by Lexi Ostrow
She stopped dumbfounded as she saw three men, including Chase, head out the front door. Another three sped past her as well. Six were headed toward the door leading to the lot. Without thinking, she sprinted past them. Bridget knew there were protocols to take into consideration, but all she could think about was the people she’d known were outside. She was breaking every fucking rule.
But she didn’t care.
All she could think of was Jeremy lying in a pool of his own blood, just as her father must have been not too long ago. She burst into the lot, unable to focus on anything as the image began to take hold of her ability to focus on anything else. She felt bile rising up in her throat as she looked around. Two officers lay on the ground. Dead or alive, she couldn’t tell. Her feet were running as fast as she could force them to move and her chest burned from the effort.
Less than ten feet from her was Ashley’s Wrangler. She couldn’t breathe as her eyes took in everything in front of her. Blood was splattered on the driver’s side door. A man lay, dressed in all black, unmoving on the side of the car with a bullet hole in his head.
Bridget didn’t waste any time on him. She turned towards the vehicle, her breath catching as she saw that Ashley was slumped over the steering wheel. Bridget couldn’t see any sign of blood or any indication as to where her closest friend had been shot. She couldn’t see any sign of movement either.
That’s when she caught Marcus stumbling out of the corner of her eye. He was standing just outside the car with his gun drawn, aiming it directly at the window of another car, and Bridget had no idea why. It didn’t matter where he aimed it though. Just like in the earlier simulation course he didn’t watch every angle. An unexpected bullet shattered through the driver’s window and out Ashley’s passenger side window as a car pulled up behind them. It slammed into Marcus, lodging itself directly into his back, right between his shoulder blades. Bridget watched as a bright red flower formed and quickly spread out. Without uttering a single sound, Marcus’ body fell forward and slammed into the ground.
Bridget’s own cry tore through the lot. She could hear the other officer’s screams as they ran forward to surround the Mercedes and the Honda Accord that clearly didn’t belong in the lot. She couldn’t make herself focus on anything but Marcus’ lifeless form laying on the ground like a limp doll encircled by his own blood.
Rage tore through her as she watched the scene. No one was shooting at her, not at that moment. Just then a man appeared to her left, as if out of thin air. He wasn’t the scrawniest man in the world and he wasn’t terribly intimidating either. She couldn’t see his face of the black beanie he wore tugged down that covered everything but his eyes. Seeing his eyes was like a bucket of ice water dumping over her head, just for a second. The dead look in his eyes frightened her. Grey pools of nothing surrounded an iris and they were focused on her.
“Bridget O’Casey,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about this for days, little O’Casey. I wanted to take you, fuck you nice and slow. But now that I know you’re a cop too, that won’t be happening. How about you do me a favor and just say hello to papa O’Casey? Tell him from Trevor sent you. You’ll be getting a one way ticket to see him.”
Bridget stood there, rooted in place. Anger coursed through her unlike anything she had ever felt before. She had no idea who the man was but her anger boiled beneath the surface at the mention of her father. She knew, then, that the killings at the various precincts were at his words. This had all been connected to her. Chase had been right after all.
There would have been some consequence of shooting first and asking questions later when dealing with a person in charge of such diabolical crimes. But she didn’t care. The mention of her father rang in her ears. Her anger flared anew. She refused to let this man rip apart her entire world. Somehow, some way, she’d make him pay, no matter the consequences.
Bridget took aim at him, even as he walked in her direction, his own gun pointed at her. It felt like an eternity passed as she waited for her finger to push the trigger back far enough to send a bullet flying at the man just in front of Ashley’s Jeep.
Her aim was perfect and her shot was quicker than this Trevor man’s was. It slammed into the center of his forehead, and his gun flew into the air before he got a chance to fire it.
He dropped to the ground like a sack filled with stones. She gagged as she saw the blood trickle out of his head and down his face. Consumed by rage, she fired a second bullet into his chest, ensuring that he wouldn’t get up ever again.
Bridget’s chest heaved as she stood over him. Everything around her had gone quiet. Her heart ached as she tried to make sense of what she’d done. She couldn’t hear the other officers or the bullets still flying because the attack wasn’t over.
She’d never killed anyone before.
Tears blurred her vision and the world began to blur and spin around her. She doubled over as bile crept up her throat and she began to hyperventilate. Jeremy.
“Bridget!” a voice cried, penetrating the walls of the fog that seemed to cloud her mind. “Bridget, get the fuck back!”
She straightened and turned away from the dead body to see Jeremy running toward her, shouting something she couldn’t quite hear. He was ok, somehow he wasn’t lying dead in the Wrangler with Ashley.
But he didn’t have a gun. Anger and fear were etched across every inch of his face. She almost dropped her own weapon and ran to him. She wanted nothing more than to feel his arms around her again.
Bridget caught sight of two men dressed in black racing toward Jeremy.
Before she could react, could scream his name and tell him to get out of the way, she saw his body pitch forward, but didn’t hit the ground, as a bullet slammed into the back of his right shoulder. Another sprayed blood from his lower back.
“No!” She wasn’t sure how long she screamed the word for.
She lifted her arm and her finger slammed the trigger down three times. All three shots hit their targets. One slammed deep into the gut of the man that had just shot Jeremy. Time had hardly moved but it felt as if everything was trickling by in slow motion.
“Move, move, move.” She wasn’t sure if the police had shouted that, or the assailants.
“Trevor’s down, come on, let’s get the fuck out of here!” She knew that had to be one of the men working for the man she’d killed first.
Her eyes were on Jeremy’s as he looked at hers, pain and fear mixing with tears in his eyes. She felt the gun slip from her fingers. She dove after it, to cover Jeremy. But she heard a lone gun shot ring out. Her eyes darted up, just in time to see Jeremy grab his stomach and crash sideways to the ground.
Bridget stopped breathing. She watched as two men scrambled into the Mercedes, and heard the peel out of tires, echoing through the parking lot, presumably the other car because there had been too many men to have come out of a two-seater with a tiny trunk.
She froze, unsure of what to do. To rush to Jeremy, to ensure he was ok. Or to do what she was trained to do. Tears spilled down her face as her focus remained on the man she’d just said “I love you too.” to. He wasn’t moving and staring at him wasn’t going to change that.
“O’Casey, get the fuck back.” a voice ordered but she didn’t.
Fury rippled through every inch of her body, gripped her every sense as her mind pieced together the longest three minutes of her life. Her senses that told her to be rational, that she should and listen to what she was being told. The injured needed to be checked to see if they were alive or dead. Yet she couldn’t to let go of the rage building within her by the second. She was devoured by pain and anger and her actions were not logical. They weren’t hers to control, they were lost to the rage.
The Mercedes lurched to life and Bridget grabbed the gun off the concrete and opened fire. She aimed at the spinning tires, missing her mark. Her aim was off because her brain wasn’t focused, it couldn’t be focused right now. The car sped over the planter and out onto the street
.
She had no recollection of bolting through the lot and hopping over the small bump of the sidewalk to chase after the car. It swerved to avoid the Los Angeles afternoon traffic, trying to get away from the horrific crime scene.
Her mind went blank as she aimed her gun once more and fired, doing her best to run alongside to stop them. She saw nothing but her most recent memories.
She remembered seeing that damn Jeep, her friend’s inert form bent over the steering wheel. Seeing Ashley it in before she’d even had a chance to protect her academy partner. She remembered Marcus’s body blossoming with red and crashing to the ground. She remembered the determined look in Jeremy’s eyes as he’d ran toward her. He’d wanted to protect her, as he took bullets he couldn’t defend himself from.
It was burned into her mind. Every moment of it.
The memories, as bad as they were, kept her from dropping to her knees on the sidewalk and falling apart. Her mind seemed to register her surroundings, and she saw someone jump out of the vehicle when they couldn’t force the car through traffic.
She gasped as she felt cold metal pierce her skin sending. The icy cold pain that was metal hitting warm blood felt like nothing she’d ever known. She felt it each time, each bullet as it ripped into her body. One in her leg and another in her stomach. The impact slowed her down and red clouded her vision. Pain leapt through her like fire and she felt the last shot. Her breath was knocked from her lungs as a bullet sunk into her chest.
There was no more running. No more simunition simulation training. Bridget felt herself connect with the sidewalk. Felt it as her head slammed into the ground, further jarring her body.
Bridgetlay there and could feel the sticky liquid pool around her. She could feel it touching every part of her body outside where it had once touched her on the inside. She could almost feel the running footsteps of cops that raced in her direction, or maybe it was her imagination.
The she felt nothing, heard nothing and saw nothing.
“You have the right to remain silent when questioned. Anything you say or do may be used against you in a court of law.” Bridget spoke the words with more conviction than she had intended to as she angrily slapped cuffs on her target. “Knowing and understanding your rights as I have explained them to you, are you willing to answer my questions without an attorney present?”
The man pressed into the ground gave a mumble of confirmation. She pulled her knee off his lower back and let him up, shoving him towards her partner as she did so.
“Think that about covers everything.”
“You’re certainly proving to be worth it in every way as a partner, O’Casey,” Santana said, and gave her a small smile.
Tears pricked her eyes, as they had done every time Santana had said something sweet to her. Two months had passed since she’d nearly been killed outside in the precinct’s parking lot. Two months of recovery, –both mentally and emotionally. Two months of learning how to live life without everyone she had lost that day. Without ever knowing what it would be like to serve with them. Without knowing what it would have been like to spend her life with Jeremy.
She’d been assigned to Santana the minute she’d demanded to be put back on rotation. No one had argued. Not Chase, not Danvers and not even Santana, who had every reason not to want a bad luck rookie by his side.
Whoever had figured out the connection, or supposed connection had been right. When she’d woken up a day and a half later in the ICU, Santana and Chase had been by her side, along with her mother and Danvers. Trevor Dennison had been a man her father had personally cuffed and locked up a little over five years ago. The name had sent a chill down her spine upon learning it. Though, she didn’t feel guilty for killing him.
The only thing that had made it better was learning she’d been the one to take him down. She took pleasure in the fact that. Even if her mother voiced her displeasure with what Bridget had done.
They’d caught the others, thanks to her shooting the wheels and slowing them down. Learning the rest of the details about what had happened that day had nearly sent her back into a coma. It had been a week before she’d been anything more than a zombie, only eating and drinking when the hospital staff put something down in front of her.
Nothing would ever undo what she’d lost that day.
Her hand dipped inside her pocket. Bridget nodded at Santana as she wrapped her fingers around the small wallet she carried in her back pocket. Tears brimmed in her eyes and it was only a matter of moments before Santana would catch her crying. Again.
Bridget heard the patrol car door open and close and she squeezed her eyes shut, not caring as the hot tears tracked down her cheeks. With her eyes still closed, she opened her wallet and pulled out the photo of Jeremy, the one that she would always carry with her now.
She opened her eyes and rubbed her fingers over it. The paper was already wearing thin from her doing so every time she thought of him. More tears coursed down her face. Bridget shook her head, trying to clear her eyes as she opened them and looked down at the picture of the only man she’d ever loved. At the second man who’d been taken from her because he’d been a cop in the wrong place.
Bridget’s eyes squeezed tightly shut and she allowed herself to feel the pain all over again. Every ounce of it washed over her as she thought about Jeremy. In her mind, she saw that stupid side smirk of his that could turn her knees to jelly. The fierce protectiveness that shone in his eyes the day he lost his life flashed vividly through her mind.
“I’m doing this for you, Jeremy. For you and my dad.” she whispered as she stood on the sidewalk of the little neighborhood they were in. Her voice trembled and tears slipped into her mouth. “I love you, Jeremy Trellins. I will always love you.”
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to open her eyes. With quick flicks of her hands, she slid the picture back into the viewing space where her ID should have been in Jeremy’s wallet. Her wallet now.
“You’ll always be with me, Jeremy. Always.”
Bridget wiped the tears off her face and turned around. Santana’s eyes were focused on her. He nodded his head, his way of telling her he understood. She took a deep breath to steady herself and walked back to the patrol car.They had a piece of scum to take in.