Page 29

From where they stood, all of them heard the sound of a window breaking and the shouting that ensued.

“Did he go through the front window?” Gabriella wondered.

“Damn.” Solomon’s soft curse told her he thought he had.

He came up on Mr. Rodney’s other side, and together they walked him into the house.

Jerome was in the foyer, staring glumly at the smashed window beside the swollen door. “He dived straight through it,” he said with a shake of his head. “George went after him.”

But George was back a minute later, carefully ducking through the broken window. “There was a car waiting,” he said. “They parked in the street right near the front gate. A brown Morris Minor.”

“He must be cut up,” Mr. Rodney said, looking at the jagged pieces of glass sticking out from the window frame.

“There’s blood,” Gabriella said, pointing to it. “It’s not yours, is it George?”

George looked at himself, holding out his arms, and then turned for them to check his back.

“No, it’s his.” Solomon sounded pleased.

“Why would Ashe do this, though?” Gabriella wondered.

“He wants to send the message that we can’t make a complaint, we just have to take whatever we get and be happy about it, because no one else will give us anything better.” Solomon sounded bitter.

Mr. Rodney sighed. “I’m tired. Too much excitement for me.”

“Are you all right, though?” Gabriella wanted to know. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No.” Mr. Rodney rubbed the small of his back. “Nothing a good bath in mineral salts won’t fix right up. I don’t want a fuss.” He looked over at Gabriella. “You go on up, Gabriella. You have a full day’s work tomorrow.”

She looked around the group, and could see they looked like they wanted her gone. Probably so they could plot something really serious against Sutcliffe and Ashe.

Well, she didn’t have the power to stop them, and she wouldn’t even if she could.

“I’m going,” she said, stepping on the first step of the staircase. “Just be careful. I don’t want any of you to get in trouble.”

“Girl.” Solomon grinned like his usual cocky self. “We are the trouble.”

chapter

eleven

The scene of crime officers had been through the jewelry shop with black fingerprint powder and someone had boarded up the window with a few thick sheets of wood.

One of the bobbies on guard showed them the chip in the pavement where the bullet had struck and then ricocheted off to embed itself in the brick of the shop opposite.

James stared at the place where the bullet had hit, and tried to recall exactly where he and Gabriella had been standing when the man had taken his shot.

“A close call?” Layman asked.

“Very.” He followed Hartridge and Layman around to the back alley and through the back entrance, mind churning.

Police work should not be personal, but that man could have shot and killed Gabriella or himself. The bullet had just missed them.

It didn’t get more personal than that.

He wondered what the chances were that it was a .38 caliber bullet, like every other bullet they’d found in this case so far.

Once he was inside the office, James couldn’t see what was the Met’s doing, and what was the intruder’s, but under the chaos, both the back office and the front shop were very neat and clean.