Written In Blood

Chapter Sixty-One

Kieran was astonished to see the patrol car heading up the road towards him as he left the yard. He didn't know which of the village's constables was behind the wheel, and he didn't really care, he was more concerned with the fact that there was no space for him to get past the patrol car; if he tried to go to his right he would be stopped by the copse of trees, while on his left there was the wall, and the ditch on the other side of it, that separated him from his family's field.

His foot lifted off the accelerator momentarily, doing so without him thinking about it consciously, but once he realised what he was doing he pressed his foot down so he could speed up again.

He hoped that whoever was behind the wheel of the patrol car would lose their nerve and turn away before there was a collision, after all, his Land Rover was more likely to come out better off. It wasn't until the last moment, when he could see that it was Melissa behind the wheel rather than one of the other constables, that he realised the car was not going to turn away; by then it was too late for him to do anything but brace himself for the impact.

When it came, both quicker than he had expected and with more of a delay – the final second or so before the two vehicles collided seemed to slow until it passed at a fraction of the proper speed, enabling him to take in every detail, right down to the look of grim determination on Melissa's face – sent a shock up his arms and made him fly forward, unhampered by the seatbelt he hadn't bothered to put on, and into the steering wheel.

It was fortunate that there was not enough time for either vehicle to accelerate to too great a speed, it meant the impact was less severe than it could have been. His chest hurt, as did his arms, but not so badly that he couldn't move, albeit slowly and with much muttered cursing. Kieran threw open the door at his side and stumbled from the Land Rover; the moment he was on his feet he looked around, knowing that he was not out of danger, and wanting to determine where that danger was going to come from next.

In front of him was the patrol car Melissa had stopped him with, it looked as though it had been welded to his Land Rover. Neither vehicle was going to be moving any time soon, that much was obvious, and from what he could see, Melissa was as stuck as her car; she was struggling to cope with the air-bag that had opened protectively, which he was glad about. Beyond the patrol car was Zack Wild, who was approaching the crashed vehicles slowly and cautiously and, as far as he could see, without a weapon; since that was the case, Kieran dismissed him as a threat.

Turning to look back up the road to his family's farm, Kieran saw something that worried him much more than either the author or the trapped constable; the second patrol car, carrying the two constables who had come to arrest him, was creeping towards him. The speed of the patrol car's approach could not have been more than one or two miles an hour, but he still didn't like to see it heading his way.

He reacted automatically to the threat by diving back into the Land Rover, the pain his chest forgotten, to retrieve his shotgun from the passenger seat. He brought the weapon up to his shoulder the moment it was clear of the vehicle and sighted along the barrel at the windscreen of the patrol car.

Black saw the shotgun and reacted instinctively to it being aimed in his direction. He spun the wheel and pushed his foot down on the accelerate in a vain effort to avoid being shot. The patrol car lurched forwards and to the left, doing so as a double flash signalled that Kieran had fired both barrels of his shotgun.

The windscreen shattered under the impact of two loads of shot but Black had no time to worry about that; the patrol car smashed through the wall and buried itself nose-first into the ditch on the other side of it.

Kieran watched the crashed patrol car for a moment before deciding that the officers in the vehicle were no longer a threat to him. Zack Wild on the other hand, having almost reached the rear of the patrol car Melissa was trapped inside of, was, even if he still appeared to be unarmed. Hurriedly, he removed the spent shells from his shotgun and replaced them with fresh ones he dug out from the pocket of his jacket; he then reached into the Land Rover to retrieve the bag containing the 'valuables' he had gathered from the house - he figured he could afford to leave behind the food, because that could be replaced when he sold his 'valuables'.