"I've always wanted to ask someone who works in a fancy restaurant this one thing," Cass rambled as she opened the door to her apartment. They'd been talking from the moment they left the café. It was so easy between them. However, Jeisa was a little distracted.

"What's that?" Jeisa asked absently, her muscles coiled so tight it hurt. She wondered if the men would already be in the apartment, and how many there would be.

"I've eaten out lots of times..." Cass quickly looked up at Jeisa, whom she let walk in first, then cleared her throat. "I mean, I've been to many restaurants to consume food!"

Jeisa gave her a silly grin, relaxing when she realised that there was no one waiting for them in the living room. These guys weren't the kind to hide away in a room or closet for an ambush.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Jeisa," Cass playfully chastised her. "And while you're there, pick mine too."

Jeisa's grin turned into a little chuckle. But the relief at them being alone was metered. If the men weren't in here, that meant that they were out there and had just watched Jeisa and Cass walk in. They wouldn't be alone in here for much longer.

"Anyway, what I wanted to say was that I don't think I've ever seen anyone ordering their steak rare. Never! Not once!" Cass said, putting her keys in a bowl on the kitchen island, then turning to face Jeisa again. "Do people actually do that, or is the internet just gaslighting us into thinking that's a common thing? What's the most popular steak doneness request in your restaurant, for example? Because I think this whole thing about..."

Jeisa swallowed Cass' next words in a hard kiss.

It's funny when you know that shit's about to go down. That you're probably about to die. And that there's little you can do about it because the odds are likely stacked against you. This was a horrible plan, and involving Cass was beyond stupid and reckless. But here they were, the choice already made. All Jeisa could do now was wait for the consequences and deal with them the best way she could, hopefully in a way that didn't hurt the first person she'd ever fallen for.

Cass pulled out of the kiss, concern in her eyes. "Jeis, are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm fine," Jeisa said, knowing that her smile was more solemn than she wanted it to be, but not being able to do anything about it. "Now, please kiss me, because I don't think I can survive you not kissing me right now."

Cass smirked and obliged, imbuing her kiss with the same intensity as Jeisa's. She pushed Jeisa's leather jacket off, and Jeisa did the same with the letterman jacket that Cass had taken from the guest house. With practiced fluidity from the last few days, Cass wrapped her hands around Jeisa's neck, and a little jump had her legs wrapped around Jeisa's waist without breaking the kiss. Jeisa held her up, one hand lost in Cass' dark locks and the other on her tight butt.

She walked over and placed Cass on the kitchen island, breaking the kiss only long enough to quickly whip off the t-shirt Cass had borrowed that morning. She had nothing underneath, and Jeisa couldn't stop herself from taking a small step back and just looking at her. Cass laughed, then grabbed Jeisa's shirt to pull her closer. Jeisa laughed too and then trailed kisses from Cass' mouth, down her jaw and neck, enjoying the whispered moans that answered every kiss.

Cass didn't seem to mind the slight desperation in Jeisa's nibbles and kisses. If anything, it seemed to get her even more hot and bothered. Impatient with the button-down shirt that Jeisa had on, Cass grabbed the shirt and ripped it open, the buttons scattering on the kitchen floor. She roughly pulled it off, leaving Jeisa in her dark green lace bra, and that didn't stay on long. Jeisa wrapped Cass' legs around her waist again, lifted her off the counter and walked to the bedroom, where she dropped Cass on her bed and made love to her like it was the last time she would ever get to.

It's funny when you know that you're probably about to die.

As she caught her breath, Jeisa turned to Cass, who was staring blankly at the ceiling.

"You okay?" Jeisa asked.

Cass nodded. "I'm just trying to remember everything that happened today so that I can replicate it perfectly if it means having you do exactly what you've just done to my body right now."

Jeisa smiled like an idiot and was about to reply, when they heard a loud crash!

Cass jerked upright. "What the fuck was that?!"

That was their time running out, Jeisa thought.

She jumped off the bed and handed Cass a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from her desk chair. Cass pulled the clothes on. Jeisa pulled on her own pants and grabbed a t-shirt from inside Cass' wardrobe. She motioned for Cass to stay in the room as she slowly made her way out of the bedroom. She found the men waiting in the living room. They were too many to take on alone, especially without the element of surprise. Plus, they had their guns out. Jeisa raised her hands in surrender. Cass followed behind her.

"Jeis what's going... woah! What the..."

The lady from table number ten was standing at the apartment's doorway. Gretel. In the living room were five men with guns pointed towards the bedroom door, where Jeisa and Cass stood. A little overkill, but Jeisa had to consciously stop herself from smiling. There were two groups of people after them, and that meant there was a fifty-fifty chance of either one barging into this apartment. These were the people she'd hoped more than anything would come through. The others had no qualms with killing them, but Jeisa had believed it when Mr. twenty ninth floor apartment told her that Gretel didn't want them dead, only captured. Jeisa just had to figure out why.

Gretel sauntered further into the apartment as Jeisa and Cass walked across the room and plopped onto the couch, waiting for what would happen next. Gretel looked as svelte as she had that night at the restaurant. Today, she was in a simple, grey, mid-thigh jacket over a pair of blue, close fit jeans and a pair of black and white trainers. It was all clearly designer wear, but she could have worn convenient-store clothing, or a garbage bag, and she would have still made it look couture.

"Hello, ladies," she said, her voice holding a slight drawl. "My apologies for having us meet this way, but you two are more slippery than a fish in swamp water."

"Ooh, I'm going to have to steal that!" Cass said.

"My name is Gretel Chambers." said the lady. She extended her hand to Cass, smiling pleasantly. "It's wonderful to finally meet you, Miss Tallum. What an honour!"

"Yeah..." drawled Cass. She ignored the lady's hand and leaned back into Jeisa on the couch, crossing her legs and arms. "You know what? You remind me of someone. Last name De Vil? Had this disturbingly unhealthy obsession with black and white puppies and surrounding herself with morons? Kudos for ditching the puppy obsession, I guess."

"I'd be careful with what I say if I were you, Miss Tallum." Gretel growled, pulling her hand back and losing her previous pleasant demeanour.

"Wow." said Cass. "The last time I heard that from some self-righteous prick, I was so scared I almost forgot to feed my pet dinosaur. Is there like a manual for you guys? And does it have a similarly creative title? Like... 'What bad guys should say for Dummies' or 'How to Villain'."

Gretel turned to her men, choosing to ignore Cass. "You three, look around. Check if it's here. Tear the place apart if you must!"

"I'm hungry." Jeisa said, speaking into the unholy din being caused by the three men ransacking Cass' apartment.

"I could eat." said Cass, shrugging.

"Shut up." said Gretel. Jeisa ignored her.

"We could make something good with the par baked mini baguettes and pastrami slices in the freezer." said Jeisa.

"Freezer? What freezer? My freezer?" asked Cass laughing. "Nah. The last time I checked, there was half a pig in there. The half with the head. Landlord said it was from the previous tenant. Haven't opened the freezer since."

"Oh, right." Said Jeisa, nonchalantly, as she imagined what sauces she could make with the sparse contents of Cass' refrigerator. "I cleaned that up a while ago."

"I said, shut up." said Gretel.

Cass turned to Jeisa and looked at her with curious surprise. "What? Really? When?"

"Um..." said Jeisa, trying to recall the day. "It was that one time we went to the supermarket after a Forest Service shift, and you shoplifted a bag of bologna from the deli."

"That was ages ago!" Cass said in surprise. "Wait, are you saying you broke into my apartment to clean out and stock up my freezer?"

"Hey! Quiet!" said Gretel.

Cass and Jeisa didn't even flinch, their focus fully on each other.

"I was afraid you might invite me for bologna sandwiches and I'm sorry, but that stuff you got is filled with more chemicals than meat, if you can even call it meat." explained Jeisa. She did a fake shudder then shrugged. "I promise you, the pastrami I brought will blow your mind! It's my best recipe trial yet."

Cass laughed. She then narrowed her eyes at Jeisa.

"Did you also sneak into my room and watch me as I slept?" asked Cass, raising one eyebrow.

"No! That would be creepy." Jeisa said, with an incredulous shake of her head.

"Oh, that would be creepy?" Cass laughed.

Suddenly, the pillow next to Cass exploded, throwing feather stuffing into the air and all over them. Cass barely flinched. While still looking at Jeisa, Cass squared her jaw, lifted a finger, and mouthed 'One second' to Jeisa, then turned to face Gretel, who was pointing the smoking gun at them.

"I feel you, evil girl-boss woman. That blue pillow clashed horribly with the grey carpeting," Cass said, pointing at the destroyed pillow without looking at it. "But, in case you missed it, I am trying to have a conversation with my girlfriend! You and I can have a discussion on interior design when her and I are done."

"The next bullet goes through your brain." said Gretel, her voice cold enough to make Elsa jealous.

Cass stood from the couch and walked up to the woman, lifting the woman's gun to her forehead.

"Go ahead," Cass said, her face turned to stone and her voice just as steely as Gretel's. "The splash of colour will definitely uplift the décor."

Jeisa sighed and got up as well.

"If you were going to kill us, you would have already." Jeisa said, lowering the woman's hand away from Cass' forehead while struggling to focus through Cass having referred to her as her girlfriend. "What do you want?"

"Aww... and I was just starting to have some fun," Cass said, crossing her arms across her chest and turning serious again. "But Jeisa is right. You're not here to kill us. You're here because you know that I'm good at getting people whatever they want. So, what is it that you want? Anything. I'll get it for you."

"A purple case. Ten inches long, five inches wide, two inches thick. I want it back." said Gretel.

Cass turned to Jeisa and sighed. "I did say anything, didn't I?"

"You kind of did." replied Jeisa. She was doing everything to hold herself back from killing everyone in this room. She might survive, but bullets would fly, and Cass might get hit.

Cass turned back to Gretel. "Unfortunately, that one particular thing is off the menu. Don't feel bad though. That goes for everyone else, not just you. Say anything else, and I'll get that."

"That imbecile was right. You couldn't resist, could you?" Gretel narrowed her eyes at Cass. Jeisa wondered if Gretel meant Mr. twenty ninth floor apartment or fancy milk guy. Not that it mattered in the end. "You opened the case!"

Cass gasped in mock revulsion.

"Lady, the people in my line of work take real pride in having the moral fibre to not involve themselves with packages that move from sellers to buyers," Cass said, looking hurt. Then she laughed. "But you're right. I totally opened that box! And trust me, what I saw made me certain that Pandora was rolling in her grave, absolutely creaming her pants."

"You saw them?" Gretel stared at Cass in disbelief. Or was that envy?

"You bet I did! Woman, you could have destroyed the world with those! There was no way you were getting those back." Cass replied, giving Gretel a disapproving look. "And yes, I realised it a bit late, but I finally figured out that it was the same person playing both buyer and seller. I just didn't know who it was, until now. I thought you were trying to play me, but that didn't make sense. Now, I'm thinking that you just wanted me to open the case for you, didn't you?"

"Where is it?" Gretel growled.

"Listen, lady, if this was a couple of weeks ago, I would have just played along and enjoyed the exorbitant price you were willing to pay me to deliver the package, then I'd have found a lovely beach somewhere remote and happily counted down the days until the world burned," Cass said. Then she turned to Jeisa and smiled. "But I kind of don't want to watch the world burn anymore."

Gretel cocked the gun and pointed it right at Cass' head again. Jeisa noticed a slight tremble come over Cass. She moved next to Cass, pressing her shoulder against her, lending her strength, while considering what way Gretel was going to die in the next few minutes. But suddenly, Gretel lowered the gun and laughed.

Cass and Jeisa looked at her in confusion.

"You know, I should be really upset right now." said the woman. "But I'm not. You know why? Because I have something just as good as those crystals. Maybe even better. I have you, Cassidy Tallum."

Gretel nodded, her gaze landing behind Jeisa and Cass.

Jeisa had been so focussed on Gretel and the gun pointing at Cass, that she'd forgotten the two men still in the room with them. One man grabbed Jeisa and the other Cass, but before Jeisa could fight back, she felt a sharp sting in her neck. She slipped out of the man's grip, turned around in one sleek move, then kicked his groin. As he buckled, he dropped the syringe in his right hand. Jeisa was about to deliver a final side kick to his head, when she stumbled backwards, the energy sapped from her limbs. Cass was slumped back into her captor, her eyes shut and body slack. Jeisa fell to one knee, unsuccessfully fighting the sudden lethargy.

Before long, she fell, darkness hemmed in from the edges of her vision, then covered everything.

*

Jeisa slid back into awareness with an irritating slowness. The rolling motion beneath her told her that she was in a car. Backseat. Door pressed against her. Against her left side. She was sitting up. Barely. The soft perfume of her strawberries and cream shampoo laced with a scent of honeycomb floated to her from her right shoulder. Cass was lying against her. Jeisa tried to open her eyes, but they felt like they were superglue-stuck together. She cried out in frustration. Or she would have if her voice box wasn't as disconnected from her brain as the rest of her was.

"Charles, why are you slowing down?" Gretel's voice came from the backseat with them. Jeisa figured the woman was sitting at the far right, with Cass between them. Gretel sounded calm, but slightly uneasy. "Charles, keep moving. Something doesn't feel..."

"Why do you keep calling me Charles?" a cold, menacing voice from in front of Jeisa – the driver seat – cut Gretel off. "You really shouldn't."

Jeisa's eyes finally popped open, just in time to watch Gretel's minion in the passenger seat rush to grab his gun at about the same time that his brain spluttered across the passenger window.

Oh.

Shit.

The driver turned. He pointed the smoking gun at Gretel. Gretel was pressing herself against the right backseat door, desperately yanking at the handle with no success. Child lock. Everything felt weird. And way too surreal. Too slow.

Jeisa felt the feeling creep down her leg, wriggling her toes as if it would rush the process. She was finally able to yank back her knee and crash her foot into the man's extended arm. The arm smashed against the headrest of the passenger seat, the gun dropping to the backseat footwell. Before "not-Charles" could react, Jeisa had grabbed his extended arm again and pulled back hard enough to snap bone against the driver seat's headrest. He didn't get a chance to scream. Jeisa reached her left hand into the recess between the driver seat and driver's door, found the seat adjustment lever, pulled it then body slammed the seat forward, smashing the man's face into the steering wheel.

The cacophony from the car horn shook the last fuzzy webs from Jeisa's mind. She reached over across the front seats' divide and pulled the driver seat back, ready to hit the man again, but he was already knocked out.

Cass had fallen backwards into the space Jeisa had vacated, still out cold despite the commotion. Jeisa was kneeling across the section between the driver and passenger seat. Gretel was whimpering against the door, shaking. The acrid smell of blood and body fluids from the dead man in the passenger seat made Jeisa's eyes water. She focused on slowing down her breathing, trying to figure out exactly what had just happened in the last ten seconds.

Her thoughts were interrupted by an ear shattering crash, followed by loud screeching. Jeisa looked out of the back window of the SUV they were in. There had been another black SUV, identical to theirs, behind them. It was probably carrying Gretel's other men. At the moment, however, a green van had just smashed into its passenger side, dragging it a good several meters across the road and causing a pile up of other cars across the four-way intersection that they had stopped at. Their driver, "not-Charles", had stopped just after crossing the intersection, forcing the other SUV behind them to stop right in the intersection. That van crash, though, had not been an accident. Jeisa knew that van. It was the same one from the spa's parking lot.

Sniper dude's friends.

While Gretel's goal was to capture Jeisa and Cass alive, these men had no such compassionate proclivities. They were here to kill! As if to prove this point, a camo-clad man stumbled out of the van, blood trickling from his brow, walked up to the driver side of the SUV they had hit and shot at the battered SUV's driver seat and back seat.

Fuck.

Back in their SUV, Jeisa leaned over "not-Charles" and released the child-lock button. She then picked up the gun that "not-Charles" had dropped and ejected its magazine, confirming that it was only missing the bullet embedded into the skull of the guy that had been riding shotgun. The irony of referring to the man in this way was not lost upon Jeisa. She crawled over Gretel and out of the car through the right backseat door, then turned back to face Gretel and pointed at Cass.

"You keep her safe or so help me I will make you beg for death, grant you your wish, resuscitate you, then rinse and repeat until I'm not mad anymore!" she said to the woman, before flipping the gun in her hand, catching it by its barrel, and handing it to Gretel.

Jeisa then carefully made her way to the rear of their SUV but dove right back when a shower of bullets rained from the guy who'd shot the driver and back seat passengers of the other SUV. He completely tore up the back of their SUV, with Jeisa crouched down in cover, waiting for the right time to move.

All she needed were four seconds.

A moment later, there was sudden quiet. Reload time.

One. Jeisa jumped out of the SUV's cover. The man lowered his hand to the magazine on his belt. Two. She yelled out, and his eyes went wide as she raced towards him. Three. He'd pulled the magazine from his belt, just as Jeisa jumped onto the crashed SUV's hood. Four. He rammed the magazine into the gun at the exact same moment that Jeisa launched herself off the hood and slammed into him. No time for grace. She was going all out.

Jeisa and the man hit the ground hard, just as another volley of bullets whizzed past her. A second gunman from the green van. Jeisa's right shoulder exploded in pain. Shit. She'd been hit! Deep graze. An inch below her shoulder joint. No major vessels hit. It hurt like hell, and landing hard on the asphalt didn't help, but she'd live. The guy underneath her began stirring. Jeisa grabbed his shaggy brown hair and smashed the back of his head into the asphalt, knocking him out. She rolled off him, grabbing his gun as she did. Good thing he'd reloaded it for her.

The other gunman was still shooting at the crashed SUV, targeting Jeisa. Jeisa found a clear line from underneath the car to his shin. She shot him. He went down on that knee. She rolled away from behind the SUV and put a bullet in his chest. Still pointing the gun, she waited to see if anyone else would come out of the van. One... two... three... four... five. No movement. Bystanders were surrounding the crash site, most clicking away at their phones, while the others called the cops. Jeisa grimaced. She quickly made her way to the green van. The van's driver was out cold. The back of the van was empty, but the guy in the passenger seat was coming to from having passed out in the crash. Jeisa yanked the passenger door open and threw herself in his face.

"Why are you trying to kill my friend?" she demanded.

"Enlightenment will only come with your deaths!" the man spat, his eyes crazy with rage. "It doesn't matter what you do to us! She'll just send more of us! We will kill you all! Every triple helix! Only then will they gift us the stars! Enlightenment will only come with your deaths! Enlightenment will only come with your deaths! Enlightenment will only come with your deaths!"

The sound of police sirens filled the air.

Jeisa cursed. She couldn't get caught. That was the one thing her and her dad had always agreed upon! Jeisa knocked out the rambling man with a sharp jab to his throat and elbow to his temple. She turned to leave and was just in time to see Gretel dragging a semi-conscious Cass down the road. Gretel stopped some guy in a blood red Mercedes by pointing a gun at him as he hurtled towards them. The man screeched to a halt and gladly relinquished the car. Jeisa ran to Gretel's side and took Cass from her, placing her gently into the back seat of the gorgeous car. Jeisa closed the backseat door, slid across the car's hood to the passenger side, and got in just as Gretel was speeding away. It made sense that Gretel wasn't too keen about the cops either.

The adrenalin that had kept Jeisa's pain at bay began to slowly drain away and her throbbing right shoulder became her new focus. Oh man. She'd bled all over Cass' Adventure Time T-shirt. She'd have to get her a new one.

Jeisa suddenly felt a tiny pinprick on her left thigh. She looked down to find a syringe in Gretel's hand sticking out of her thigh and looked up to find Gretel smiling.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" slurred Jeisa, as her world went dark for the second time that day.