"Hey! Blondie, go get your uncle would you?" I shouted to the boy behind the desk. He couldn't have been older than nineteen but he was acting like a six year old. Granted, a snarling man carrying a shot gun had indeed just stormed into the once peaceful police station of a small town where scarcely any crime was committed - well, none that they knew of - but he could have at least ran and got back up. Especially seeing as this was about the seventh time I'd called him.

"He's scared," Ian laughed. I could tell he had no interest of turning the gun away from its current target - but perhaps that wasn't apparent to the boy. His hair was still ginger, but his eyes were a vivid blue; two stone cold stormy seas. They suited him more than his previous black set had and somehow managed to look more threatening despite what was probably the friendlier colour. Perhaps it was because it was the real him. They weren't masked behind anything. "He won't call for help."

"Help is on its way already," I said. "The call was made for his superior. You're going down, Ian."

"And you're willing to let you and your friends fall alongside me?" He asked. I said nothing, just stared down the barrel of his pointed gun. "How heroic of you. Well, I guess in that case..." He cocked the gun, the loud click making both Skylar and Matthew gasp aloud.

"So hasty?" I hoped he couldn't see how nervous I was. He'd known me since I was eleven thanks to Jason's parents being a friend of his, not quite as smart as Flora's dad to see that the man had changed. He'd worked with me since I was fourteen. Chances were he knew me well enough to understand I was hopelessly prolonging this. I didn't care. It was worth a shot. "I thought you'd want to make me suffer. Especially after stealing Flora from you. Don't deny it, you're jealous."

His jaw ticked, hand shook a little. "Jealous? Of you? Please. I have everything I want. Do you know how much money I've got being in the business I am? Do you know how much brains it takes, how much concentration, to be able to do what I have done? Become other people? I have talent and I'm rich. Why would I want to be a teenage kid with no girlfriend and daddy issues?"

"Flora is my girlfriend," I lied knowing that it would piss him off. She was as good as so it wasn't much of one, but a label never had been confirmed. There had always been so much going on. It felt good to say it at least this once. "So yeah, Ian, I think you're jealous."

"When did this happen?" It was working. His gun had lowered ever so slightly, distracted by a fact he hadn't been aware of.

"Right about the time you guaranteed Flora would despise you for as long as she lived. When you told her you'd murdered her father. So I guess it's your fault we're together, actually. Thanks for that."

He was in front of me within the space of a second, gun pushing into my chest. I didn't dare take a breath incase the rising of my chest somehow pushed Ian's hand into pulling the trigger. The cool metal seemed to seep through my shirt, chilling me to the bone.

"Flora," Ian growled lowly, mouth virtually frothing. His nose twitched as if the scrunching of his features was an attempt to reign in his temper. "Does not despise me. She might not be so fond of me at this moment in time, I admit, but she will grow not to fear me. She will grow to accept me first. Then she'll see my point of view, and then, perhaps, she'll even come to care for me."

"As a father?" I said, unable to help riling him some more. Of course he didn't think of Flora as a daughter. The guy, for reasons unbeknown to everybody save himself, thought it possible he and Flora could have a relationship. Flora had forced me to watch enough crime shows with her when struggling to fall asleep - honestly, CSI was like a morbid bed time story to that girl - to know that angering the murderer when he held a weapon never ended well, but I just couldn't resist. Whether it was nerves or adrenaline or fear, I couldn't seem to keep the words to myself. "Of course, it all makes sense now. You wanted a daughter and that's why you killed off her dad. You wanted a family. Creepy way of starting one, though, I must say. Took you a while, too-"

"SHUT UP OR I PULL THE TRIGGER!" He boomed. Skylar was sobbing in the background and I could hear Axel murmuring for her to quieten down. Distractedly, I noted that it was the most gentle I'd ever heard him sound and wondered if Axel had ever heard my voice change when speaking to the person I'd recently realised I loved most in the world. At least if things went south for me, I knew that Axel had found his Flora. I hoped the rest of them would, too. Even Hayden. Well, Flora's male equivalent. "You know I'll do it."

"I don't doubt it. I'm just surprised that you're taking me down in such an easy way, you know? I thought a guy like you would have been creative. Spiced it up a little. I mean, Flora ended up with me rather than you. She wanted me. Still wants me. How does that make you feel? Like you want to just shoot me in the chest, or like you want to make it slow and pai-"

He jerked the gun downward and pulled the trigger. Matthew screamed. The blast was short and sharp, not particularly loud, but it had popped my ears. They rang as I tried to make sense of the white hot pain lancing from my foot and up my leg. There was a hole in one of my boots, leather torn to expose a circle of skin and sock beneath. Crimson.

"I'm guessing you were going to finish up that sentence on the word painful. If so, then yes, I'd say the latter. Can't say creativity was ever really a strong suit of mine, but killing on the other hand? Inflicting pain? I think you'll find that's my expertise."

"Really?" I grimaced. The bullet to my foot was making my eyes tear up. "Thinking on the spot is mine."

I gave Ian only enough time to frown in confusion before I lunged at him. The gun flew from his hand and skidded across the floor as we collided and fell upon the linoleum in a fit of curses and grunts. The gun had fired as it travelled and Matthew was screaming bloody murder. There wasn't a second to spare a glance at him to check whether he was just being Matthew or whether he'd actually been hurt for our lives depended on my current concentration and Ian's distraction. I put all of my strength into rearing back my fist and plunging it straight into his face - but it wasn't enough.

Ian was as quick as a flash of lightening and just as lethal. Though I'd surely broken his nose, it had been nothing more than an annoyance to him, and myself the pesky fly that kept hovering around and causing it. He swatted me away as if I were no different, and I flew across the room until the wall slammed into my back with a force brutal enough to knock the breath out of me. Relentless, Ian's boot clad feet were already obscuring my vision and giving me barely a second to raise my hands in front of my face to deflect the impact of another blow. Skylar's screams mixed with Matthew's to create an ear piercing soundtrack to the brawl.

"Stop hurting him!" Screeched Skylar as Ian dragged his leg backward for another kick, but Topher intervened, Hayden and Axel flanking his either side wearing masks of determination. I sagged with relief. With Ian's attention diverted I got the few moments I needed to compose myself. Staggering to my feet was more of an effort than I'd like to admit and certainly wasn't about to voice - though I doubt I concealed my wobbling when upright all too well. I'd whacked my head against the corner of the wall when Ian had shoved me and it was clearly taking its toll.

"Dude," Matthew said, looking skittish again with eyes flickering between myself, the ongoing struggle with Ian and the receptionist cowering behind his counter. "You don't look so good."

"Neither do you," I felt an unfamiliar rush of paternility come over me as I snatched up his arm, blood coating it from elbow to fingertip like an ugly scarlet glove. "That shot that went off-"

"I'm fine and dandy," He replied, but his face didn't look it. His dark eyes exaggerated how pale he'd become, seemingly sinking into his scared face. Matthew wasn't a fighter. He might have sometimes pretended to be, but we all knew he'd never been into the violence. Never even taken part in it. He stood at the sidelines, screamed a little and later pretended we'd misheard. "But you look like Gillian McKeith just before she executed that infamous faint on I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of He-"

"It'll be fine, Matthew." I glanced at his arm, furious, then at Skylar who was hovering anxiously behind him and staring at Axel just as he got hit upside the head. "Skylar, you and Matthew run through the back and find someone. God knows how they haven't heard the commotion, it's a fucking police station for Christ- Whatever. We'll keep him distracted whilst you both get help. Afterwards stay in the back until it all blows over."

"Maybe you should come with us," She started. "You don't look so-"

"And take that dweeb hiding behind his receptionist desk whilst you're at it before the guy has a bloody heart attack." I pressed Flora's phone discreetly into her hand.

She stared at me for a moment as if attempting to gage how resolute in my decision I was on fighting. Eventually she gave a reluctant nod of her head, took Matthew by the uninjured arm and sped toward the receptionist desk whilst slipping the phone into her pocket. Ian turned, looked as if he were preparing to strike the two of them out of the way, and thought better of it once realising I was back up on my feet. Axel, who hadn't noticed his sudden change of mind, leapt upon his back and clawed at his face before yelling at Skylar to run. And run she did.

I was about to come to his side, had in fact already made it half way there, when I spotted the gun lying unattended by Hayden's feet. We'd seen it at the same time, both of us meeting the other's eye at the exact same moment. One of the perks that came with always having had the one friendship group since young was the understanding you could share without having to exchange any words at all. I nodded my head just as Hayden did his and so it came as no surprise when the weapon came hurtling through the air, my hand already outstretched to catch it.

The metal was even colder in my grasp than it had been through my shirt when pointed at me earlier. Though I had held a gun and been shown exactly how to work it by my dad when there used to be one hidden underneath the floorboards of our living room for safety (the hiding place of which immediately changed after my father left and my mum had become aware of the messy situations I was winding up in with Ian), this somehow felt very different. It was like learning self defence. You could practice it, enjoy learning, but did you ever want to end up in a situation where you needed to carry it out?

"Axel, Topher," I said it quietly yet it managed to break through to everybody despite their shouting. Perhaps it was the contrast between the volumes of sound. Axel dropped from Ian's back, eyes bulging from their sockets, and hurried to the side as Hayden had, well out of range of the gun. Topher followed suit, looking more composed but still visibly shocked. Like Matthew's arm had been gloved in blood, his shirt was sticking to his chest from an expanding pool of it. My friends, hurt because I'd asked them to confess, a request which would have eventually hurt them anyway. We'd all committed illegal acts thanks to the man standing in this room. Everything that was awful stemmed from him. "Make sure you stay back."

"Well, well, well." Ian laughed and blood dribbled down his ginger stubble. I idly wondered how he managed to dye his beard ginger without getting it on his skin and making it look as if he'd dipped his chin in a pot of melted cheese, but didn't bother inquiring. "The tables truly have turned."

"Yeah," Snapped Topher, peeling the red fabric of his shirt away from the mysterious wound underneath. "So don't even think about throwing that bloody pen knife you've got stashed up your sleeve at him or he'll blast your fucking head off."

"Is that so?"

I didn't answer. In all honesty it was because I didn't know. My sister's death had haunted me for years, and that had been unintentional. A stupid seatbelt buckle left unclipped. What would a purposeful death do to me? Would I have more nightmares? Would it be Ian's face plaguing my dreams rather than Olivia's? I didn't want to see his face in my mind's eye for the rest of my life, or live with the guilt, but I couldn't imagine living another day in a world I shared with this man who'd ruined my life. My friends' lives. Flora's. The horrible things he'd done to Flora...

My hand shook as I raised the weapon. There were a few metres between us but I didn't doubt I was capable of hitting his chest from where I stood. "What's your real name?"

He cocked his head to the side. "That's really the question you want to ask me? The last question before you, as Christopher put it so lightly, blast my fucking head off?"

"If he doesn't do it I sure as hell will." Topher growled lowly. I reckoned he was still more than slightly peeved that he now only had half of a left ear thanks to Ian.

I shrugged, ignoring him. "It's as good as any."

"You used to be such nice boys. You did as you were all told. How the opposite sex can cloud a man's better judgement..." He shook his head. Hayden made a disgusted sound that, by the look on his face, he'd intended to keep inside. I didn't blame him. Nobody in this room could say they weren't scared other than the devil himself - who just so happened to be facing the gun held in my grasp. "I take it my little Flora's spun some elaborate tale that I am in fact not Ian Greene? A wild imagination, that one has."

My little Flora. I shuddered. She was a girl, not a piece of property - but if she had to be anybody's then god forbid she was anybody else's but mine. "Recorded it, actually."

"Excuse me?"

"We're here to take you down, Ian, and if that means we're going with you then so be it. We've all agreed it's the right thing to do, especially now that we've got evidence. It's over."

"Flora didn't record our conversation, she was too distraught. All she did was vomit on the stair case, the sink and then proceeded to bawl her eyes out like a child. None of which would have happened had you not forced my hand, might I add." He glowered as he spoke the last sentence as if I was somehow to blame for every inconvinient event for him that had happened since the confession.

"Are you telling me that this is my fault?" My hand was slick with sweat. It slipped over the metal and I was forced to grip it with both hands in case disaster struck. "Wouldn't you say what you did to Flora might have caused that reaction? That finding out you were Alexander, some fictitious brother of a dead man named Ian who you murdered in cold blood, who she'd tried to forget for years, might have shaken her a little? That it had nothing to do with me, but rather you, I don't know, say, murdering her dad when she was under the impression she'd been judged and abandoned by him?"

"Look at you," He smiled. "All in the know."

"What's your real name?" I demanded.

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Tell me," I said through gritted teeth. "Or I shoot."

"Feel free," He glanced toward the opening door behind the receptionist desk where a group of fierce looking men and women in uniform armed with a generous amount of weaponry spilled out shouting orders at the pair of us about obeying them in the name of the law or something or other. I wasn't concentrating on that, however, but the superior look Ian held when he was already ten moves ahead of you with checkmate in sight. How had he won? Surely it had been we who were victorious this time? "Feel free," He said again, this time with an almost manic laugh. "But you'll never find Flora if you do."

Somebody was ordering me to drop the gun. Another unfamiliar voice demanding that someone snatch it from my grasp. It was Topher who eventually prised it from my rigid fingers, handed it over to the police with a mumble of explanation I couldn't hear. They were cuffing both Ian and I, still unsure of the details of the matter. I barely felt the cold hoops encircling my wrists, barely heard my friends protesting about the cuffs, for I'd already been plunged into the Antarctic Ocean and held beneath the surface for an eternity.

"What have you done to Flora?" I shouted. "Where is she? What did you do!"

The fluorescent lighting made the red that stained his teeth seem even grislier than what it was. "I've always been the guy that gets what he wants. Bit like Jason in that sense. So I guess if I don't get the girl," A hand shoved at his back, guns jerking toward him in a threatening manner so that he move toward the corridor. Just beyond that corridor lay temporary holding cells and interrogation rooms. They'd keep us separated, I knew that from experience. I would have been thankful for the segregation had it not been for the mention of Flora. Every hair on my body stood on end as he looked at me again, this time dead in the eye, and proceeded to finish his sentence. "If I don't get the girl, then nobody can."

I'd never particularly been a fan of small dark spaces. One, because they were small, and two, because they were dark. I guess it was pretty self explanatory. I'd never really been afraid of the dark, not within my home at least, but when elsewhere it made everything seem extremely unfamiliar. At least in my house I knew what ominous shape I was tripping up over (usually a stray sneaker, or this one time it was my magic 8-Ball which happened to roll on a particularly unhappy answer and later caused me to throw it out of my window) and the way back to a light source if I so wished. But being in a place unknown? In a confined space? It wasn't particularly pleasant, and on top of that there was something a little suffocating about unwanted darkness. It clung to you in a way that turning the light out for bed time didn't. Made you panic.

I closed my eyes in the hopes to calm myself even though I knew it made no difference whatsoever. When my eyes were open, I was faced with the endless black that surrounded me. Not that it was endless. It might have felt that way, but I was unable to even stretch my arm half way in front of me without it hitting the inside of the trunk of Ian's car. That's where I guessed I was, anyway. It definitely felt like a car boot minus the grocery shopping that was probably the normal contents of the average automobile. It certainly had been for mine. Particularly Twinkies and Lucky Charms. Also, considering the last thing I could most vividly remember was Ian striking me in the face with the butt of a gun, I could take no better guess as to who the vehicle belonged to. I certainly knew of nobody crazier than Ian.