Chapter Sixty

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"Mike, Michael, what's going on up there? Are you alright?" Melissa asked hurriedly, abandoning the call to Stevens so she could try to find out what the new shotgun blasts indicated; she hoped it wasn't a sign of something bad, though how it could indicate something good, she didn't know. Her concerns grew the longer she waited for an answer.

It was almost a minute and a half before Black responded to the radio call, time in which he cowered behind the patrol car, afraid that the slightest move on his part would draw more fire from the murderer. "I'm uninjured, so is Adrian, but I'd hardly say we're alright," he said, speaking in as low a voice as he could manage to keep from being overheard. "We're still using the patrol car for cover."

"What were the last couple of shots about?" Melissa wanted to know. "If you're staying under cover, what was Kieran shooting at?"

"Us!" Black said. He sounded a little calmer, but there was still a note of alarm in his voice. "I don't think he was actually trying to kill us – for which he was more than a little grateful – I think he was just trying to get us to keep our heads down."

"Is he still in the house?" Melissa still had her mobile phone in her other hand and she could hear from it, faintly, Inspector Stevens voice as he demanded to know what was going on.

There was a prolonged hesitation from Black as he worked up the courage to raise his head above the bonnet of the patrol car, against which he was leaning, so he could look around. He exposed himself for no longer than was absolutely necessary, dropping back down into cover after the briefest of glances. "No, he's not in the house anymore," he said quickly into his radio once he was safe again. "He's in his car. I think he's getting ready to leave; yes, he's just started the engine. What do we do?"

The answer was obvious to Melissa and she gave it without hesitation. "Stop him." After everything Kieran had done they couldn't simply wait for the backup that had been requested and hope that it would arrive before he got away; in her mind that would be tantamount to aiding and abetting his escape.

"How're we supposed to do that?" Black wanted to know.

"I don't know, any way you can think of," Melissa told him. She couldn't believe that she seemed to be the only one capable of thinking of solutions. "Run his car off the road or something."

"Don't do it, Melissa," Zack said in his most authoritative voice. He realised what the young constable was intending the moment she dropped her phone and radio and bolted from the living room, and was determined to stop her before she got herself hurt. "Melissa!" He hurried after her, but wasn't quick enough to catch her before she made it out the front door.

""hat's going on, what's she going to do?" Sophie chased after her friend, worried and curious, but, like Zack with the constable, was unable to catch up with him before he disappeared through the front door, which he left open.

Sophie wanted to continue the pursuit, if only to satisfy her curiosity, but stopped herself when she remembered that Tara Wright was still in the living room; the young teen may have calmed after the ordeal she had gone through that morning but that didn't mean she could be left on her own. Frustrated, she left the door ajar and returned to the living room, where she kept an eye on the teen Zack had saved while listening for anything that might tell her what was going on outside.

Zack reached the patrol car that had been parked to block the narrow road in time to see it race away up the road. What she was doing was the same action he would have taken were he in her position, but he would have liked her to show a little more caution. There was nothing he could do to stop her, short of turning into Superman, which left him with just a couple of options: he could remain where he was and watch as Melissa continued on the road on a collision course with the Land Rover that had just left the Wright Farm, or he could give chase on foot and hope that he could somehow limit the potentially fatal disaster he could see looming – he chose the latter option.

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