East End #3, obviously set after #1 and #2, and written in 121 minutes.

The problem with a bloody assassin having a thing about killing me is that she was an assassin: it wasn't like doors or locks or anything would bother her if she decided tonight was the night she was going to murder me. I locked everything anyway, drew all my blinds, and then sat in the dark listening to all the odd noises coming from the nooks and crannies of my old flat, imagining all the horrible ways she might try to kill me.

It was silly; Widowmaker had been trying to kill me for ages and she'd never bothered to tail me here. It wasn't really her style to kill people while they were pottering about their homes: she preferred dramatic, public murders that she could watch on the telly afterwards with a glass of red.

Then again, it wasn't really her style to throw me up against a wall and snog me either, and she'd just done that…

I swallowed. It was right creepy, it was, the whole kissing thing. Maybe her kissing her targets was some weird black widow spider reference I didn't understand? I knew spiders killed their lovers after they'd got it on, so maybe she was just snogging me in preparation to kill me? She had called her rifle 'Widow's Kiss' after all.

Even though it was pretty unlikely that she'd come here, I decided I'd get my blasters out just to be on the safe side. Once I had them, I sat back down to listen to all the noises that might be Widowmaker infiltrating my flat while I tried to sort out what was going on.

She's probably not going to come here, I tried to reassure myself, her snogging me is probably just some ploy to get me thinking about her like that so when we next cross paths, she has the upper hand.

Well, it wasn't going to work on me, that was for sure. I wasn't some toey teenager who'd salivate at the thought of shagging her and make critical mistakes as a result, no siree! I could quite easily imagine shagging her without getting dangerously distracted!

I frowned; wait, that didn't come out right. What I'd meant was that her cheap trick of being horribly sexy and half-undressed around me wasn't going to lead to a victory for her, and if she thought using her womanly wiles on another woman was going to work, she had another think coming.

I mean, she obviously did think that, though, didn't she? Otherwise, why would she have stripped in front of me for what felt like a full half hour and then gone right in and snogged me in some posh restaurant? Clearly, she expected me to have a reaction to all that. Well, the joke was on her, because I hadn't. Not really. Not enough to land her a victory, anyway: I was quite able to dismiss that mental image of her in that fancy bra, and those cool lips against my—

A knock at the door made me jump a mile.

It's her! I thought, and then very nearly blinked a few times and scuttled under the bed. Then, I rolled my eyes at myself; I'd never been afraid of her before, why should I start now? Taking a deep breath, I grabbed one of my blasters and edged up to the door.

Her rifle could probably shoot right through the wood, I realised, and so trod very, very lightly so she wouldn't know I was there to fire. The Widow's Kiss made a very subtle ping-ping-ping sound as it focused, so I put my ear up to the door to listen for it.

"Lena!" my neighbour's gruff voice blasted right on the other side, nearly deafening me. "The missus made an extra pot of mash if you'd like to pop over for some!"

I stood up, grimacing and rubbing my ears; you had to be bloody kidding me! Normally I rather liked having a de facto mother who cooked and washed up for me, but now? "Thanks, but I'm fine, actually!" I called back, leaning my forehead against the door.

"Well, the kettle's on if you change your mind," he said, and then I listened to his footsteps disappear across the hall and into his own little flat while I reflected on how completely paranoid I was being, sitting here in the dark and creeping about in my own home.

Honestly, look at me: this was bloody ridiculous. There was no way I was going to get any sleep at all if I just left it; I needed to know what that evil woman was up to or it was going to drive me mental.

I put my jacket back on so I could tuck my blasters on the inside of it, and headed back out to see if she was still in that restaurant.

It was a good plan, going back, because there was no way she'd suspect it. In fact, she was probably having a glass of victory wine over how thoroughly she'd freaked me out, never suspecting that I wasn't freaked out at all and I was returning to get to the bottom of things.

When I made it there, I didn't bother with the front door this time. Instead, I snuck around the laneways and hunted about for some way up to that balcony so I could creep back in. There wasn't a ladder or anything, but there were loads of rubbish bins, and with a bit of luck I managed to stack them all on top of each other and pull myself back up before they all fell down.

Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I dusted off my hands and then turned towards the balcony door. A quick look through it revealed Widowmaker wasn't seated at her table. That was a bit odd, because her half-eaten food was there. Perhaps she'd ducked off to the loo or something like—

"You'd make a terrible assassin."

I jumped so high I nearly recalled to the Palaeolithic era, spinning and pulling my blasters on her. Unfortunately, I was used to holsters, and because I didn't have any I accidentally dropped one of them. It clattered across the balcony floor to her feet.

She was leaning casually against the railing with her ankles and arms crossed, in the shadow of a big old pot plant. She looked down at my blaster at her feet and then up at me with a gun pointed at her, unmoved. "I could have heard you climbing up here from my apartment in France." She didn't sound very impressed.

"It's not my fault they don't have a bloody fire exit!" I told her. "Rubbish bins aren't exactly easy to climb up, you know!"

She laughed once like I was her evening entertainment or something. Then, she stood and kicked my blaster aside with one of her sharp heels. "So," she said, swaying those hips as she advanced on me, "did you come back to finish what we started?"

Oh my— my eyes widened. "No!" I told her, waving my blaster in warning. "I came back to find out what the bloody hell you're up to!"

She didn't look away from me, but she did lick her lips. It was on purpose, I swear. It made me think of watching her lick her thumb as I ran off. "Oh, did you?" she said like she didn't believe me at all. "What did you expect to find out?"

I was still staring at those lips and it took me a moment to process what she'd said. I gulped and looked back into her eyes. Honestly, that wasn't much better. "Erm, well, I-I thought I'd sort of peek in and see what you were up to…" I suddenly realised I had no idea at all what I'd planned to do when I got here, and she knew it. Oh, no. Oh, this wasn't good at all. She was still advancing on me, and there was a wall behind me; I couldn't retreat any further. "I mean, p-perhaps you'd take a call from Talon, or perhaps you'd be gone because you'd followed me to my flat…"

She was feigning exaggerated interest, nodding like she was listening to a child telling her a tall story.

"It's true!" I protested, but even to my ears it sounded very she-doth-protesteth-too-much.

As if to illustrate that, walked right up into my blaster, so the nose of it was pushing on her breast-bone, right in the centre of her cleavage. Her breath was cool on my face as she looked down at me. "So shoot me, then."

T-That was— "What?"

She pushed against the barrel. "If you are so sure I am doing something diabolical, shoot me. Save the world, or whatever it is that you tell yourself that you do."

I didn't… I mean, I couldn't…

She gave me a cold, knowing smile. "I thought so," she said, and then leant her lips close to my ear with my blaster still between us and murmured. "You want to know what is my master plan?"

I think I'm actually about to die, I realised, wondering why that didn't seem to concern me enough to blink away.

"My evil, evil master plan is to have a nice dinner with a woman I find very attractive," she whispered, and while I was reeling from her just coming straight out like that and calling me 'attractive', she added suggestively, "and then maybe afterwards I will follow her home to her flat."

My jaw dropped.

While I was gaping at her, she stood up from my ear, turning that evil bloody smile on me again. "So, what do you say, chérie?" she asked me with unblinking eye-contact. "Will you come and share a dessert with me? The food here is absolutely breathtaking."

Even that sounded like a threat. I completely expected to be poisoned, but it wasn't like I could go home now, could I? I couldn't shake the feeling that she was up to something, and that I was the right person to get to the bottom of it.

Maybe two can play at this spy-game, I thought, trying very, very hard not to look down into her cleavage where the blaster was pointed.

I found my voice somehow. "W-Well, perhaps someone should keep an eye on you," I conceded a bit breathily, dropping my blaster. "You know, in case you try to do something. But I'm warning you, Widowmaker, I'm watching you!"

Her eyebrow twitched. "Oh, I hope so," she told me over a shoulder as she turned smoothly on her heel and walking towards the door. She was doing that swishy-hip-thing on purpose, it was like having a coin swinging backwards and forwards in front of my eyes.

It was only when she cleared her throat that I realised I'd been staring at her hips instead of going through the door she'd been holding open for me.

Whoops, I thought, pulling myself together and clumsily retrieving my blaster from the ground where she'd kicked it. I was going to have to be much more careful if she wasn't going to get the jump on me before I figured out what was really going on.