21. Sneak Peek Of Avenging Amity
Sneak Peek Of Avenging Amity
I built a case against aristocrats trafficking women. They tried killing me. HAVEN sent reinforcement: an ex-SAS operator who turns surveillance into warfare. Bodyguard romance with bite.
Amity: The Ashford family tried silencing me with an assassination attempt. I survived and kept investigating.
Declan: Close protection job, they said. Keep the lawyer breathing, they said. Nobody mentioned she'd be this stubborn or this stunning.
Amity: He follows me everywhere: courtrooms, Parliament, aristocratic estates, Australian accent clashing beautifully with my world.
Declan: She walks into danger like it's Tuesday, argues legal precedent while I'm scanning for threats.
Amity: When another attack comes, he shields me with his body and I realize I trust him completely.
Declan: Trust becomes heat neither of us can ignore, professional distance burned away.
Amity: Steve and Janice warned about attachment during operations, but they're married so clearly rules are flexible.
Declan: I turn their surveillance teams into my intelligence source. They hunted her. Now I hunt them.
SNEAK PEEK OF AVENGING AMITY
Chapter 1: The Sniper
Amity
Kensington, London. 0835 hours.
The bullet hits the brick wall beside my head.
One second I’m walking along a Kensington street with a briefcase in one hand, mentally reorganizing the argument I’m due to make at ten, and the next, brick dust explodes across my face.
I stop.
Every sensible instinct I possess seems to stop with me.
Then the crack reaches me.
Gunshot.
I run.
My heels hammer the pavement as I sprint past white stucco townhouses and black iron railings, briefcase swinging hard enough to bruise my leg. A woman walking a terrier shouts something as I nearly collide with her. I don’t stop to apologize.
Another shot strikes the pavement behind me.
There’s nothing random about this.
Ten days ago, someone fired into my car as I left chambers. My driver took a bullet, the rear window shattered, and Scotland Yard called it an attempted robbery despite my insistence that no one had tried to take anything.
The first attempt could be disguised as street crime. This one absolutely can’t.
I turn sharply into a side street and almost lose my footing. My heel catches between two paving stones, wrenching my ankle before I tear free and keep moving.
The briefcase stays with me.
Inside are copies of documents I’ve spent eight months collecting. Documents someone is apparently willing to kill me for.
Another bullet snaps into a stone column across the road.
Three shots.
No shouting. No vehicle racing toward me.
Someone is shooting from a distance, and they know exactly what they’re doing.
I run harder.
A car horn blares as I cut across the road, nearly stumbling again before catching myself against a parked van.
I duck through an opening between two buildings and find myself in a narrow mews lined with parked cars. My lungs burn as I run deeper into it, searching for an exit.
There isn’t one.
Bloody brilliant.
I drop behind a Range Rover and crouch beside the rear wheel, trying to make myself smaller while keeping hold of my briefcase. My hands are shaking badly enough that I struggle to unlock my phone.
999.
I press call and force air into my lungs.
“Emergency. Which service?”
“Police.” My voice sounds remarkably composed considering someone is trying to murder me. “I’m being shot at.”
“Can you tell me your location?”
I give her the street, then glance toward the entrance to the mews.
Nothing moves.
“Are you injured?”
“No.”
“Can you see the shooter?”
“No. They’re firing from a distance. At least three shots.”
The operator tells me officers are on their way and instructs me to remain behind cover.
For once, I have no objection to being told what to do.
I look down at the leather briefcase still clenched in my hand.
Ten days ago, they shot at my car.
Today, they waited until I was walking in the open.
Whatever I’ve uncovered, someone has decided I’m no longer a lawyer asking inconvenient questions.
I’m a problem they intend to remove.
***
Kensington, London. 0855 hours.
The first police car arrives within six minutes.
By the time the second pulls up, the street has been closed at both ends and a uniformed officer has hurried me into the rear of a nearby café, away from the windows. The owner clears a small staff area while armed officers search rooftops and upper floors along the street.
My left ankle aches from the sprint. Brick dust coats one side of my jacket, and there’s a shallow cut near my hairline where a fragment caught me.
My briefcase remains between my feet.
An officer takes my statement while another comes in briefly to confirm the impact points. Three shots. One into the brick beside where I was walking, one into the pavement, and a third into the stone column near the corner.
Three opportunities to kill me.
A dark sedan pulls up beyond the cordon. I see it through the narrow window in the staff-room door.
Detective Chief Inspector Cormac Flynn.
Of all the senior officers in London who could have been assigned to an attempted assassination, Scotland Yard has sent the one man who’s spent months making certain my investigation goes nowhere.
A minute later, Flynn appears at the rear of the café with the measured confidence of someone who already knows what conclusion he intends to reach.
“Ms. Lovell.”
“DCI Flynn.”
His gaze moves over my dusty jacket and scraped hands. “You’re not injured?”
“My dignity suffered considerably when I nearly broke my ankle.”
His mouth almost moves.
“I’m glad you’re unharmed.”
“How fortunate you happened to be available.”
His eyes sharpen slightly. “I was informed of the incident and recognized your name.”
“I imagine you did.”
He’s recognized it often enough while blocking requests, redirecting inquiries and watching witnesses become unavailable whenever my trafficking investigations stray too close to the Ashford name.
Every road eventually reaches Flynn. Then stops.
He glances toward the front of the café. “Three shots?”
“Unless Kensington has developed a problem with spontaneously exploding masonry.”
The constable beside us looks down quickly.
Flynn ignores the remark. “Did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“Anyone following you?”
“No.”
He nods as though my answers confirm something. “Then we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves.”
I stare at him.
“Someone fired three bullets at me.”
“We don’t yet know you were the intended target.”
“The first bullet missed my head by inches.”
“Kensington is busy at this hour.”
“Which makes firing a rifle into it remarkably antisocial.”
His expression hardens.
Ten days ago, my driver was shot when someone opened fire on my car. Flynn backed Scotland Yard’s conclusion that we’d interrupted an attempted robbery.
Now someone has waited until I’m walking alone and put a bullet into the wall beside my head.
He glances toward the officers outside.
“Just a random act, Ms. Lovell. London, you know.”
I almost laugh.
“London?”
“Violent crime happens.”
“Twice to the same human-rights lawyer in ten days?”
“We don’t have evidence connecting the incidents.”
“You haven’t looked for any yet.”
His jaw shifts, irritation flashing before he smooths it away. I’ve seen it every time I refuse to accept whatever convenient explanation closes another door.
Flynn lowers his voice. “Go home, Amity. Let us handle this.”
I look at the man who has blocked requests, redirected inquiries and repeatedly assured me there’s nothing unusual about investigations collapsing whenever the Ashford name gets too close.
Then I look at my briefcase.
DCI Cormac Flynn has arrived within minutes to tell me this means nothing.
I don’t believe a word.
***
Kensington, London. 0915 hours.
Flynn wants me to go home.
I have no intention of doing anything DCI Cormac Flynn suggests.
I wait until he’s called away by one of the officers examining the bullet strikes, then retrieve my phone from my bag and move several meters away. The police cordon keeps pedestrians at a distance, but people are already filming from across the street.
By lunchtime, footage will be online. By this evening, whoever hired the sniper will know I survived.
Again.
I scroll through my contacts and call Adrian Blackstone.
Our families have known each other for generations, which means Adrian and I have spent years crossing paths at dinners, charity events, weddings, and gatherings populated by people with titles and people who desperately want them.
The call connects on the fourth ring.
“Amity?”
Hearing his voice tests the composure I’ve been clinging to since the first bullet hit the wall.
“Adrian. I need help.”
“Where are you?”
“Kensington.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I watch Flynn speaking to a uniformed officer beside the damaged wall. He glances toward me, and I turn slightly away.
“They’re trying to kill me again.”
Adrian doesn’t ask who they are. He knows enough about my trafficking investigation to understand the danger surrounding it.
“What happened?”
“Sniper. Three shots while I was walking to a meeting. One hit the wall beside my head.”
“Christ.”
“Flynn has already decided it was random.”
“Cormac Flynn?”
“You remember him?”
“I remember enough. Where are you going now?”
“Home. I need my laptop and the rest of my files.”
“No.”
I blink. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t go home.”
“I’m not abandoning my files.”
“I didn’t say abandon them. They put a sniper on you in Kensington at eight-thirty in the morning. If they know your route to work, assume they know where you live. Assume they know your office, your parents’ house, and anywhere else you might go after an attack.”
My gaze moves over the surrounding buildings.
Until now, I’ve been thinking about the sniper. Adrian has me thinking about whoever told the sniper where I’d be.
“All right. Where do I go?”
“Nowhere yet. I’m sending someone.”
“Who?”
“The best bodyguard I know.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“You’ve survived two attempts on your life in ten days.”