As expected, there were no lights on in the house. The place looked to be totally empty, just as it was supposed to be. So far, so good, Becky Lynch thought as she crouched in the bushes at the bottom of the garden. With a dull thud, her girlfriend, and partner in crime, Bayley Martinez landed beside her after climbing over the wall.

"It looks deserted, just like he said," Bayley whispered.

"Yeah," Becky agreed. "We'll stay here for five minutes first, like I said earlier."

Both women remained completely still in the bushes, surveying the house and the garden for any signs of life. Although no one was expected to be there, it was much better to be safe than sorry. They were dressed appropriately for the robbery they were intending to commit, in black jeans, leather jackets and gloves.

"This should be easy money," Bayley whispered a couple of minutes later. "Get into an empty house, download some files from a computer, and get out again."

"Right," Becky said. "And if what Mr Reigns said was accurate, which I don't doubt, there won't even be any security cameras or guards around the place for us to worry about. It doesn't look like a big enough house for someone who might hire guards anyway. I can't see any cameras."

"Ric Flair. The guy is a lawyer," Bayley remembered from the brief that Roman and Nicole Reigns had given them they day before. The Reigns were the heads of arguably the biggest criminal organisation in the city, which meant that doing a successful job for them was vitally important for more than one reason. On one hand, the money on offer was great, and there would likely be further work if they did the job as ordered. On the other hand, if they failed, they would likely be killed. Such was life, when you took work from people like Roman Reigns. Anyway, Bayley reasoned, where was the potential for failure in such a simple job? If anything, it was a stroke of luck that the Reigns had given them something so easy for their first test.

"Break into the place, download all of the files from the computer onto this flash drive, then get out. We've had the place scouted and there is no CCTV, and Flair doesn't have anyone guard the place when he's out of town. It should be as simple as getting in and out, but make sure you do it without leaving any sign that you were there. Flair cannot know that someone has been in the house."

That was how Mr Reigns had summed up his orders to them after giving them the more elongated version. Bayley had no idea what Reigns might want from the computer, and she honestly didn't give a damn. It was of no importance or interest to her. Handing over the flash drive and collecting the money in return was as far as her concern extended, and she knew that Becky felt the same way. Besides, if Mr Reigns hadn't divulged the information, it meant that he didn't want them to know. That was his prerogative.

"Alright, there's no signs of life," Becky whispered after another few minutes had ticked slowly by.

"Okay, let's do it," Bayley said, giving her girlfriend a quick peck on the lips.

Moving quickly, the two women dashed across the lawn and took cover once more with their backs against the brickwork. No one had called out to sound the alarm.

"Now we need to get in the door. Shouldn't take me long," Becky said, pulling a set of lockpicks out of her jacket pocket. "You stay here, out of sight, until I'm done."

"Okay," Bayley agreed as Becky disappeared around the corner of the house. She knew her girlfriend wouldn't take long to get the door open. She was a master at lockpicking. Sure enough, Becky's head appeared back around the corner less than five minutes later.

"We're in."

Both women carefully wiped their feet on the doormat, not wanting to track any dirt into the house, then Bayley followed Becky into the house. Sure enough, there wasn't a sound to be heard. Off the hallway that they had walked into, the living room door stood open. Even without turning a light on, she could see that the furnishings were about what you would expect to find in a typical middle class home. Again, it struck her as strange that a seemingly unremarkable lawyer had something of such significant value to Roman Reigns.

"He said the office is on the first floor," Becky whispered, focusing on the job at hand as she pointed to the nearby staircase. They made their way up the stairs, walking as quietly as possible, out of habit as much as anything else.

The first floor landing extended in both directions either side of the staircase, with several doors on each side of the landing, most of which stood open. There was light coming from one of the rooms on the right hand side. It wasn't a ceiling light; it looked more like a TV or computer screen that had been left on.

"That's probably the office," Bayley whispered. "I'll check it out. You go left and check those rooms, just in case."

"Alright," Becky agreed. Bayley was the tech-savvy one, so she would be the one doing the work on Flair's computer, downloading its contents to the flash drive.

The two women parted ways and Becky commenced her cursory inspection of the rooms on the left hand side of the landing. The first room she walked into was a bathroom. Nothing of interest there. Next came what looked like a guest bedroom - empty of course. Just as she walked back towards the door, Becky was taken by surprise by the sound of a woman's voice.

"Throw the fucking flash drive to me, now. And get away from the computer."

Someone else was in the house! She had found Bayley! Now what?

In the office at the other end of the house, Bayley had nearly had a heart attack when the woman had walked in on her. In the dim light from the computer screen, all she could make out was that the woman was blonde, and dressed in a similar way to Becky and herself. Who was she, and what the hell was she doing in the house? The exact same mission, seemed to be the obvious answer. Then it clicked in Bayley's head. The reason the computer screen had been on when she and Becky had walked up the stairs was that this woman had already been using it. She must have heard them opening the front door and hidden somewhere.

"Who are you?" Bayley asked, stalling for time as she got up out of the chair behind the desk. The one advantage she had was that the woman might not know that Becky was also in the house, unless she had heard them whispering to each other. Given that she had been confronted alone, that seemed unlikely.

"Forget the questions," the woman snapped. "Flash drive, now!"

"Alright, take it easy," Bayley said nervously, hoping that her acting was good enough. The mystery woman was standing in the doorway, unable to see what Bayley could see - the black-clad figure of Becky creeping up behind her, carrying a porcelain table lamp.

"Don't tell me to take it..." was as far as the woman got before Becky smashed the lamp over the back of her head with a tremendous crash, sending her crumpling face first to the floor, unconscious. Pieces of the disintegrating lamp had exploded all over the room.

"What the fuck?" the Irish woman asked, looking at her girlfriend with wide eyes.

"You tell me?" Bayley shrugged. "Looks like Reigns wasn't the only one who wanted whatever's on this stupid computer." She looked at the pieces of the lamp all over the floor. "So much for nobody noticing we were here."

Becky had crouched down beside the unconscious woman and checked the side of her neck for a pulse. "She's alive. In fact she's not even bleeding," she said in surprise after checking through the woman's hair. "Her head must be made of concrete or something."

"Never mind what her head's made of, what are we going to do with her?" Bayley asked, frustrated by how quickly everything had gone wrong.

Considering that for a moment, Becky shook her head. "We can't leave her here. Reigns couldn't have been clearer about this guy Flair not knowing that someone had been on the computer. If we leave her here, there's a good chance she'll still be there by the time someone comes home. Who knows how long she'll be out cold for. We'll have to take her with us." She paused for a second, then said, "Fucking hell. This was supposed to be a simple job. Reigns is going to lose his shit when he finds out we had to kidnap someone."

"I'd rather that than have to tell him we blew his specific instruction about no one knowing we were here. You heard how emphatically he said it. We'll have to take her and then tell Reigns what happened."

"I know," Becky sighed. There was no other choice. They were going to get some serious flack from Roman Reigns anyway, but it was hardly their fault that this woman had been in the house, trying to do the same mission as them. At least this way, they could plead the case that they had fulfilled all of the criteria he had given them, and he could then make the decision on what to do about the mystery woman.

"I'm going to carry on downloading this stuff," Bayley announced, sitting back down in the chair and diverting her attention to the computer screen.

"Do that," Becky agreed. "And I'll go find something to tie her up with, and something to put all these pieces of lamp into. We'll have to hope that no one uses the guest room I took it from any time soon."

As Becky left the room, Bayley got back to work transferring files onto the flash drive. Copying everything on the computer's hard drive was a time consuming process.

Downstairs, Becky found a utility closet off the kitchen. Searching it in the dark wasn't the easiest thing in the world to do, but she didn't want to risk turning a light on. Soon enough, she was making her way back upstairs with a couple of simple items that likely wouldn't be missed by anyone in the Flair household any time soon.

"Any luck?" Bayley asked, glancing up at Becky when she walked back into the office.

"Yeah. I found a bin liner to put the bits of lamp into, and I have duct tape to take care of our friend here."

"Better tape her up first, just in case."

Becky nodded, cringing as she remembered how wrong things had gone last time Bayley had said just in case. There was certainly no room for any more mistakes on this job, or Reigns would have them both killed for sure. Without saying anything more, Becky got to work with the tape. Even though she was sure their new friend would be unconscious for several more hours after the hefty blow she'd taken - plenty long enough for them to get her back home - Becky's primary thought was to avoid anything else going wrong. The woman had to be securely tied up for transportation.

To that end, she wrapped the tape around the woman's ankles several times, then did the same to her legs, both above and below the knee. They were muscly, powerful legs, Becky couldn't help noticing. The unconscious woman was lying face down, with her arms splayed out across the carpet. Becky was glad, as it made the process of securing her gloved hands behind her back easier. Crossing the woman's wrists over each other, Becky encased them in plenty of tape, thinking thwt it was a good idea to leave the gloves on. It ruled out any remote chance of the woman managing to pick at her bonds with her fingernails. Next, moved on to wrap even more tape around her arms just below the elbows.

Perfect, she decided when she was done, standing back to survey her handiwork. Half of the large roll of duct tape had already been used on their captive. It was thick, strong stuff, too. Becky had noticed how sticky the adhesive was while she had been working with it, feeling it stick to her gloved fingers several times. Their captive wouldn't be moving around any time soon. In fact, it would likely take scissors or a knife to even have a chance of getting her free.

"Better gag her as well," Bayley advised.

"Just in case," Becky finished, before her girlfriend had the chance to say it. The cute grin she got in return made her heart skip a beat, just like it always did.

"Exactly," Bayley said. "The last thing we need is her waking up in the back of the car and making a bunch of noise."

"That's a good point," Becky said with concern as she elaborately wrapped the duct tape around the woman's head several times, making sure it as tight as could be to effectively seal up her mouth. "How are we going to get her in the car? I don't exactly like the idea of carrying a taped up woman down the street to our car."

"We'll have to back the car up the driveway to the house. I know we ideally didn't want to do something like that, but what choice do we have now?"

"You're right," Becky admitted reluctantly. "That's the plan then. First, I'll pick these bits of lamp up while you finish there. Actually, I should probably try and find a hoover and run that over it. If someone comes home and finds some bits of lamp that I missed, it's going to be more than obvious that someone has been in here."

"Actually, I'm done," Bayley announced, removing the flash drive from the computer. "It's shutting down now. No one would ever know I'd been on it."

"Great work," Becky smiled.

Bayley walked around the desk and looked down at the securely taped up woman. "Why don't you carry her downstairs and get the car, Bex? I'll look for a hoover and finish up in here."

It was the most practical division of labour, Becky knew. She was stronger than Bayley, and their new acquaintance was a well-built woman. "Fuck knows what Reigns is going to do with her," Becky said, crouching down to lift the woman from the floor. Grunting with the effort, she stood up and slung the hefty burden over her shoulder.

Watching Becky carry the woman out of the room, Bayley found herself thinking that her girlfriend's choice of wording was probably optimistic. Roman Reigns was hardly likely, in her estimation, to take on the responsibility of dealing with whoever the woman was. That was probably going to be the second job she and Becky were given, and they would be working for free as well. And that was if they caught Reigns in a good mood when they broke the news. At least they had the flash drive. Hopefully that would pacify him somewhat.

Ten minutes later, Bayley was putting the hoover back where she had found it, after giving the office carpet a thorough going-over. Cleaning up all of the smaller bits of the broken lamp had meant turning the light on for a couple of minutes, but that was by far the lesser of two evils.

"Come on," Becky hissed impatiently, waiting by the open front door.

"I'm coming," Bayley said, jogging over to the door. "Are we ready to go?"

"We are. Our friend is in the trunk. Let's move."

Bayley got into the passenger side of their car, which was now parked just outside of the front door. It was lucky, she thought, that the Flair family didn't have gates on their driveway.

After making sure the door was properly closed and locked behind them, Becky ran around to the driver's side. She pulled the car out onto the street and drove away slowly, not wanting to attract any attention to the car. "What a goddamned mess!" she exclaimed, finally allowing her frustration to bubble over.

"That won't help," Bayley said soothingly, trying to cool Becky's fiery temper. "We're in a tricky spot, but we'll get through it. We'll get through it together, like we always do."

Becky glanced over at her girl and drew strength from the loving look in her eyes. "I know, Bay. But I don't know what I'd do without you."

"You'll never have to find out," Bayley promised her. "Now focus on the road. We need to get home alive before we do anything else."

Fifteen minutes later, after a thankfully incident free journey, Becky parked the car in the attached garage at their modern, two story house. Luckily, having the attached garage would allow them to take their captive out of the trunk without even the slightest risk of any prying eyes seeing what was going on.

"Let's see if our friend is awake yet," Bayley said as Becky killed the engine and pushed the button attached to the keyring which commanded the garage door to close itself.

"She won't be," Becky said confidently, getting out of the car. "She can spend the night in the basement. We'll have to leave her there tomorrow morning when we go and see Roman."

"We weren't supposed to go over there until the evening," Bayley reminded her.

Becky pointed at the closed trunk lid. "That was before she showed up. We're going over there tomorrow morning."

"Okay, the morning it is," Bayley conceded. "Let's get her in the basement then."

Becky popped the trunk. The blonde woman was lying on her side, facing away from them. She was still, and silent, still out cold as Becky had predicted. "I'll carry her, Bay. You open the doors."

"Sure," Bayley agreed.

Then Becky rolled the woman over onto her back, to make her easier to lift. It was the first time they had seen their captive's face in any kind of reasonable light. Becky felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. Her legs nearly went from under her.

"Tell me that's not who I think it is," Bayley breathed beside her.

Becky gulped. There was no mistaking that face, especially not with the distinctive mole on one cheek. Everyone in the city knew this woman's face. If there was a list of people not to kidnap, her name would have been right up there at the top. "That's Ronda Helmsley," Becky muttered, barely able to get the words out.

Bayley closed her eyes for a second. They had managed to kidnap the daughter of Hunter and Stephanie Helmsley. The Helmsleys were the heads of the other major criminal organisation in the city, and therefore the biggest rivals of Roman and Nicole Reigns. "Oh my god," she gasped.

The two women looked at each other, shock and fear written all over both of their faces. Becky summed up the situation. "We're in deep shit."