She really had no business being up on the roof in the middle of the night. Any normal, sane person would already be in bed, deep in their dreams. She hadn't pretended to be a normal person in a very long time. Her soft soled boots barely made noise as she walked towards the edge. Nothing about Hell's Kitchen had ever been this quiet during the night. Not in the last couple of weeks since she had moved into the neighborhood. If it wasn't sightings about the Devil of Hell's Kitchen, then it was rumors that the Punisher wasn't dead and he was gunning down people just like always. Jade didn't really care about either of them. She had made sure to never leave any evidence behind that could possibly be followed back to her. The last thing she wanted was to have to deal with either of those two.
Over the ledge, Jade looked down at the semi-busy street. She wasn't the only one awake this late at night. Down the street, near a darkened alley a couple of guys hung out. They were casually smoking and having a good time. Up and down the street a couple of randoms walked along the sidewalk. Most on their way home while others headed towards work. None of them were the person she was looking for. Jade shivered as the night breeze crept through the thin barrier of her jacket. She still hadn't gone shopping for one that would actually be able to handle a north winter. Hell, she didn't even want to think about what she would do when snow began to fall. A small part of her hoped that bad guys hated the cold too and hibernated during the winter months.
She had never had good luck like that though.
"Watch where you're going buddy."
A commotion started down the street as a man stumbled away from one of the guys he had bumped into. The group moved as one as they straightened and looked as if they were about the start following him. The man half turned to them and seemed to mumble something as he held his arms up. Whatever he had said seemed to do its job because just as quickly, the group lost their interest in him. The man had turned the corner and seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He stumbled as he continued to walk down the street, using the sides of the buildings to support himself. Anyone who passed him by probably assumed the man was drunk.
Jade watched him carefully, leaning her elbows against the ledge. The man was too alert to be drunk. From where she stood, she could see the way he kept looking up and down the street. This man was clearly trying to get away from something. He was favoring his right side and she guessed that someone had gotten to him just recently. Fortunately for him, he wasn't the man she was looking for. Jade kept her eyes on him until he got to the other end of the street and turned right. She raised her eyebrow at that. The Russian's (whatever was left of them) had recently taken up resident in one of the stores down that way. It could have been a coincident, or maybe the fools were trying to regroup.
That was one thing Jade had quickly learned about the people of Hell's Kitchen. It didn't matter how many times they got knocked down to the ground, for some inexplicable reason they always got back up. It was impressive, probably would have been more impressive if it weren't such assholes that got back up. Jade perked up, her thoughts forgotten as she spotted a hooded figure walking down the side of the street in which the building she stood on was. Now that was odd. On this side of the street, the light post seemed to have blown a fuse and had sent this little part of Hell's Kitchen into darkness. The person disappeared in and out of the light from the other side of the street, but that didn't matter. Jade had gotten used to seeing in the dark.
A shadow moving in darkness wasn't hard to spot if you knew what you were looking for, and Jade had all her attention on him.
For the last couple of weeks, like clockwork Jonas Compton would walk down this specific street at two in the morning. He always kept his face hidden by wearing the same black hoodie and dark blue jeans. He was a family man and he worked for some elusive business that made some product that Jade couldn't remember. Jonas worked in the marketing department and while they had been in Florida, he had kept a strict schedule. Day and night nothing changed for months. He went to work, he came home, and then on the weekends he would go somewhere with his wife and kids. It had nearly driven Jade insane.
Then one night while she had been parked outside his house about to fall asleep, a random black car had pulled. Jonas got in with a traveling bag and Jade had followed him to the airport. Together they got on a plane to New York and they had been here ever since. After all these month, Jade knew him better than anyone else. The apartment she was currently renting looked like a scene from a murder show and she was sure someone would call the cops on her if she ever let anyone in. Jonas' photos probably covered every inch of her living room.
Jade didn't have a problem admitting that her detailed investigating had probably turned into a dark obsession. It was the risk everyone took when being on a job for so long. But tonight all of it would end. The obsession that seemed to last a lifetime, the cold days and even colder nights in New York all together. If she was lucky, Jade would be on a plane in a couple of hours and heading back to Florida and hopefully hiding away for a couple of months. The pay from this job would make sure that she wouldn't have to worry about money for a while. First though, she had to finish the job.
Like always, Jonas made his way up the steps of the building Jade was on. He used a key to open the glass door and let himself in. Jade closed her eyes for a quick second and took a deep breath before she straightened and headed back towards the door that would take her downstairs. The building had been blacklisted for years. No one wanted anything to do with it. The banks couldn't sell it and the state refused to tear it down. It was a part of history apparently. Then the night her and Jonas made their way to New York, the building had been bought by someone using a fake name. Jade still hadn't been able to make the connection between Jonas and the purchase. The timing fit and it made sense, but something about that didn't feel right and Jade hadn't doubted her instincts yet.
The door slammed closed behind her, but she didn't pay it any mind. Besides her and Jonas, there's wasn't anyone else inside the building. Not that he would know that. Just a few hours ago, she had gone knocking on every single door and told everyone to evacuate. It was some sort of gas leak and that the owner had paid for all of them to get rooms at a motel a few streets away. Jade had used Jonas' company credit card to pay for it all. That would be a nasty surprise for sure. She took the stairs calmly, knowing that Jonas wouldn't be able to escape if he somehow got the feeling that something was wrong. She had rigged the front door to lock behind him. There was no way out except the roof or through a window.
The building only had three floors. The first floor was the reception area and held the mail slots for the apartments. There was a custodial closet that looked like it hadn't been used in years, the manager's office, and a bathroom. Nothing about the first floor seemed any different from other buildings. It was the apartments that held interesting things.
When Jade had fallen into this career path, she had known that she had to be ready to face the worst of the worst. Sometimes she thought she had already seen it. Then a new job would come along and show her that she really hadn't seen anything yet. Guns, drugs, hell, even photographs didn't faze her as much anymore. She hadn't expected videos though. They were really living in a world where everyone recorded everything. She had taken them and the photographs and had put them in a mailbox. Sometime tomorrow they would be delivered to the police and all hell would break loose.
"What the hell?" Jonas shouted, his voice echoing up the stairs to her.
Jade climbed down the last set and watched as he stepped out of an apartment and slammed the door shut behind him. Number 19. The place she had found most of the videos. She could only guess that he was either blackmailing someone or they all shared in some sort of sick pleasure together. Jade was willing to bet that it was a bit of both.
"You look rattled Jonas," Jade told him as she stopped at the bottom of the stairs, "Bad night?"
Jonas turned to face her, his hood was pushed back and Jade looked at the face she had become so familiar with. He looked like a normal guy; dirty blonde hair, average build, blue eyes. Nothing about him really stood out and maybe that was what made him so dangerous. Bad guys didn't look like they used to anymore. They adapted to the environment around them and hid in it easily.
"You," he accused her.
Jade widened her eyes and pointed at herself, 'me?' she silently mouthed the words.
"This is trespassing," he told her and gathered himself together, trying to appear bigger. Not that it was a hard thing to do. Jonas was easily pushing six feet tall, while Jade was 5ft 4" on her best days. "You don't think I haven't seen you following me around, huh? I'm sure the police would love to hear all about this."
"That's a fantastic idea Jonas," Jade told him as she trailed her hand along the wall, peeling the wallpaper, "why don't you go ahead and call them and they can come down here and question us on what's happening."
He didn't think she would call his bluff, Jade realized as she watched the color drain from his face. In her opinion, people like Jonas were some of the worst in their crimes, but turned into scared little rodents when they got caught.
"Who sent you?" he seemed to shrink in on himself, "Was it Juarez? Cuz I'm getting his package, I just need more time."
Who the hell was Juarez? Jade wanted to scream, "I don't work for Juarez." She walked closer to him and finally his eyes left her face and started paying attention to what really mattered. Her fingers dragged along the wall beside her and the wallpaper crumbled and the wood beneath started rotting away.
His eyes widened and he stumbled back into the door frame, "You're one of those freaks."
"I think they prefer mutants and no, I'm not one of them," Jade smiled.
If anyone heard his screams, no one had made to do anything about it as far as she could tell. Jade stepped out of the building a few moments later to a slightly less busy street. The group of guys were still hanging out at the other end, but none of them bothered to look her way. Screams in the night weren't something new in this part of the city. They never would be. Slipping her hands into her jacket pocket, she pulled out her gloves and slipped them on. In the past, she had always warn them when handling her jobs. Fingerprints were the easiest ways to find someone, until she realized that whatever she left behind wasn't capable of leaving any type of trace. The rotted wood would be so damaged that the cops wouldn't be able to lift anything from it.
Or the body for that matter.
As far as the world was concerned, Jade Vega didn't exist, simply because she couldn't leave any type of DNA behind. It had always been funny when she had to take drug test for old jobs or be fingerprinted when she got caught by cops. She would past the test with flying colors even if she had just finished smoking a joint and the cops would never get a hit on her even if it had been the twentieth time she had been brought in. They couldn't pull up her photos if her name was different and her prints never matched.
Jade walked down the street, ignoring the buzzing phone in her pocket. Probably the wife calling to see if the job had been done. She had met plenty of vengeful women before (they were her preferred clients), but Marie Compton took the cake. Most of her clients never wanted to know the gritty details of Jade's job. Most of them happy knowing that something was finally being done to help them, but Marie wanted her husband to suffer.
She would have to call her back in the morning, because while one part of the job was done the name Juarez kept echoing around her mind. If Jonas hadn't bought the building, could it have been Juarez? Was there something bigger going on than just one asshole? Jade would have to go through all her files again and see if she had missed something simply because she hadn't known there was something more she was supposed to be looking for.
The night had gotten even colder by the time Jade reached her apartment. She slipped inside, keeping her head down to avoid the camera seeing her face. Her apartment wasn't anything special, probably a little too large for just one person, but she liked having the space. It was on the third floor and the only way anyone could reach it was by taking the stairs. For some odd reason the elevator just wouldn't stop on this floor. It went to all other five floors just fine and when Jade had found out, she had smirked at what she called her continued tango with bad luck.
No one else lived on the floor either. Rent was definitely cheaper than the other apartments because of it, but it seemed no one really wanted to make the journey up and down every single day. Jade honestly didn't mind having the entire floor to herself. She came and went at such odd hours that it was just easier not having to explain to some nosey neighbor. Once inside, she locked the door behind her, making sure to turn the two locks and place the chain on the hook. The building had never had any problems in the past, but she wasn't about to tempt fate like that. Jade kicked off her boots, not caring where they landed. She would just be putting them on again in the morning now that she knew there was another job to do.
