Page 88 of Return Ticket

“You will drop the charges, or I’ll keep coming back. And I also need to know what you’ve told the coppers. Everything you’ve said to them, so I can prepare a defense. Do that, and I’ll walk away, no harm, no foul.” Tanner shoved her down the short passageway to her door in the dark. “Where’s the key?”

Gabriella looked back toward the bathroom, at where she’d dropped her robe and her toiletries. “In the pocket of my bathrobe.”

He swore in her ear, spun her back to the bathroom, and shoved her in front of him until they reached the fallen items.

“Get it,” he told her.

She tried to bend to pick it up, but his grip tightened.

“No funny business.”

She waited, and after a beat he loosened his grip, allowing her to reach down for it. As she dug in the pocket of her robe, she held onto his forearm for balance, and then crouched suddenly, spinning with her elbow out and slamming it into his crotch.

He gave a keening grunt, bending at the waist, and she shoved him to the side.

He fell through the open bathroom door, and Gabriella ran, taking the stairs two at a time. Long familiarity made her footing sure, even in the pitch dark.

As she flew down, she considered her options.

Mr. Rodney was most likely asleep, and it would take too long to rouse him for help, so she headed straight out of the front door.

The fog was still thick, and she had a good chance of losing Tanner in its white embrace.

She raced toward Holland Park Avenue, glad she’d put her slippers on before she’d left the bathroom. They were pretty sturdy and matched her pajamas, a gift from Ben and Trevor she knew full well Dominique had organized.

She and James had passed a few people on their walk back to her flat, but now, more than an hour later, the streets seemed empty. She reached the main road and listened for cars, but she could hear someone running behind her, and she chanced it and darted across to the other side.

A big lorry suddenly lumbered by, and using the noise from its passing she ran down the first street to the left she could find.

She knew the street name where James was waiting—but she didn’t know exactly where it was, especially in the fog.

She would have to head in the general direction of Holland Park and figure it out.

When she reached an intersection, she went right, but before she continued on, she stood in the lee of a large oak tree on the corner and listened for Tanner.

There was no footsteps behind her any longer, and she leaned against the tree in relief, closing her eyes and catching her breath. Her heart had been pounding, trying to fight its way out of her chest, but it slowed at last and she was able to take her first real breath since Tanner had grabbed her outside the bathroom.

Slowly she realized she was cold, and moisture was seeping into her flannel top from the tree bark, so she pushed away and carried on down the street, looking for a road sign so she could work out where she was.

When she got to the next intersection, she found a pole with a sign on it, and had to go right up to it to make out what it said, but the street name meant nothing to her. It wasn’t Harborne Close, and she didn’t know the area well enough to find it from here.

Still, she had to be near the park, and as soon as she reached it, she would hopefully be able to orientate herself. She walked down the road, glad to have a destination in mind.

Most of the houses along this street were in darkness, and she didn’t want to knock on a stranger’s door. She slowed when she heard a sound up ahead, and stopped, head tilted, trying to work out what it was.

The squeak, squeak, squeak was rhythmic, and for a moment she wondered if it was a gate, swinging back and forth.

Then, just for a second, the fog thinned, and she saw a man up ahead, pushing a wheelbarrow. An arm hung, limp, over the side of it.

She stayed frozen in place as the fog swirled back to cover him. She thought something was lodged in her throat, and her hands crept up to rest, all twined together, between her breasts.

A man had used a wheelbarrow to transport the victim she’d found at the Billick Building.

And James was waiting for a killer tonight.

She had been so pleased to be headed toward him, so happy to get away from Tanner, that she had forgotten why James was out here in the first place.

The killer was in front of her, but she knew for sure they were not in Harborne Close, where James was waiting.

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