause friction between us. I can’t say it’s been an easy ride up over the years, up until now.”
“Tell me to keep my nose out, but can I ask why?”
Katy sighed and swivelled her cup on the desk. “It boils down to them never wanting him to join the Met. He rebelled against their decision, and they punished him for it. Joining the police was beneath them socially. Basically, they’re snobs, and that’s not me speaking out of turn, it’s fact, they’d be the first to admit it.”
“I get that. I don’t approve of them thinking that way but I get it. All right, if they felt like that about his decision to join the force, how the hell do they feel about him being a stay-at-home dad?”