by Lexi Ostrow
She sat up and looked at him. The playfulness was gone from her face, but she didn’t look serious either, a little spooked perhaps.
“Did you just imply that you were in love with me?”
He laughed. “I think I implied I was falling in love with you, yes.” He leaned over and gave her a peck this time. “Pretty damn fast, I might add.”
She smiled at him. “I would say three months is fairly standard. But in case you were wondering, I’m pretty close to being done falling myself.”
He smirked, unintentionally. “Now that is something mighty fine to hear.” he said, his southern accent thickening as he spoke because he knew how it affected her. “That first night when you pulled away from me, I was a bit worried it was one-sided.”
“I was just nervous about starting at the academy. Besides, can you imagine how weird it would have been in the morning if one of us happened to say where work was, or something to that extent?”
He laughed and she did as well. They both knew just how awkward things really would have been since they had a pretty heavy dose of awkward at the station.
“It certainly would have been. Now, about that shooting competition?”
“Yes? Sure you’re not afraid of being taken down by a slip of a woman?”
He grinned and shook his head. “I was thinking we could hold off and raise the stakes. What do you say to a little action during your simulation final? I think I could convince Danvers to let me in, other officers have stepped in before to make things a little harder.”
She laughed. “I knew it. You’re chicken.”
He gasped. “Southern men are never chicken.”
“Well, the one next to me in this bed sure is.”
She began to make clucking noises. Jeremy started tickling her. She rolled around the bed, gasping for breath, helplessly clawing at him through her laughter.
“Say mercy, or I bet you’ll pee yourself.” He was laughing so hard the words were difficult to get out.
“Mercy! Mercy!” she shouted, and when he stopped she kept rolling fitfully around the bed for a minute, like she had no idea he wasn’t touching her anymore.
“Oh, there’s going to be payback for that, mister.” She stood up out of bed. “Come on, let’s go. You’re not getting out of it now.”
He lay back, partially sitting up and smirked at her. “I think I can handle you. I’m fairly certain that was a victory for me.”
She snorted and walked into the bathroom. “Ten minutes. Be ready to have your ass kicked.”
“Congratulations, you’ve just finished the beginning of the end. For those of you on track, you have my respect. For those of you not, you still have four days to get those tests and qualifications passed. You’re not excused just yet, but a test score isn’t going to magically make all your other non-qual scores work. So get to it and come see me to schedule extra test times if the class one’s don’t work. The rest of this week is going to be a ton of reviews, so be ready to impress me.” Chase said, and smiled at them, the first real smile Bridget had seen from him since they had begun at training so many weeks ago.
“So, how’s it feel to be top of our class, miss perfect?” Marcus asked as they walked out of the classroom.
She flushed. Bridget was proud of herself, though she felt guilty about doing so well when Ashley and Marcus weren’t. Plus, she had essentially abandoned them since she and Jeremy had moved things to an official level.
“It feels nice. I’m sorry I haven’t been around to help out more. Or hang out.” She looked at the ground as Ashley gave a lighthearted laugh.
“I think spending time in bed with a sexy soon-to-be federal agent is reason enough to leave us common folk behind.”
“Ashley, I don’t think there’s a damned thing common about you,” Marcus teased as they got off the elevator and walked through the intake floor behind the cop who escorted them today.
“Anyone else find it odd that we are still walking around the precinct with a uniform?” she asked.
Marcus shrugged. She barely caught it out of the corner of her eye.
“Only because there’s like three hundred cops working here. I feel like we meet a new one everyday, and then poof, someone else has babysitting duty.” Ashley laughed.
The cop escorting them laughed and then another shouted something.
“Another one? Are you fucking serious? How has no one caught these fuckers?”
Bridget froze. Another one what? Someone answered her mental thought before she even vocalized it.
“If they don’t catch the shooters soon, there’s going to be a statewide panic.”
Bridget swallowed. It felt like she had swallowed hundreds of shards of glass. Her head whipped around to see the two male cops standing by the water cooler like it really was an office gossip spot.
“What do you mean another one? Did they attack more cops?” She had turned around and was walking toward them as she asked.
For a moment, she didn’t think they were going to answer. One of them gave her a once over and then a confused look, as if there was no way a recruit was talking to him. The other looked at her and shook his head.
“Down in Santa Cruz. Media hasn’t gotten there yet, but it sounded like it was a much lower key hit than the bombings a few days back.”
“But there was definitely another attack? On police?”
She could hear the panicked edge in her voice as she spoke but she didn’t care. With every attack that happened she grew more and more concerned of two things. She wondered if the Los Angeles Police Department was somewhere on the hit list. If there was a chance the people that shot her father outside the cop hangout were a part of this.
“Absolutely. These freaks have some expert skills because they’re getting away with what they’re doing. Well, they were. I don’t think they stand a chance from here on out. Counties are onto them now, and they won’t get away with another one.”
It felt as if something possessed her. One minute, she’d been calmly walking out the door. The next, she’d walked away from her escort, and now she was literally running through the building toward Captain Danvers office. They had only been shown it once, but she knew where it was because of her father’s time on the force.
“O’Casey, stop right there!” Whoever had been escorting them must have been the one that shouted.
“O’Casey. God damn it, O’Casey, stop!” Someone grabbed her wrist, and jerked her entire body causing her to stumble as her knees buckled. “Get up. Fuck, I can’t believe I’m going through this with my best recruit.”
Her eyes widened as she realized Chase had been the one to grab her. He must have been on his way up and had seen her running like an idiot. She didn’t struggle against him as he helped her to her feet. Her good sense a`nd logic slowly returned.
“What the fuck was you thinking? You damn well know you’re to be in the company of an officer the entire time. The last fucking week, and you choose to break the rules!?” Chase’s voice was stern and laced with disappointment.
For a split second, she felt bad about what she’d done.
“I have to know what happened today. My father–”
“Was shot a few months back. We all know about it. More than half of us were at his ceremony. That doesn’t explain why you freaked out and ran away like that.”
“I have to know what happened. What if these are the people that killed my father? You didn’t catch them.”
“No, we didn’t. It was a he though, not a them. You know this. Shake it off, O’Casey. You can’t do this shit. You’re a danger if you keep losing control like this.”
He tugged her towards the captain’s office. She caught sight of Marcus and Ashley. They frowned as she was led in the other direction. Shame slowly started to trickle into her subconscious. She’d bolted through a police station, uncaring of the consequences.
“You’re taking me to the captain anyway, aren’t you?”
Chase’s voice seemed l
egitimately sad as he nodded. “There’s no other choice. Full house out there, and they all saw you do it.”
Her cheeks grew warm. Several tears blurred her vision. She didn’t trust herself to say anything and nodded instead. What’s Jeremy going to think when he hears about this latest stunt? She didn’t know why she thought he would disapprove, probably because she’d broken two codes of conduct in just as many seconds.
With her eyes downcast, she walked alongside Chase to the next floor. He knocked on the door leading to Captain Danvers’ office. When Chase knocked Danvers waved them in without looking up from the papers on his desk.
“Sir, I know you must be busy now. We’ve a little disciplinary situation you need to know about.”
Danvers looked up, his eyes focused on Bridget. “Bridget – –Miss O’Casey, whatever could you have done? Your dad was older than me, but I still know you grew up coming around here after school. Shit, I remember your high school graduation, we all went.”
She flinched at the knowledge that she’d managed to disappoint one of her father’s friends. They’d never been partners, but they’d served together almost twenty years ago. Danvers was nearing retirement now, but he’d been young when he started. Her father had him over for dinner a lot when she was growing up.
“O’Casey decided she was going to take a little jog through the station without an escort.” The tone of Chase’s voice was hard, though he wasn’t that angry about what she’d done.
Danvers sighed. For a moment, Bridget wanted to crawl into a hole and vanish. “What brought this on?”
“The shooting. The one in Santa Cruz, sir. I wanted to know more about it. I can’t shake the feeling my father was killed by the same people.” Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke when she brought up her father and she silently cursed herself for looking like a child.
“And this made you run through the building?” Danvers sounded confused and it just helped to emphasize how stupid her choice had been.
She nodded. “Yes, sir. It was impulsive. I know that, but I don’t know what happened. These shootings, they’re taking a toll on me. I don’t want to admit that, but I have to.”
Chase’s face softened as he looked at her. “They’re concerning to us all. However, I can assure you there is no attachment to your father’s murder. While we didn’t catch the shooter, the description fits someone he put into the drunken tank a few years back. Found out the guy was carrying, and when he was released, he went after your father. One person and the witnesses have all verified that. This is a group of people. So far, we don’t have any motive, since there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the killings.”
She said nothing, only stared at him.
“This behavior is unacceptable. Before you are to complete your course, you will have an evaluation to see if you are able to proceed. It can be scheduled after the actual testing, as I’m certain this is nothing more than a little residual worry. But it will happen before we determine if you are one of the newest of LA’s finest.”
She nodded. “Thank you, Sir. I’m sorry. But I have to know, what happened in Santa Cruz?”
Danvers was the one to shake his head this time, he shook it no. “That’s not information you’re able to have access too. I don’t even know how much I’ve been given. Do not question it me again, or there will be a lot more than a psych evaluation and a lot less possibility you’ll walk out of that training room as a cop.”
Bridget swallowed past the lump in her throat, unsure of what to say or do. She wasn’t certain which she wanted to do more; feign an apology or shout at him? In the end, she did neither.
“I understand.”
“Alright then. Chase, walk her out. And Bridget? Don’t get in Jeremy’s way this week. I’ve asked him to come in and look at some of the reports during a meeting. He shouldn’t be here long, but he was a damn good cop, and I want him in on the meeting to see if he can spot an angle.”
She nodded.
“All right, let’s go, O’Casey.”
She did her best to hold back a sigh. If Jeremy was coming in to consult, then that meant the LAPD was going to be working on this. Someone was hunting them for reasons unknown to them, which meant all the counties were also going to work together to solve this, once and for all.
Jeremy turned his head and looked at the clock. They’d been sitting in the gigantic press conference room for the better part of four hours. For some reason, it made his skin crawl. It had only been a little over a week since he’d put his new uniform on. Being there as a consultant with no actual power to do anything unnerved him.
“We’ve gone over everything we’ve had. We have reason to believe that the Ventura attack is indeed a part of the same game plan. There’s no way to tell for certain. That attack was on a grander scale, but the time frame fits that of the other shootings. Once again, something was done right under our noses. The bullets do not match from any of the shootings either. We’ve hit every damned dead end you can think of and until we get a step closer to a conclusion, no one leaves this room,” Captain Marjket, captain of the Ventura Police Department, said as she paced around the room.
Jeremy understood her worry. Her department had taken a hit far more severe than any of the others to date. Santa Barbara lost two men, San Diego lost three along with and a female prison guard. Santa Cruz had fifteen causalities, but thankfully, no deaths. Ventura lost an entire section of their building, eleven officers were dead and seven more were in the hospital.
He scratched a spot just above his eye and sighed. They’d been over everything, from the guns and bullets to the time of the shooting. They’d tried to take into account how many different directions of open fire occurred to pinpoint how many assholes they were dealing with. After all of it, the only thing Jeremy was certain of was that whoever was behind this, they were smart and had what it took to get away with this and leave people from six districts were twiddling their fucking thumbs.
Every single shooting utilized bullets that were a match to a registered gun whose owner was dead. Dead ends. All had different numbers of supposed shooters, from as many as eight in Santa Barbara to only three in Santa Cruz earlier in the day – well yesterday based on the time. There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason for the men and women hit, with the exception of the prison guard in San Diego, she had been taken from her home and not the station. A note had been left behind, printed from a computer that left no doubt that she was apart of this mess.
Jeremy had a damn good feeling it was a personal strike, all of it. The body of the guard they’d found was his only true clue. She’d been tortured prior to her death according to the autopsy. It seemed as if the killer had a specific reason to hate her.
“Has anyone considered the possibility of a grudge match?” He spoke up out of the blue, and three captain’s heads whipped towards him – consultants typically didn’t speak out in meetings.
“Of course, we’d be fools not to after a string of them not to consider that option,” said Marjket said.
“Yes, but has anyone taken the time to process which of the guards from Cheryl’s people had been let out recently? She’s your one mistake. Everything else has been cold and distant. Her death was deliberate, passionate. You find someone you can link directly to her, and you’ll have at least one of your shooters.”
“We’ve tried that, Trellins. Well, not us specifically at the LAPD, but the SDPD pulled files immediately. She’d worked with so many felons over the course of her entire career. Nothing coincided with a recent release. Nothing more than a few drunks and strung out druggies. They wouldn’t have the firepower or really the edge to do what was done to her,” Danvers said, sighing as he dragged his hands over his eyes.
“We aren’t getting anywhere. We don’t even know for certain where else this group will hit. We have confirmation this isn’t happening in other states, so this is not an uprising of sorts. We’ve seen a pattern that seems to point to repeat attacks not being an is
sue. Which, if we start at Santa Barbara and work our way south to San Diego, that still leaves San Bernardino, Orange County, and Los Angeles as counties not yet targeted,” Captain James, captain of the Santa Barbara Police Department, stated.
“Which leaves them vulnerable,” added the chief from Orange County. “Vulnerable, and with officers and family members sitting around wondering and worrying when they might be next. We need to catch whoever this is and we need to catch them before they take anyone else down.”
The cacophony of voices murmuring in agreement around the room sounded like a roar of thunder. Jeremy looked around and took in the faces of almost one hundred and fifty people in the room. There were too many of them. Too many voices battling to be heard and it was part of the reason why they’d been here four hours and only managed to put together a small piece of the information that they didn’t know.
He could technically get up and leave anytime he wanted since he wasn’t on payroll anymore. He was a consultant, here to do nothing more than volunteer information. He had no badge, no gun, nothing tying him to the chair. Except how badly his blood boiled that someone or some group of people were targeting the law enforcement agencies in Southern California. Every time someone had gone down each and every police officer in the country would have felt the pain of losing someone on the force to such brutal killings. He had wanted to believe in that. Because in his mind, there was a chance these people were dirty cops pulling off the jobs.
“What about the possibility of insiders?” He voiced his internal question, prepared for what would come next. Jeremy was met with the curses and hisses he thought he would so he stood up and raised his hands in a sign of defense. “Just give me a second here. Think about it as a possibility before you castrate me. Trained officers would have access to multiple weapons belonging to dead people. Trained officers would know how to pull off hits without getting attacked. And whether you want to suck down the bitter taste in your mouth and admit it or not, everyone has dirty cops. They’re filthy parasites, and they hide somewhere in every department, in every county.”
