“Come on now, we’re sisters, right?” Nia said, returning her stare. “You got yourself a good man there. I’m definitely not that kind of girl that looks to mess up somebody’s relationship, especially after everything you and Bobby have done for me.”
Then Nia glanced at Bobby and rolled her eyes dispassionately with a look that hinged on disgust. “I mean, Bobby’s all right and all, but compared to my man …girl, please! You ain’t got a thing to worry about. Trust.”
Charlene turned to Bobby, whose hands burrowed in his pockets, his head hanging like a scolded child. Charlene’s mood finally lightened.
“I’m sorry, Bobby.”
“It’s cool, you had your reasons, I guess,” Bobby muttered, reaching over and kissing her upon the cheek. “I forgive you, though. Let’s clean this room up.”
Nia folded her arms, turned and left the room, marching down the steps.
That eye contact stuff only works on nervous people, girlfriend. I’m so used to lying it’s not even funny.
Nia returned to her own room, looking at the clock.
It’s only like seven-thirty…why do people like getting up so early? I might as well go back to sleep. What time does Charlene go to work again? Bobby needs to give me some attention for what I just did for his ass…
Nia Black was a night person. It had to be quite a job to get her to go out in the morning. It took a great deal to get her to rescind her rule about daylight, but that didn’t stop her from hating it. Daytime was her time to sleep, to stay invisible.
Nia kicked off her boots, turned on her television and flopped on the bed as the morning news started. Unable to doze off immediately, she figured she’d allow daytime television to bore her into lethargy.
“Good morning. This is Mike Morrison reporting. This once beautiful and peaceful morning erupted in absolute chaos here in the southwest section of the city,” said the newscaster.
Nia smiled, remembering the brief police chase.
Ooh, Nia thought with a giggle. There’s my work. I sometimes even amaze myself with how good I am! Go, Nia! Go, Nia!
“And this event ended in tragedy as well,” continued the news. “Jane Simon is on location. Jane?”
Tragedy? What the…
The screen switched to a close up of the same street Nia sped past on her bike on before shooting the oil truck. The camera swept across the disaster area until a female reporter panned into view, turning away from the site of the blast.
“When the oil truck exploded, the flames spread from the street to many nearby homes. While most of the residents were away, some were occupied. Unfortunately, some of them suffered severe burns and smoke inhalation.”
Nia sat up in her bed. I…nobody was anywhere near that truck…I made sure…
Nia shot to her feet, her eyes quivering as she stared at the television, watching as the helicopter-bound camera swung around the sorry pile of crumbled bricks and smoldering wood from above. She thought of how it must have felt to the people inside the homes; to be minding their business at one moment, the walls around them shattering into flames the next…
Nia did her best to keep innocent people out of her crosshairs. Abiding by that rule was her way of justifying her actions and maintaining a sense of conscience during her criminal activities. As long as the only damage came to her target’s financial holdings, it was no big deal.
But this time, she was in too much of a hurry—only thinking of herself, only about doing whatever it took to keep being paid.
What if they end up permanently disabled? What if they die? What if they were only kids, their lives just getting started? Nia couldn’t handle the thought of her actions cutting some good person’s life short, especially people no older than she, and the notion scared her to death.
At that moment, for the first time ever, Nia began to doubt herself.
Nia quickly shoved her feet back into her boots and charged for the door, grabbing only her key chain, leaving her phone and her weapons behind. She hopped on her vehicle and roared away from the house quickly, her bike’s engine growling louder and more guttural than ever. The street shook as her engine deafened everything else, setting off car alarms as her bike rumbled down the block.
The Jazz Hall was only open after 8 p.m. During the early morning hours, Marc resided alone in an apartment on the second floor of the building. He passed the time by peacefully preparing his club for the patrons who would flood in for the evening, cleaning the bar and organizing his selection of drinks in the dark atmosphere. It was outlandish to expect any sort of visitors in the dawn hours. No wonder he was startled when he heard a motorcycle engine roaring and gaining in volume until the noise ceased, directly outside the door of his club.
Nia reached the Jazz Hall in record time and charged inside, headed for the bar. Marc was cleaning the shot glasses with a napkin. He glanced at Nia with a surprised look when she stepped inside; the bright corridor of sunlight flowing through the doorway, nearly blinding Marc, whose eyes had long since adjusted to the dimly lit interior.
“What are you doing here this time of day? I thought you only came out at night,” said Marc, squinting.
“I need to talk to somebody.”
“Okay, I’m here. What’s up, sweetheart?”
“Something’s bothering me. You know how I usually get when I do my thing, most of the time, I’m loving it. But this time was different. You know about that oil truck explosion? That was me. I was trying to get away from the cops…I needed a way to get them off me, and I…people got hurt because of me.”
“Did they die?”
“The news said they were in critical condition or something,” Nia stammered. “I’m sure they’ll be okay, I think they will. I mean…”
“Okay then, no harm done, right?” Marc said, his apathy clear in the cold silence that followed.
Nia didn’t look convinced. “I don’t feel right about hurting innocent people. I got too hasty. It ain’t my thing to involve people who ain’t got nothing to do with it.”
“So what, you’re saying you care about somebody other than Nia Black now?” Marc looked away as he set his glasses neatly on the racks below the bar. “What’s next, going out to save people like a super hero or something?”
“It ain’t all like that,” Nia stammered with a nervous laugh. “But right now I got respect on the streets because I mess with Hudson. I mess up his deals, steal his stuff and piss off his troopers. The people love that about me. But if innocent people get caught up in what I do, I just know I’m gonna lose that respect. They’re gonna say I’m a loose cannon…that I don’t give a damn who gets hurt. I might hurt a client’s cousin or sister or mom or something and they’ll think I don’t care. And if I ain’t got my respect, I don’t get my jobs. I’m thinking I should quit blowing stuff up. Maybe if I just do jobs that don’t hurt anybody, like, just the robberies…”
Marc looked as if he were going to say something. But he stopped, and suddenly tunneled below the bar. When he rose back up, there was a newspaper in his grip. He tossed it and it flopped on the bar in front of Nia. The paper was folded open to the business section.
“Read the headline there,” said Marc.
Nia leaned upon the bar, folded her arms under her chest and stared at the paper.
“‘Genius daughter inherits position of deceased scientist’,” Nia read aloud. “So what?”
“That ‘genius daughter’ is Chelsea Romedrux, the daughter of Dr. Kane Romedrux,” Marc explained.
“Who?”
“…Romedrux? Don’t that sound familiar?”
“Not really.”
Marc groaned. “Look at the picture then…what about the building? Doesn’t that look familiar to you?”
Nia glared at the black-and-white photo on the newspaper page. She studied it for a moment.
“Oh! That’s the place where I looted that weapon from the other night! Ha, I made the news twice in one week! That’s what’s up!”
; “Except for one thing,” Marc muttered. “Because you got away with that weapon, Romedrux lost his job. In fact, he worked for Hudson; he might have lost a little more than that, because of you.”
“Me? But I ain’t done nothing to that man!”
“Are you sure?” Marc continued. “Think about it. You broke in and stole the gun. You beat Romedrux’s security and you got away, right in front of Hudson’s face. Isn’t that what you said? Then the guy who designed the weapon, who was supposed to be protecting the weapon for our favorite corrupt defense contractor, turns up dead. Why do you suppose that is?”
Nia fell quiet.
“There’s no right way to do wrong, Nia.”
Nia hung her head and sighed. Then the chime of her pager startled her.
“That’s my contact. I have to go,” Nia said. “He’s got the information I need so I can do this job…”
Marc folded his arms. “You don’t have to do this. Look at yourself, Nia. You’re so beautiful. You shouldn’t be living your life like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have the skills and the smarts to do whatever you want. Don’t waste your life as a criminal. Every bad guy goes down sooner or later, and that goes for bad girls, too.”
“But…”
“But nothing,” Marc interrupted. “There could be people plotting against you, setting you up to take a big fall at any moment. People you already know, people you think are your friends, or people you don’t even know exist, anybody could be looking for a way to bring you down. Pay attention to what’s going on around you. Look at every detail. You can’t just keep floating through life. You gotta learn to watch your head. You gotta start acting like you know what you’re worth.”
“It’s something to think about,” Nia said as she headed for the door. “Thanks, Marc.”
“My pleasure, sweetheart,” Marc mumbled, returning to his scrubbing and polishing as Nia stepped back onto the streets.
Seven
The winds grew chilly and rapid in the autumn night. The corporate offices of Hallegan Security had closed down, with only a scattered few security guards patrolling the lobby. Hallegan’s employees filed out of the building as another business day ended.
Nia Black spent the better part of the day planning and preparing, using the blueprints of the building and her own research to devise the perfect scheme to breach the Hallegan Building. When the sun descended beneath the horizon and shadow-laced cumulus clouds blanketed the sky, her time had come.
The first task was to get into the building. With its lobby and loading entrances guarded by highly trained, rotating security personnel, Nia felt entry from the ground was simply more trouble than it would have been worth.
She could have easily blasted her way past the guards, just as she did at Romedrux Labs. But the time it would have taken for her to reach the thirty-seventh floor from the bottom—especially since it would have been too risky to use the elevators—would give the guards enough time to marshal the authorities and trap her. No entry from the ground. That left only one option. She had to break in from above.
A nearby office building that towered above many other ones sat next door to the Hallegan building. The company was adding another wing to its corporate headquarters. It was still under construction and was presently little more than a sky-high grid of steel girders and winch-operated elevators. Construction workers busied themselves here at daytime; at night, the site was vacant and gated off. The construction site was the key to Nia’s approach.
From a brisk dash, Nia lunged over the wooden barricade that barred access to the site and accessed a freight elevator, reaching the soaring peak of the building in a matter of minutes.
Nia stood on the far edge of the building’s roof, the open sky yawning below her, wind slashing through her hair, the company’s neon logo beneath her reflecting on her leather getup. She squinted as she gazed at the building in front of her, Hallegan’s corporate headquarters.
Nia analyzed the distance between the two buildings. Not all that far, not for me anyway, she thought. She brought along a grappling hook with a magnetic head for rappelling across great distances, but Nia wouldn’t need it immediately. She had a far more efficient means of getting to the Hallegan building.
She slid her goggles over her eyes and took a few breaths, backpedaling from the edge of the roof. She then sprinted forward with all her might, outstretched her arms and sprang from the roof with all the strength her powerful legs could muster.
Nia speared through the air like a javelin, across the yawning breadth between the two towers of steel and glass, easily several hundred feet vertical of the street below…
And seconds later, Nia’s palms slapped the rooftop of the Hallegan building and she tucked into a roll and came to rest. She stood up, swept dust from her hair and looked back at the roof she jumped from—now hundreds of yards way and above her.
Nia examined the front of the Hallegan building as the echoes of traffic moaning from below and the groan of the wind filling the air around her. She had to rappel down three floors to get to number thirty-seven.
Now, she thought, it’s time to use this thing.
She unhooked her grappling gun from her belt. It was a high-tech device; the grappling gun used gas-powered propulsion to fire one of two magnetic heads across great distances, with the second head intended to secure a hold at the point of origin, if needed.
The device was the key to Nia getting into the Hallegan tower—and her way back out. She could have tried a roof access doorway, but it was highly likely the door was alarmed, so she needed to breach from outside by rappelling down from the roof. And there was no way she could leap back up to the building, so when she’d finished inside and needed to get out, Nia would use her grappling gun to go back the way she came.
Nia affixed one magnetic end to the edge of the Hallegan building, swung her legs over the edge and began to lower herself hand over hand. She extended the cord as needed until she counted down to the 37th floor, her objective near.
Using a power-driven screwdriver, Nia effortlessly removed the bolts that secured one of the windows. Nia kicked the window after unscrewing it, sending it plopping upon the carpet inside the building. Swinging and lunging into the room with a perfectly silent four-point landing, she pressed her fingers and toes to the carpeted floor, raising her head and scanning the area like a predator seeking its prey. Nia lifted her goggles and looked about, comparing her surroundings to the blueprints in her hand. It was the correct floor.
She turned about and jerked the wire still dangling outside of the building. It was the key to her escape, so she needed to ensure it remained stable.
Nia hardly expected to have such an easy time breaking into the headquarters of a company specializing in advanced security.
According to the diagram Darien Drakonis gave her, the thirty-seventh floor of the Hallegan building held the company’s most crucial computer equipment. The layout was a perfect cross with a single cube dead center. Several doors along every wall in every corridor led to a different computer room, but Nia’s target was the room in the middle of it all, the room marked on the blueprint earlier.
In the center of the floor is the chamber where the network administrator, or whatever, is. In there is the computer with the Main Systems Disc. I just need to get to it. Piece of cake, Nia thought as she examined the area.
Though darkness enveloped the floor, cut only by the faint glow of the moonlight outside, Nia was able to see the details and obstructions before her, or the lack thereof. Nothing but a clear path of blank walls, nondescript doors and bland carpet lined her path.
She found that perplexing. The only form of opposition presented to Nia was the presence of two wall-mounted cameras, one directly above her and another at a corner of the cross. Nia couldn’t outwardly tell if the cameras were on or not. Though clearly mounted on swivel bases, the cameras were not moving. They just leaned inertly on their pedestals.
Forgetting the cameras, Nia reached in her pack and drew a can that sprayed odorless aerosol. She suspected perhaps there were invisible lasers barring the otherwise unassuming hall. She pressed her pointer on the nozzle and swayed her wrist back and forth, filling the hall ahead of her with enough mist to create a fog.
Nia frowned.
Nothing.
She was eager to go leaping and somersaulting through an otherwise impregnable array of beams, averting any chance of setting off alarms while being incredibly graceful in the process. She was genuinely upset.
All that exercise for nothing.
Nia switched her way toward the room in the center of floor thirty-seven with a twisted look on her face, annoyed that she had to give up her Mission: Impossible-styled plan of infiltration. She approached the door and subtly graced the knob with her palms—testing for more traps in an almost paranoid way—before quickly grabbing and turning it.
The door was unlocked. Nia pushed her way into the room and examined the area.
This is where their main systems disc is? Nia wondered. This place looks like a storage closet or something.
The chamber was a spacious square. Aged, dusty computer terminals were stacked atop each other amidst the shadows against the walls. It was far too packed and musty to house a high-end computer that would hold a ‘Main Systems Disc’—there wasn’t even a chair in the room, and all sorts of alarms were going off in Nia’s head.
Did I count the floors wrong? No way. Maybe the hard part was just getting in.
She spotted the only fully assembled PC in the rear corner of the room, and sighed with boredom.
I thought it would be a little more difficult than that. Oh well. The easy jobs are the best jobs. No bruises and no torn-up clothes to worry about.
Nia approached the computer and glanced upon it.
What the hell?
She noticed a yellow sticky note affixed to the monitor. Neither the monitor nor the hard drive tower connected to it was receiving any power. Nia peeled the paper off and read.
Beloved Weapon Page 6