Rebecca picked up the photo on the mantelpiece. After wiping away a smudge on the corner of the glass, the girl studied the two figures in the picture. There was a dark-haired man proudly holding a bright-looking woman close to him. They were both in wedding attire. The woman's elaborate dress spilled out of the frame's view, leaving a trail like spilled milk down the steps below her. The man was wearing a yarmulke and gazing toward the viewer with a bright, youthful look in his eyes. Rebecca couldn't remember him looking that sprightly, even though she'd known him her whole life.

A few footsteps fell in the next room. Rebecca turned around to see the very same man, aged almost two decades. There was still a sparkle in his quick eyes, but it was dampened by the very few wrinkles that patterned his face. Rebecca cracked a small smile.

"Good morning, Daddy."

The man smiled in a tired way to her, drawing his dressing gown more closely around him to protect him from the cold.

"Morning, Ree-ree. Has the cook still not arrived? I don't smell breakfast."

Rebecca cocked her head with a small smile.

"Daddy...it's seven o'clock. You know Anna doesn't get here 'til seven thirty at the earliest."

Her father sighed and glanced at the clock before shuffling off, grumbling about the early morning. As the morning sounds of coffeemaking began in the kitchen, Rebecca set the picture down once more, making sure it was in its perfect place. She then glanced over the other pictures on the mantlepiece. There were a few pictures of her mother looking determinedly out of the frames, sometimes alone, mostly accompanied by other people. Then there were the pictures of her: little black-and-white babies, toddlers, and quickly growing girls with the same dark hair and flashing green eyes as her father. She had gotten her mother's face, though: heart-shaped with a nose that stuck out too far to be a conventional beauty.

Rebecca's eyes rested on a picture from two years ago, taken just before she entered the newly established Mitzi Lilith MacLeod Jewish Academy. Her fourteen-year-old self was wrapped in furs, smiling in a self-assured way as she stood between her father and grandmother in front of the Palais Garnier in Paris. The opera had always been in her life--as well as ballet, plays, private libraries, concerts, and gelaterias. She had picked up her mother's viola at a young age and had performed in several concerts of her own over the years. The last time she had performed had been at her graduation that June, at which she had been honored as the youngest graduating girl. Rebecca turned back away from the pictures to flop onto the comfortable couch. She sighed and shifted, closing her eyes. After a few moments, she registered the soft sounds of approaching footsteps.

"Rebecca, I didn't ask: What did they say about transferring at Eastern Michigan?"

Rebecca opened her eyes to see her father standing above her. His eyebrow was raised in a slightly critical way, like it was when he discussed her future with his mother. Rebecca shrugged.

"They said I could. I need to go pick up some papers down at their offices."

Jack nodded with a smile.

"Good. You can take the coupe today and go down there."

"Sure."

Her father gave a slow sigh and sat on the arm of the couch.

"Ree-ree...your education is important. I'm sorry you didn't like Holyoke, but you can't stop your education because of that."

"I just like being home is all, Daddy. I can't stand to be away from here for too long." She sat up suddenly, looking her father right in the eye. "Can't I work with you? You've always got some job open."

Jack looked taken aback for a moment, then shook his head firmly. "No, Rebecca. The business I'm in is not something you want to be involved in." He paused as the sounds of Anna entering and bustling about in the kitchen reached their ears. They looked at each other for a moment, challenging one another with their matching green eyes. Rebecca finally shrugged and slipped off the couch.

"I'll go after breakfast."

Jack smiled and nodded.

"Okay. Be safe, hon."

It was around noon when Rebecca left the university, mundanely sifting through the registration papers as she approached the little powder-blue coupe she'd recieved for her birthday. She'd complete them tonight and bring them back tomorrow. The place wasn't bad, but it didn't have the glamour of a private institution or the small, exclusively female class sizes she'd grown used to. Rebecca tossed the papers into the passenger seat through the open window, then walked around to get into the driver's seat. With a long, slow sigh, she reached for the ignition and turned it.

When she pulled onto the road, she felt something hard and cold press into the back of her head.

"You're going to pull this car behind that diner, Miss MacLeod."

Rebecca's eyes flicked frantically to the rearview mirror. There was an unshaven man in the seat behind her with a gun shoved against the back of her head. He spoke with a Russian accent and glared furiously at the back of her head. She gave a quick nod and took a shuddering breath. As she pulled into the directed diner, pulling around back, she felt tears well up in her eyes, pumped out by her quickly beating heart, but she didn't let them spill. He commanded her to turn off the engine, and she did.

"What do you want? Money? I can give you money. I have two hundred in my purse. You can even have the car if you want it."

The man just chuckled.

"Miss MacLeod, how much do you think your father will pay for you? What about your grandmother? Or, if they won't pay for you, how much do you think men would pay for a night with such a beauty?"

As he spoke, he fondled her black curls, twisting one around his finger. She took a deep breath and glanced at her surroundings, hoping someone would notice the man pointing a gun to the back of her head. But there was no one there. She gave a single sob, but stifled any other show of emotion.

"My...my family would pay handsomely for me, I'm sure of it. Do you need their numbers? I can give you their numbers, and you can call them and they'll come get me with all the cash you want. But not if you hurt me." Rebecca managed to make eye contact with him through the rearview mirror. "If you hurt me, they will find you and personally make sure that you see your bowels spilling out before finishing you off."

The man laughed. "Oh, I'm sure they would." She watched his eyes move down her body in a way that disgusted her. "If they won't pay, though...well, I wonder if I should test out the goods first."

He grabbed her suddenly, jerking her halfway into the backseat. Before she could finish a cry of mingled pain and surprise, she had already been pulled completely backwards, her head slamming into the leather of the seat with dizzying force. She blinked, trying to get her world back into focus. The man was grabbing her roughly, feeling her curves. With a terrible grin, he began to pull her blouse off. Rebecca immediately resisted, trying to shove him off with one hand as the other punched him squarely in the nose. He cried out in anger and pain and clamped a hand over her throat. She gagged and immediately kicked upward. Her knee connected with his thigh, sending him into a flurry of curses as he clenched his hand more tightly around her neck. She couldn't breathe. Her hands searched for something, anything.

And then she found it. The cold metal of the gun he had dropped at some point. She picked it up and pointed it to the side of his head. Before he could get the confused look out of his eyes, she had pulled the trigger. His body slumped onto hers, bleeding all over her and the seats. She shoved him to the floor and took a deep breath, gasping for her life. Rebecca looked around her, taking in the bits of brain and skull blown over the back window, the bloodstains on her shirt, and the dead man's corpse. She rested her forehead on her knees and simply breathed for several moments. She glanced back to the man. She kicked him furiously--once, twice, three times. He was long past feeling. She shook her head and continued gasping. He was dead. And now she was alone with a dead body in the backseat of a car behind a diner in the middle of Detroit.

After several moments, she managed to open the car door and stumble out, walking toward the diner. She registered somewhere in her mind that the diner was boarded up. There was still a pay-phone out front, though. She went back to the car and found a nickel, quickly making her way back to the phone. She slipped the coin in and quickly dialed her father's work number.

"Jack MacLeod, how may I help you?"

"Daddy...daddy, there's a dead man in my back seat." There was shocked silence on the other end of the line. "Daddy, I killed him. Oh, God. God. I killed him. But Daddy, he was going to...God, he was going to do worse to me...I swear. You...please believe me, Daddy." She collapsed against the phone booth, sobbing hard into the phone.

"Rebecca...Ree-Ree...please stop crying, I believe you. Where are you? I'm going to come get you."

Two hours later, Rebecca was sitting in his office with a cup of chammomile tea. They had both disposed of the body and cleaned the car thoroughly. Jack was looking across the desk, studying his daughter with a tired frown.

"Rebecca...this is why I didn't want you working with me. I wanted you to...to make something better of yourself--you know you can. I didn't want you associating with that sort of riff raff. I thought...I thought I had to protect you." He released a slow sigh. "But you seem to be pretty ready to protect yourself, aren't you?"

Rebecca looked up to her father. He had managed to twitch a small smile up his face. She managed to give him a wobbling smile back. He reached across his desk and brushed a bit of her hair back.

"I'm proud of you, actually, Ree-ree. You showed me today that you're perfectly capable of thinking fast in a tight spot. You're a tough cookie, like your mother. That, as well as your many other talents, makes me think that you might actually be good for business. If today's experience didn't scare you too bad, I'd be happy to offer you that job you were asking about this morning."

Rebecca blinked. What, now he was offering her license to go knee-deep into crime? Now that she had nearly been violated...possibly even killed? But she survived. She had made sure she survived, with everything intact. She had killed instead of being murdered. And the world he was offering was characterized by "kill or be killed." And, deep, deep in the bottom of her heart...there was a curiosity, a slow excitement, wondering if she may have to kill again, and would it be easier or harder, and who it would be.

"You don't have to choose now, Rebecca."

She looked around the room. There were pictures lining the walls. Pictures of people her father, mother, and grandmother had worked with: people with scars, people who had been dead for years, people who had grown up covered in dirt but were standing in the picture looking perfectly slick. Rebecca swallowed slightly. There was one thing that all of them had in common--a grittily proud look on their face. In some it was downright arrogant, but others just seemed to be happy to have the finer things of life, no matter how they had procured them.

"No, Daddy." She turned back to him with a smile. "I can choose right now." She took a long sip of her drink. "I want in."

Awesome job do you think you can write some more i like the title to(:

Rebecca the killer :D

You may be young, but after an incident like that, you are definitely not naive.  You will do well in this thing of ours.