Taking Aim (DS Leah West Book 6): A fast-paced crime thriller (DS Leah West Crime Thrillers) Read online

  Taking Aim

  DS Leah West - Book Six

  Nic Roberts

  Ari Thorne

  Copyright © 2022 by

  Nic Roberts & Ari Thorne

  * * *

  ‘Taking Aim’

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes.

  Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Book Seven

  Missed My Other Series?

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  About the Author

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  Taking Aim

  A target marked for death. A killer who won’t be stopped. And enemies on every corner.

  * * *

  Danger is everywhere. When a citizen comes forward as the key witness to a crucial investigation, Detective Sergeant Leah West is charged with their protection and ensuring the evidence is heard in court.

  Meanwhile, her partner, Detective Constable Sam Jones, faces his own demons, desperate to support his partner. But could he end up hindering the investigation?

  As the conspiracy unfolds, Leah will face her greatest opponent yet; a killer who will stop at nothing to get their target. As the conspiracy unfolds, Leah is running out of time and people she can trust…

  * * *

  Taking Aim is Book 6 in this nerve-shattering series of crime thrillers that will capture your attention until the final page, leaving you counting the days until the next installment…

  DS Leah West Books So Far:

  1. Sins Evoked

  2. Deadly High

  3. Murder Match

  4. Self Killer

  5. Spa Slaughter

  6. Taking Aim

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  * * *

  Prologue

  Justin Burton was certain that they were watching him.

  He’d first got that inkling while at his wife’s funeral before getting up for the eulogy and choking out the words about how much his wife meant to him. And he remembered the controversy he ended up stirring due to those words. If looks could kill, Justin would have died a thousand times over. He may not have been the one who put her in the ground, but as far as her friends and family were concerned, he as good as killed her.

  Because in a way, he had.

  And while all of them were looking at him, making silent threats, he could see someone standing at the back of the room, not a relative he recognised. But the most shocking thing about her wasn’t that she was present at the funeral. He knew exactly who she represented.

  It was how young she was.

  She couldn’t be any older than early twenties, at a push. He’d hoped to go over and confront her, ask her why she was there, but he found himself surrounded by his fellow mourners, and by the time he was able to get away from them all, she’d already slipped out.

  He’d decided against going to the wake, unable to take all the people looking at him with scrutinising eyes.

  As he pulled away from the venue, he caught sight of his sister-in-law making her way towards him. She’d never liked him and always went out of her way to find a reason to hate him.

  Then again, he’d given her several.

  She approached him, and to his complete lack of surprise, she slapped him round the face.

  “You killed her! I know you did!” Her lips curled up at the edges into an angry grimace.

  Now, he was aware of everyone turning to look at him. He lifted his hand to touch the sting of his cheek.

  “I’m hurting too,” he growled at her, keeping his voice low. “I didn’t kill Kelly. And deep down you know that.”

  She paused for a moment, looking deeply at him, casting her pain through his soul.

  “You might as well have,” she protested through tearful eyes. “The only reason she was up at that spa was because you beat the living shit out of her. She couldn’t wait to get away from you! You had some nerve getting up and giving that speech, giving everybody the rainbow side of your marriage!”

  He couldn’t bring herself to argue with her. The last night he’d seen Kelly, when once again he’d lost his temper, she’d stood holding an ice pack to a fresh cut above her eye. He had tried to apologise, to tell her that it was a mistake and it wouldn’t happen again. But she’d heard those words so many times before and was now looking at him in a new way, with a look of pure defiance, as though it would be the last time he ever touched her.

  He should have stopped her that night. Maybe if he had, she would still be alive.

  Unable to say anything more to appease Alicia’s disgust for him, Justin simply stepped away.

  He arrived home forty minutes later and dropped the keys to his car on the floor, not caring where they fell.

  The house was immaculate, everything about its marble surfaces screaming wealth. He’d worked tirelessly to have all of this for himself. His wife had once said that it had given him a bloated sense of entitlement.

  “Nice sendoff, all things considered.”

  Justin nearly jumped out of his skin, dropping the whiskey glass he’d been holding. He looked in the direction of his favourite armchair.

  It was the young woman from the funeral. She was wearing jet black jeans and a navy t-shirt.

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  The young woman got up from her seat and walked over to him. “You really think it was that hard to get hold of a key?”

  “What do you want?” Justin asked breathlessly, wondering if she was here to kill him and not being brave enough to ask.

  “I just wanted to get a sense of your headspace,” she replied, looking round the room while pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, thus alarming Justin even more. “Relax,” she said, her back turned while she poured herself a glass of water from the sink. “If I wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be bothering with this conversation.”

  “So, what’s this all about?” he demanded shakily, feeling his confidence starting to come back into him.

  “I was fairly impressed with your performance at the funeral today,” she offered, draining the glass in one go. “You almost sounded genuine.”

  “I was!” Justin shouted, unable to believe he was having the same conversation he’d walked away from earlier.

  The young woman placed her glass in the sink and crossed over to the mantlepiece to examine a photo that showed Justin and Kelly with their arms around one another during happier times. “Nice pictures. Shame it wasn’t exactly the fairytale romance.”

  “Did you kill her?” Justin asked slowly, noting the casual way in which the young woman had conducted herself, wondering how many lives she’d silenced.

  “No,” she replied, turning back to him to emphasise her sincerity. “That wasn’t me. That was somebody else.”

  “You bastards,” Justin growled through gritted teeth. She wasn’t armed—as far as he could tell—and he was wondering whether he could make a dash for her. “You killed my—”

  “Are you seriously taking the moral fucking high ground with me?” the young woman asked, sounding completely indignant. “You beat her senseless. I saw the hospital reports. How many cupboard doors did she end up walking into?”

  Justin looked away, unable to face the truth about himself.

  “For what it’s worth, if it had been up to me, your wife would have been allowed to walk away scot-free and make a new life for herself. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any guarantee she wasn’t going to drag you into the spotlight, and as a result, us.”

  “You said you were going to talk to her!” Justin insisted, trying to hand the blame off to somebody else.

  “Like I said, that decision wasn’t down to me.” Now she was fast approaching him, as though ready to pounce. “Did you ever think that if you hadn’t decided to use her as a human punching bag, none of this would have been necessary? We had a good thing going. You cou
ld have worked your silver tongue when we asked you to and lived the champagne lifestyle. But no, you just had to blow it up with your fisticuffs! Just so you know, they decided to act on your behalf, not out.”

  Justin balled his hands into fists, unable to control his anger.

  The young woman saw this and was instantly bemused. “Oh, this is cute. You want to lay a hand on me, you’re welcome to try. But remember, I am not your wife. So if you want to get it off your chest, go ahead. See where it gets you.”

  Justin really wanted to punch her and let loose the anger that Kelly had frequently chided him for.

  But she seemed so sure of herself. And the way she looked at him, Justin was convinced that no matter what action he took, it would be his last.

  He uncurled his fists.

  “Good boy,” the young woman commented derisively, as though she were speaking to an unruly dog. “Now that we’ve got this little bout of unpleasantness out of the way, we can get down to brass tacks. I’ve got to head back to my superiors later today, and I’ve got to tell them whether you’re going to be a problem or not.”

  “A problem?” he asked, conjuring up a mental image of his head on a chopping block.

  “Basically, we’ve got a backlog of clients who require your representation. I would hope that we could rely on you when the time comes.” She was so matter of fact, it took him aback.

  “So, the message is basically, ‘we killed your wife, now it’s back to work’?” Justin demanded incredulously.

  “Yes, pretty much,” the young woman offered bluntly. “We took a huge risk cleaning up your mess. And you’d better not let this affect your game. You owe us that much at least.”

  “You know I will toe the line,” Justin murmured, losing all resistance.

  “I should hope so.” She gestured around the large house. “Because all of this… technically, you owe to us. So… can we rely on your continued support? And I want to hear it from your own lips.”

  “Yes,” Justin stated, wondering if she was enjoying bringing him to heel. “You can rely on my continued support.”

  “Excellent,” the young woman chirped, a wide grin on her face. “I’ll just see myself out.”

  She walked out of the room casually, and he didn’t dare move from the spot he was standing until he heard the door slam shut.

  He walked over to the window, watching her leave. Afterwards, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a large glass of whiskey. He couldn’t bring himself to settle into his armchair, feeling like it had been tainted by her presence.

  He wanted to relax, to tell himself that the danger was behind him.

  But he couldn’t help wondering if he was actually safe. What guarantee was there that they weren’t watching the house right now, anticipating his every move?

  For a fleeting moment, he considered tearing up the house to see if there were any bugs hidden there. He couldn’t be sure that they weren’t going to watch for his next move.

  He thought about his wife. How she’d died. He hadn’t been given the specific cause of death. The most they had offered was that it was an ‘unfortunate way to go’, which was as good a way as any of saying she’d died suffering.

  He wondered if he would be able to put together a decent poker face, whether he would be able to convincingly fool everyone around him with the façade of the grieving husband trying to bury himself in work.

  It was then that Justin knew exactly what he should do.

  1

  He could have lied to her, told her that he was actually going to the meetings and then ducked out when no one was any the wiser.

  But Detective Constable Sam ‘Jonesy’ Jones was well aware that his partner, Detective Sergeant Leah West, had a high-class bullshit detector. She would pick up on his lies a mile off.

  Instead, the only thing he could do was go along to the meetings.

  She’d had taken the time to set up the meeting with Occupational Health, and he was now sat opposite a sympathetic medical officer. Despite her repeated claims about ‘not being there to judge’, he still felt like she was silently assessing him.

  “So, how are you feeling today, Sam?” the medical officer, Gretchen, asked, oblivious to Jonesy’s ire. She had asked him the same question for the last three sessions, as though expecting a different answer each time.

  “I’m feeling good,” he started, shuffling in his seat, clearly uncomfortable.

  “Are you on any medication?” she asked, her pen at the ready.

  “I’ve had my fair share of piss tests,” he retorted, shrugging off the suggestion. “I think that should tell you all you need to know.”

  Gretchen dismissed the barbed comment with a smile. “Yes, your tests all came back positive.” She looked through her tablet, which had Jonesy’s medical record on the screen.

  “I understand that you suffered a violent assault in the line of duty.”

  “That’s what the medical records tell you,” he replied, looking out the window, determined not to give the conversation any more attention than necessary.

  “I was wondering if you could talk about it,” Gretchen asked patiently, having had numerous previous instances where she’d had to break down the walls of the visiting officers patiently and gently. “We’ve had three sessions now, and I think it would really benefit you to talk about how you’re feeling.”

  “What’s there to talk about?” Jonesy asked with a shrug. “I went in there, I almost died, I didn’t. Unless this is hell—which it quite possibly is—I’m very much alive. I don’t need the psychoanalytical bullshit.”

  Gretchen could see she was going to have her work cut out for her with this one. “Sam, this isn’t about putting you on the spot. You went through a serious trauma. What you have been feeling in the few months since is perfect natural.”

  He sighed, taking the time to consider the question, knowing that he probably wasn’t going to be cleared for active duty until he gave her something tangible. “My dad was a copper before. He was always so proud that I carried on the family tradition.”

  “I imagine your father must have been through his fair share of ups and downs,” Gretchen offered empathically.

  “He did. But he got on with the job just like everyone else.”

  There was more to the story, she could tell. She said nothing, simply letting him reflect.

  “My dad got stabbed in the thigh once. He couldn’t take out the blade without causing massive blood loss. He went to the hospital and got it removed. We all thought that he was going to take time off from work, spend more time with the family. And then, he was back at work after three days, no complaints.”

  “And you feel pressured to follow suit based on his example?” Gretchen suggested, twirling her pen in her fingers.

  Jonesy didn’t want to admit that was the case because it risked simplifying the problem for him.

  “I understand that after the aforementioned incident, you were offered administrative leave, but you refused to take it,” she noted as she scribbled down something on the page. “Do you think you might benefit from some time off?”

  “No, absolutely not.” The resolute way he’d said it told her she wasn’t going to change his mind.

  “Sam—and I say this with a great deal of respect—even without taking into account your personal wellbeing, you don’t want to run the risk of jeopardising any future cases.” If he wasn’t going to pay attention from a personal perspective, she hoped to sway him with a more professional point of view.