Ava makes a bargain to dispose of a gangster’s enemy in exchange for a new life.

It was the 4th of July, the country’s Independence Day. It was Ava’s, too. Although, unlike the nation, Ava was still unsure of what it meant to be free. On the vanity she set the lipstick, “Crimson Dynamo”, and the Colt automatic. Ava hadn’t handled either of these for the five years she’d been jailed at Tehachapi State Prison, but she hadn’t lost her touch with the only things a girl like her really needed.

Independence Day is a short story by Avril Adams published in 2017 in LAst Resort – an anthology of stories written by members of Sisters in Crime / Los Angeles.  Edited by Matt Coyle, Mary Marks, and Patricia Smiley, with an introduction by Michael Connelly.