Cass’s breath hissed through her teeth as she surveyed the damage. All four tires on their ‘borrowed’ patrol car were slashed. It was the same with her dad’s car. Every tire was damaged past the point of usefulness, with deep and long slashes that would prevent them from holding air for even a few seconds. It looked like a knife had done it, a rather sharp one to cut right through the rubber. Tires could be surprisingly sturdy at times.

“Those scum…” She harshly muttered. It was obvious the suit-wearing murderers still suspected there was another person in the house, even though they had been forced to rush off and assist Paul. Cass shivered at the thought. Those two men would be heralded as rescuing heroes. Not one of the policemen of the town knew Mr. Moon shot their Chief.

Still. As much as she yearned to climb on the roof and shout the truth to the sky for all to know, Cass knew how vital it was to safely get free of the house before Mr. Moon returned. Only then could she plot a path to a vengeance that wouldn’t only be her word against theirs. Cass knew all the men in the precinct. They’d worked for her father for years. But in their eyes, she was just the Chief’s kid. Even if they were fond of her, the word of Mr. Moon would probably be rated higher.

Mark’s heavy footsteps jolted Cass out of her spiraling thoughts, and she looked up at the man, who was walking around the cars to observe the damage. The hunting rifle dangled casually in one of his meaty hands. Clearly he didn’t plan to use it if things went south. That fit. He was never a good shot. At least Mark could carry the weapon for her.

The footsteps stopped and Mark looked at Cass. His eyes looked tired, much like how hers felt.

"Cars are toast," Mark announced. Cass started to open her mouth and unleash a biting response to his obvious declaration, but Mark continued to speak before she could get any words out. “What about your car? Think it’s still parked out front at the station?”

That…

Cass tilted her head in thought. It would have to be. There were only two places her car would’ve ended up after that night. Either her dad would’ve taken it back to the house, or he left it at the station to deal with later. It obviously wasn’t in the garage right now. That meant it had to be at the station.

It would be a bit of a walk. But… Paul was shouting something about the corner of State and Fairlawn Street over the radio. If they stuck to backyards and stayed far away from that area, along with the route one would take from her house to that corner, the two of them could probably get there just fine. Then they could get her car and drive off. All that would be left after that would be for Cass to do a bit of stakeout work, figure out where Mr. Moon was staying, hide in a nearby bush, and dome him in the head from 300 feet with the hunting rifle. It had a decent enough scope for the job. It would almost be like one of her dad’s old war stories about men with guns hiding away in trees to ambush unwary G.I.’s.

Then all that would leave… Cass unconsciously bit her lip in thought. The big guy would be a problem. He would likely take issue with Cass killing his partner. Plus those maniacs from the station. Maybe with luck, the two opposing teams could kill each other off. It would save her some work. They could be shooting each other to pieces right now while she pondered.

She shook her head. Bad Cass. A shootout in the town meant people she knew all her life could get hurt. Not only that, but her thoughts were spiraling again, and they didn’t have time for that.

“Come on. Let’s get my car.” Cass gestured to Mark, walking back into the house toward the back door. Mark silently followed her. The house was quiet, unnaturally so. At this time of the evening, her dad should have been bustling around the kitchen. Cass would’ve been waiting by the phone for her interview results. Dino was supposed to get back to her any day now. She was sure she aced it.

Maybe tonight would have been a grill night. The weather was nice enough to make the thought tempting. Hamburgers, hot dogs, green peppers, onions, melted cheese, all the works sizzling away on the portable grill under her father’s watchful eye. The timer would be ticking away on top of the oven, counting down the minutes until Cass could pull the fries out to reveal their golden sizzling shapes. Making oven-baked fries with freshly harvested potatoes, that was the way to do it for sure.

Cass passed the kitchen. In the corner of her eye, she could see her dad’s body limply strewn about on the floor. Her vision blurred worse and worse each second her eyes lingered. Cass roughly dragged the back of her hand against her face, but the hot tears streaming down her cheeks were cleared only for the briefest of moments. Mark said something, but his voice was muffled, almost drowned out by that infernal ringing noise in her ears. Cripes. The ear-shattering gunshots Cass had experienced in close quarters had affected her hearing worse than she originally thought.

Cass shuddered and continued walking, unknowingly biting at her lip hard enough to draw a thin stream of blood. She couldn’t even give him a proper burial right now. Not with the combined threats of Mr. Moon and the guys who attacked the station hanging over her shoulders. She had to get moving and keep moving.

Behind her, Mark flinched as he too reached the point where the Chief’s body was visible. She could hear him retching again, but this time nothing splattered onto the floor. His stomach was as empty as hers.

The back door clicked open. Cass sent one last mournful gaze around the inside of the house, and then she stepped out onto the patio. Before her, an entire line of backyards was laid out. White picket lines mingled with tall wooden fences and sturdy chain link barriers. Most of the yards were deserted by now, and almost none of them could be fully seen from the street.

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Cass glanced at Mark.

“Alright. It’s time to go.” Cass sighed and took the first step onto the grass.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Dag was leaning back taking a breather on one of the few chairs that had remained intact from the grenade blast by the time Mr. Moon arrived at the broken front door of the house. The slab of wood was hanging loosely off its hinges, crooked and askew from the forces it had endured.

Mr. Moon rested his briefcase on the floor and observed the room. Shattered furniture, cracked walls, and a dead man on the ground. Nothing unusual, considering a grenade had gone off in the space.

“Report?”

Dag smushed the butt of his cigarette into the ceramic ashtray by his side to put it out.

“One dead Russkie down here, plus the one you sniped up on the second floor. Officer Joseph got hit. He is in critical condition, Officer Paul’s providing first aid. An ambulance is on its way from a town over. ETA is twenty minutes at minimum.”

Mr. Moon nodded along. Two dead John Does on the Russian side, one officer out of action on their side. Adding the Chief to the body count meant his list of available assets was down by two in full. Not completely ideal, but he couldn’t realistically expect much better. The Russians were formidable, after all.

“Then there’s two left we know about.” Mr. Moon concluded. “A grey-haired woman and a large, scarred man ran out the back door right before you breached. I was unable to hit them. The man wore a suit. Close-cropped hair. Heavily scarred face. The woman was in a dress, with glasses and shoulder-length hair.”

Dag nodded, wordlessly committing the sparse descriptions to memory.

It was a shame the entire group couldn’t have been wrapped up here. The chance had been almost perfect, with the Russians making such a desperate play out of the blue. However, just this happening in the first place was able to confirm a few facts, at least. Number one - the Russkies didn’t have the alien. Otherwise they would have faded away into the night instead of picking a fight when they had a gradually decreasing supply of manpower.

That meant fact number two, his theory of a third party being at the station, was also essentially confirmed. Unless of course, the police of this town were being unusually adept at secrecy, to the point where they could hide the creature from himself and Dag. That was unlikely, though. This was a small-town precinct. They wouldn’t have any reason to hide the alien away. So considering the fact that the alien would never move by itself, there simply had to be a third party.

“What about the homeowners?”

Mr. Moon’s abrupt question caused Dag to fall into a thoughtful silence before answering.

“I asked the neighbors. Apparently it’s a middle-aged couple. They’re on a vacation to the West Coast for a week to see their son. The Russians must have slipped in the back so no one noticed the house was occupied.”

Mr. Moon curtly nodded, picking up his briefcase and walking out of the house. Heavy footsteps behind him indicated Dag was following. The dust had settled from the ambush. There was little they could do here. By now the rest of the officers had arrived, and they had already begun to get the statements of everyone who lived on the block. Mr. Moon ignored them all. That information would be most useful when it was fully gathered and turned into a report.

Until then, they had a cleanup of their own to perform. The blame for the Chief's death being pinned on anyone other than a Russian sniper would be extremely inconvenient if Mr. Moon wanted to freely pursue his goals.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The ‘crack-pop’ of a beer can being opened was one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. That was something Steve had known for quite some time. It had to be a cold beer, though. Only heretics could settle for a warm beer. It had to be cold. If there was condensation or even a bit of frost buildup on the outside, even better.

“Ah… that’s the stuff.” The man next to him sighed contentedly and leaned back in his lawn chair as much as a man realistically could in a cheap lawn chair (in effect, not very much). A second man gave a grunt of agreement, and Steve added an approving hum of his own.

These two men were his neighbors. Well, some of his neighbors at least. The block was quite a bit larger than that. They were just his immediate next-door neighbors. Maybe in a few days he would expand his circle of acquaintances to those who were non-immediate neighbors. No need to rush it, though. Steve and Ms. Miller needed to blend in. That meant doing things in the unhurried manner of a man and his wife enjoying the small-town life. You don’t move fast in the small-town life.

Not everyone seemed to get that.

For starters, a muffled ‘bang’ had come from the Chief’s house about ten minutes ago. Soon after that, screeching tires had heralded Mr. Moon’s car flying out onto the street.

Steve didn’t say anything then. The two men with him were drunk enough to not recognize the gunshot. Or perhaps they did, and thought it was just a rowdy kid or a hunter hanging around a bit too close to the city limits? Eh. It hardly mattered.

About a minute ago, two people had slipped out the back door of the Chief’s house. The evening was late enough that shadows obscured their features, though of course the distance didn’t help either. He could see that backyard from his backyard, but the houses weren’t exactly close. The best he could tell was that they were a rather bulky, solid man, and a much slimmer figure. He could barely make out a ponytail on the latter. A woman? Or a slim man with a strange choice of hairstyles. Probably a woman.

Steve took another sip of his ice-cold beer. Ah. How refreshing. The cool liquid splashed down his throat to settle joyfully in his stomach.

On the patio table next to a pile of empty beer cans, a folded piece of paper innocently waited like a scrap of discarded trash. Soon it would disappear. Ms. Miller had already peeked in on the trio from the upstairs window, a movement Steve had noticed and given the appropriate gesture for in response. A simple hand sign that indicated he’d seen something important. She would find a good excuse to pop out and grab his note soon enough, whatever it would take to make the action natural. Steve’s best guess is that she would use the pretext of grabbing their cans for recycling. That was all the rage now, saving the planet one aluminum can at a time. Then all she would have to do is radio Mr. Moon with his observations and the ball would be in that man’s court.

Steve crushed the now-empty can in his hand and stacked it on top of the pile of empty cans. The structure almost looked like an alcoholic leaning tower of Pisa. He was pretty proud of that. One of the men with him reached into the cooler, grabbed a fresh beverage, and tossed it to Steve, who casually caught it with a muttered thanks. He popped the tab, sipping at the ice-cold liquid inside.

This was the way to do it. No running around waving a gun like Mr. Moon and Dag were doing. Just a bit of guard duty, a bit of stakeout, and a nice bit of bonding over beer with the neighbors. This was the reason he stuck with the Criminal Investigation division. While the others were busting their asses, all Steve had to do was play a part and pay attention.

Yeppers. What a life to live.