Jack took a deep breath outside the briefing room. This was almost as bad as the tie when they briefed the team on Delaney, when Mickey was sitting through the entire thing.

"Right now, everyone." He arched in through the door, just as he normally did. "Most of you have heard of the new incident near the . A man was shot." He paused, wondering whether to just treat this as he did with all the other victims, but he couldn't do it, he couldn't brush past Mickey as though he meant nothing to them. "Unfortunately, what you don't know. Is that, it was DC Mickey Webb. He has been taken to hospital, we're unsure of his condition at the moment. Now then, "He rushed on, trying to avoid eye contact. "The bullet was found a few yards from the vi, Mickey, and it matched those found on victims in the case that he was working on." He pressed a button on the laptop and automatically the screen displayed a close up image of a cold round bullet and the gun it is pared with. "Judging fro CCTV camera's it seems to us as though it was a trap. Mickey radioed in 5 minutes before the time he is thought to have been shot, with information about a car he was following. That vehicle has been found one mile away form this area, it was set alight but some local put it out before all evidence was damaged." Next came on the screen a CCTV image of the car. "Looking at CCTV camera's we can hazard a guess that the driver was not working alone, 2 minutes after Mickey enters the site, another man follows in behind. Unfortunately his face turned away. He is tall, broad, with ginger hair. Fro what we can tell it appears as though he was waiting round the corner for Mickey to appear. "

Finally he allows himself to glimpse at his audience who had remained uncharacteristically quite throughout the presentation. Now he could see solemn faces, with hard steady eyes, and angry lines upon them. Good. They wanted to get these men, and there would be no stopping them now. Now, it was personal.

Jo was trawling through CCTV footage trying to follow the car and get a decent picture of the men inside, and Terry was going through everything Mickey had found on his case. Meanwhile, Jack was sat in his office, waiting for the phone to ring. He knew he had to do something,

He wasn't any help to Mickey sitting here. Sitting himself up straight he tried to go through all the facts by memory and place them into some kind of order. Mickey was lead into a trap, so they could have been getting hot on their heals and they wanted him silenced, but that didn't make sense, he had half his team working on that case and none of them had come across any encounters. It didn't make sense. Unless, unless he was already targeted as a victim anyway. What if he had some relation to the other victims? They had all been followed by the same car, a car which they all recognised. If Mickey had been followed, then they knew where he lived, where he worked, what car he drove. They can't have been that far away from his home.

Briskly he strode to the corridor through to CID main office.

"Jo, how's that CCTV footage coming?"

"I haven't got their faces on camera yet but guess what." She held up a photo with a smug grin "We caught one of them using a cash machine. Now there's no way to tell if this is actually his own card or stolen, but the card's name is to a Mr Benely and, we can use it to track him."

Jack nodded thoughtfully. "Upload a picture of Mr Benely, see if it matches any of the feature we know about these two, hair colour height. Stevie". His words stopped the DS from dashing to the coffee machine.

"I want you to find out where that car was before the attack. If I'm right it could have been following Mickey for some time, even days."

Finally he was getting somewhere. Who ever had done this was going to regret it.

"Mi…." He closed his eyes and cursed through clenched teeth. The next task, to go through the other victims, he was about to assign to Mickey. Idiot! It was just a brief moment of habit, of getting absorbed by the job at hand. But despite the self reassurances he still felt a stab of guilt, how could he forget, even for a second?! Determined to right himself and, sitting firmly behind a computer got stuck in he took on the task himself.

After 10 minute of thorough research he soon found that al of the victims had been to the police before, either with full scale attacks or minor complaints, one of them against a Mr Benely. It was easy to just put this information aside, most of them had been very minor complaints and never pressed charges. But where on earth did Mickey fit into this pattern?

His mobile rang suddenly making hi jump from his deep thoughts. It read Smithy on the screen. He knew what it was. Pausing for a few seconds he eventually brought the phone to his ear. "Jack Meadows."

"Sir." Smithy's voice came through from the other end, almost straight away Jack felt the bottom of his stomach grow heavy. "I think you should come."

The suspense was going to kill him. "Is he alright? What's wrong?"

"He's stable." There was a silence at the end, covering up the "for now"

Of cause Jack wanted to ask more, but the words just couldn't form. Instead he slowly flipped the mobile shut. Maybe he didn't really want to know just yet. What if he was needed here, where he would make most difference to Mickey?

He shook his head. Mickey didn't have family anymore, unless you counted him. Where he was needed was by his friend's side.