PROMPT: NO ONE IS TALKING, BUT IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WHO IS IN THE CASKET:
(prompt from somewhere online)
"And to conclude the service, a moment of silence for the brother we have lost. Thank you."
The church is suffocating both in temperature and ambiance, but Astrid knows not which of these drives the bead of sweat down her temple. From her place in the last row of the congregation, she sees only the backs of bowing heads, and even this only through the mesh of her veil. She has the worst vantage point of anyone here, but still she is most prepared for what will come next. Discreetly, she places a gloved hand through the unzipped flap of her purse and curls her fingers around cold metal.
Meters or miles forward is a mahogany casket, stained dark and polished rigorously. Atop the varnished wood is a framed image of a man in who looks to be in his early 60s, but isn't nearly that old. And inside the velvet walls is Mr. Bigby, poor, poor Mr. Bigby. A heart attack, so young? What a shame. His poor family. Poor son, poor wife. Poor Bigby's. This is what the old croons of the church chattered on about when Astrid first arrived. A shame, a shame.
A shame that he couldn't stay kicking for another week, Astrid thinks. Would have made this whole thing a lot easier.
She can't see anything happening at the front of the room, but in absolute silence, the sound of a gun's safety being turned off is as loud as it being fired. Without a moment's pause, Astrid stands, leaving her purse in its place on the aisle seat and moving quickly along the perimeter of the church. For the moment, it seems that no one has noticed her, nor her partner Jack.
Except, of course, the priest, who has a gun pressed to his temple and a gloved hand clamped over his mouth. Jack nods at Astrid, who has made it to the podium and already has a hand under the casket door. Then, POP POP POP! the sound of three rounds being fired stops her in her tracks.
"Fuck!" she hears Jack yell, and Astrid is going to kill that trigger happy little shit, she's going to skin her and feed her carcass to her dogs, she's going to...
But when she turns around, there is mayhem. The churchgoers are screaming, and someone is crying, but this is to be expected. They've been put in a distressing situation. More disturbing is the state of the priest: he is screaming, crying, crawling away from the podium-- but he isn't hurt. Instead, there is--
"Jaqueline!" Crumpled on the ground and clutching her arm and--
"Hit the ground, idiot!"
She does, but doesn't take her eyes off of her partner. "How many did you take?"
"Just one. It's a graze, don't freak." And Astrid will have to take her word for it. The black of her blazer hides any red that may be seeping through, and her veil disguises any pain she might be showing as she rolls behind the podium the priest had been using. Likewise, Astrid ducks behind the casket.
"Who pulled the gun?" she hisses.
"No idea. I don't think they stood up, which is probably why their aim was so shit. Lucky us, huh?" Jack says dryly.
"Lucky? Not even as a joke. There's 70 people in this bitch, how the fuck are we supposed to know who to shoot?"
"We could shoot all of them."
"Exactly how many clips did you think I brought?"
"Not enough."
Astrid huffs. "You're not wrong. Do you think you can figure out who's attacking us?"
"While you do what, exactly?"
"While I get what we came for," Astrid says through gritted teeth. Yanking up her pant leg, she exposes the array of tools she has taped to her calf. With nimble fingers, she pulls out the screwdriver and the appropriate end, before turning back to the hinges of the casket. There are four of them, but given the two-door casket, she'll only need to bother with the first two. Still, given that they're two inches a pop, and that the tiny handle of her pocket screwdriver doesn't provide much grip, it seems that she has her work cut out for her.
