Rough: A Hitman Romance

by Chambers, V. J.

  “That’s right,” I murmured. “Everything’s fine down there.”

  One last thing needed to go.

  Easy peasy, not a big deal.

  I took down the Wi-Fi for the whole building. I scrambled the modem. It couldn’t connect to the Internet, and now everyone was going to be pissed.

  The phone rang.

  It was the redirected IT number.

  I answered. “Information Technology services. This is Kelly.”

  “Internet’s down here,” said a voice.

  “Have you tried restarting your computer?”

  “It’s the Internet, not the computer,” said the person on the other end.

  I just grinned. “Yeah, okay, we’ll send someone over to help out.”

  “Thanks.”

  I disconnected and then opened a channel to Demetrius and the others. “You guys ready? Call just came in.”

  “Got it,” said Demetrius.

  On the security cameras, I watched the doors where they were entering. I could see what the cameras really recorded. The actual guards didn’t see a thing, only my loops.

  Demetrius, Cass, Ambrose, and Blaze all entered the building dressed as if they worked in the IT department. In this case, that meant that they were wearing untucked plaid shirts and khakis. They had all donned glasses.

  “We’re in,” said Demetrius. “We clear? Anyone see us?”

  “Nope,” I said. “So far, so good.”

  * * *

  Demetrius

  “Okay,” said Kiera’s voice in my ear, “this is where you split up.”

  “Here?” said Blaze.

  “Yes, here,” said Kiera. “Down that hall is the elevator.”

  Blaze saluted me and headed down the hallway. Cass went after him, waving.

  “Don’t wave,” said Kiera. “You’re doing IT work.”

  “Sorry,” said Cass.

  “You guys,” said Kiera to Ambrose and me, “head down to the end of the hallway.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  Ambrose got ahead of me. “I’m doing the talking, yeah? You should let me go first.”

  I nodded my assent.

  He led the way, and I followed. We went past open doors, and people called out to us. “Hey, the Internet’s broken.”

  Ambrose smiled at them. “We’re working on it. Hang tight, there.”

  But people were starting to mill out into the halls. That was good. The more chaos we caused, the better. Chaos meant no one would be watching too closely.

  We reached our destination, and Ambrose opened the door and came in. “You guys have a problem with your Internet?”

  “About time,” said the guy behind the desk. His hair was slicked back, and he spoke with a thick Russian accent. He obviously worked directly for Nikolai doing Bratva business. “We cannot do anything. This is ridiculous.”

  Ambrose grinned. “Well, step aside there, sir, and I’ll see what I can do.”

  The man got up from his computer.

  Ambrose sat down at the screen.

  I nodded to another guy behind him. “You too. Your machine may be the problem.”

  The other man shrugged. He got up. “Whatever you say.” He sounded Russian as well.

  I slid behind the desk and jiggled the mouse.

  “Well, we’re looking at the computers now,” I said, which sounded stupid, but was for Kiera’s benefit.

  “I can see you on the cameras,” she snapped.

  I flinched. Probably a bad idea to have had sex with her before all this went down, after all. I still couldn’t say I regretted it, but shit would be so much easier if she wasn’t mad at me right now.

  Ambrose looked up at the workers, smiling easily. “You two might want to go get a coffee or something. It could be a while.”

  “We will wait,” said the first guy.

  Great.

  Ambrose shrugged. “Okay, then.”

  “Damn it,” muttered Kiera. “Okay, that’s fine, though. Just don’t respond to me out loud, got it?”

  I almost said, “Got it,” but I squelched it. What was her problem? Why ask questions if she didn’t want them answered?

  “Okay,” she said. “Ambrose, the doors are all controlled by a program called Verits. Pull it up. Hopefully, he’s already signed in.”

  Ambrose and I had to do this because Kiera couldn’t get to these controls on her own. Someone had to be onsite to do it. So, she was walking Ambrose and I through the steps to get the doors open for the big cell downstairs, with all the girls in it.

  Unfortunately, however, we couldn’t get to Natasha’s cell from this program.

  Those cells were higher security and there was no way to remotely unlock the doors.

  “Damn it, damn it,” said Kiera. “I can’t see your screen from the camera view, and I can’t remotely access that computer. Can you tell me if he’s logged in somehow?”

  Ambrose cleared his throat. “This Verits program?”

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “You’re not logged in?”

  “I restarted the computer,” he said.

  “This computer is logged in to Verits,” I said.

  “They both need to be logged in,” said Kiera.

  Ambrose stepped away from the computer. “Can you log back in, sir? I think that the problem may be caused by the interaction between that program and the Wi-Fi.”

  The man sighed. “That makes no sense. I can’t see how they could interact.”

  “God, don’t improvise, Ambrose,” said Kiera. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  * * *

  Kiera

  “Kiera?” said a voice in my ear. It was Cass. “We’re having trouble with the elevator door.”

  “Hold on, Cass,” I said. “I’m still trying to walk these guys through something.” But I peered at the camera that was trained on the elevator. Cass and Blaze were there, and Blaze was trying to pry open the doors.

  “It won’t budge,” he said.

  “Hold on a minute.”

  “We might not have a minute,” Blaze said.

  I sighed.

  I turned back to the other security camera, where I could see Ambrose and Danger. Ambrose was standing over the man who worked there, who was typing on the computer.

  “Oh, good, he’s logging on for you?” I said.

  “Yes, thank you for logging on, sir,” said Ambrose.

  “Kiera,” said Cass.

  “I hear you, Cass,” I said. “Look, I might be able to trip something that will make the elevator door open. Just two seconds okay?”

  I switched channels back to Ambrose and Danger. I could see on the cameras that Ambrose had taken the computer back from the worker. He was ready to do as I instructed. “Hey guys, you’re both on. I need you to pull down the file menu and go to Manual Override.”

  I switched back to Cass. “Okay, I’m in the elevator system again. Hold on.” I typed furiously, and then clicked, and then typed, and then…

  The doors started to open.

  “Better, Blaze?” I said.

  “Yeah, perfect,” he said.

  I switched back to Danger and Ambrose. “Okay, Ambrose type exactly what I tell you to type. Verbatim.” I read it off to him slowly. Twice. “And Danger, you type this.” I read his off to him. Twice as well. “Now, hit enter. Then you’re going to wait, because it’s going to take a while to process. Look busy, and I’ll be back with you as soon as I can.”

  I opened the channel to Cass and Blaze. I could see on the security camera that they were climbing down the elevator shaft now.

  It was just the way they’d gone into Nikolai’s office before. Cass was leading the way, and Blaze was attached to her with a harness.

  Cass tested the roped that held them. “You ready?”

  Blaze made a strangled noise. “I don’t know why I’m always having to do this jumping stuff with you. I think Danger has it in for me.”

  “I’m watching you,�
� I said to them. “You’ve got this.”

  Blaze shook himself. “All right, let’s do it.”

  The two swung out of the security camera frame.

  Blaze yelled a throaty scream.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Cass was laughing. “We’re perfect.”

  “Is this where I get off?” Blaze asked.

  “Yeah,” said Cass.

  I pulled up another camera to see Blaze climbing out of a set of elevator doors. He looked pale, even in black and white.

  “You good, Blaze?” I said. “Do you need a minute?”

  “No, I’m fine,” he said. “I’m definitely fine.” He started jogging down the hallway. “Which room is it?”

  “Next one,” I said.

  He threw open the door to a storage closet and pulled out several small metal charges from his pack.

  I switched camera views again. Now, I could see inside the closet.

  “Okay,” he said. “Three, two, one…”

  There was a bright blast, and the camera view whited out for a minute. When the smoke cleared, all I could see for a minute was fluttering paper.

  Then that settled too, and I could see that there was a big hole in the floor of the storage closet.

  Blaze knelt down over it. “Hey,” he called.

  I couldn’t hear a response.

  “Do you see her?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she’s here,” he said. “I’m going down.”

  I switched camera views again.

  Now I was looking at the front door to Natasha’s cell.

  Cass came running into the frame.

  “Cass,” I said. “You made it.”

  “Tell Cass to take cover,” said Blaze.

  “I hear you,” she said. She ran out of the frame.

  There was another bright blast, and the door to Natasha’s cell blew outward, right off its hinges.

  After a few minutes, the smoke cleared and Natasha stepped out over the door.

  “Hi,” said Cass. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  Natasha threw her arms around Cass. “Is true? Matteo send you?”

  Cass hugged her. “Matteo sent us.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Demetrius

  Ambrose and I were both frantically typing on our keyboards, trying to make the guys in the office think that we were actually doing something.

  Where the hell was Kiera?

  The stupid Verits program had finished doing its thing several minutes ago.

  “Danger, Ambrose,” her voice suddenly boomed in our ears.

  I couldn’t help but jump.

  One of the guys eyed me suspiciously.

  “Taking down the Verits program worked,” she said. “I can see it now. The cell’s open. The girls are out.”

  Good.

  “Now, tell the men in there that the problem is widespread and that you’re going to have to try something else,” she instructed me.

  Ambrose turned to look at me. “Hey, you having any luck?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking this problem is more widespread than just this office. We’re going to need to go back to the mainframe and try to figure something out.”

  Mainframe? But I just nodded. “Sounds good to me.” I turned to the men. “Sorry, guys.”

  “You not fix?” said one of them.

  “How long will it take?” said the other.

  “We can’t say, sir,” said Ambrose, “but you can rest assured we’ll be working on it.”

  We both got up from the computers and left the room, leaving the guys behind us looking peeved at the lack of Internet.

  “Okay, you’re out, right?” said Kiera in our ears.

  “Yeah, we’re out,” I said. “Is Blaze in place? Did he make it down to the girls?”

  “I can’t tell yet,” she said. “He still has to blow the ceiling to get down there. But he got Natasha out just fine. She’s with Cass.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good.” Everything was going well, then. We were on track for everything to work out.

  “Well, you guys need to get outside and to the back of the building,” said Kiera.

  That was the plan, after all. Blaze was down in the bottom level, and he was going to basically blow out a tunnel for the girls to escape by. He’d send them through it, and Ambrose and I would be waiting for the girls to usher them to safety.

  We were fairly sure that no one would be paying any attention to them at that point, because Blaze was going to remotely detonate the explosives he’d already placed on Nikolai’s office building. A leveled building should be quite the distraction.

  “We’re on it,” I said, nodding to Ambrose.

  Together, we headed for the nearest exit.

  * * *

  Kiera

  The screen I was using to monitor the progress of the elevators suddenly blinked to life.

  “That’s not right,” I muttered. “I turned you off.”

  “What’s that?” said Demetrius.

  I still had the channel open to him. “Nothing,” I said, shutting off my microphone. I could still hear him, but no one could hear me.

  I turned my attention to the computer. I needed to turn this all off again. The elevator system was rebooting, and that meant that the elevators would be moving again.

  I checked the position of the elevator.

  I opened a channel. “Cass? Where are you?”

  “We’re halfway up the elevator shaft,” she said, panting. “Is this an emergency, because… it’s not easy to… talk right now.”

  Damn it. If that elevator came back online, it was going to come right down on her and Natasha. This was bad.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said to her. “Just keep climbing.”

  I opened the channel to Demetrius. “Hey, Danger, Ambrose, when you were restarting that Verits program, did you touch anything else?”

  “We were in there for like ten minutes messing around with those computers,” said Ambrose. “I don’t even know what the hell I did. I was trying everything I could to look like I knew what I was doing.”

  I groaned. “You guys did it somehow. You triggered a reboot of the system that runs the elevators. And now I’m locked out.”

  “What do you mean?” said Demetrius.

  “I mean that the only way that I can get the elevators back offline is to be onsite. I need to leave here and come into the building.”

  “No,” said Demetrius. “No way. That’s not happening. We agreed that you would stay out of this. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Not that again,” I said. “If I don’t do this, the elevator is going to start moving again, and it’s going to squish Cass and Natasha.”

  “What?!” said Ambrose. “Listen up, Kiera, you get your little butt down here and get those elevators offline.”

  “No,” said Demetrius. “I’ll do it. You tell me where I need to be, and I’ll do it.”

  “You can’t do it,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know how to explain it to you.”

  “Well, I’ll get there, and we’ll figure it out,” he said. “We managed to do the Verits system pretty well.”

  “That’s because I was prepared for that. I knew how to explain to you guys what to do. I won’t be able to see what’s going on in that room. There are no security cameras, and I don’t even know what the terminal is going to look like. It’s got to be me, and we’re wasting time talking about it.”

  “No, Kiera,” he said.

  “Look, I know it’s not ideal—”

  “What if something else goes wrong, and you’re not there to fix it?”

  “I…”

  “Get your butt down here,” growled Ambrose.

  “I’m on my way,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Demetrius

  She was going to get herself killed.

  Ambrose and I were already outside of the building, in place waiting for the girls to come ou
t of the tunnel that Blaze had already blown.

  I took off running for the building.

  Ambrose caught me by the shoulder, stopped me.

  “What the hell?” I said, shoving him off.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I can’t let her do this on her own,” I said.

  “Why the fuck not?” said Ambrose. “She knows what she’s doing, and she’s saving my wife. You don’t have to micromanage that girl.”

  “If something happens to her—”

  “Yeah, I know that feeling,” said Ambrose. “Because I’m scared to fucking death about Cass. But if I run off from what I’m supposed to be doing, this whole plan falls to hell, and that puts everyone in even more danger, including my wife. Don’t be a dick, Demetrius.”

  “I don’t have time for this shit.” I started to run for the building again.

  “You have to let go a little bit,” Ambrose yelled after me. “She’s a grown fucking woman!”

  I didn’t listen. I just ran.

  Now.

  Getting back into the building.

  I would have gone to the exit that we’d left from, but they all locked in place from the outside. The only way into the building was the main entrance. Except for the fact that Kiera had gotten one of the doors unlocked for us to enter, and that would probably be the place she’d enter from, and maybe she would have left it unlocked, because she would have had to set it before leaving her computers.

  I headed for that door.

  Yes.

  Success.

  It opened.

  I threw the door wide and hurled myself inside. I was half-hoping to see Kiera inside, to be right on her heels.

  But the hallway was empty. No Kiera anywhere.

  Where the fuck would she go?

  I hurried down the hall, trying to think through everything that I’d seen when I went over the building schematics. I’d spent weeks with them, and I knew this place inside out. If I just concentrated, I’d know exactly where she was heading.

  But I couldn’t concentrate, because I just kept picturing all the things that could go wrong.

  Kiera running into the security guards, who shot first and asked questions later. Her body lying face down, blood blooming onto the carpet beneath her.

  No.

  Kiera running into Nikolai himself, who recognized her—