"You don't want to do this," Alex cautioned the suspect. "Think about it." Her head was throbbing from the pistol whip she'd received as she walked through the door and her gun was sitting useless in a corner, but she still knew her job.

"Shut up!" he screamed at her. "This is all your fault. You shouldn't have come back." One arm was folded against her throat, while the other held a gun firmly to her temple.

There had been a split second as they entered the house, a split second before they had gathered their bearings where they were vulnerable. The suspect had taken advantage of this and after hitting Alex on the temple and disarming her he'd grabbed her in a headlock, choking the air out of her as his arm crushed her windpipe. Outside, the noisy chatter of crickets emerging for the night filled the tense silences in the house.

"Put the gun down," Bobby soothed, trying not to think about Alex's brains being splattered across the wall if the suspect snapped and pulled the trigger. "I can't help you while you're pointing it at my partner."

He pressed the barrel harder into Alex's temple, causing her to wince. "You put your gun down!"

"You know that's not going to happen, James. Now, just think about what you're doing."

James cocked his head to one side and grimaced. "I know exactly what I'm doing. The question is, detective, do you?"

Did he? He'd come here because he'd had a hunch about the case they'd just closed. Something just hadn't sat right, and he thought that if he revisited the victim's wife he'd be able to put his finger on the missing link and solve the puzzle. He'd come here, placing Alex's life in direct danger, because he just couldn't let things alone. Now he had a hostage situation on his hands with the wife and son sitting huddled and terrified on the couch, and Alex's eyes kept flashing him signals he just wasn't getting. Did he know what he was doing? Hell no, he didn't have a clue.

"James, this isn't very smart. Let my partner go and – "

Spittle flew from James's mouth as he tightened his grasp on Alex's neck. "No one is going anywhere. Not until this bitch admits what she did was wrong."

Bobby's eyes flickered to the shaking woman in a barely perceptible motion. She was clearly unable to help herself or her son at that time. "We all know what she did was wrong," he improvised.

"Yeah? Why don't you tell me. . . tell us all . . .what she did wrong then?"

"She . . . allowed your brother to hurt her child," he spoke quickly as he recalled the facts of the case. "She sat back and did nothing when he raised his fists and whatever else was handy to beat him."

James was nodding.

"And as if that wasn't bad enough," Bobby continued, "she covered up for him when people started asking questions."

"She enabled that sack of shit to hurt my boy," James said hoarsely. "What kind of mother does that?"

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place and Bobby knew he had him. "A bad one, James. But don't allow this situation to dictate that you become a bad father."

"I want to be a good father. . ."

"I know you do. You already proved that. . .you killed your son's abuser. Because of you, your son can knock over a glass of milk without fear of receiving a punch to the head. But now you need to let my partner go so we can talk about it some more."

James had eased the pressure of the gun a little as he listened to Bobby's proclamation but reinforced it at the last sentence. "No, I don't think so."

"So you're going to kill a cop in front of your son? Is that truly the image you want to leave him of his father?" Bobby was clutching at straws now, but he felt that the longer James had his gun trained on Alex, the worse her chances were of walking away unscathed.

"No. . ."

"You killed your brother because he was mistreating your son," Bobby pressed. "You were trying to protect him. I understand that. . .the courts will understand that. What they will not understand is the murder of a cop."

"Shut up! Shut up, SHUT UP!"

Then everything happened at once. The little boy, who had been watching the scene play out with wide eyes untangled himself form his mothers arms and screamed at the man who until moments ago he knew only as his uncle. "You're not my father!"

James dropped his arm slightly as his son's rejection echoed around the room. Alex took advantage of his lapse of concentration and with a practiced elbow to the midsection extricated herself from his hold. She scrambled for her weapon and came up standing with it trained it on the suspect. The victim's wife sobbed hysterically and tried to gather her child back into her lap, and the whole time this was going on, Bobby's eyes had followed the gun.

"It's over, James. Put the gun down," Alex ordered.

"It's not over yet," he disagreed, and turned and fired twice.

The shots reverberated around the room, stopping abruptly as another, lone shot burst forth. Outside, crickets severed their song in mid-verse as they waited, assessing the danger. Silence reigned for one brief moment; a moment in which time itself seemed to stop and mourn for what it had just witnessed. The moment passed, as moments do, and chaos reared its ugly head as pain and disbelief and the hot smell of blood filled the room. Outside, the crickets resumed their medley, oblivious and indifferent that two lives were slipping away.

TBC. . .