"What was that?" Tara's head snapped around from from Zack's laptop, which she had been given to distract her from the morning's events, to point, unerringly towards her family's farm, as though she could see what was going on there despite the walls that prevented her seeing the road, let alone the half a mile up it to the farm.
"What was what?" Zack asked, he hadn't heard a thing.
"It sounded like a shotgun," Tara said. She had never handled a shotgun, but she had heard her father and her brother using their shotguns often enough to recognise the noise. "There it is again."
Zack heard the noise the second time, and would have guessed at it being a gunshot, but he wasn't practised enough with the sounds of the countryside to be able to say it was a shotgun blast. Four months of country living simply wasn't long enough for him to become an expert on such things, but to his mind it didn't matter what variety of gun it was that had been fired, the only thing that did matter was that someone, somewhere was shooting; given the situation that was ongoing, it didn't need him to be a genius to figure out where the shot had come from, or what it might mean.
Melissa recognised the noise immediately and felt herself gripped by a wave of panic; since none of her colleagues had gone to the farm with a shotgun, she was sure it had to have been Kieran who fired the weapon, and that made her worry that one or more of them had been hurt. Snatching her radio off her belt she brought it to her lips, "DI Harrison, this is Constable Turner, come in please. DI Harrison, come in please."
Melissa tried again and again to get hold of the inspector, and when she was unsuccessful she tried Sergeant Mitchell instead. In the end, it was Constable Black who responded to her radio calls, though he sounded very unhappy to be doing so.
"Mel, it's Mike, the inspector's down, so's the sergeant, he shot them both." His shock was audible despite the crackling of the radio signal, it was strong enough to render him almost incapable of speaking. "He shot the sergeant right through the door, and then he shot the inspector in the back."
Melissa went cold at that news.
"What do we do now?"
Melissa found the question incredibly unfair, she was the youngest of the constables and Black the oldest; if anyone should have been able to come up with an idea of what to do, it was him. Her mind raced for a few moments as she thought about the situation. She hoped that Black would come up with something, but when he didn't she spoke.
"Where's Kieran?" she asked. She had been listening for any further shotgun blasts, and was relieved that there had been none; she hoped that meant her fellow constables were currently safe, but the absence of such noises told her nothing of what was going on at the farm.
"He went back into the house after shooting the inspector," Black said. "He hasn't come out again." He was relieved by that, though he couldn't help worrying about what the teen might be doing in the house. The patrol car he had arrived in sheltered him from the house but did not stop him feeling as though he was being watched, and possibly being sighted on with the shotgun; it was a feeling that made his skin crawl, as though his body was being explored by a tarantula.
"Are you safe?" Melissa hoped so, though she found it hard to believe that he could be under the circumstances.
"Safe enough, for the moment," Black said, unable to conceal either the lack of certainty or the apprehension he was feeling.
"Good, stay safe," Melissa told him, as if she expected her friend to foolishly risk his life. "I'll call Inspector Stevens and see what he says; armed backup should be on the way, hopefully they'll be here soon and can sort things out." She ended the radio call and switched to her mobile phone so she could call the inspector.