Trish stood two paces behind and just to the right of Annelie as the four patrons who paid $1000 each for the privilege stood around the actress and talked and laughed like they were old friends.

Annelie had given everyone in attendance a treat in the form of an impromptu speech once the movie concluded, and answered a few questions from a set of young twin girls who appeared to be around ten or eleven, and who had gone to great lengths to resemble Bekke Reese, sans weapons and blood stains, just before her epic fight scene in the first Bekke Reese movie Dangerous Heights.

It was two married couples talking to Annelie now, if that was the right phrase to use. Trish didn't need heightened perception to see that it was the two men who were interested in getting within arm's reach of Annelie and, if at all possible, much closer still. The irritation on the faces of the two wives was clear, but they both put on brave, friendly, if false, faces.

Annelie had not needed heightened perception either, and she showed no reluctance at all holding Trish up as her shield against the two after her cool response to their overly friendly manner failed to have any effect.

"This is my girlfriend, Maja. She is keeping me company during my stay in America."

It took a bit of effort for Trish to stop herself from laughing as the irritation drained from the two women's faces, and the smiles they wore became much more genuine. If the men were affected in any way, Trish could not tell, but she was pretty fucking sure she knew what they were imagining.

You would be dead from a heart attack, compadre. You couldn't even handle one of us.

A man with a tray of flutes filled with champagne approached, and it appeared that the evening was not quite over. Trish declined, and since none of the four guests seemed at all interested in talking to her she felt she could relax the smile on her face, and the muscles in her shoulders. None of them were any sort of threat, not unless a fair amount of the mass underneath their clothing was well manufactured padding.

When an unannounced guest turned the corner into the private reception room, a guest who was not on the list that Trish had seen for the private reception, it took her brain about five milliseconds before she recognized him.

Uh oh.

"Hello," Kyle said to Annelie as he approached, "I'm very sorry to be late. My name is Kyle Richmond, Ms. Bodin. I am a huge fan of all your work. I had to take a call. Please forgive me."

"Not at all, Mr. Richmond," Annelie said, her face showing no indication of the surprise that must be foremost in her mind,"I understand completely."

"Hello," Kyle said to everyone, "Kyle Richmond."

"Maja Johansson," Trish said after the other four had introduced themselves, leaning on her Swedish accent just a bit more than normal for the benefit of untrained ears.

"It was very kind of you to talk to the two girls," Kyle said to Annelie, "They passed me on their way out, and their faces radiated pure joy."

Jesus

"You're very kind, Mr. Richmond. I admit that it's what I enjoy most about being an actress, meeting my fans."

And the truckloads of cash.

"C'est un don de Dieu pour apporter de la joie aux autres," Kyle said.

"Vous parlez magistralement, monsieur," Annelie replied with a genuine smile.

It was clear from their faces that none of the four spoke French.

"None of you speak French?" Kyle asked, "it's the only other language I speak beside English, and I have little opportunity to practice. Please forgive me."

That asshole has never apologized to me for anything. Never.

A small amount of nervous laughter, and two short stories about trying to learn French at boarding school, and the conversation resumed as another round of drinks arrived.

"Ms. Johansson, how are you enjoying America?" Kyle asked her in French as he stood directly in front of her, his back blocking the four guests who now had Annelie all to themselves.

"I was enjoying it more before you showed up." Trish replied en français in a quiet voice.

"Change of plans," the conversation continued in French, "You're taking a company jet to Chicago, not the charter that the studio arranged."

"Is this general paranoia, or special paranoia?"

"Her flight crew was compromised."

"Compromised?"

"They're dead."

It took Trish a moment to reply.

"No fucking way."

"Colin was keeping tabs on them. They came back from lunch, went to their rooms, and went silent. No internet access, no phone usage, nothing. Over four hours. Colin's team went into their rooms dressed as cleaners. Single gunshot each, small caliber, back of the head, execution."

Trish's anger rose almost too fast for her to control.

"Motherfuckers."

"Whoever did this, we think they are planning to hijack her plane once she is on board."

"With a bogus crew."

"The pilots, at least, will be genuine, the rest will be who the fuck knows what."

Trish was truly angry now, and her anger was, at least partly, directed at Kyle Richmond.

"You always knew that this was more than just twisted letters," Trish said with venom in her voice, "you knew."

"No. I had a feeling, nothing more," Kyle said, his voice still calm.

Her heart rate was still up, and it was taking her more than the usual effort to settle down.

"Motherfuckers," she said again, as if it were a mantra.

"She's going out the back with Mark. You are going out the front with Sharon."

"She's my protectee, not Mark's."

"You have to go out the front with Sharon. They will be watching. You came in together, you leave together."

"Fuck."

"Keep your voice down."

Breath. Just breath.

Trish closed her eyes, bowed her head slightly, and took a moment before taking the three ritual breaths that would slow her heart and calm her mind.

Most people didn't know that Frank Herbert based Bene Gesserit Training on The Way of Taoism. Trish had not known either when she had first read his novel Dune when she was fourteen. It had been Hank McCoy that had informed her years later, and given Trish her first lessons in The Way, as he had given Trish her first lessons in many other things. She sent him a silent thank you for helping her forge the tools she needed now to regain her composure.

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone, was the Taoist concept of wu wei, uncontrived action.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer, Frank Herbert had come up with that one on his own, and Trish had quickly adopted it as her own as well. She had repeated it before every gymnastic event, she had muttered it right before going on stage in performances, and it was usually the last thing Trish repeated silently in her mind as she pulled the black hypermesh cowl and attached long red wig up over her head before heading out to whatever nighttime target she was aimed at.

By the time Trish opened her eyes and raised her head up to look directly at Kyle her heart rate was barely breaking fifty beats a minute.

"What do you want me to do?"


Annelie was still crying as she shed her clothes, modesty seeming to be the last thing on her mind as she thought about the two men and two women who had accompanied her from Stockholm to New York.

It was just the three of them now, in a private, though luxurious, women's restroom off the private reception room in the Actor's Studio; Annelie and Sharon both clad only in panties and bras as the two exchanged clothes. It was due to the necessity for speed that Annelie's initial hysteria had quickly given way to a more manageable grief, but Trish knew that it was only a temporary reprieve.

"We have very little time," Kyle had said as Trish sat with her arms around the weeping actress, Annelie's head on her shoulder, "The other private guests have left already. I have to leave soon, and you can't be far behind. I'm sure they are still watching the front entrance. And we can't wait much longer before informing the police."

"We'll be ready," Trish said as she kept her arms around Annelie and began to stand up, "Come on, you can do this. We need to go."

Kyle's phone vibrated in his pocket, and his face became a mask when he looked at the name on the display.

"Bruce?" Kyle said as he answered.

Who's Bruce? Trish thought.

"Hang on," Kyle said into the phone as he began to walk away from the door to the women's restroom before turning and looking at the three women, and at Trish specifically, "make it quick."

Kyle was off the phone when they came back out.

"Annelie will come with me, Mark, and her two bodyguards," Kyle said, "We are going straight to the company hangar. You, Sharon, Michael and Simon will start off to the private terminal at LaGuardia. You'll lose anyone following you once you cross the private perimeter. Your field cases are in the limo."

Me, Sharon, a counter-assault specialist and a team leader from the lightweight wet team.

"What then?" Trish asked as they stopped at the point where their paths would diverge.

"We'll have a long lens on that aircraft. We'll give you a heads up what is waiting on the tarmac," Kyle said before looking at Annelie, "Who was it that greeted you in Stockholm when you pulled up to the plane?"

"It was Laars, the copilot," Annelie said as she began to cry again, "His daughter just turned three."

"I'm sorry," Kyle said before looking at Sharon, "You know what to do with whoever is waiting for you."

"Yes sir," she answered, her face like flint, and her voice just as hard.

"We are absolutely sure that the people on that plane are bag guys, right?" Trish asked.

"Yes," Kyle said, "This is wet work now. Simon is your team lead. Simon will fly the plane, and the bodies, to Virginia afterwards. The rest of you will head to the company hangar."

I don't do this. I'm not an assassin, I don't just walk up to people and shoot them, and I'm not about to start now.

"I'm not an assassin, Kyle," Trish said, "You have people who do this, and I'm not one of them."

"They just killed four people in cold blood for no other reason than they wanted to take their places," Kyle replied in that hard edged voice that Trish had learned to avoid. But not this time.

"So send someone else, or let me do this my way," Trish replied, "I can do it, you know I can. We hand them over to the NYPD. If you want to kill them afterwards, I'm sure you'll find a way, just don't involve me in any executions."

Kyle thought for a moment before dialing his phone.

"Simon, change of plans. Trish will fill you in on the way."

"If it goes sideways, it goes wet, and it's on you, capish?" Kyle asked her after ending the call.

"Capish," Trish said, her mind already switching to autopilot in anticipation of the upcoming violence.

"Let's move," Kyle said, the edge still in his voice as he began to walk towards the stairs that would exit in the back of the building.

I'm going to fucking pay for that later, Trish thought as she began to move.

Annelie's arms were around Trish before Trish had taken a step. She was still crying, her face still wet with tears.

"You better fucking come back to me," she said as she bent forward and buried her face in Trish's neck before standing up and looking down slightly into Trish's eyes.

A thousand responses went through Trish's mind in the span of a half a second, as she looked up into those crystal blue eyes, but her voice, seeming to act on it's own, formed the simplest one.

"Promise," she said as she kissed Annelie's perfectly shaped mouth.


"Thank fucking God," Trish said after stripping off the thigh garter holsters that held her tactical batons and sub compact handgun and rubbing the inside of her thighs.

It was normally a thirty minute drive along 495 and 278 to get from Hell's Kitchen to LaGuardia but a backup in the Midtown Tunnel slowed them down a bit.

"The drone said they were five or six cars behind us when they lost us in the tunnel," Sharon said as their encrypted signal went to zero bars.

They were all professionals, though they had never worked together before. Trish knew that a dark drone would pick them up again once they exited the tunnel and follow them all the way up Grand Central Parkway before entering the restricted zone of the airport. It would keep its distance from the private jet on the private runway, observing what the conditions on the ground currently were. It would also record the violence that was to come, and their trip to the private hangar afterwards, where it would land and deliver its 4K footage, which would be compared to the lower resolution live feed that Kyle himself would almost certainly be watching. Simon's flight to a Nighthawk Security black site in Virginia, if it proved necessary, would be listed under several different flight numbers, using rotating transponder codes, courtesy of a small red and green striped box that Simon would have in the cockpit, and that was under no circumstances to be captured or touched by anyone other than the operator.

Trish could hear Sharon's phone vibrate as they exited the tunnel and the signal strength returned. It took an additional minute before it vibrated again.

"Eight cars back," she said.

"They're going to lose us if they're not careful," Michael said.

"You're sure they haven't tagged the limo?" Trish asked.

"We're sure," Michael said.

"No offense."

"None taken."

Sharon's phone vibrated again, and she took a close look at it before passing it to Trish.

It was a still image from the drone, showing a black BMW 5 series with New York plates.

The resolution of the live feed wasn't good enough to get the plate number, which wouldn't matter, since it was going to be bogus. The 4K image would get it, and Kyle would follow up, but just to be thorough.

A thought occurred to Trish.

"Is Kyle going to snatch up the guys in the car?"

Everyone in the car remained quiet.

"Not our op," was all Simon said.

Fuck


"She couldn't have worn something that could have concealed a weapon?" Sharon said as she opened her field case.

"She failed to anticipate the possibility of wet work," Trish answered.

"I thought she was an international assassin," Sharon said.

Trish was about to tell her to shut the fuck up when a thought occurred to her.

"You know, I bet she would hire you as her stunt double for this movie she is shooting. It's the second Bekke Reese movie. You would be perfect. You two look a lot alike."

Sharon, whose last name Trish did not know, who was a seasoned field operative for Nighthawk Security Services, who was about to kill at least one person with her bare hands if Trish's plan failed, took the opportunity to go full blown fan girl.

"Holy shit, do you really think she would?" she asked, her voice rising with each successive word.

"Oh, for fuck sake," Michael said.

"Game faces," Simon said, "final checks."

"Go." Michael said as he chambered a round in his CZ Bren 2.

"Go." Sharon said as she covered her silenced Sig Sauer P320 .40 Caliber with a light jacket.

"Go." Trish said as she attached the silencer to her Walther PPQ 9mm.

"Sixty seconds," Simon said as the car started moving.

"One man on the tarmac," Sharon said after looking at her phone, "pilot's uniform. Nothing else."

Payback's a bitch, motherfuckers, Trish thought as she began the ritual to go emotionally numb to what she was about to do.

Lord, forgive me for the sins I have committed, and for those I am about to.

The car turned in a smooth arc as it approached the aircraft, and the man standing next to the open hatch, the warm light from inside the plane joining the headlights from the limo in illuminating a small portion of the tarmac. It would be Michael that would exit first, but only to open the rear door and let Trish out. Sharon would exit second. By the time Simon exited the driver's seat and reached the door to the plane it would all be over. The drone would be overhead somewhere behind them and off to one side.

The car stopped next to the GULFSTREAM G650ER and Michael opened his door and stepped out. Trish could see through the tinted window as Michael gave the fake copilot a nod as he stepped to the car door and pulled the handle.

Trish stepped out, her high heels in her left hand, her pistol laying concealed on the seat behind her. As she placed a foot on the tarmac she seemed to lose her balance.

"Where's Laars?" Michael asked the man in the uniform.

The man had moved forward to help Trish when he turned his head to answer Michael.

"He's..." the man started to answer just as Trish struck him on the left temple with a strong ridge hand blow from her right hand.

Michael quickly caught the unconscious man and laid him on the tarmac as Trish reached back with her right hand and retrieved her hand gun from the seat. The captain's seat window was immediately above them and anyone looking out that widow would see everything.

If someone is looking out the window we're fucked, and they're dead.

Trish simply walked towards the plane before ascending the steps to the interior of the cabin, only to stop at the top of the steps, shoes still in hand.

The door to the cockpit on her left remained closed. Two men were in the main cabin, one of whom was approaching Trish.

She held her left hand up and showed him the high heeled shoes.

"Sorry. I twisted my ankle."

"Let me help you," he said in accented English as he approached and began to bend forward to help her.

"Thanks," Trish said as she hid the pistol behind her, dropped one shoe, reversed her grip on the other, and struck the man in the temple with the titanium reinforced heel before grabbing his collar and flinging him down the stairs.

Hope I didn't kill him, Trish thought as she brought her right hand up and pointed the silenced weapon at the only other person in the cabin as she raised the index finger of her left hand to her lips in the universal sign for keep your fucking mouth closed.

Sharon kept her own weapon raised as she moved past Trish to the man before placing the silencer against the back of his head and searching him with her left hand; a search that produced an MP-443 Grach, a straight razor, and three condoms.

"What were you going to do with these, you sick fuck?" Sharon whispered to the man as she held up the condoms in her clenched left fist, an inch from his face, "Were you gonna fuck your buddies with these? Or maybe they were gonna fuck you, and you don't like getting ridden bareback?"

"Angli khelgüi," was the only answer he gave, his face a stone mask.

"Cuffs," Sharon said and held out her left hand for the flex cuffs that Michael tossed to her.

Trish walked forward and pressed the silencer of her 9mm weapon against the forehead of the man in front of her as Sharon placed his wrists in the restraints and Michael turned around, raised his weapon, and proceeded towards the closed cockpit door, taking time to check any space large enough for a person to hide.

"Were you planning on raping my girlfriend, asshole?" she asked, her tone of voice flat, and deadly, as she increased the pressure of the square metal silencer against his head until he could no longer keep the pain from his face.

"Would you like me to fuck you up the ass with this?" She asked him, accenting the word this with enough added pressure that the metal object against his head cut into his skin and drew blood.

"Novshiin gichii!" he said through his clenched teeth.

Trish removed the metal from his forehead only to swing it forward and bash the captured murderer/rapist across the side of his head.

"I don't think I need a translator to understand that last comment," Trish said as she looked down at his unconscious body.

"Me neither," Sharon said before she turned, raised her weapon, and continued to search the main cabin.

Enjoy getting raped in prison, asshole, Trish thought as Simon approached and began dragging the unconscious man away, and as Michael's voice ordering the man in the cockpit out into the main cabin came from the front of the aircraft.


The limo had just cleared the private terminal entrance as Port Authority police and officers from the NYPD's 115th precinct were arriving at the now disabled aircraft and the four bound men, who an anonymous tip to 911 had connected with four homicides in a hotel in Manhattan. The dark drone stayed with the aircraft just long enough to see the men taken into four separate vans, each under the custody of two officers.

Trish returned Sharon's phone as the drone left the scene and eventually resumed it's position above and behind the limo.

"Thanks," Trish simply said as she lay her head back against the cushioned seat.

"Sure," Sharon said, "thought you'd want to be sure none of them escaped."

"I appreciate it," Trish said as she turned and looked at the woman who Trish would never mistake for Annelie now that she knew her.

She's still pretty fucking good looking though.

"No worries," Sharon said as she smiled before turning back, closing her eyes, and resting her own head.

No one talked on the drive to the private airstrip of Richmond Air Services.