Lowering my face and turning towards my father, I looked at him and whispered, “I hate you!”
“You’ll get over it,” he grunted.
I leapt at my father again, my hands outstretched before me, just wanting to rake the flesh from his smug-looking face. “Vincent was a better cop than you – he was a better man than you. That’s why you murdered him.”
“Get off me!” my father roared, throwing me from him. “You’ve lost your fucking mind. No one is going to believe a word you say.”
“But they’ll believe me,” Michael said, suddenly stepping forward and smashing his fist straight into my father’s face. There was a sickening crack as my father’s nose spread in a bloody mess. He dropped onto his arse in the mud. “It’s over!” Michael shouted beneath another flash of purple lightning.
“It’s far from over,” my father said, taking his hand from his nose and looking down at the blood.
“It’s over,” Michael breathed.
As quick as the lightning flashed again overhead, my father shot his hand out at Michael. Clenched in his fist was his can of police-issue CS spray. A jet of thick, white fluid shot from the nozzle of the can, hitting Michael in the eyes. Throwing his hands to his face, Michael staggered backwards towards the well. I watched as my father leapt to his feet. He raced towards Michael and pushed him hard in the chest with the balls of his hands. Michael tumbled backwards, blind by the CS spray which was now making his eyes feel as if they were ablaze inside his skull. He hit the wall of the well and disappeared over the edge.
I leapt through the air at my father. Michael had managed to cling to the edge of the well with his fingers. My father had started to prise them free.
“Leave him alone!” I screamed as Michael hung over the deep well of blackness.
“Fuck off!” my father barked, lashing out at me with his arm.
I fell backwards into the wet mud. With the wind knocked from me, I gasped mouthfuls of air into my lungs as I struggled to my feet. I clawed at my father’s legs as I tried to get up. Reaching out, I gripped the end of his baton, yanking it from his utility belt. I staggered to my feet, and locking out my arm, I racked the hard piece of steel. I brought the baton down on my father’s legs over and over again. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground, crying out in pain and clutching his knees. Dropping the baton, I reached down into the well, taking hold of Michael’s wrists. The rain had made his skin slippery, and I could feel him sliding from my grasp and down into the pitch black.
“Help me,” I begged Michael. “Push yourself up.”
“I can’t,” Michael cried out. “I think I’ve broken my hip.”
He screamed in agony as I pulled on his wrists. Michael looked up, his eyes puffed closed and red.
“I can’t do this on my own,” I cried out, knowing I was going to lose him to the well just like I had Vincent.
The rope! I suddenly thought.
I glanced back over my shoulder in search of it, but all I could see was my father shuffling towards me with the baton raised above his head.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Put it down,” I heard someone shout.
I looked over my other shoulder to see Grayson step out of the shadows. He had a shotgun pressed against his shoulder, the barrel aimed at my father. Jess bounded and leapt about his legs.
“I’m not going to tell you again!” Grayson boomed in that deep voice of his. “Drop that baton or I’ll happily blow your brains out.”
“You’re not going to kill a cop,” my father grinned at him.
“If you don’t shut your fucking face and drop that baton you’ll find out soon enough if I’m prepared to shoot a cop or not,” Grayson threatened.
My father stared back at Grayson, a look of not-knowing on his face. I had never seen such a look on my father’s face before. He had always been so confident. He looked stripped of that arrogance now. Slowly, my father lowered the baton.
“I ain’t gonna tell ya again,” Grayson roared. “Drop the baton.”
Like a sullen child, my father flung the baton into the nearby trees.
Grayson then edged his way over to the well, where I clung to his son. Not once did he stop pointing the shotgun at my father. Jess stood barking and snarling in the rain. “Take the gun,” Grayson snapped at me. “And keep it trained on your father. You can do that, can’t you?” He looked me straight in the eye.
“With pleasure,” I said, taking the gun from him and training it on my father.
Grayson leant into the well, as Michael gripped the ledge with the last of the strength in his fingertips. With one mighty heave, Grayson dragged his son from the well. Michael wailed in pain again, as Grayson laid him on the ground. Once Michael was safe, Grayson took the gun from me and trained it back on my father.