Part 5

The sound of the buzzer in the reception area caused the officers in the muster room to look up in surprise. Alex looked up at the monitor, forcing a smile. It was Mrs. Peroni. "Looks like this one is for you, Guiseppe."

Kelly began to bite her bottom lip nervously as she watched Joss bury his head in his hands momentarily. Susie shook her head in confusion. "Guiseppe?"

Joss reluctantly dragged himself to his feet and headed out into the foyer, where his mother was standing on the other side of the counter, her hands placed impatiently on her hips.

"And where the hell have you been?" she demanded. "It's well past midnight and yet you still haven't come home!"

He rolled his eyes. "I was called into work," he explained in as calm a voice as he could manage. He didn't plan to tell her about Kelly, the last thing they needed right now was for to be charged with assaulting his own mother. "A detective was nearly killed an hour ago and we need everyone around."

"Where were you until an hour ago?" Mrs. Peroni asked in what Joss knew was her really angry tone. She didn't use it much, but when she did, it was better to just avoid her.

"I was at the pub," Joss answered, "drinking with my mates."

Kelly chose this moment to enter the reception area slowly, letting a weak smile spread across her face. Joss turned back to her, his eyes pleading her to leave, but still she stayed. "Mrs. Peroni?" she asked kindly. Joss hung his head guiltily. This just couldn't be happening.

Mrs. Peroni looked at her in bewilderment before looking to Joss. "It's her, isn't it?" Almost as if to exclude Kelly from the argument, Mrs. Peroni began to yell at Joss in fast Italian, so fast that even Joss had trouble keeping up with it. Kelly couldn't understand a word of it, but she could tell that Joss' mother didn't quite approve.

Joss rolled his eyes. "Mama," he pleaded in English, deciding that even if his mother wouldn't let Kelly understand the argument, he would, "I don't care that she isn't Italian. I love her!"

Mrs. Peroni looked Kelly up and down, shaking her head in disbelief. "You're dating a…a…a blonde Australian slut!"

Joss' annoyance suddenly turned to blind fury. He thrust a finger in the direction of the front doors. "Get out," he told her firmly, only to be ignored. "Get out!" he bellowed, causing his mother to cower slightly before him and Kelly to jump behind him. "You will not come into my workplace in the middle of the bloody night and start calling my girlfriend a slut! Get out!"

Mrs. Peroni gave a huff of disapproval as she turned and disappeared into the night. Joss turned to Kelly. "I'm sorry Kel…"

She stared after Joss' mother in complete bewilderment. It looked like Joss hadn't come from the simple family that she'd thought he had.

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Chris peered around the doorway into Amy's hospital room, the sound of the door creaking open finally stirring PJ awake. Amy groggily awoke from her short nap, her body still sore all over and her neck killing her. PJ's eyes lit up as he realised that Amy was awake, but he didn't get much of a chance to say anything.

"How are you feeling?" Chris asked as she came inside, holding out a bouquet of multi-coloured flowers to Amy. She reached out for them with her right hand, only for Chris to change her mind. "I'll go find some water," she said with a small smile, "I'll be back."

As Chris disappeared, PJ turned to Amy, his eyes still sparkling. "You're awake."

Amy nodded weakly, grabbing the buzzer at her side again. "I woke up earlier," she croaked, immediately realising just why Sophie had urged her not to speak. It just made an unbearable pain even worse. She let the buzzer go momentarily as she placed her right hand over her knife wound protectively.

PJ suddenly realised that it was hurting Amy to talk and nodded, his smile fading slightly. "I'm not letting him get his hands on you again, Amy," he told her comfortingly, "I'm going to stay here as long as you want me."

She nodded again, daring to speak once more. "I…I want you to stay with me," she managed to croak, her voice still strange and weak, foreign coming from her throat. He smiled at her gently as he pushed a strand of brown fringe back from the bandage around her head.

"Then I'm not going anywhere."

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Mark waited until Falcon-Price was well and truly gone before entering the muster room. "Susie," he instructed, "I want you to get a search warrant for the Prior house. If Steven's hiding there, then there has to be some sign of him."

She turned to him, incredulousness written into her features. "You want me to wake up the magistrate at twelve thirty in the morning on Christmas Day to get a search warrant?"

"If that's what it takes, yes." Mark said as he rubbed his eyes furiously. "Joss, put on your spare uniform, we'll need all hands on deck for this one. Kelly, Alex, you're with me in the interview room."

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Yvonne's head snapped up from her hands as Mark, Kelly and Alex entered the room, closing the door behind him. Alex leant back against it while Mark and Kelly sat themselves down at the table.

"I told you, I don't know anything," she mumbled tiredly, "I could make a complaint, you know."

"Go ahead," Mark said, leaning across, "no copper, ESD or otherwise, would ever have us sacked for trying to find who attacked a fellow member."

"Yvonne," Kelly probed, as she leant across and rubbed the woman's hand gently, "we understand that Steven is your son and you want to protect him from us, but Amy is somebody's daughter and they'd be going through hell right now, knowing that she's lying cut up in a hospital bed."

Yvonne shook her head silently, tears beginning to fill her eyes. Kelly glanced over to Mark and back at Alex, their eyes telling her that she was nearing a breakthrough.

"The longer that Steven is out there, the worse it gets for him," Kelly continued gently, "he's already got a long list of charges against his name, including the escape, the attempted murder of a police member and possibly the robbery. If he isn't found soon, then he may never get out."

Yvonne began shaking her head more forcefully. "No," she whispered, "no my Steven's a good boy!"

"Mrs. Prior," Kelly said quietly, "if you really love your son, you'll help us to find him and stop him before he hurts someone else or he goes after Senior Detective Fox again. Because I can guarantee you that if he tries to attack her again and he kills her, then your Steven will never see the light of day again."

The woman sitting opposite finally broke down into desperate sobs. "I didn't know what he was planning!" she wailed. "He showed up on the doorstep, saying that he needed somewhere to stay. Said that they were doing horrible things to him in jail, that he had to get out of there."

Kelly nodded, looking over to Mark and Alex for a reaction. Their eyes were shining with what she knew was pride.

"I told him that he could hide out in the shed, I didn't know what he was planning at all. I didn't want to know what he was doing in there. I just let him be." Yvonne finished, hiding her head in her hands.

"Would you give us permission to search your shed?" Alex asked from where he was leaning against the door, earning a silent nod from Yvonne. "Thanks," he responded as he opened the door and beckoned the others out.

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"Guys," Susie as Mark, Kelly and Alex returned to the muster room. She held a plastic evidence bag out to them as she approached them. "I found this outside the station in some bushes."

Mark reached out and took the bag in his hands, eyeing off the wooden cross inside with disgust. He finally relinquished it to Susie. "His calling card," he announced to Joss who was signing his gun out at the gun safe. "We need to search the Prior shed now."

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Mark opened the door to the Prior shed, gun outstretched. He swung it around the small building before glancing back to the officers behind him and shaking his head, holstering his weapon. "There's no sign of Steven."

The others behind him returned their guns to their belts as they followed him into the shed. Mark and Alex began upturning large bags of blood and bone that were at least three years old, while Kelly, Joss and Susie took to pulling the drawers right out and dumping the contents on the floor.

Joss' eyes began to shine as he pulled out a drawer, only to be met with several piles of notes and coins. "I've found something!"

The others joined him at the drawer as he held the drawer out to them. Susie nodded to herself. "That'd be the proceeds from the robbery."

"Keep looking, we need something that'll tell us where Steven is," Mark instructed as he returned to the bags. It wasn't long before Susie found something else.

"Shit," she swore softly as the others approached her from behind and looked over her shoulder. Sitting in the drawer that she had pulled half-way out was what looked to be a box of bullets. She turned back to them, to see them all suddenly very silent.

Steven had a gun and was after Amy. They had to get to the hospital now.

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Chris returned to Amy's hospital room, sitting the vase of flowers on the table by her bed. She smiled at Amy before looking to the ragged PJ sitting beside her, his hand wrapped tightly around her's and the buzzer.

"Alex rang earlier looking for Kelly," Chris explained, "I found a 24 hour florist. I can't believe we even have one in Mt. Thomas…"

Amy remained silent, glancing over to PJ. He found himself surprised when he realised that he could understand what she was thinking.

"Thanks, Chris," he said with a smile, "they're beautiful."

Chris looked on in confusion, before PJ continued. "She's not meant to talk much. It'll make the pain in her throat worse."

The publican nodded as she sat down on the end of Amy's bed. "Sorry," she said with a nervous smile, "we were all worried sick, Amy," she told her softly, "you're really part of the team, you know that?"

The three didn't notice that the door had been opened until they heard the sound of a gun being pulled from the figure's pocket. Amy's head snapped up quickly and Chris and PJ spun to see Steven Prior standing in the doorway, closing the door behind him with one hand while he kept the gun trained on Amy as he did so.

"You shouldn't fight this, Amy," he told her in a voice that sometimes still haunted her in her worst dreams, "we aren't meant for this world."

PJ reluctantly relinquished his grip on Amy's hand as he slowly eased himself to his feet, holding out a hand to Steven. "Steven, mate, put the gun down…"

Steven shook his head. "Everything in this world is wrong and Amy and I are the only ones who can see what needs to be done."

Amy found herself unable to stop her body from shaking like a leaf. The terror of being back at the station at the mercy of Steven was returning horribly. The feeling as he grabbed her, dragging her, refusing to let her go. Chris noticed her fear and pulled Amy into her arms as best she could, holding Amy's head to her heart protectively. If Tom Croydon had been like the father of the team, then Chris Riley was certainly the mother.

PJ sighed thoughtfully. "Maybe you and Amy can see what needs to be done, but she won't be able to do it if you shoot her to death." His heart pounded away in his chest in fear. He had to save her. No matter what the cost. "Give it up, Steven; you'll never get away with this."

"The whole world is twisted and wrong," Steven pointed out calmly, "and there's nothing that can be done to change it. We aren't meant for this world Amy, we see differently to everyone else. We can't go back and change anything, we can only move forward."

Amy began shaking her head, hoping that she wasn't crying. "Maybe we can't change the whole world," she whispered hoarsely from Chris' arms, "but we can try." She found herself surprised that after all these years, she was saying her old Constable mantra. "If you kill me then we can't change anything."

Steven shook his head. "The world doesn't want to change," he pointed out, "people go on being abused like you and I everyday and it will never change. We can only go forward. We can't change the past."

"But we can build a future," Amy pleaded in her croaking, pained voice. As much as it hurt to talk, she was going to be the one who would save their lives, not PJ or Chris. "Once we learn to accept our pasts and the world around us, we can start to become better people. We can change the world, Steven."

He lowered his gun thoughtfully as PJ looked over to Amy worriedly. She looked like she was in so much pain as Chris loosened her hold on her weak body.

"I tried to change the world," Steven explained, "I tried to stop the abuse cycle."

Amy began to shake her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Yeah," she admitted, "by killing innocent people like us. Your father did the wrong thing in abusing you, but you killed innocent people who were trying to make themselves better people. All you have done is make life worse, not better."

"No matter how you look at it," PJ interrupted, Amy's weakened voice telling him that she was really struggling to say anything, "it all stops here. You've stabbed a prison security guard, cut an innocent girl working at the servo, nearly killed a detective on police premises and are holding two officers and an innocent woman hostage at the local hospital." He began to shake his head as he backed away towards Amy and Chris. "You're not getting out of here alive, Steven. SOG will arrive soon enough and they won't waste anytime trying to talk to you. There's probably officers from Mt. Thomas and St. Davids outside waiting for you. They won't be wanting to talk either."

Chris tightened her hold on Amy again as she spoke out weakly. "You've hurt enough people," she whispered, "please don't hurt anymore."

Steven looked away from Amy to his gun thoughtfully as he rose it to the side of his head, horror filling their eyes as they realised just what they had convinced him to do.

"Steven, no!" Amy called in a voice that was nearly lost in PJ's struggle to tackle Steven to the ground. The gun was fired just as PJ lunged for it, sending Steven's blood flying everywhere and PJ rolling back in pain, rubbing his red hand as he groaned slightly. "PJ!"

The door flew open and Mark and Susie lead the others through, guns drawn, until their gazes fell to Steven's body on the floor, blood pouring from a wound at the side of his head and the gun lying just next to his hand. The uniforms holstered their weapons as Mark crouched down beside the body on the ground while Susie raced over to PJ, grabbing his shoulders as she pulled him gently into a sitting position, the blood on his shirt worrying her slightly, until she realised it was Amy's from the station.

"PJ?" she asked worriedly. "Are you okay?" She caught sight of his right hand and held it up. "What happened?"

"I tried to stop him," PJ mumbled, "he pulled the bloody trigger on himself when I tried to grab the gun…"

Alex mumbled something about getting a doctor as he turned and raced off down the corridor, calling out for help. Kelly and Joss backed away out of the room, no one really knew where they were going, but no one really cared.

Chris' eyes widened as she clutched the shell-shocked Amy closer to her chest, the bond that had been quickly forged when Amy had returned to town a month ago very evident in the way that the publican held her in her arms, like a daughter or a best friend.

"It's okay," she soothed shakily; "he's gone now. He isn't going to touch you ever again."

As Amy let Chris pull her close, PJ looked up from his hand and past Susie to his Amy in Chris' arms, his eyes shining. After all of the crazy things that had happened over the last month, she was okay. Maybe everything was going to work out alright in the end.