Like ripples in a pond
Two cop cars with sirens screaming passed them going the other way. Luke stopped stashing his gear and looked up at the windshield.
“They don’t even notice me,” Sam whispered under her breath.
The sirens screamed then faded. Luke finished ging out his gear and moved into the passenger seat like a ghost.
“Yetting superstitious with it,” he said without looking at her. “Those cops weren’t stopping for shit. They got officers down ireet. Turn Here.”
She turned onto a gravel road surrounded by warehouses and industrial buildings. Two guys in front of a stru equipment pce watched them pass.
“They’re not gonna call the cops. They don’t trust cops.” Sam said in the same whisper, like she was trying to assure herself.
“You don’t know that,” Luke ughed. “But they probably stare at every car that goes by. Bullet marks are oher side anyway.”
Their earpieces chimed.
“I got a body shop a little ways from there.” Philip's voice pouhrough with a familiar rock melody behind it that Gradie couldn’t pce. “Zoey sent you the address. Leave the mae there and split up for a while before you meet us at the post. I left your rides in the bays. Keys got your names on em. Max out.”
Sam followed the dash navigator through five blocks inhabited mostly by Pitbulls boxed into front wns. The shop was a white sheet metal building surrounded by brick walls topped with razor wire. Sam punched in a code and the bck gate rolled open.
Gradie saw Luke doing something on his phone and took his own out of his pocket, trying to remember everything about it.
It was bulletproof, but that was its least iiure. There were apps to spoof key fobs, put a tracker on any cell phone in range, drop devices off wi-fi, crash any security camera you poi at, and a million other things that Gradie wasn’t aware of. It was also lio his watd would automatically overheat until everything inside was melted into sg if it was off his person for more than a few minutes. Usually, the earpieces worked off of it, but they could operate even if it was destroyed.
Gradie opehe map. EP had added a new pin beled “Shop”, right in front of him, and another beled “ste”, a few miles away. “The Mae” was beled right beh him, and he could request to ping the location of his other teammates, draw a route, and request a full data mine, names and wifi works and tax history, of any address he chose. At least he would have been able to, if EP hadn’t locked half the funs.
Sam drove into the open garage and tapped her phohe doors rolled shut and they sat sighing in darkness for a few seds until the lights came on. The garage was a fully stocked auto shop with tools and jacks everywhere. The sheet metal walls had been reinforced with der blocks and gunslits, and ss half to the ceiling pyed camera feeds of the lot around, one of which was a drone shot at least three hundred yards up in the air, cirg.
Luke stepped out of the SUV and gss and shell gs kled on the crete floor. Sam rolled down the driver-side window, popped the hatch, ahe keys on the driver's seat as she got out.
“Bye bye baby!” She patted the side of the SUV and pouted at the mirror windows.
Luke walked around bad refilled his mag pouch then put it in his backpad set it on the edge of the floorboard. He took off his fnnel shirt, tossed it on the ground, and dug another button-up, this one a dark grey, out of one of the bags and put it on. Gradie remembered his own gun.
“Where’s the Five seven mags?” he asked. Luke opened up one of the cases and handed him two.
“Just so you know, Max is gonna give you shit about running out into it like that.”
“I got four of them.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not a kill t game. We don’t get that token, we don’t get paid.”
“So what? I shoulda just waited in the car while you got shot at?”
“You asking me? No, I appreciate the help, I’m just letting you know Max is gonna give you shit so you don’t jump off a yourself killed just cause it worked out this oime.”
Luke shut the hatd led them towards a door in the back.
“He care if I get killed?” Gradie asked.
“Yep. Think of it like this. We’re his guys, his pieces. You get killed he ’t maneuver you how he wants to.” Luke made a motion with his hand like pying invisible chess.
“I’m the horsey,” Sam said. Luke snickered.
The door ched open like a seal had been broken. The dry air of the office felt like it hadn’t moved in days. Sunlight glowed at the edges of the blinds and drew beams in dust. Luke looked around for a bit.
“Call Max.”
A few seds ter he asked the dusty air where the keys were. After a moment, he nodded and pulled the top drawer out. There was a small envelope stapled to the back of it.
“Yeah, got it. Out.”
Inside were three sets of keys. Each had a small colored tag on them with names written in sharpie. Luke handed oo Gradie. The tag said ‘kid’. He ripped it off the ring. Sam ripped her tag off a fall to the floor. It said ‘Monkey’. Luke left his tag on the ring and put them in his pocket. Gradie thought his said ‘buddy’, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Let’s see what he got us,” Luke said.
The cars were parked outside on a shaded gravel lot under a sheet metal awning. A jeep chirped as Sam pressed her fob.
“See yall at the base.”
There was a gual grey Dodge Charger, a hail-damaged white sedan, an old purple Fer, and a turquoise minivan. Luke slipped into the Charger. Gradie sighed and unlocked the seda there waiting for the AC to ki as the other two squealed and roared out onto the road, but it never got below “somewhat less hot”, so he cursed and backed out. ime he’d just steal his own fug ride.
****
It was absolute age and eerily silent. Detective Williams wasn’t used to the quiet. The EMTs were all long goheir sirens faded. A detour routed traffic away from the main road. The se was blocked off and the st screaming, g bystander had bee home ht down for statements. Normally, this was the time in the iigatiohe se was alive with chatter. Detectives throwing out theories, ents, observations, all peppered with gallows humor and dry ughter.
But there had been four cops lying dead ireet and their blood and brain matter still staihe ground, and the cruisers, inside and out. The men standing around now drove cars just like them. Carried guns just like the ohat had failed to defend them. Would have died just the same. Or would they? Surely every cop here was looking for answers in the gore. Something to tell them how the deaths could have been avoided, how they would have survived in their shoes, or how they could survive if it happens again.
“Twelve five seven gs ihe store, multiple five five six and nine mil on the east side of the cruisers.” Fritz, the other detective rattled off. It seemed a therapeutic exercise for him.
“A trail of .300 bckout over o those cars. Another cluster of .300 o those little stairs. 7.62 and 5.56 all down these rows. Most of it shit not sold to civilians. Twelve-gauge shells…”
“Who the hell were they arresting?” Williams cut in.
“Uh, Cooper Davidson. Cashier ssh B and E guy. Robbery picked him up, if you believe it.”
“Who’d he rob? Anything that would expin this?”
“Nothing I know of would expin this shit, short of an iional fug i. This screams cartels or something.”
“Ahey picked up got ties across the border?”
“Well, everyohey picked up’s dead, besides the fug cashier.”
“What’s taking prints so long?”
“Nothing. They came back with a bunch of goose eggs in half an hour.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean so far it looks like a bunch of guys who’ve never been picked up for anything worse than half an ounce of weed, got together on a Friday to shoot a bunch of giggle-switched fun guns at each other over a shoplifter who occasionally breaks into houses.”
Fritz had beeied all night. Probably his way of g, but Williams tried to reel him in.
“So were they from across the border, or—”
“David said they all looked very Ameri.”
Detective Williams let the series of questions f on his toay there. For the third time that night, he felt the se demanded silence.
If a band of interdimensional spirits came to your world causing age, how would you know? ime, don't make him mad. episode, Boss