“No! Please!”
It was a familiar voice. An unmistakable one. One that Bridge could never mistake for anyone else. It was one that Nicole had heard from the kitchen as well. She ran over to the light and turned it on. With his vision clear, Bridge looked down at Abbott’s face and relaxed his arm. He got off him and helped him to his feet. Abbott put his hand on his heart to signify his discomfort with the whole situation.
“You wanna tell me what you’re doing here?” Bridge asked.
Abbott cleared his throat. “Well, um, I came here because, well, you know, Bevell’s been missing, and I wanted to try to find a few clues.”
“Isn’t that what you hired us for?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if you were doing other things and…”
“You know this is breaking and entering, right?”
“Um, well…”
“You could be arrested for this.”
“Wait, isn’t that what you’re doing here?”
“Not the same thing,” Bridge replied. “We’re professionals. We do this for a living. We’re trained to take risks. We know how to do these things properly. You don’t.”
Abbott scrunched his eyebrows together, looking at some of the bumps and bruises on Bridge’s face. As Nicole came closer, he noticed the same on hers.
“Why do you guys look like that?”
“That’s another reason why you don’t do things like this,” Bridge said. “You never know who you’ll run into. We ran into a friend who was here before us.”
“Who was he?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Looks like he worked you over.”
“You don’t say.”
“We should go,” Nicole said, still mindful of any other visitors.
“What exactly were you hoping to find?” Bridge asked.
“Honestly, I’m not sure. I was hoping to find something that would jump out at me.”
“Well, you accomplished that one.”
“Other than you, I mean.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get here twenty minutes ago and find that other guy before we did. Otherwise you’d be joining your brother right now.”
“I just didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Leave the investigative work to us. That’s what you’re paying us for, right?”
“Right.”
“We should go,” Nicole said.
Bridge looked back at her and nodded. He put his hand on Abbott’s shoulder. “C’mon. We need to get out of here.”
“Did you get a chance to search?” Abbott asked.
Nicole held up the two backpacks. “We sometimes take our work home with us.”
“Oh.” They began walking through the back of the house again. “Did you find anything yet?”
“Other than a big guy with a big fist?” Bridge replied. “No. But we’ve got a lot of stuff to sort through. So we’re gonna do that while you go home and stay out of it. Right?”
Abbott sighed. “I guess so.”
“Chris?”
“Fine. I’ll go home and wait for you to call me.”
“Much better.”
They walked out of the house without any further incident. Still on the lookout for any signs of trouble, they walked around the side of the house and down the street back to their cars. Abbott was parked in the opposite direction. About halfway to his car, Bridge’s eyes happened to look further down the street. It must have been a flickering light that caught his attention. He only saw it for half a second. Maybe it was the light from a cigarette being lit. Maybe it was the light from a phone being turned on. Maybe it was something else entirely. But he saw it.
Bridge knew where the light had come from, and there was a car parked there, but it was too dark to see any of the occupants. He kept his head looking straight ahead so whoever was in the car didn’t know he was on to them. He nudged Nicole in the arm.
“There’s a car up ahead. About thirty yards away. Don’t make any sudden movements.”
“Who you think it is?” Nicole asked.
“Don’t know. Could be anybody, I suppose.”
“You don’t think cops would be watching the house, do you?”
“Tough to say. Maybe it’s our friend from earlier. Just stay sharp.”
They walked a little further, almost to Abbott’s vehicle, when Bridge noticed the car make a sharp and sudden turn out of its parking space. The car roared ahead toward them, speeding up to get closer to them.
“Get down!” Bridge yelled.
He pushed Abbott over, using his own car as cover, while also getting behind it. Nicole dove to the ground as well. Just as they hit the pavement, bullets ripped through the air from an automatic rifle. It was a tense few seconds as Abbott’s car became riddled with bullet holes. Glass from the windows shattered. Then the other car sped off into the night. Bridge peeked his head around the front wheel of Abbott’s car to make sure no one else was there, even though he heard the tires squealing as it left the scene. He then poked his head above the hood, making sure there wasn’t a second car in the area that was supposed to finish the job. Seeing nothing that looked like a threat, he turned back around to make sure the others were OK.
Bridge noticed a bunch of glass on top of Nicole. “You OK?”
She gingerly got up, brushing the small pieces of glass off her body. “Yeah. I’m good.”
Bridge then looked to Abbott. “How ‘bout you?”
Abbott sat up. “I think I’m fine.” He then looked at his car and sighed. “Look at my car. Why’d they have to do that?”
“You’re lucky the car’s the only thing that’s got holes in it.”
Bridge glanced back to his girlfriend, who looked troubled. She was just staring out into the darkness.
“What is it?”
“Just seems convenient,” Nicole said.
“How’s that?”
“They would’ve had a better, unobstructed view of us if they did it sooner. They had plenty of time. But
