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
