As he started down the slanted lawn, she tried to break free of Dominic’s grip and go to him. She got only a few feet before her head scrambled. Her brain cut contact with her legs and they shut off. Her head got another whack, this time by mown grass.

Looking up, she saw Dominic step forward, up the hill, getting between her and Nick, who was coming down like a runaway train. Dominic turned partly to his left and raised his right arm, curling it before his face, like someone trying to protect himself. But in his hanging left hand, hidden from Nick’s view by his leg, was a short piece of metal that instantly elongated in length with a click.

Nick stumbled on.

‘Where’s my daughter?’ he yelled.

A trick, she realised. She tried to shout, but it was too late.

Feigning cowering behind his raised right arm, Dominic suddenly turned and brought his left arm up and around, swinging the extendable baton at Nick’s head. Full of forward momentum, he took the blow hard, almost on the same spot where he’d been struck the last time he’d met this man. His legs collapsed under him. She almost felt the earth vibrate under the hard impact of his body hitting the dirt. He tumbled past her and came to a stop in the ring of turned earth, face up.

‘Déjà vu, asswipe,’ Dominic said. He took four strides down the hill and bent over Nick.

‘Nick!’ she yelled.

Dominic grabbed Nick’s shoulder and flipped him over easily. Then he knelt on her husband’s back and put hands in his hair, full weight bearing down on locked arms. She actually saw Nick’s face sink two inches into the soil.

A shadow fell over her. Ball Cap, standing nearby.

‘It’s over, don’t you hear the sirens?’

Dominic ignored his colleague’s shout. Nick was thrashing under powerful hands intent on forcing the life out of him, but no match for the skinnier, smaller man. She was too dazed from the crash to get up, to help him. But over the drumbeat of rushing blood in her head, she heard the sirens, loud and getting louder. She expected the two men to flee.

But Dominic remained right where he was, hard fingers locked on the back of Nick’s head.

‘You go kill her, I got this guy. Race you.’

‘It’s over, pal. Let’s not add years to the sentence.’

Dominic ignored his partner. Knowing he didn’t have time to end Nick by suffocation, he reached for his discarded baton. Even in daylight, Anna saw the air above the road at the top of the lawn pulse with blue light. The sirens seemed so close that another inch would put them in her head.

‘Dom, c’mon, man, stop.’