Mr. CEO (22 page)

S
uccess
! Oh, it was fucking sweet, too! The look on his face, the flash of the bulbs... and best of all, not a single soul knew who I was.

Don't get cocky, Katrina. Your work is just beginning.

I nod at the words from long ago and take off my dress. I strip everything off before sticking it all into a plastic bag for later disposal. It's going to suck throwing a thousand-dollar outfit into an incinerator, especially since that's more than I make in a month sometimes, but it's necessary. Peter DeLaCoeur's going to send his men after me, I know it. I can ghost, but only if I leave as few clues behind as I can.

I go back over to my dresser and open it up, grabbing my favorite black
gi
pants, and the sports bra I prefer for exercise. I get dressed quickly, then turn and walk across the big, empty space of this old warehouse until I reach the post in the middle of the floor. In exchange for teaching kids' martial arts classes twice a week, the owner of the boxing gym downstairs lets me crash here. Right now I'm buzzing on adrenaline, and I need to refocus.

The post is steel, but I've wrapped it in old, bald tires that provide just enough padding for me to use it as my own personal training dummy. My sparring gloves are an old castoff pair I rescued from the garbage downstairs, but they serve their purpose well enough, which is to prevent scrapes on my hands. I take them off their hook, and pull them on, sneering at the tires. Except they aren't tires any longer. They're Peter DeLaCoeur's fat, piggish face.

My first punch lands hard, but it jars my body. The first punch always has that effect. I can punch far above my weight, but my first punch always knocks me a little off balance. Still, it doesn't take long for my body to adjust. It's trained to compensate for the shocks, turning them into energy I roll with and use to power the next strike. Kicks come next, then knees, and elbows...this is just a light workout for me. I can't practice my deadlier techniques on this simple training dummy, but it's a good way to relieve some of my stress.

With a scream, I throw an overhand elbow that would dislocate a man's jaw before falling to the floor, covered in sweat and gasping for breath. That's good enough for tonight. I'll get a real workout in tomorrow.

I peel off the gloves, hanging them up on their hook again and go over to the mat on the far side of the room. I've removed the lights, and darkness reigns. By pure muscle memory, I find the lighter and light a single tea candle, setting it in front of me and assuming the
seiza
kneeling position that I learned long ago. I send my mind into the flickering light of the candle, and what comes up are my memories.

“You are filled with anger,” Virginia says, two days after I've come to her home. It's the third foster home I've been placed with, the other two having sent me back after what the social workers called 'inappropriate behavior'.

“No shit, lady,” I snap back at her, twisting my hair around my finger. “You'd be too if you got treated like last week's Big Mac.”

“Perhaps I would,” Virginia says. She's lean, and according to the file the social worker showed me before she dropped me off at the house, she's former military. She looks it too, with muscles outlined against her chocolate-brown skin, and eyes that look like they've seen some shit. “But I wouldn't be helping those people who treat me that way by acting like an inconsiderate baby.”

“Excuse me, bitch?” I snap, sitting up. “I ain't no goddamn baby.”

“First of all, it's 'I am not a baby'. Second of all, in this house, you will
not
curse me, nor any other person who is my guest. What you do outside I cannot control, but you will show respect to me and my house.”

“Or else what? You send me back to the orphanage? Return to sender, address unknown?”

Virginia gives me a little smile, which pisses me off for some reason. “Well, you can't be all bad, you at least have some knowledge of Elvis. As for what will happen... no, I will not send you back, for two reasons. First off, because I don't fail, and sending you back means that I fail. But more importantly, because I won't let you fail, and sending you back will guarantee you that you will end up a failure in life. You're not going to get another foster home, not with three strikes against you. Even if you are a pretty little white girl, the only place you'll end up is some pervert's house. And while I may not live in the best home in New Orleans, that's by choice, and you will not fail on my watch.”

“I ain't no failure!” I scream, getting to my feet. “You take that back!”

“Make me,” Virginia says softly, shifting her right foot back. “If you can.”

I charge her, my right hand already cocking back in a punch that comes from the depths of my rage, but instead of hitting her, I'm redirected. She sends me spinning through the air and crashing to the hardwood floor of the dining room. Virginia keeps a hold of my wrist and twists, and I howl, tears of anger and pain already flowing as she turns me over onto my stomach. She wrenches my hand around and up until I feel my little finger touching between my shoulder blades and her knee on my spine near my waist.

“Your anger makes you strong, Katrina. But you must learn to control it. Now tell me, before I have reason to dislocate your shoulder, why are you so angry?”

I cry, trying to look up to see her, but I can't, no matter how hard I kick or fight. Finally, I howl, letting the truth out. “My parents! They got blowed up!”

Virginia eases off her arm lock slightly but keeps a strong grip on my wrist. “Tell me what happened.”

I close my eyes and struggle against the memories, but they come flooding out anyway, carrying me away. “Mama and Papa, we were at the Fair Grounds. We'd gone for the horse show... I'd begged them to take me after that movie, and after the hurricane. Mama said that she'd dropped her phone, and I told her I'd go get it. I run back and see it on the ground near the door to the elevator, and turn around. The car... the car blowed up! The fire... it's so hot... MAMA! PAPA! DON'T LEAVE ME!”

I'm sobbing, and Virginia releases my arm to pull me up into an embrace. She lets me sob and scream my horror, anger, and everything into her chest. When the tears finally stop, Virginia lifts me to my knees and looks into my eyes. “This is very, very important, Katrina. What do you want to do with this rage?”

I sniff and wipe at my nose, looking into Virginia's sand-colored eyes. “I want to kill whoever killed Mama and Papa.”

I know I shouldn't say it. The social workers tell me that it's wrong to feel this way, that I'm supposed to live and let live like Pastor Gibb who comes by the orphanage says we should do...but I'm no Jesus. I want something darker.

But Virginia doesn't flinch, and instead she nods, brushing a lock of hair out of my eyes. “Good. You're being honest, which is a good thing. Then I make you a promise. Your training will not be easy. You may not survive your vengeance. But I swear to you, as someone who's been there... you will not fail.”

I open my eyes to see the candle's burned itself out. I smile, feeling refreshed. Using meditation to supplement sleep wasn't something that Virginia taught me, but I can't deny that I learned a lot from her. She was the first in a long line of instructors, of teachers who gave me the skills that have finally brought me to this point.

I shift positions, rolling onto my back because I know my feet are going to be asleep still after kneeling for what's most likely been an hour or more. As blood flow slowly returns to my toes, I feel a pain that gradually subsides into the familiar pins and needles sensation that's always a part of this process. My feet are still tingling when I hear the door to my loft unlock. I sit up immediately—only a few people have a key to my place, but still I'm wary. It pays to be careful, and pays more to be paranoid.

The door opens, and the soft lighting above my door shows me it's Darcy. She's another one of my mentors, but more importantly, she's my best friend. She's thirty-two years old, but Virginia introduced us six years ago, on my sixteenth birthday. Meeting Darcy was my birthday gift from Virginia, and in the long run has been the best gift I've ever gotten. “Darce, I'm over here.”

“Damn girl, I know you want to cut down on your electricity bill, but you could run this entire setup right now with two nine-volts and a hamster wheel,” Darcy says, making her way through the dim space. “What, short on money again?”

“You know that's not the problem,” I tell her, although there have been times in the past when I barely had two dimes to rub together and another payday nowhere in sight. “The skills you taught me provide better than that.”

An anarchic, idealistic hacktivist, it took Darcy a long time to come around to my point of view on things, and agreeing to teach me more than the basics of computer science. Not that my education was ever traditional, but nowadays, under the hacker handle Coup De Grace, I'm able to earn enough to put food in my stomach and keep the lights on.

“Yeah, of course I know,” Darcy says, her boots clomping on the floor. She and I share somewhat similar viewpoints on fashion, and that's one of the things we bonded over first. Well, that and a hatred of all things Microsloth. “Jeff saw the pics a half hour ago. I dropped Henry off with his grandmother and hightailed it over here, telling her a client had a computer issue. She doesn't quite understand my work, so it's cool like that.”

“You didn't need to rush over here. I'm fine,” I say, getting to my feet. My little toes are still tingling, but it's not too bad. “Have you seen them?”

“Sho'nuff. Didn't think he'd be so... short. Thick, but short.” She holds the tips of her index fingers close together, indicating his length.

I laugh and get up. I know she’s talking shit because she knows my hatred of the family. He damn sure wasn’t
short
. “Actually, he's bigger than the average man. I'd say a solid eight or nine, although I didn't have my ruler with me. I'm guessing the jacket hid some, and the angle of the photo hid some more. They get any of me?”

“They got your body and hair, but the photos released so far don't show your face. Don't matter, though, since you're off-grid so much. But from what I did see...you were lookin' good, girl.”

Darcy's comment about me being off-grid is true. Katrina Grammercy has no driver's license, no photo IDs, no voter registration card, not even a library card. Everything is handled through 'Net identities and anonymous numbered accounts, or face to face with no paper trail. Cuts down on my income... but money isn't what I need. And it's definitely not what motivates me.

“Well, regardless, you and I both know that Peter DeLaCoeur's going to be coming for me. I just need enough time to take him the rest of the way down,” I say.

“And your friend? I know he's a womanizing asshole, Kat, but he was your best friend when you were kids. You take Papa DLC down, you take down Jacky-boy, too.”

I sigh and shake my head. It surprised me, but it actually hurt when I saw the look in Jackson's eyes. Once he realized who I was, there was a distinct look of betrayal I saw before I got out of the car. “You know there's no other way, Darce. I can't attack the DeLaCoeurs head on. Hell, I can't even hack their systems. Peter runs his business the old-fashioned way, with a lot of offline backups, and he only keeps paper trails on the stuff that's legit. From what I can tell, his memory's the only thing that keeps track of his illegal dealings. I need to pull the king out of his fortress, or else I'm dead before I get anywhere near him.”

“You could be dead either way,” Darcy reminds me. “And that, to me at least, is a greater loss than not getting your revenge.”

This is one of the few areas where we still disagree, but we're at peace with the situation. By that I mean I'm at peace with Darcy continually trying to get me to have a more positive outlook on life, and she's at peace with wasting her time trying to achieve that. “Not revenge, Darce. Vengeance. There's a difference,” I say.

“So you've told me for the past six years. But you know I disagree.”

We walk toward my sitting area, if you can call it that. My sitting area is mostly two old, patched-up wooden chairs from the boxing gym. The accompanying “table” is nothing more than a board of plywood sitting on top of two old computer towers. Since Darcy's here, I turn on the light, which is a solar-powered LED lantern that recharges during the day from the small amount of sunlight that comes in through the only window that isn't boarded up in the warehouse. “Darcy, if you really disagreed with me that much, you'd tell Jeff. If he busted a hacker like me, he'd get a promotion for sure. At the very least, it'd get him off patrols and a detective's shield.”

“And betray my best friend?” Darcy asks, shaking her head. “No honey, me and Jeff, we got ourselves an understanding. He don't ask about what I do besides put together custom computers for people, and I've backed off my online stuff for the most part. He helps me sometimes too though, when our purposes align.”

I chuckle. “Backed off? Since Henry's been born, I barely see you on the boards anymore. Let alone see your traces around the systems.”

Darcy smirks and shrugs. “Ah, it's all good. I keep up-to-date, and besides, I make more money building kits for Tulane kids than I ever did trying to change the world one server at a time. And you know, if you really need my help, well, BlakDhal1A can always make a comeback.”

“You still worry about me though,” I say with a smile. “Why?”

“You know why, Kat. I already buried my family one time, when Katrina came through. I don't wanna bury you, too.”

“If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way,”
I quote to Darcy, smiling softly. “The
Hagakure.”

“I hate that fucking book,” she counters, then sighs. “All right Kitty-Kat, you my sister. You wanna run headlong to your doom... I'll be there to make sure you at least get a proper funeral. We'll have jazz and everything.”