"Ugh. This is so stupid. That scream is just messing with my head," the woman muttered, realizing that she had fallen asleep and resuming her activities. She was completely oblivious to the fact that we were both right behind her chair, waiting for a good moment to strike. I was almost leaning on a bookshelf that had been placed near the wall, and Hodek simply stood by me with a hand on my shoulder as if he had to hold me back.

I felt something brush my foot, and looked down to see a shotgun leaning against the drawer. Without the light coming from this woman's laptop, I wouldn't have noticed it.

She's not suicidal.

She thinks she can handle people like us.

"...ow," she muttered, holding her head and turning sideways in her chair to get her line of sight away from the computer for a while. We both shifted to the right as silently as we could.

"Why is—"

The computer made a loud screeching noise, the screen seemed to split, and with another five seconds it was completely off. For a moment, I thought it had died, but the woman just sighed and plugged it back into a charger as if this went on every day. She jammed the "on" button a couple of times, impatient. By some miracle it came back to life, though I had a feeling that whatever had happened was a little bit more than just a glitch. It was almost like something had passed through it for a short while, but I shook my head and tried to stay focused. I noticed Hodek kept a particularly sharp eye as she typed in her password. In perfect sync with the clacking of the keys, he mouthed, "R, K, I, O, 2, 0, 6."

The woman kept muttering reassurances to herself, like she was simply hearing things.

"That Giovanni kid," she said with a sneer. "I told them, if you keep this little charade up then something will deal with you at one point or another. Did you listen? No. You didn't. And now you got what's been coming to you. If I lived just two doors down..." she paused her excessive typing and sighed. "God. Wish that'd been me."

I didn't know whether to laugh or knock her out right then. She seemed so sure of herself, it was almost funny. Hodek seemed a little more than annoyed at this, though it looked as if something she'd written convinced him too. He drew his knife, narrowed his eyes to the best of his ability, and whirled the woman's chair around faster than I could even see. He stepped on its edge and covered her mouth before she could scream or say anything.

"I hope you know that I was about to leave you alone before I saw that. What are you, five?"

As she struggled against him, he let out a little disapproving sigh and raised a hand so the knife glimmered in what little light there was. She stopped she when caught full sight of it. After a few strained moments, he removed his hand but kept a grip on the collar of her shirt.

"What's your name," he asked under his breath. As she was about to respond, he pressed the dull side of the knife against her neck. "Quietly, now."

"...Rachael. Kione. P-please don't hurt me, I can—"

"So I wasn't far off. Don't worry, we're not here for that."

"We?"

Hodek seemed to realize his mistake, but didn't show it too much. He continued. "Do you happen to be married, Rachael Kione? Any kids, roommates...?"

Rachael hesitated. "Yes. Two little boys downstairs. They mean the world to me, and—"

"Liar," Jeff muttered, releasing her and glancing to the side. "If there were anyone else in this house I would've known by now. But like I said, don't worry." He looked back at her, tilted his head, and kicked the chair towards the wall with surprising force. She helped with terror, almost falling off. Hodek flocked the tip of his knife upward in a gesture.

"Get up."

She got up.

Not so brave now.

"Turn around, and put your hands behind your back. Anything you're holding, drop it."

"I-I'm not holding anything."

"Good."

I held back a snicker. "What are you, a cop?"

Hodek gave me a stern look. "Hey. I thought it'd be practical. As for you," he said, turning his attention to a now shaking Rachael, "I wouldn't normally be in the mood for this, but since I've grown bored of normal I'm going to let you go. I'll just be needing that computer of yours."

"I—" Rachael paused, and though she was facing the wall I could sense her confusion. "Wait, really? Just that?"

"Want me to take something more?" Hodek growled, frightening even me for a second. Rachael flinched.

"No! Nope. I'm fine, thank you...!"

"That's what I thought."

What a turnaround. He really doesn't want to kill her?

"Hodek, are you sure about this?" I muttered. In truth, I was hopeful that he was being true to his word. He scoffed. "Of course. Ever known how fun it is to give someone a scare? It's like a little high."

"Can you please just go?" Rachael's voice was almost inaudible. It was as if she'd almost lost it. Hodek tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

"Well. Not like we were going to stick around for much longer. Come on." He waved me over such that it seemed he wanted me to specifically get away from the wall that she was facing. She was still shaking, and I thought I could hear a tiny lapse of sobs from her. It didn't exactly faze me. I complied, and not one second passed after it that Jeff took his knife and threw it straight into her head.

In spite of my surprise, the first thought I had once I'd regained my balance was, That makes more sense. I blinked once, twice, and was able to see clearly again. It had happened just like that. It almost saddened me to think that this woman might have felt relief at Hodek's supposed change of heart, only to have that ripped away. My brain felt fuzzy at this sight. I narrowed my eyes.

"How could you do that?"

He walked over to Rachael's body, limp against the wall, and examined the gash in her head. "Oh, well, you make a hobby out of something and next thing you know you get pretty good at throwing knives. Do you think it reached the wall?"

"No, I mean how could you just kill her? It's not like she was going to—"

"Tell anyone about it? Go to the police? She sure as hell would have if we didn't stop her."

"I...I know. It's just that you even said you weren't going to hurt her. Seems a little unfair, doesn't it?" I forced a small laugh, though that didn't do much to convince him I didn't care. Hodek waved a hand dismissively.

"Yeah, yeah, but..."

He shut the computer with a single finger as if it were contaminated with something and held it out for my taking.

"Happy Holidays," he said with his driest possible voice. I gave into the temptation to brush this all off, and raised an eyebrow. "How would we even use it? We don't know..."

I stopped at the exasperation on his face. He sighed and opened the laptop back up.

"I keep forgetting you're an amateur. I mean, it was in her name."

"What, the password? Is that why you asked?"

"Oh, I just did that to check. I could see her type it in, you know—or were you just too busy looking at my beautiful face to notice," he said without a trace of irony. Without another word he handed me the now opened computer with a look that said, You're welcome. I tried to ignore him and took a good look at what was in front of me.

A message sent five minutes ago on some social media site that read, "Of course you are, honey. Just do it. The world would be better off."

Something in my gut twisted. I didn't even want to read further up, that sentence gave me such a horrible feeling. I furrowed my eyebrows and ended up taking an unfortunate glance at the message she'd sent before that.

"Ugh. KYS already I'm so sick of this."

I wasn't sure of exactly what that meant, but I knew it was bad. Way too bad, considering how distraught all the replies sent her way seemed. Hodek folded his arms as if to prove a point.

"And besides, I don't think that innocent life I took turned out to be so innocent after all. You wanted information. Well, this might be something of a ticket." He gestured towards the computer and started to walk out. I looked at the shotgun leaning against Rachael's shelf, her bloodied body hanging an inch from the ground, and eventually left.

Why even bother thinking I could be right for once?