Stakeout

“Did I ever tell you that stakeouts are the worst?”

“All the time,” he says with fake exasperation. In reality he’s smiling under his black fedora.

She puts her feet up on the dash with a huff, one hand nearly spilling her steaming coffee onto his lap.

“Hey there!” he says, pushing her hand back to the other side of the car. She just chuckles, and he shakes his head and puts his hands back on the wheel. Not that they’d be going anywhere anytime soon.

While she slurps her coffee loudly, he does a recheck of their surroundings.

An old factory looms across the street, dark and still, like the rest of the block. The moon hangs, suspended, above them, like it will never let morning come. A single streetlamp casts a dingy yellow glow on the trash-covered ground outside the factory, and the rest of the building is obscured by the shadows of pipes and overgrown ivy.

Their case is pretty simple this time around; the building surveillance has video of two men, shady types, entering this abandoned factory with a suspicious package. They still don’t know if it’s a sack of money, hoard of potatoes, hell, it might be a stockpile of bibles. The other thing they don’t know is whether it’s a bomb, which is why they’re sitting around instead of getting in on the action.

And by ‘they’ he means the police… and him. He looks across the car at his makeshift partner. Her badge is just visible under her jacket. Official police.

He, on the other hand, is just a lowly detective. He leans back in his seat and takes a cigarette out of his jacket, putting it in his mouth.

“Don’t light that,” she says, glaring across the car at him.

He shrugs. “My car, my rules,” he says out the side of his mouth, taking out his lighter.

She sighs and checks her sideview mirror for the millionth time. She wasn’t actually mad at him; he had too much charm for that. Or so he chose to believe.

“What are the chances we actually get to storm this place?” she asks him, rolling down a window and leaning away from his cigarette smoke.

He takes a puff and blows in her direction. “I’d say pretty low. There hasn’t been any movement at all.”

After a brief moment she snorts and says, “Remember last time we did this?”

He holds his cigarette away from his face in thought. “The last time you stooped so low as to work with me, a lowlife?”

“You are a lowlife,” she agrees. “But I’m talking about how you tripped over a pile of wet towels and laid there while I caught the crook.”

He resumed smoking and trained his eyes on the dark factory. “I don’t recall that. I was the one that threw a wet towel on his head,” he said with a smirk.

“That did nothing. And don’t you know what smoking does to your lungs?”

“You can get out of the car anytime, Officer.”

She huffs again, but he can tell it’s in good humor. “How about this? If we go after these guys—which we better, ’cause I’m bored—and I catch them, you have to quit smoking.”

“And what do I get if I catch ’em?” he asks, grinning.

She meets his eye. “I’ll talk to the department about you. Working for real.”

He laughs, short and loud. “Alright, it’s a deal.”

Before she could respond, a gunshot fires, and a man exits the factory running full force, carrying a bag. He’s rounding the corner of the building.

They exchange a glance as they scramble out of the car. Looks like they’ll be chasing this goon around the factory.

He throws his cigarette on the ground. He’ll get to light another one later.