That's concerning. She looks down at the building from a few angles, then apparates down near the back door. Another round of divination, this time for humans in view of the door, or bells hooked up to it.

There's a few people milling about inside, but there's no one right by the door. There's electric doorbells on most of the units, but nothing mechanical that'd make a sound if the door opens. 

A quick alohomora to take care of the door lock, a silencer to the hinges, and then she'll step very quickly inside, closing the door behind her.

It's a fairly ordinary looking place, with wooden flooring and eggshell white walls. The entry hall is nestled with a space for shoes and a coat hanger, with a sitting room just past it, and halls leading to a number of bedrooms. 

Carefully, quietly, grateful for her silenced boots, she steps closer to the middle of the house, then casts again. Where in the house are the rifles?

They're in a cabinet in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. 

That's rather more rifles than she'd expect one person to have. Possible suspect?

She heads up to that bedroom, steps in, closes the door, and then casts a tracking spell, carefully containing the generated vestiges to just the room she's in. Who's been fiddling with that cabinet?

Looks like just the person who's been using the room. 

Tch. Any sign of information about Dr. King's schedule or movements in here? She makes sure to carefully levitate things out of the way, to avoid leaving prints in the room, and then put everything back exactly where she finds it.

There's nothing incriminating at a look around - just the guns, stored in cases, with the ammunition set aside in a different area. 

No certainty, no clear indications.

She'll just have to take precautions.

This'll be fiddly, but she delicately casts an alarm paling (like a ward but smaller and temporary) on the cabinet, set to give her a distinctive mental nudge if anyone opens it.

She lets out a breath at the rush of magic it takes, the delicate focus a bit mentally tiring.

Worth it, though. She can come back here in a trice if this boarder turns out to be the shooter.

A quick silencing charm to the room — underpowered so it'll fade in a few minutes — and then she apparates to the motel parking lot to look for the hunting rifle she sensed.

It's in the back of a Ford Thunderbird, it looks like. 

That'll need another alarm paling. And then she's popping back to her motel room to grab her thermos, fill it with water, grab some ice from the ice machine at the end of the hall, and lean against the wall outside Dr. King's door under a fresh disillusionment and a supersensory charm to increase her field of view, enhance her senses, and provide additional angles of perception. 

Stakeout time. Anyone points a gun in this direction, she'll see it. Anyone touches one of those alarmed guns, she'll know.

Stakeouts are bloody boring.

She's read that before, she's heard it said, but none of that compares to the experience of how boring they are. Can't just daydream, because it could make her miss something. Can't read, same reason.

She has to stick to only as much idle thought as won't interfere with watching for the glint of a barrel.

Keeping a partial-radius supersensory up only makes it worse. Her eyes are constantly a little dry, everything's constantly a bit overstimulating, just gradually wearing on her. She can tell she'll have a headache tomorrow, but she's okay for now.

Time passes. She runs through spell lists in her mind.

Three variants of piercing curse, depending whether overpenetration is a problem or a bonus, and how big a hole you need. 

Technically there are five different stunners, if you count the dark variants that require specific counter-curses and the comparatively easily shielded area variants. She'll only need the basic one today.

There are easily dozens of shields. There's variation in type of defense: spell-focused shields, physical shields, shields that require more magic and complexity but handle elemental "splash" and radiant heat. There's variation in size and shape, from hand-sized duelist shields to personal domes or whole walls. They vary in intensity, from thin shields meant to take a single spell and shatter, to bunker shields meant to personally fend off a siege spell or several. Hailey can cast maybe half of those, at most; she's missing the complex variants and the bunker variants, instead specializing in duelist shields, with a few personal domes and walls for special circumstances. The main thing she expects to need tonight is a projectile wall shield.

Most of those come as palings, as well: magic halfway between a spell and a ward, meant to hold up for minutes to days without active attention or channeling, depending on how much work you put in. The problem with palings, of course, is that that duration assumes the paling is left alone, rather than actively attacked, making them only really useful for types of magic other than shields. Most shield palings fall after one or two hits unless you put a bloody lot of work into them, and essentially no one could cast a paling that held against more than five solid hits. Personally-cast shields could be reinforced by the caster, and wards could draw on ambient magic and their reservoirs, but palings stand with only the structure the caster worked into them at the time.

Suffice to say no one bothers with shield palings except to give them a moment to wake up and draw their wand if they're camping. Far more useful to cast palings for detection, utility, or offense. Hailey knows a couple particularly violent ones for camping in enemy territory.

There are an awful bloody lot of more violent curses, everything from blasting and bone-breaking to flaying and entrail-expelling. Hailey knows most of those quite well, but doesn't expect to use them. There are quite a few elemental spells as well, lightning and fire and wind and so much more. Those feel especially familiar to her, but again are overkill for tonight.

Then there are the spells everyone else knows, for people who haven't trained to be a one woman war (or war crime), if Hailey's interpreting the bias in her knowledge of magic right. Things like summoning and banishing and floating, vanishing, basic transfiguration, cleaning, simple tool animation, modification of properties like weight or rigidity, multiplication, and so on. She knows all of those, especially all the household and cooking ones. Oddly mumsy of her.

This should be a simple job: deflect the bullets, stun the attackers, preserve some physical evidence so the local pigs can put the gits away proper, then leg it.

The day goes on without too much of consequence - Doctor King is a busy man, and he doesn't simply stay in his room when he has people to meet and a smoke break or two to take, but beneath the cover of invisibility, it's simple enough to be a vigilant in the shadows. Soon enough, Doctor King is readying himself for a dinner that in another world would be his last. 

Not in this one, not if Hailey has anything to say about it. It's been a tedious wait, but that's a bargain if she can stop the assassination.

Anyone approaching her alarm palings or pointing anything reflective out a window? Anything that looks like a gun anywhere in view at all?

Not quite yet...

She keeps watching. It's gotta be soon. This is the target time. Where is that bastard, whoever they are...

He steps out onto the balcony, chatting amiably as ever. 

There's the faintest metallic clicking sound, just barely audible past the din of their conversation coming from across the street. 

It's time.

Transparent projectile shield covering the balcony, wall type, big and wide and invisible until struck, additional sections from the corners to the hotel wall. Dr. King is unreachable by bullets, now.

Focus on where she heard the sound from, but keep watch over the whole area too. Where's the blighter? Any glint of a gun, any motion, any further sounds?

She can't go far while holding these shields up, so she needs Dr. King to go back inside as soon as the first shot is fired, give her time to neutralize the shooter without risking him.

There's a terse moment, like the world taking its breath...

Then a momentary ripple in the air and a crack of a bullet's passage, deflecting off her shield. Everyone nearby startles and ducks, falling back from the balcony. 

There's the faint hint of the muzzle flash - it looks like it came from a window in the rooming houses across the street.

Bloody hell why does no one flee?

She lunges for the edge of the roof — can't hold a channeled spell through an apparation — and swings down onto the balcony, dropping her disillusionment in the same moment.

"Doctor King, get inside!" she barks, opening the door with her off-hand and then pointing inside, eyes still across the street.

The last of the startled shock flees them as they turn and usher quickly back inside to the bark of a second bullet and breathless muttered prayers. 

With the second flash, she can pick out the room the would-be assassin set-up in. 

Seal the door with colloportus, imperturb the door and window, and now the shields don't matter.

Okay, bastard. You're hers, now.

She apparates across the street into the shooter's room with a sharp crack, aiming for an empty spot a meter and a half back from the window and off to the side. 

She primes her mind for a physical bubble shield, hugging tight to her body, casting the instant she lands. Can't let the fucker get the drop on her.