There was a lot Knox had worked hard not to think about since they’d sped out of the car park under Leconfield House. He didn’t want to entertain the idea that everything Williams had done following his miraculous return—his openness with Holland, his willingness to forgive Knox, his keenness to do whatever would bring him back into the fold—had been a trick. So he’d refused to.

But now, he had to face the possibility that it might all have been an incredibly cunningly orchestrated act of revenge and betrayal. And he had to do something. He had to stop his best friend from kidnapping his mentor.

Whatever was going to happen next, he couldn’t let the Cessna take off. So he dipped the clutch, shifted into a low gear, took his foot off the brake, and slammed it once more onto the accelerator.

The Jaguar surged forward, leaping down the runway as Knox rapidly moved up through the gears to the car’s top speed. In response, the Cessna’s propeller blades became a blur, and it raced towards the Jaguar.

‘This is your plan?’ Bennett shouted as she braced herself against the passenger-side door and the armrest between her and Knox.

Knox didn’t respond, or take his eyes off the Cessna. For five long seconds the car and the plane sped towards each other and it seemed like Knox and Williams were both going to lose the game of chicken they’d started. But then the Cessna began to tilt backwards and its three wheels lifted off the grass. The Jaguar was close enough for Knox and Bennett to see both Williams and Holland’s faces as they rose up into the sky.

Knox kept his speed up, but drifted the Jaguar to the side, out of the plane’s path. Then, just as it was about to pass them he held his breath, wrenched the handbrake on and heaved the steering wheel, skidding sideways under the plane. The car’s roof smashed into the Cessna’s wheel frame, shearing two of its struts clean off.

The Jaguar kept spinning off the smooth runway and onto the rougher grass. It hid a divot side-on and for a perilous instant almost flipped over before its horizontal momentum brought it bouncing back down to earth.

The Cessna rocked violently from side to side as it lost height and veered off course. Its wings tilted back and forth until one finally made contact with the ground, sending the plane into its own crashing spiral that snapped off the last wheel, broke a wing and the tail fin, and exploded the cockpit windows. It came to a shuddering halt thirty yards from the runway at the same time as the Jaguar finally stopped spinning on the other side of it.

Inside the car, Knox and Bennett both gulped for air as their hearts and lungs pounded inside their chests.