Atop a large building, the wind blows. Shirley takes a deep breath, her green hair rustling in the wind as she takes in the atmosphere. Here, on the twentieth floor... a nice vantage point. Taking out her binoculars, she begins to scan the area. She'd been here for a week now, watching through the binoculars. Learning people's routines. Studying where they went, who visited what businesses, what paths they liked to take.
Now, she was finally satisfied. Happy with her knowledge. And she zooms in on a man sitting outside a cafe.
Shirley hadn't bothered reading all the intel her client had given her, but this unassuming man was a serial killer - her client had lost a relative to him. She'd skimmed a few bits of a manifesto he left at the scene of a crime, but didn't really care to read the whole thing, as it was mostly rambling nonsense about testing how much people actually loved each other with deadly consequences. It wasn't what mattered.
What did matter was there was just enough info to piece together who he might be. Not enough to stand up in a court of law, but enough that her client had found out who he was, and Shirley had started scanning information about his past. In the right locations for the crimes of the same MO... fit the voice that was left on an audio recording to rant about how much people needed to be tested... it all clicked.
Now was just execution.
Assembling her sniper rifle, the huntress looks through her scope at her prey. Shirley wouldn't hurt a human without cause, but in her mind, someone she accepted a contract on was no longer a person in her mind, just a target. She watches the man as he continues to eat. She could take him out now, but that would cause a scene and a manhunt that she didn't want.
Besides, she had already set up her trap.
Shirley waits for another fifteen minutes, remaining prone and quiet on the rooftop as she watches - she knew nobody came up to this roof, having scoped it out earlier. The man stands up, leaving his money on the table to pay, and begins to walk away. Casually strolling, like any other person in the city.
He walks by an alleyway. There. Shirley carefully aims into the alleyway, and fires once, her bullet striking several stacked boxes and causing them to collapse. Natural human curiosity takes care of the next step, the man curiously walking into the alleyway to see what the noise was about. He looks around, confused, picking up one of the boxes.
Now. Already adjusted for wind and gravity. Shirley aims.
She fires.
Her bullet pierces straight through the back of the serial killer's head, the man dead before he hits the ground. With nobody walking by there, it would take a little while for anyone to find the body. Someone would, of course, but she had aimed such that both her bullets had hit the wall, severely damaging any ballistic markings they might have left. With any luck, this would be written off as some sort of alleyway altercation gone wrong.
Shirley takes her time packing her sniper rifle back into her briefcase, before closing it up and exiting the roof. Next was spending a couple days in Milwaukee before she took a rental car out of the city, already knowing her general plan of travel - especially since her client now had the other 70% of her fee to pay.
A hunter's work, after all, was never done.
