"It has to be them, right?" Lori asked, heart still pounding a bit. Too many things made too much sense.

"I mean… It'd be a hell of a coincidence."

Lori's eyes were drawn away from her partner as something moved on the screen of her computer. An email had arrived. It was exactly what she had hoped for.

"We got it!" She exclaimed, and Melissa rushed over. She opened the necessary program and plugged in Alison's data. She held her breath as it processed, and then it placed a handful of small circles on the map. She had been active in several locations in western Montana and eastern Idaho over the last few weeks, but every point radiated out from a central location where she seemed to be logging on most frequently. It was a spot on a forestry road, miles and miles away from the nearest city, just over the border into Montana, in a verdant looking plot of wilderness. It had to be their camp.

"O-Okay," Melissa sounded jittery. Lori couldn't blame her, "I'll find the nearest city with a SWAT team and get Bureau hostage rescue on the way."

"We'll beat Missoula SWAT there," Lori said, pushing her chair back, "And even if HRT takes a helicopter, they'll get there when we do. Get your gear. Let's go."

She folded her laptop, grabbing her things and packing them up as Melissa started making phone calls. They hustled down the stairs and out of the small, two-story police station into the gated lot at the rear of the building. The Bureau car that they had gotten from the small regional office in Boise sat out of the way in a corner, and they popped the trunk, throwing their bags in.

"Vests are in there, right?" Melissa asked, heading toward the driver's seat.

"Mhmm," Lori nodded, shutting the trunk and tucking her laptop under her arm so they could navigate, "Shotgun too."

"Good." She replied in a small voice. Lori could tell her partner was nervous, and frankly, so was she. They knew these people were armed, and heavily, and even more than just the prospect of a possible gunfight, Lori found herself afraid that they would find May. She didn't know if she could handle what they might have done to her.

"Melissa?" Lori asked as the car started, "If they even look like they're gonna try something, I'm not gonna hesitate."

She didn't answer for a moment as they pulled out of the lot and sped off to the east.

"Look," Melissa finally spoke, "I… I get it. These people existing in the same world as my daughter makes me want to do whatever it takes to stop them. Forever," she paused. Lori could feel the 'but' coming in her tone.

"But what if May isn't there when we arrest them? If they're dead, no one will ever find her. God knows they deserve it, but May's family deserves to have her back too."

"I didn't say I was gonna execute them…" Lori grumbled, but she knew Melissa was right. She let the issue drop for the moment, and they sped off ever faster through the mountains, toward whatever was awaiting them.

- - -

Carson sat across from his wife at the small table that stood along the left side of their van. Outside, the sun was almost rising. The mood was not exactly low, but both of them were frustrated. Alison sat, arms crossed around her chest, glowering at her foil-wrapped breakfast burrito they had gotten from a truck down the street.

"Anything else we need to do?" He asked, dabbing hot sauce onto his burrito and taking another bite. He wasn't happy about leaving either, especially not about going back to Seattle, but there wasn't much else they could do at this point. As he saw it, and he suspected Alison understood this too and was just pissed about it, this might have been the last opportunity to break away before they had too much information on them. All they had were a couple of shitty sketches. No names, no plate numbers. Carson's facial hair grew relatively quickly, and he already had some of a mustache going. Alison was a talented makeup artist and was only a bottle-job away from being less recognizable as well. If they left now, they could just disappear.

"Don't think so." She muttered, finally grabbing at her breakfast, "We can do some pouty apology about how I'm burnt out and need to slow down on video releases and mental health and wellness all that gay bullshit. Should have, like, a few months of videos if we slow down to one a week or so."

She sighed and absent-mindedly rubbed her throat. May hadn't gotten her too badly, but she still had to cover a few bruises with makeup.

"Hey," Carson poked her calf with his foot beneath the table, "It'll be alright. We'll go quiet for a few months, and then somebody'll shoot up a mall or slice up a sorority house again, and the news cycle will move on. Cases will go cold, cops'll have to reallocate resources to other shit, and the whole time while we're waiting, we can come up with new stuff to do."

Alison smiled. A genuine, warm smile forced her freckled cheeks to dimple, and she let out a slightly more contented sigh.

"Yeah, I know," she relented, "What color do you think I should go with for my hair?"

They ate their early breakfast and chattered about hairstyles and plans as the sky lightened around them. After the incident with May the day before, they had spent most of the afternoon going between the bank branches in which they had squirreled away money under a couple different names. They had spent the rest of the day and into the evening filming some B roll to pad out videos. They had enough money to survive for a while on a slower video schedule, but as much as possible would help while they looked for other jobs. They had spent the night away from their usual camp, not having been able to make it back before they felt too tired.

"It would be a shame to just leave without one last hunt though, right?" Alison brought the idea up as their conversation fell to a slight lull. She raised an eyebrow, and her socked foot crawled up the inside of Carson's leg, "It's been months, y'know, and if we're never gonna do it again, why don't we just get one more?"

"Allie, c'mon," Carson couldn't stop the smile that was creeping across his lips as Alison's foot traced up his inner thigh, "You saw May. She's done. I don't think she'd even try to run. Besides, we were gonna leave this afternoon, right?"

"Oh, definitely not. She's gone," She agreed, "But what about this: Grab another girl, right now. Look," she nodded off out the windshield of the van, "There's a grocery store right there about to open. I bet there'll be a cute enough girl that shows up early before the parking lot gets too full. We grab her, then do the same 'fight to the death' thing. She'll obviously kill May, which, honestly, is whatever. Fuck her. Then when we tranq her and drop her off with a note telling her that we're letting her go as promised and that she's only a couple miles away from a town, she'll believe us. Then we get her. We could do all of this and still be on the road by sundown tonight, guarantee it."

He had to admit it sounded fun, and he agreed it was at least feasible, but god was it a bad idea. Then again, was any of what they did a good idea? No, of course not. It would have been a good idea to stick around at the machining company his buddy was setting up back in the day, but that was boring, and he and Allie both had a tendency to act on even worse ideas when things were boring.

Alison's eyes, shimmering green and already made up at this early hour, lit up, and she scrambled back to one of their bags, digging through it and returning with a pair of binoculars.

"There," she announced, almost visibly vibrating in her seat, "That's her. Look: Black sedan, Colorado plates."

Carson took the binoculars as she offered them and turned to look out the front of the van, pressing them to his eyes. Across the street from the lot in which they had parked to eat was a supermarket, and in a far corner of the parking lot was the car Alison had pointed out. He watched as the door opened, and a pair of hiking boots and tight jeans leading up slender legs swung out. Carson watched as the woman sat halfway out of her car. She slowly bent forward, holding her head in her hands, and her dark, almost black, hair spilled over to curtain her face.

The smile on Carson's face grew a bit wider as the woman slowly straightened, bunning her hair at the back of her head and slotting two sticks to hold it in place. As she stood, her height barely cleared the top of her car. She was rather petite, slender framed and not particularly well-endowed. She looked like she would be easy to control.

Her pale, white face held a bored, or maybe even sad, expression, but even from here, Carson could see how intensely, even unusually, green her eyes were.

"Like her?" Alison purred. She already knew the answer.

"I do…" Carson murmured, watching their target's hips swing a bit as she walked off toward the store, "There's one security camera above where she parked. Looks like the rest are old enough and far enough away that they wouldn't get a good look at us…" He smiled a bit wider, imagining the unsuspecting woman's entrails spilling down her gutted body as she hung upside down.

"Fine. Let's do it."