"You're that surprised?"
"Not really," grumbled Ghost, "I never trusted you from the start."
Detective Robert Trent bent down, the silencer equipped gun pointing at his 'partner in crime fighting', and grabbed the case of money lying beside the invisible hero.
Ghost was ready to make a move towards his belt to grab a weapon he could use, but Trent raised his gun slightly, anticipating him.
"Your body may be armored, but I'll bet your head isn't."
Ghost relaxed, still fuming inside and curiously looking at the piece of equipment strapped to the detective's head.
"Oh, yes," he continued, guessing his next question, "These worked out just the way I hoped," Trent tapped the side of his head with his gun barrel, then returned it to his target. He wore a set of fancy looking goggles; the lenses tinted green, "Night vision goggles, able to amplify tiny light sources including infrared light; heat waves coming off your body. But the rings you guys wear bend all light waves around you, don't they?"
Though hidden behind his mask, Trent could 'see' Ghost's eyebrows rise.
"Yeah, I know all about the rings."
"I figured."
Trent tilted his head in surprise, though he really wasn't that shocked, "You found the bug, didn't you. I was wondering why I couldn't pick you two up anymore."
"It's taking a coffee break," Ghost sneered.
"It doesn't matter; I already found out what I needed to know. The rings bend light waves around you, making you invisible to the naked eye, but you don't know how they work. Using night vision goggles would be a waste of time in this situation... normally. So, I just applied a little reverse common sense: instead of looking at places lit up by amplified light, I'm looking at the places... that aren't."
Of course, thought Ghost; clever son of a bitch.
"Everything around me is crystal clear, almost like daylight... except for the place where you're lying, which is pitch black. You're just a silhouette in my line of sight; a dark 'hole' in the light. I knew there had to be a way around your little 'trick', other than steam or sprinklers."
Just then, the door to the roof access banged open and Jacko, recovered from his 'shock nap', stepped out from behind the stairwell shack, gun drawn.
"Where are they?" he asked, his head still aching from the pounding he received, "Can you see them?"
"I've got one of them right here," Trent answered. Jacko positioned himself next to the detective, pointing his gun at the same area of the roof.
"By the way, where is your partner?"
Ghost just stared daggers into Trent and responded, "You set us up;" he then nodded at Jacko, "you were in on it with this fucker the whole damn time, weren't you!"
Trent flashed a sarcastic smirk at him, "What finally clued you in?"
"A lot of little things, all tied together. Your 'removing evidence from a crime scene' comment when you questioned us the first time we met, for starters; I had time to think about that one. How could you have known evidence was missing... unless you excepted it to still be there when you arrived on the scene," he nodded at the case in his hand, "The money; you were going to pick it up after the bust was made, but it wasn't there at the jewel deal in the warehouse. After you identified me from the blood sample you had, you figured out that it was us who took it."
"Very good," Trent scoffed, "but how did you link this all to me?"
"Easy," Ghost continued, seeing something out of the corner of his eye dart behind an air conditioning unit on the roof and keeping the two thugs occupied and distracted from it, "One of the goons in the factory," he gazed at Jacko, "was one of yours; the meathead guarding the door at that building you brought my partner to when you kidnapped her."
"Chaz," Jacko uttered in disgust, "I knew I should have left him out of this, that fucking moron."
"And when you showed up, Jacko... that's when I realized that you couldn't have gotten out of jail that quick to do your business... unless you weren't arrested in the first place." Ghost glanced back at Trent, who just nodded, but retorted.
"But anyone at the precinct could've let him go or hide him. Even if he was busted, someone else could've sprung him out; there are a lot of them working for guys like him. How did you know it was me?"
"That." Ghost pointed to the money case; Trent looking at it, confused.
"That case gave you away the second I saw it, the last one we gave you from the factory bust. Ghoul dodged a bullet thanks to that case; it hit the corner, chipping away a piece," Trent flipped it around and saw the gouge dug into one corner, "How could Jacko have gotten his hands on it... unless he got it from you? And he told you about his tricks to 'see' us."
"Nicely done," Trent smirked, but still annoyed at himself for not seeing that little detail on the case; he considered himself more cautious than that, "Anything else?"
"Why?"
Trent gave Ghost an incredulous look and answered, "Are you kidding? Talking you into helping me was the easy part; playing to your sense of justice..."
But Ghost cut him off, "I already figured that part out. Why are you doing all this, helping criminals like him?" he waved a hand at Jacko.
"For this; what else?" Trent hefted the case.
Ghost scowled and felt sick to his stomach, "All the pretense of stopping the drug trafficking, all the raids and stakeouts, all of the ones you had killed... you did all that... for money?"
"A lot of money... well, my part of the deal was for money," Trent gestured at Jacko, "his part was for business expansion." He was about to explain, but Ghost beat him to it.
"You had us help you take out the competition," he growled, "With all the other major players out of the game, Jacko was free to pick up the pieces. 'Make a better offer to the other dealers', with him the only boss in charge, right?"
"And become the only 'game in town'," the scumbag finished.
Trent motioned to Jacko, "He gets to be the big boss and clean up," then nodded to himself, lifting the money case, "and in return for helping him, I get a tidy nest egg. This tops it out at five million, as we agreed."
"What happened to 'replacing it with something better', 'benefiting others'? Ghost groused at him.
"It is being replaced with something bigger and better: a bigger and better organization, managed under one roof instead of dozens," Trent answered, "And as for the 'benefits', well..." he just shrugged and motioned to the case again.
"And you've got the balls to call yourself a cop?"
Trent just huffed, "I'll never see this kind of money as long as I live, at least not working behind a badge at a thankless job. As of tomorrow, I'm no longer a cop; I'm retiring and taking my little 'nest egg' with me. Jacko's free to do what he wants, now; it's not my problem anymore. In fact," he quickly brought up his gun and fired, putting a bullet through Jacko's head. His body shook for a second, then collapsed to the roof with his blood splattering the tar patches, "he's not anybody's problem anymore."
Ghost could only stare horrified at what just happened and gawking at Jacko's corpse, as Trent kneeled down, setting the case to the side.
"Satisfied now?" He raised an eyebrow at Ghost, "What? I just did you a favor, this time."
"By committing murder?" Ghost shouted.
"Oh, please," Trent scoffed, "He was a maggot; a drug pushing fuck head, dealing his shit and pushing it on people... on children! He didn't care who he was hurting with his drugs; all he cared about was himself and the power he could obtain. Your hypocrisy is showing," he leaned in closer and sneered, "now you tell me: who have I hurt?"
"You didn't hurt him; you killed him!" Ghost retorted, but still feeling the sting of his words being used against him.
"Do you honestly believe anybody will miss him? He'll never hurt anyone... never hurt another kid with his drugs ever again. His whole operation is in the shitter now and his goons have got nowhere to go. Like I said before: everybody wins... well, at least for now; you know there'll be another one to take his place, sooner or later."
"You're just as bad as he was, you fucking prick!" he spat at him.
Trent just held out his hand, the gun in the other still pointed at Ghost's head, "The ring, please."
Ghost didn't move.
"You know I could just kill you and take the ring, anyway; hand it over," he placed the barrel against Ghost's head, "now."
Hating Trent, the assholes who were working with him, and the rest of the Universe, Ghost slowly pulled his glove off and removed the ring. Trent saw his form materialize in his night vision and removed his goggles, tossing them aside.
"Don't need those anymore," he remarked, as Ghost placed the ring in his palm. He looked it over, carefully going over its curves and asked, "How does it work?"
"You're the detective; you figure it out."
Ghost cried out in pain as Trent pressed the gun tip against his calf, one of the few spots not covered by body armor, and fired a bullet into it. He groaned as Trent placed the gun near his fingers.
