by Mike Ryan
“Someone’s got their hair on fire,” Nicole said.
“We made her nervous. Now let’s see who she goes to.”
Werther peeled out of her parking spot, Bridge and Nicole following her, though they made sure to keep their distance. With Werther being as cool as she was under questioning, they didn’t think it was a hard jump to believe that she knew when she was being followed if they weren’t careful. Nicole made sure she was at least four cars behind as they drove. After driving for ten minutes, they still couldn’t be sure where she was headed.
“Where do you think she’s going?” Nicole asked.
“Anyone’s guess at this point.”
They continued driving for another forty-five minutes, though at this point, they thought they might have been spotted. They drove down several of the same streets multiple times.
“Think she spotted us?”
“Tough to say,” Bridge said. “She’s not acting like she’s trying to lose us. She’s probably being careful and following protocol. I’m sure she, and whoever else she’s in with, has gone over this scenario before. All we can do is keep with her and see what happens.”
And nothing did happen, at least for another twenty minutes. They were getting tired of all the driving, but eventually, they knew Werther would get to her destination.
“Hope this happens by sundown,” Nicole said. “Or it’s gonna cut into my sex time.”
Bridge slowly turned his head. “Does your mind always go there?”
“Why do you ask like it’s a bad thing?”
“I’m just asking.”
“Well, I haven’t had it in a while.”
“You just had it this morning!”
“Well, for me that’s a while.” Bridge put his hand on his forehead and rubbed it. Nicole briefly looked at the back seat. “I guess in a pinch we could do it back there if we had to.”
Bridge turned his attention back to the cars in front of them, wanting to get out of that conversation as quickly as possible. Finally, after another ten minutes of aimlessly driving around, it appeared that Werther had come to where she was headed. She pulled over in front of an expensive-looking house and parked her car. Nicole instantly pulled over as well, much further down and hopefully out of sight.
“So who do you think this is?” Nicole asked.
They watched Werther get out of her car and walk toward the house, where the front door opened, revealing a man standing there and waiting for her. Nicole reached for one of their folders.
“Is that Kenny?”
“That’s not him,” Bridge replied.
“Well, who is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s that Stash guy.”
“Guess anything’s possible.”
“Maybe we should go in for a closer look,” Nicole said.
“Let’s just give it some time first. If they’ve initiated their run package, they might not be here for long.”
Nicole looked at the time. “Twenty minutes.”
“Thirty.”
“Twenty.”
“Thirty.”
“Twenty-five.”
Bridge sighed, but he wasn’t going to argue over five minutes. “Fine. Twenty-five.”
Nicole smiled, happy she got her way, but she felt like maybe she left something on the table. “Should’ve started at ten.” Bridge just looked over at her and shook his head. “Twenty-five minutes, then we’re going in.”
“Unless they leave before that.”
“They won’t.”
“That intuition thing again?” Bridge asked.
“No. She’s just gotta be tired of all that driving and wanna sit down for a few minutes.”
Ten minutes rolled by with still no sign of Werther or the other man she met. Nicole was starting to get impatient.
“Can we just go in now?”
“We agreed on twenty-five minutes,” Bridge answered.
“But that was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I got tired of waiting.”
“Fifteen more minutes.”
Nicole sighed. “Let’s just go in and get this over with.”
“Patience.”
“We’ve been in this car for an hour and a half.”
“Legs cramping up?”
“I don’t like sitting and waiting.”
“I know.”
“So can we?”
“Sure. In fifteen minutes.”
“You’re impossible. How did I ever fall in love with you?”
Bridge smiled. “You just couldn’t help yourself.”
Nicole raised an eyebrow. “True.” She happened to glance at the backseat and thought of how they could pass the time while they were waiting. She put her hand on his arm and leaned over, kissing him on the cheek. “Hey, Luke.”
“Yeah?”
“I have an idea how we could pass the time for the next few minutes.”
Luke casually looked at her, then did a double-take, seeing the sultry look on her face. He knew what she wanted. “No, no!”
She retreated back to her seat. “Why not?”
“‘Cause we’re on an assignment here!”
“Nothing’s happening.”
“Yet!”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“We could be back there doing the hanky-panky, and they leave us behind while we’re still getting our pants on!”
“OK, so what’s the next worst thing that could happen?”
“No! No! I give in to you a lot of times, but I’m putting my foot down here!”
Nicole loudly sighed to voice her displeasure. “Why do you have to be so formal all the time?”
“It’s called doing our job?”
“We can still do our job and have a little fun at the same time.”
Bridge rolled his eyes. “No. Not now. I’m putting my foot down.”
“You can put your foot down back there.”
As they continued debating the merits of having some extracurricular fun while they waited, Bridge’s eyes were drawn to another vehicle that pulled up in front of the house.
“Wait, we got action.”
“I wish we had action,” Nicole said.
“No, stop. I mean it. Another car just pulled up.”
Nicole sat up straight in her seat and looked at the car that Bridge pointed to. The car sat there for a few minutes, nobody getting out, nobody getting in, though the engine had turned off.
“Maybe they called an Uber,” Nicole said.
Bridge looked on closely. “I kind of doubt it.”
It was close to three minutes before there was any sign of life from the car. Finally, the driver’s side door opened, revealing the driver. Nicole looked at her partner.
“What do we have here?”
Bridge stared at the driver as he walked to the house. “Bad news.”
11
Bridge and Nicole stared at the man as he entered the house and disappeared from sight.
“Isn’t that um…”
Bridge nodded. “Greg Kenny.”
“Well, I’d say this puts a wrap on it.”
“On what?”
“We can now connect Kenny to Werther, and Werther to the car, and the car to us. That pretty much makes it a slam dunk that he was the one,” Nicole said.
“Maybe it was the other guy in the house.”
“Really?”
“Until we can positively put someone in that car, we have to keep all options open.”
“At this point, I don’t really care who was in the car. Let’s just take these clowns out.”
Bridge sighed, not liking what they might be running into. There was no telling how many more people were in that house. Could have been ten. Might have been zero. And he knew how dangerous Kenny was. So it was logical that whoever he had picked to associate with, that they were probably equally as dangerous.
“So how you wanna do this?” Nicole asked.
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“I don’t.”
“Well, we’ve gotta do something, Luke. We can’t just sit here.”
“I don’t wanna rush into something that we’re not prepared for.”
“If they come out of that house and go in separate cars, what do we do? Who do we follow?”
“We stay on Kenny. He’s the number one target in all of this.”
“I don’t think we can afford to wait and let them get to their cars. Once that happens, who knows if we’ll ever get this close to them again. Once they get in traffic, we can’t guarantee we’ll keep up with them.”
Bridge rubbed his forehead. “I know.” She was right. They couldn’t let them get to their cars. But he wasn’t very eager to walk into a situation where he didn’t have all the facts. He pulled out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling Eric. I’m gonna see if he can get a team down here.”
“What if they can’t get here in time?”
“Then we’ll have to improvise.”
The phone rang, with Happ immediately picking up. “Yeah?”
“Eric, you busy right now?”
“Luke, I’m always busy. I assume you need something?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Bridge said. “I’ve got my eyes on a house right now that has Greg Kenny, Marianne Werther, and some other guy inside.”
“You serious?”
“Deadly.”
“Right this very second?”
“Yep.”
“You’re sure it’s them?”
“Positive. We just had a conversation with Werther, followed her here, then we saw Kenny show up. Are you able to get a team down here? I’m not sure how many other than them are in here, and I’m not so keen on finding out alone.”
“You don’t do this when you’re overseas, do you?”
“When I’m overseas, you’re not available. You want in on this or not?”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll be on the way. Where you at?” Bridge gave him the address. “OK. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
“OK. If they start moving before that, I’ll have to improvise.”
“How you gonna do that?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“I’m sure you will. Twenty minutes. Just hold on.”
“I’m holding.”
Bridge put down the phone and took a deep breath, putting his eyes back on the house.
“Why’d you call Eric instead of the agency?” Nicole asked.
“Because they are not legally allowed to operate here. And if something goes down, if something goes awry, then it’s gonna be an even bigger mess to clean up.”
“Makes sense.”
“Besides, if we can nab Kenny here, then I’ll call P-One and let him know the FBI’s got him. Then they can do their bargaining thing to figure out who gets him.”
“Who do you think would get him?”
“Well, unless the FBI can prove he committed a crime here, which I have my doubts about, I’d imagine he’d be sent back to the agency.”
“That he committed a crime or that they can prove it?”
“Either.”
“And then the agency would drop him in a hole?”
“That’s the idea.”
“You think he’s the mole? The one that Abbott was talking about?”
“I’d say that the odds are good,” Bridge said. “It certainly looks that way. He quits, Abbott winds up dead, the PI who starts looking into it winds up dead, a car outside the PI’s house starts shooting at us, the CIA’s involved, the car belongs to some woman who excels at lying, and that woman winds up at a house that Kenny also shows up at. That’s an awful lot of coincidences if he’s not involved. And you know how I feel about that.”
“Maybe he’s trying to find out what happened too?”
“Unlikely. He wouldn’t have to quit and disappear to do that.”
As they talked, the two of them put on their bulletproof vests in case the action came sooner than anticipated.
“Who’s this other guy that’s in there?” Nicole asked. “Where do you think he fits in?”
“I don’t know. Unless it’s Stash.”
“You really think so?”
“I don’t really think anything at the moment. I’m just saying that nobody’s ever seen the guy, and since we don’t know who this is, maybe it fits.” Bridge shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t fit. I don’t know.”
“By the way, you talk to Abbott?”
“Not today, why?”
“Just wondering how he was holding up. Gotta be tough having all this thrown in his face. Thinking he knows his brother and then finds out about all this other stuff. I imagine it’s rough.”
“Yeah. Just goes to show you, though. You never really know anybody unless you’re living with them, and even then it’s iffy.”
“Guess that’s true. You know, thinking about Kenny now, it’s gonna be tough to take him alive.”
“Men like him don’t get taken alive,” Bridge said. “They know what that means. Death is a much more satisfying proposition than being taken, thrown into a dark hole, beaten, and questioned. If he’s got any type of choice to make, he’ll go down with the ship.”
“Well, let’s hope we can stop that before he sinks.”
Bridge looked at the time. “Twenty minutes is a long time to wait on this.”
“It’ll be fine.”
As soon as the words left her lips, the front door to the house opened. The man they didn’t recognize walked out, a couple of bags in each hand, plus a backpack on his shoulder.
“That doesn’t look good,” Nicole said.
“No, it doesn’t. Looks like they’re about to get out of here.”
“What do you wanna do?”
Bridge quickly thought of a solution. “As soon as he gets back in the house, we rush it.”
“Sounds good to me.”
It wasn’t much of a plan. But it didn’t have to be. They only had to keep the people busy long enough to allow enough time for the FBI to get there. Bridge hoped they would be able to do that. Most shootouts and confrontations like this did not last that long. Maybe a few minutes at most, depending on the situation. And they had to keep them busy for at least fifteen. It was going to be a tall order. But they had to do it. There was no other choice. And they couldn’t let the group escape. With their histories, and the way Kenny was able to blend in and disappear, they might not get another shot at him that was this good.
Bridge put his hand on the door and opened it slightly, just waiting for the other man to get back inside so he could jump out. As they waited, Nicole wondered about the engagement rules.
“What are we doing when we get there?”
“Talk first,” Bridge replied.
“Why is that a thing?”
“What thing?”
“Why do we always talk first and give the bad guys the opportunity to shoot at us first?”
“Because that’s the rules.”
“There are no rules. Why can’t we shoot first? We know they’re gonna shoot at us, anyway. So why do we always give them the first shot? That doesn’t seem fair.”
Bridge shrugged. “Because we’re good and they’re not?”
“Seems so counterproductive.”
“Maybe. But I think it’s in the Good Guy Handbook.”
“You’re making stuff up.”
“No, it’s there. Chapter four, section six, paragraph three, subsection fourteen.”
“Uh huh.”
They watched as the man finished putting the bags in his car and walked back to the house. He closed the door once he was inside. That was their cue. Bridge and Nicole bolted out of their cars, guns drawn, and started running for the house. Unfortunately, their plan didn’t work. They were about halfway there when the door opened again, the same guy walking out, having a few more bags in his hands. He immediately looked to his left and saw two people running his way. Considering
they had guns and bulletproof vests, they didn’t look like the kind of people he wanted to wait for.
“Cops!” the man yelled, ducking back inside and closing the door.
“Crap!” Bridge said. “There goes the element of surprise.”
As they ran closer to the building, a few of the windows opened with guns sticking out of them. The flying bullets came next. Bridge and Nicole immediately ran for cover behind a car.
“There goes that idea,” Nicole said.
Bridge looked at the time. “We just gotta keep them busy for a few minutes.”
“Why don’t you stand up and let them use you as a pinata? They can use you for target practice.”
Bridge gave her a glance, but didn’t respond. He took a deep sigh as he figured out what to do next. “We gotta get closer.”
“I’m sure there’s a back door, too. If we wait too long to move, they’re gonna jet out the back.”
“But their cars are out here. They’d have to go on foot.”
“I think they’d take their chances over staying here in a shootout.”
“Maybe.”
“If we stay here, we’re gonna lose them. The one guy yelled cops, so if they think we’re feds or something, they’re not gonna wait for the rest of the crew to show up. They know they wouldn’t make it out.”
Bridge sighed again. “I know. Damn.” He didn’t want it to go down this way.
The gunfire stopped for a few seconds, until Nicole poked her head above the car. “Well, looks like they’re still there. For now.”
“Fine. You try to keep them occupied, and I’ll sneak around from the side.”
“You got it.”
It was going to take Bridge a little longer to get there as he scurried behind a bunch of cars parked along the street. He was going to go down to the next few houses, then come back up to the house from the side, so Kenny and company didn’t have the same good view to shoot at him. Nicole jumped up and fired a few rounds at the window, then immediately ducked back down behind the car.
It took Bridge a few minutes to work his way around to the side of the house, but he finally managed it without incident. Remembering what Nicole had said about people ducking out the back, he made his way to the back door. Just as he got there, it started to open. He recognized Werther. He pointed his gun at her.