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.
“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
