Maya's engine rumbles delightedly, fluffy clouds drifting through the clear sky above her.

Violetta dances in the passenger seat to "come as you are" on the radio, grinning over at her wife as autumn leaves whip past them on either side.

Eventually, they've driven far enough that they need to stop for gas, and they pull over at a filling station. Hailey gets out and starts filling the tank, giving a few other drivers friendly nods.

One of the drivers looks over and lets out a long whistle.

"Nice ride! Really, beautiful!"

She smiles wryly. "Thanks. She took a lot of work to get her restored properly, but the purr of that engine and the way she handles make every hour worth it."

She idly watches the positions of everyone around her, tracking them all. It's a hard habit to break.

Slowly the tank fills.

"Oh man, I'll bet!"

He walks closer and leans over the car, patting the hood.

"How much?"

Hailey arches an eyebrow. "Not for sale, sorry."

He stands.

"Oh, c'mon now, everything's got a price. How much?"

She gives the boy a flat look. "Not happening. Not for any price."

The pump handle clicks to a stop in her hand, and she hangs it back up on the pump, then closes the tank.

The man steps back from the car.

"Whatever girl. Hey, think about it, okay?"

She gives him an unimpressed side-eye as she gets into the car. "Thought. Declined. Have a nice day."

Off she drives.

Maya rumbles angrily as she peels out of the lot.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Violetta rests a hand on Hailey's thigh as they drive off.

"Dumb kid got pushy about trying to buy our car. Not worth the stress."

"I prescribe fast driving and loud music, love. Put him out of your mind."

They spend the rest of the morning driving, rumbling down curvy roads and taking in the scenery, eventually making it home in time for a late lunch.

Hailey's in a better mood by the time they pull up to their two-story Victorian house on a spacious plot by the water. She makes them some grilled chicken sandwiches using last night's leftovers, and the afternoon improves.

Violetta cheers Hailey up a bit further with some quality time.

God she loves her wife.

Eventually, after a homemade curry dinner, the happy couple retires to bed.

…A scratching sound at the door…

…A rustling sound in the hall…

And then, very suddenly, Hailey is being dragged out of her bed by her hair and thrown to the ground.

A heavy blow to her stomach knocks the wind out of her, and another to her head sets her groggy mind spinning.

Hailey can hear Violetta scream behind her, and more sick thudding noises as the men do who-knows-what to her wife.

A weight presses down on her from above, and she can hear a man further away ask something in Russian.

"Alright, where're the car keys?"

"Violetta!" Hailey screams. She spits out some blood and groans, then shouts curses back at them in Russian. "Get the fuck away from my wife, you cocksuckers!"

She struggles to pull herself onto her hands and knees, crawling toward Violetta, vision swimming, head spinning.

A boot suddenly meets the side of her head, and she sees stars.

"Shut the fuck up, bitch!"

A familiar man sidles into Hailey's view, and drives his foot into her stomach, laughing.

"Bet you wish you'd taken the money, huh bitch?"

He calls over to one of the other men,

"Hey, fuck her up, huh?"

One of the other men picks up a metal bat, and Hailey can only scream in horror as he delightedly swings it into her wife's head.

Hailey coughs and wheezes from the kick, slumping against the ground, barely able to move.

"Prick," she croaks out, barely audible. "Dn't tch 'er."

The man looks down at her, disgust plain on his face, and—

"Hey! Found the keys!"

One of the men jogs into view and tosses the keys to his friend.

How dare those bastards touch Maya's keys. They don't deserve to polish her rims, let alone touch her keys. 

The man chuckles, and picks Hailey up by her hair.

"Guess that makes this goodbye, huh?"

Hailey just glares at him, burning his face into her memory, memorizing every detail of this night.

This prick and his friends will pay for hurting Violetta and stealing Maya. 

She spits in his face.

He glares down at her for a moment, then—grinning—he drives his fist into her face, and with it, the last of her waining conscious from her mind.

"Say goodnight, bitch."

An indeterminate time later, maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour, Hailey comes to.

She looks around in horror, and crawls to Violetta.

Violetta's breathing, but she sure ain't moving, and that's a lot of blood on her head.

"Violetta, baby, please. I need you, love. I can't lose you. I can't."

She struggles over to a counter and drags a phone down, calling 911, cradling her wife, breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps.

Hours later, Violetta is mostly stabilized, but still unconscious.

They don't know if she'll wake.

She's scheduled for more scans.

Hailey... can't sit still any longer.

She's not doing Violetta any good like this, nor Maya.

She walks out of the hospital, and catches a bus going to the city.

Just over an hour and a transfer later, she's walking up to a garage, ignoring the mechanics, and heading straight for the owner.

The owner is a short, older man with graying hair, holding a drink and staring down into it.

As she walks up to him, he looks up apprehensively.

She gives him a level gaze. She even manages not to growl.

"She here?"

He pauses for a moment before speaking.

"…She was."

A single eyebrow arches in an unspoken question.

He sighs.

"She was, and now she isn't."

"I…"

"…Look, I kicked them out, but… it was Tarasov's kid. Iosef."

He looks down into his drink.

"I roughed him up some, but that's the most I could do. Probably got her plates changed someplace else."

A scowl twists her lips.

After a moment, she steadies herself.

"Good to know. I'll need wheels in the meantime."

"I think I can help you there."

He stands and sets his drink down, before leading the woman around to the lot behind the shop, where a few finished cars sit in the evening light.

He motions to one of the cars.

"I'd loan you any of 'em, but knowing you, I'm guessing I know which one you'll pick."

The car in question is a sleek black musclecar with two thick white stripes running down the hood from the windshield.

Looking the loaner over gets the first hint of something other than steel from her expression. "Yeah, it'll do. Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

She accepts the keys and gets in, throwing a comment over her shoulder as she does.

"I'd ask you to blacklist Iosef, but."

The man sets his jaw in a sad grin and nods silently, before making his way back inside.

Hailey drives home.

She carefully cleans the house.

Sweeps up the glass.

Scrubs the floors clean of blood.

Then she goes to the shed.

She gets out a sledgehammer, then goes back in, and heads down to the basement, her footsteps heavy, hammer leaning on her shoulder.

Step.

     Step.

          Step.

               Step.

                    Step.

                         Step.

                              Step.

She drags a rug out of the center of the room, then lines the hammer up with the middle of a discolored patch of cement, and swings.

The first hit cracks it.

The second makes a dent.

Crack.

Crack.

She screams as she hammers her way through the cement, rage and grief spilling out of her.

After the final swings, she brushes aside the cement chunks to uncover a wooden chest, and opens it.

At the top are a pair of foam-lined trays. The left contains silencers, grenades, knives, and spare magazines. The right contains twenty-four stacks of twenty gold coins each, grouped into neat rows of eight, laid out horizontally.

She takes out those two trays, and underneath are a high-powered sniper rifle, a shotgun, an automatic rifle, and several scopes.

She carefully inventories everything, and checks the condition of all the weapons.

This chest laid the foundation of her life with Violetta. It feels fitting, now, to reopen it to hunt the boy who tried to take that from her.

The old phone on the desk behind her rings.

She'll answer it.

"What," she snaps.

"Hello Ha—" he pauses, then starts again. "Hello Hailey."

He clears his throat.

"I'm—I'm sorry to be calling you so late. I know you must be tired."

"Do you now."

Her voice is curt and cold.

She clenches the receiver tight enough that the plastic creaks audibly.

"I… yes, well. I guess… it must be fate. Or, happenstance, or just bad fucking luck for our paths to cross again…"

"Or bad genes," she scoffs, metal clicking as she disassembles and cleans the shotgun, handset wedged against her shoulder.

"Well now, let us not resort to harsh words. I think we can both agree that it is for the best if we settle this like m— like civilized adults. There is no need for anger or passion when we can simply be reasonable and evenhanded and set these things behind us. I—"

She can't help but cut him off, voice gradually building from a growl to a roar in her rage.

"Set this behind us? Viggo, how exactly d'you expect me to set behind me the fact that your son stole my car and maybe killed my wife?"

Silence, for a moment.

"…I would hope that you could see the bigger picture here, and understand that cool heads and calm discussions are what is best for all of us."

For a moment, the only sound is Hailey racking the shotgun and setting it down as she finishes cleaning it.

When she speaks, her voice has returned to that low, sharp edge of frost.

"I fail to see what you've got to offer beside a clear path to your son's blood and my car."

Silence again.

"…I… Look, we have known one-another for a long time. If it will put this behind us, we can replace the car, swear my… child to stay away from you and your family, and we can help to pay for treatment for your wife's… injuries."

For a long moment, Hailey has no words.

"If you had offered to return my car, that would've been less of an insult. 

"Blood for blood, Viggo. With interest."

A sigh is audible through the receiver. Then, a click, and the line goes quiet.

She hangs up the receiver, then resumes cleaning her rifles.

When that's done, she gets out her bulletproof vest and takes it upstairs, dressing for a busy night: black undershirt, the vest, black dress shirt, her signature dark green tie, and a black suit, fitted perfectly, with hidden pleats to allow for easy movement.

Knives hidden at her hips and in her boots and up her sleeves.

Viggo knows what she's planning. It's obvious.

He can only respond in one way.

She goes up to her bedside table, opens the drawer, and pulls out a heavily-customized SIG Sauer P226. The trigger's been replaced with a flat one sized for her finger, the barrel replaced with a threaded one for her silencers, and the slide replaced with one ported for reduced weight and recoil. The slide and barrel have been treated with black cerakote, while the trigger, hammer, decocker, and slide and mag releases have been with dark green. To finish it off, the backstraps and side panels have been replaced with custom pieces designed to sit perfectly in her hand, with a dark green design engraved on the textured panels: a thorn-covered rose vine curling around a dagger.

The weapon gleams faintly in the moonlight, sitting firmly in her hand and emitting a subtle aura of excitement.

Hailey loves her gun. Mae never fails to cheer her up a little, even when things are awful. "Work to do, babe."

She fits a suppressor to its barrel, screwing the attachment on securely, then pats it once.

And she steps out to the living room, tucking herself into a corner of two particularly sturdy walls, shielded from any windows or doors, to wait, listening carefully.

For minutes on end, there is nothing.

No sound, no light: nothing.

…Then, faintly, she can just barely hear the unmistakable sound of feet scuffing at the gravel path in the yard.

She tracks the origins of the sounds as carefully as she can without moving from her spot. Reverse ambush time.

The scuffing noises draw slowly closer, migrating around the house and towards the large bay window at the side.

She carefully cocks the hammer on Mae, moving slowly and silently so as not to give away her position. She's ready to lean past the edge of the wall for a brief moment the second they break the glass.

The noises continue to progress for a moment or two longer, before—as predicted—the glass of the window shatters inwards, and three dark-clad men follow the now-broken glass inside.

She leans past the edge of the wall, quickly and precisely sights on the nearest of the three, and puts a silenced shot through the center of his forehead, then smoothly shifts her aim to the other two without waiting for the first to drop, first hitting them center-mass to stun them and then shifting to their heads to keep them down.

Each man falls in turn, viscera spraying as their bodies hit the floor.

The room is silent for a moment, before a gunshot cracks through the night air and a bullet-hole appears in the wall beside Hailey.

She ducks back into cover, tries to figure out where that shot came from.

Another shot flies by, over her cover, and she can see from where it hits that it's coming from one of the men still out in the yard—they must have had some waiting behind while the others broke in!

To be expected, honestly. She leans out the side of her cover instead of popping back where she was and takes him out with a quick shot, then another beside him, before ducking back to safety once more.

The bodies crumple to the ground outside, and the bullets cease whizzing over her cover.

She can hear someone opening a door outside in her periphery.

She shifts to a different spot of cover with better protection and sight-lines on the door that just opened, then carefully holds her gun out, aimed in that direction, trusting what impressions Mae can give her.

Peaking over the cover, Mae can see three men moving through the door. One of them is holding a rifle, and the other two are carrying metal bats.

Touching on their mental connection, it sends Hailey the impressions of the three men, their relative positions, and their weapons, along with a small thrill of excitement—it hasn't gotten to have quite this much fun in years!

Yeah, she agrees. This is a lot more exciting than twice weekly range time, for sure.

Okay, carefully use Mae's guidance to put a shot into the rifleman's chest, possibly just stunning him through the vest, and then lean properly out of cover to put a round between his eyes in a blink. Two more shots to take out the melee dumbasses while they're surprised and out of range, and then back behind cover to listen for more of these fucks.

Down they go in a hail of well-placed bullets!

Then, a sound from behind her as a man with a bat jumps through the broken window, then another to the side as two more come through the door!

Window boy gets a steady headshot, then she smoothly turns toward the two at the door, tapping them each once in the chest and once in the head, before ducking back behind cover, Mae's slide stuck back as the mag runs dry. Smooth reload, then rack once to chamber.

Anyone else want to die tonight?

Another man comes through the door, followed by several bullets from another, aimed to force her back into cover!

Suppressive fire? First time they've tried that all night. She might actually develop a shred of respect for them if they keep breaking out these tiny scraps of skill.

It's not enough, though. They're aiming high, for chest-height when she's standing. She drops low and holds Mae out, shooting out the first guy's left kneecap.

The man collapses to one knee, shouting out a curse in Russian as the other man runs around him, still firing short bursts of gunfire over and around her cover.

Okay, he's actually worth a modicum of effort?

She ducks around the other side of the wall she's using for cover and gets out of view for when he comes around looking for her.

The man walks slowly to the wall, carefully watching for her to pop out, then turns around the wall, trigger ready to—nothing? Where is she?

He quickly checks around him. Which way did she go?

And then while he's looking this way and that, she pops out and shoots him in the chest, then once more in the head, before stepping the rest of the way around toward the door to shoot out the bat-wielder she kneecapped. Any other takers? She's still got eleven rounds left, just in her current mag.

She looks and listens carefully.

…

…Silence.

Job well done. Time to look around the grounds just in case, make sure there aren't any stragglers hiding.

There don't appear to be any more hiding in or around the house.

After several minutes of looking around, there's a sharp knock at the door.

Viggo can't have more goons that quick. She heads toward the door, stepping quietly, and peers out the peephole to see who it is.

Outside are flashing blue and red lights, silhouetting a man in a uniform, standing at the door, empty hands by his sides.

Ah. Cops. She knows the town cops, so that's easy enough. She opens the door and leans out, carefully keeping her gun out of view.

The man waves casually.

"Hello, Hailey."

Yep, she knows this one.

"Hello, Jimmy. Noise complaint?"

The man nods.

"Noise complaint."

He looks past the woman, peering into the house at the several still-bleeding corpses visible from the door.

"You uhh… you working again?"

She glances thoughtfully at the bodies for a moment, then back at Jimmy. "Nah, just sortin' out some... irreconcilable differences."

He gives the bodies a worried look, then looks back to Hailey, the question clearly on his tongue…

…And then clearly thinks better of it.

"Alright then. I'll leave you to it."

"Have a good night, Jimmy," she replies before shutting the door and walking over to the phone.

She picks up the handset and dials a number from memory.

"This is Harper.

"Yes, Hailey Harper. I'd like to make a dinner reservation for thirteen."

Once that's all confirmed, she hangs up and heads down to the basement, counting out thirteen of the gold coins into a small stack, then heads back up to the living room and looks up a glazier in the phone book while she waits, leaving a message asking to schedule a window replacement as soon as possible.

Before too long, a large van pulls up, and an older gentleman knocks on her door, backed by several burly-looking men, all carrying various forms of cleaning equipment.

She opens the door to let them all in. "Charlie."

He tips his hat as the other men enter. "Hailey."

The men get to work, moving bodies, cleaning floors, and clearing away damaged decorations. There's a lot to clean up, but there are a lot of them, and they work with practiced efficiency.

She watches over it all dispassionately.

She's tired as fuck, but she doesn't get to rest yet. 

Still work to do.

At least Charlie's men are as reliable as always. 

When they finish up, she drops the coins into his outstretched palm with a quick cli-cli-cli-clink of metal on metal.

Charlie nods to her again as he's paid, and then he and his men file back into the van, driving away into the night.