I'm inverted, my feet pointing straight in the air as I lower myself on the two steel bars which let my head dip lower until my hands are next to my ears before pushing up, locking out. Seven. Three more and I can kick back down and let my shoulders rest a little bit.

I lower myself, sweat dripping off my nose to soak into the wooden floor below me, and push again. Eight.

I focus on the pain, tasting the metallic tang on my tongue and savoring the electric fire that runs up from my elbows to my spine. Soon enough, I may not feel anything at all except the eternal satisfaction of vengeance before Peter's men tear me apart. Nine.

One more. I can do this. My elbows are shaking, but I can make it. Don't cheat yourself, there's nothing that can bring defeat faster than cheating yourself... now PUSH! I push, and in my mind I see the fire rolling across the concrete ceiling of the parking garage, hungry and reaching for me after it's already taken my parents' lives. It's coming, ten years later now to claim me, but claim me it will...

Ten. I kick over and land on my feet, shaking out my arms. I don't need my pills yet, in fact since the night with Jackson I've only had to take them once. Still, the image of the explosion is hot in my brain, and I have to do something constructive before the anger morphs into depression. I know the pattern, but I'm going to fight it this time.

I grab the sandbag next to my handstand bars and lift it, whipping the forty-five-pound bag up and onto my shoulders. I start crossing the floor of my loft with long, lunging strides. Each one brings me nearly to the floor before I force myself to rise and take the next long step.

I'm on my second trip back across the loft when my computer beeps from the corner. Darcy's little setup on the shipping company she wants me to crack is tougher than I thought it'd be, and I wonder if she's calling me on time. I still have thirty-six hours left on the deadline that she gave me though, even if my tools are still barely chipping away at the firewall, still searching for that elusive crack. I know one has to be there, so it's just a matter of patience, processing power, and tools.

I set my sandbag down and see that I have an IRC chat window up on my screen. Only Darcy and a few others have my IRC handle, although it's not that hard to figure out if you know my hacker name. I mean, CDGrace and Coup De Grace aren't really all that different, after all.

But I don't know this IRC handle at all. Blue Sakura... intriguing. Maybe it's one of Darcy's Japanese contacts?

CDG- Hello.

BS- You're a hard woman to find.

CDG- I prefer my privacy. Who are you?

BS- An ally.

CDG- An ally? In what? I can count my allies on one hand.

BS- An ally who agrees with your vendetta against Peter DeLaCoeur.

I'm tempted to close the window now and reset my router. It'll cost me Darcy's contract, and six thousand dollars because of it, but this person knows who I am. I'm reaching for the power button when Blue Sakura pops up again.

BS- Please don't shut me off. I'm really not trying to expose you or hurt you. I messaged you to warn you.

I pause, my finger hovering over my power button, and go back to my keyboard.

CDG- About?

BS- Nathan Black has found out where you live. He's passed along that information. You need to get out of there.

CDG- If they want to come here, they can. Makes my job easier. Little messier, but a lot easier.

BS- Please watch your back, in any case. You deserve closure.

CDG- What do you know about closure?

BS- You're not the only one who's lost a parent because of Peter DeLaCoeur. Be careful.

The IRC window says that Blue Sakura has left the room, and I consider what just happened. Blue Sakura, huh? Makes sense... Andrea. That you found me at all online tells me that you've got some skills yourself. I run a backtrace on her IP and see that she's also using at least one signal relay, as the address says that Blue Sakura is currently on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica. Doubtful at best.

I could use my tools to continue running the backtrace, but I don't need to. It'd be easier just to get Andrea's phone number if I really want or need to contact her again. I've had access to that particular database for years. Instead, I go back to my workout, not letting myself get distracted. I've still got three hundred pushups to do, and then I'll go into my form training. Without a lot of partners, I have to keep my skills up as best I can, and that means lots and lots of mental imagery while I drill on poor substitutes for real people.

I wonder if Andrea can be a resource? There are so many things I can't verify yet, the things that can really take my campaign against Peter DeLaCoeur from just harassment to putting him behind bars. Not that I want it to stop there, but it's a start. The dirty cops, the mob connections, the bodies dropped off in the swamps or somewhere in the Mississippi... if I can verify those, I can really put the pressure on him. Maybe not enough to get him into a court of law, but certainly enough that his allies would move to distance themselves. Without their support, the walls he's carefully built over the years would surely start to crumble. If I can take down enough of those walls, maybe I can get him out of his fortress.

As I start my first set of fifty pushups, I think about the juiciest case I'd like to connect Peter to. He's no longer in office, but Dutch Landry is from one of the two biggest political families in this city. The Landrys and the Morrels have traded the mayor's office back and forth in five of the last six administrations. His son is currently on the city council and has a good shot of running for mayor himself in three years.

But Dutch... Dutch Landry was the type of mayor loved by the press, and hated by the underclass. Virginia and Darcy showed me the evidence firsthand, but hell, I grew up seeing it often enough in Virginia's foster care. I saw the drugs, the street crime that was only checked when the police rolled through in paramilitary fashion. I saw classmates show up with wounds from both police and gang bullets, and I know that a lot of the guns were bought through Dutch Landry's connections. The drugs for sure came in with his authorization. Of course, someone had to arrange transport for all of that, and wouldn't you know, Peter DeLaCoeur knew some friends among the longshoremen who were willing to look the other way as the shipments flooded the Port of New Orleans.

It's how Peter's stayed in business so long. He doesn't directly touch anything. Instead, he makes introductions, facilitates communication between interested parties, and collects his middleman's percentage regardless. He's the ultimate in one-stop criminal shopping. You want it, he knows a guy.

He's completely crooked, but there's no hard evidence. His business dealings are done face to face with cash on the table most of the time, and the IRS thinks he gets his money through renting residential properties in the Lower Ninth Ward. Hell, in their estimation the man's a saint, owning so many Section 8 properties. He's not looking out for anyone but himself, though—he filters his money through those houses.

Say you have a house that you're renting for a thousand dollars a month. Sometimes housing assistance provides full credit for rentals, and sometimes they only provide partial credit. Peter DeLaCoeur only rents to those with partial credit. The government gives him between three hundred and five hundred a month... and the rest of the thousand comes out of his illegal business. He makes friends with the IRS and HUD, who think his fifty houses are all rented out to families in need. Meanwhile, the families think he's renting to them cheap on the down low.

He's just using those same poor families as a cover, since the funds he's filtering are in fact coming from the same drugs and guns that are killing the neighborhoods he owns. He makes even more profit from the Section 8 money. I have to admit, it's a smooth scam, but it's just one of half a dozen that he runs.

If I could just prove it... maybe Andrea can help with that. It'd damage him more than just exposing an embarrassing affair. I don't know. In the meantime, I keep doing my pushups, even though my chest and shoulders are screaming at me at this point.

Someone knocks on my door and I pull my right leg up, bounding to my feet. I approach the door slowly, since it's one of only two entrances to my loft. The other entrance is the old freight elevator that connects to the boxing gym downstairs. Unlike the door, I can control the elevator entrance fully.

Next to the door is one of my home defense weapons. After all the years of martial arts training, you'd think that I'd have something exotic like sai or a wakizashi sword. Maybe a hundred years ago, but what I have instead is a Glock 18. They're highly illegal since they're fully automatic, but since I don't officially exist as far as the law's concerned, I'm not worried about illegally owning this gun. If I need to, I can fire all fifteen rounds through the door in less than a second, and whoever's unlucky enough to be on the other side is going to get turned into Swiss cheese.

I pick up the Glock and flick the fire selector switch from safe to semi-auto, and look through my peephole. I really should invest in a higher tech security system, but it hasn't been a priority.

Whoever it is knocks again as I open the cover on my peephole, and my fingers go numb when I see who it is. I'm only dimly aware that I drop the cover on the peephole. Jackson?

“Open the door please, Kat. I'm alone, and we need to talk.”

“What are you doing here, Jackson?” I yell through the door. “Don't try and knock the thing down either, it's steel core.”

Actually, my door isn't steel core, it's just a plain hollow metal door, but that's beside the point. If Jackson is alone, then just what the hell is he doing here?

“Please Kat, open the door,” Jackson repeats. “It's just me... I want to talk, that's all. Come on Kat, it's been ten years. If our friendship meant anything to you... I just want to talk.”

Against my better judgment, I lower my Glock for a moment and unlock the door, stepping back before raising my gun again. “It's open.”