The casual way in which Hugo spoke of murdering Angelo chilled Joey to the core. Gone was the flustered, angry man who had first held them at gunpoint. Here now, was a man to be scared of. And she was.

"Yeah, that's right, I killed him," Hugo repeated to the stunned trio. "That bastard was going to get away with hurting Martha." He stared right at Watson. "So I did what you were too gutless to do and gave him what he deserved."

"I wasn't gutless," she replied. "Martha wouldn't have wanted me to kill him."

"You wanted him dead though."

"I just wanted him out of my life," was Watson's reply. "How did you get Gypsy Nash to lie and confess for you?"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "She'll keep her mouth shut and since the only people I have to worry about talking are right here with me, then soon all my problems will be over."

"You think you'll get away with this?" said Watson.

"I have experience in getting away with a lot."

"Oh god," Watson murmured as a horrible realisation finally dawned on her. Being locked up and held at gunpoint must have been messing with her brain for her not to have joined the dots sooner, but the pieces were just now slotting together as she stared into the eyes of a killer. "The gun that killed Angelo, also killed Jack," she said. "You pulled the trigger both times, didn't you?"

"I never meant to kill Jack," Hugo said and even Joey noticed a slight waver in his voice as he said Jack's name. "You weren't meant to be there that night, no one else was." How different things would have been had he known that night, that he'd been reported in as a prowler and the cops were on their way.

"Well we were there and you shot at us."

"It was dark, I didn't see who you were."

"Would it have made any difference if you had?"

"Of course it would have," Hugo said quite firmly. "I may have had my issues with Jack, but he was family and I swear, if I'd known it was him, I never would have shot in his direction. Hell, I wasn't even aiming to hit anything, let alone you guys. I was just trying to scare you off."

"So Jack was just unlucky?" she said.

"Everything that night wasn't meant to happen the way it did."

"You could have come forward." Despite her deep loathing for the man, Watson had found herself believing him when he said he had never meant to kill Jack.

"Not after that," Hugo said, his voice full of regret. He shook his head. "I couldn't break mum's heart or Uncle Tony's."

"And confessing to murdering Jack would have blown any chance you had of getting Martha back."

"I make no apologies for loving Martha and wanting her back, even to this day," Hugo told her. "We were engaged to be married, those feelings don't just die."

"They did for Martha."

"I know," he murmured. "If I could, I'd turn back time and not pull the trigger that night, but I can't. What's done is done."

"Then don't make it any worse for yourself," she said. "Let us go."

"I've already murdered two cops, what's one more."

Watson made sure to keep her eyes trained on Hugo and not on what was happening at his side and slightly behind him. Keep him occupied and focussed on you, she told herself when it became apparent he'd lost track of the fourth occupant here.

"You said you couldn't break your mum's heart," Watson said. "What do you think killing us will do to her? She loves John and she treats me like a daughter." Watson winced in pain when the butt of the gun smacked into her cheek. She gestured to John to stay out of it.

"You're not her kid," Hugo hissed at her.

Watson rubbed her cheek. It hurt like hell and she feared it was fractured, but she couldn't stop now. If she did, they were likely dead. "By now Gina and the others will know we're missing," she said. "Hugo, don't add to her pain any further by taking us away from her forever."

Joey had no idea why she was even contemplating this. All Hugo had to do, was to turn his head a fraction, and he'd see her. If he did, she would most likely find herself shot and Georgie and John would quickly follow her into death. Georgie wasn't even looking in her direction, but Joey sensed she knew exactly what she was planning and she was deliberately keeping Hugo's attention on her. Despite her fear, Joey knew she had to do this. There was no other way out.

"Mum is a strong woman, she'll cope with the losses," Hugo said rather callously.

"If she is so strong, then why didn't you come forward over Jack," Watson countered. "Because you didn't want to break her heart, is what you said. Well Hugo, what you're planning to do here, is going to hit her even harder."

"I can hardly let you go."

"We'll speak up for you," John said. "Say you weren't thinking when you took us and then you had a change of heart when you realised what you'd done."

"I've kidnapped people, including a cop, locked them up, held them at gun point and then admitted to two murders," he snidely said. "And you think you can make it all better for me with a few lousy words?"

"Maybe not," John admitted. "But stopping you from making it even worse would be far better for you in the long run."

Hugo shook his head and sensed, rather than saw, the movement to his side. Joey stopped, frozen in fear, as Hugo turned, bringing the gun to bear on her. Only Watson acted faster. The moment his attention was off her, she'd pounced and before Hugo had had time to realise his mistake, the smaller woman had crashed into him. The air was knocked out of him as he landed hard on the floor, her knee in his side as the gun slipped from his hand. It had all happened in a manner of seconds and he now found himself sitting on the floor, with Joey pointing the gun she'd just picked up at him. With the way her hands were shaking as she held the gun, he was likely to end up shot by accident, he thought.

"Joey, why don't you let me take that," Watson said and a grateful Joey handed the weapon over to her.

"Oh thank god," Joey heaved a sigh of relief and moved away. The gun had felt so heavy and cold in her hands and it wasn't something she'd liked holding at all.

Hugo now found himself looking into the gun held by a steady hand. There was no wavering at all on Watson's part.

"Hugo Austin, I am arrested you for kidnapping and on suspicion of two counts of murder."

He was filled with anger as she continued to read him his rights. Losing was bad enough, but to be defeated by a woman he despised more than anyone else just made it worse.

"How does that gun feel?" he asked all of a sudden.

"What do you mean?"

"It doesn't have a ring of familiarity about it?" he said tauntingly. "Maybe that is because you're not looking at it from the right angle." He sneered at her. "Imagine peering down the barrel like you once did."

Joey gasped as his meaning sunk in. The gun that had killed Jack was in the custody of the police, handed in by Gypsy Nash when she had confessed. There had been another gun from that night though and if Hugo were to be believed, then in her hands, Watson held the very weapon that had nearly taken her life.

"Any painful reminders now?" Hugo continued to taunt.

Joey had no idea whether Hugo was telling the truth or lying through his teeth about the gun, but one thing was clear, it seemed to her that Hugo was deliberately trying to provoke Georgie. She saw the other woman's hand squeeze tighter around the gun, her stance beginning to look a little less steady now.

"Anything yet?" Charlie demanded to know from Graves when she and Shandi walked into the Station. Graves had already left the party with Shannon before the call came in, yet she'd come on duty the moment she'd heard about the disappearances, so Charlie was grateful she'd set aside her date to help out, but she was too worried for Joey and Georgie to bother with civility. Graves seemed to understand where her rudeness was coming from as she took no offence.

"I'm sorry Charlie, there's nothing yet," she replied. "We've contacted the local media to help get the word out about our missing trio, but the only responses we've had so far, are from people who saw John in Yabbie Creek well before he would have met up with Joey and Georgie."

"What about the blood?" asked Charlie.

"DNA profiling won't be back for some time, but we had a rush done on the blood typing. The type is a match to both John and Georgie."

"Oh god," gasped Shandi and she fell into Charlie's arms when they wrapped around her from behind.

"There wasn't that much blood," Charlie told her.

"I can't believe this is happening, Charlie," she murmured.

"Neither can I." Charlie looked to Graves. "Whoever was in that third car has to have taken them somewhere," she said. It was the only possible explanation to the blood, the smashed phones and the fact there had been no word from any of them. Someone had to be preventing them from returning to their loved ones.

"We're doing everything we can to identify the tyres that left those tracks and therefore, the type of car they belonged to," Graves told them. "Unfortunately, even when rushed, these things still take time."

"Why would anyone take them?" asked Shandi.

"Georgie might have been targeted because she's a cop and John and Joey were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," answered Graves. "Or maybe they stumbled upon something they shouldn't have, we just don't know yet."

"If they have been kidnapped, then what are the chances of them being found alive?" Shandi asked in a broken and scared voice.

"If whoever has taken them had wanted them dead, then they could have done that at the cars," Charlie told her, even as her own mind was going through all the various scenarios as to why it would be more beneficial to take them elsewhere before disposing of them. She didn't even want to think about it anymore, because it didn't help.

"I'm just so scared for them Charlie."

"So am I," she said. "But Shandi, we need to stay positive."

"It's so hard to," Shandi sobbed. "I finally have my sister in my life and I might lose her and dad forever."

"Hey, we'll get them back," Charlie told her. "Alive and well."

"Oh god I hope you're right."

"Who was he?" Watson demanded to know and Joey knew at that moment that Georgie had believed Hugo about the gun. "Who was the bastard who shot me, then walked right up and pulled the trigger again."

Hugo smirked. Despite his current predicament, he was enjoying rattling this woman. "Brax."

"Fuck," she muttered. Brax had been a part of her life for a long time and while she had never regarded him as a friend in the same way she had his brother, she had never expected this. It felt like a betrayal and she wondered if Heath had known what his brother had done?

"It was nothing personal," Hugo told her. "It was just by that time, self preservation had kicked in and he didn't want to take the risk of leaving behind a witness who might have been able to identify us."

"I never saw your faces or heard your voices," she said. "I had no idea."

"Yeah, we kind of realised that later when the cops never came to arrest us."

"Why were you even there that night?" Hugo just shrugged in reply, refusing to answer, so she asked another question. "How did you end up with Brax's gun?"

"I took it off him that night for safe keeping."

All sorts of things were going through her mind and she latched onto one of them. "You mean you took the gun from him so you could hold it to ransom over him," she said. "Keeping the gun gained his complete silence for that night, didn't it?"

"Whatever," he replied with another shrug. Hugo shook his head dismissively at her. "I still have no idea why Martha was so willing to lower herself into the gutter to be with a loser like you," he said. "Not when I could have given her the world, children, security, everything you never could."

"You couldn't make her love you again," she angrily fired back.

"If you hadn't have gotten in the way, she would have turned to me, because I would have been there for her and helped her through her grief over Jack," he told her. "She loved me once, she could have loved me again."

"You're dreaming."

"No, you're the one who is dreaming," he sneeringly said. "Thinking you're better than your slut of a mother."

"Don't talk about her like that."

"Why not, it's true," said Hugo. "She was a lost cause and so are you," he said. "You couldn't even protect Martha or avenge her."

Joey held her breath when Georgie's finger twitched against the trigger. She really wished Hugo would just shut his mouth and stay silent.

"Martha would be mine if not for you," he said. "And Jay would be calling me dad."

"You will never be a father to Jay."

"We'll see what happens once you're out of the way."

"I'm the one holding the gun you dickhead."

"The one you're too gutless to use?"

"Georgie, he's just trying to distract you," John softly said to her. "He might be expecting some help to be coming."

"No, I think Hugo actually wants me to shoot him and that is what he's trying to goad me into doing," Watson replied. "You see, I'm the loser with the volatile temper. A Watson who resorts to violence when confronted by something I don't like, just as my dad did. Angelo found that out when I decked him and now Hugo wants some of the same. You would rather die than lose it all and go to jail, isn't that right Hugo?" she said to him. "You're a coward, which is exactly why I'm going to let you live. I have no intention of letting you take the easy way out Hugo," she told him. "I guess your luck has just finally run out. Once, I might have pulled the trigger and you could have died knowing I'd likely end up behind bars for killing an unarmed man. Only I'm not that person anymore Hugo and I'm nothing like my father," said Watson and for the first time in her life, she truly believed that. "It's you who will be rotting in jail, Hugo, not me and while you're in there, you'll have plenty of time to live with what you've done and to live with the guilt for the devastation you have brought to your family." This time she was the one who smirked at him as she added, "And you will also have to live with the knowledge that I'll be married to Martha and adopting Jay and any other child Martha may have as my own, while you'll be bitch to the top dogs who just love a nice piece of arse like yours."

"You bitch," he raged.

Before any of them could react, Hugo launched himself right at the gun in Watson's hand.