The metal door of the safe was cool against Jack's cheek. With her right hand she spun the dial slowly, listening for the tell-tale click with her ears and the tips of her fingers. Her eyes were nearly closed—she said it helped her listen better—but under her lids she watched her partner across the room. His gun was out, his finger on the trigger, but he was clearly nervous. Jack made a mental note to find a different trigger man next time, one that wasn't so twitchy.
After a few more seconds, the lock opened with a soft click. Jack moved back, so smooth her partner didn't even notice. Another point against him, she thought. The safe was old, but well used, and the hinges didn't make a sound as she eased it open. The dark room made it difficult to see what was inside, so she raised her tiny penlight and clicked it on. The sound caused her partner to jump. Idiot, she thought to herself, sending him a nasty glare. He had the decency to look sheepish.
She ignored the gaudy jewelry and stacks of cred chips in the main part of the safe and reached back to the back wall. She aimed the light toward the wall and traced the line of the hidden compartment. Jack bit her lip as she tried to see where the compartment opened. A soft shuffling made her aware that her partner was getting restless, but she couldn't be rushed right now. The actual safe might be old, but this compartment was new. She closed her eyes and felt the crack where it separated from the wall, fingers questing for any small variation in the metal. She'd nearly given up when she noticed a small switch, one that would have been invisible to her naked eye. Jack opened her eyes and wedged her fingernail under the switch, flicking it open with a hard flick. The pneumatic lock opened with a soft whoosh of air, and she aimed her light at the dark square and the single item inside. Pocketing it without a sound, she shut the inner safe and reengaged the lock.
Her partner was staring at her as she shut the door and spun the dial. She raised both eyebrows and used two fingers to point to the door. He nodded and raised his gun, using it to lead the way out of the house. They made it out without any problems and Jack smiled to herself. The hack of the Senator's security system was one of her finest: even the vid feeds would look as if no one had been there. Even one guard dog would have made their job much more difficult, but Jack had found that rich people were far too dependent on their electronic security to think about its faults.
They walked down the sidewalk, looking for all the world like a pair of well-off teenagers out for a late-night pleasure stroll. Her partner's gun was concealed under an expensive, stylish jacket. Jack had hidden a large knife in the small of her back, tucked into the waistband of a pair of very expensive jeans, along with two other, smaller knives elsewhere. Their fingers intertwined in a semblance of young love. A few blocks from their mark's house, Jack slipped behind the wheel of a luxury sports car and drove the pair of them away from the ritzy neighborhood of Twelve Pines and toward the city's ghetto.
Jack navigated the narrow backstreets of the city and slid the sports car into an underground parking structure. Careful now, one of her previously hidden knives hidden against her wrist, the pair made their way up the stairs to a disreputable office. Jack knocked on the door, then barged in without waiting for an answer. "We got it," she said without preamble.
The man behind the desk was large—not fat, but large. John Fleming stood 6'7", and at one time he'd had the build of a pro athlete. Since then, he'd gone soft, his muscle turned to fat. One hand could easily envelope both of Jack's, which made him great for intimidation and muscle, but shit for anything involving stealth. A few of his crew, mostly of low-level hoodlums and a few teenagers that had nothing else going for them, lounged in sofas and beanbag chairs scattered around the room. Jack ignored them all and walked straight up to the desk and dropped her bag on it. "Now, where's my money, John-boy?"
John reached for the bag, but Jack tugged it closer. "I just want to see the merchandise first, my girl." Jack raised her eyebrows. "Fine." John raised his hands in surrender. "I trust you, Jackie." Jack sneered at the diminutive, but didn't say anything. John may have looked like a big, stupid man, but she knew he was anything but. He unlocked the right-hand drawer of his desk and pulled out a cred chip. He looked at it closely for a second, then tossed it toward Jack. She snapped it up, and ran it through the cred tracker on her wrist. The agreed-upon number popped up, and she reached into her bag and tossed him the data square. John smiled greedily and grabbed it. "Did you have any trouble?"
Jack was already halfway across the room. "None," she said. "But you ought to find someone a little less twitchy to be my partner next time," she threw out in passing, letting her partner alone to explain that tidbit to his boss.