The Vance Venture Ch. 08

Author's Note:

So we've got a team, and they've got a mission. Time to get them together and make a plan. I suppose this would be the conclusion of the first act of this little play, as we're switching gears next chapter. I hope you've been enjoying the read so far. If you've missed the first 7 chapters, the first half of this one may make little sense, and there's plenty of tale yet to tell.

Either way, enjoy the mission briefing...

o

THE PRE-OP

Shortly after five the next afternoon, the crew began arriving at the offices of A.I. Jack had been there since three. He'd closed the office for the day in preparation for the Pre-Operation Meeting, at which all the details for the Vance job would be decided. Research and prep were all but finished, for this operation was nothing if not short notice—all that remained were execution and contingency planning.

Kiki and Sonya arrived first, the petite brunette in blue leather and the taller, more buxom blonde in white. They pulled up to the curb together on their motorcycles, Kiki on her midnight blue Ninja ZX, Sonya astride her red-on-white Fireblade. He watched them dismount and remove their helmets, hanging them on the bikes as a pickup truck drove by packed with hooting and hollering teenage boys. Jack heard only muffled cries through the thick glass, but watched the girls wave after the truck, giggling and laughing at the howling youths. Jack couldn't help but smile.

Together the girls had dug up an exorbitant amount of information on Vance and his dealings, but it had been mostly superficial smokescreen, and they knew it. So using Kiki's data, Cy had infiltrated Vance's offices in the Vance Tech building downtown, as well as his private condo and sprawling estate, linking his security and offsite systems to A.I., and therefore to Kiki. Hardwired to his system, Kiki would know more about Vance than he did himself, and Jack understood she and Sonya had spent most of the night digging. What they brought to the meeting wouldn't change their plans much, he hoped, but it would tell them all they needed to know about Maximilian Vance.

Jack rose from where he had been reclining in a leather chair to greet the beautiful ladies, a smile growing on his face at their ever-present youthful exuberance. Kiki was twenty-one, Sonya twenty-three.

"I'm totally serious, Kiki," Sonya said with a laugh as she unzipped her jacket, revealing a tight white tank top beneath. "He wants you."

"Well, maybe. But only because I'm his boss and I'm hot," Kiki replied with a smile as she shed her own blue leather, under which she wore a white tee shirt, knotted up below her breasts to expose her belly. Across her chest was written HACK THE PLANET, and a diamond sparkled from her navel. "It makes for a good fantasy. But I've seen the way he looks at you. He's just dying to fuck you!"

Both girls giggled, cutting their argument short as Jack approached.

"It sounds to me like he wants you both," Jack offered, then added with a knowing grin, "I can't say I blame him. Who is this poor guy?"

"Just Stewie," Kiki said dismissively. "This geeky valet at the hotel."

Sonya looked mildly appalled as she turned on Kiki.

"He's not a geek. I think he's kinda cute. He's got potential," she said, looking defiantly from Kiki to Jack, then added, with a sharp glance at the pretty brunette next to her, "and he doesn't like being called Stewie, you know."

"Oh, I know," Kiki said, a playful smile bending her slim lips.

Jack watched the exchange with subtle amusement, grinning and shaking his head at Kiki's punch line. He had met Stewart. Sonya toyed with him constantly.

"Everything's ready on the display table in the conference room, if you ladies would care to take a look?"

Sonya and Kiki both nodded, and then drifted past him toward the room at the back of the building. Kiki smacked Jack's ass as she went by, and he turned to see her giggle as she chased Sonya across the room. His eyes lingered on their lithe forms as they walked away, appreciating their agile grace, that languid feminine stride, and those tight leather-clad asses.

When he turned back to the front of the building, he saw a deceptively rusty old pickup pull up to the curb behind the pair of sleek speed machines the girls had arrived on. He saw Cy's dark head emerge from the driver's side, shaved clean and wrapped in Ray-Bans. The big merc walked around the rear of the truck, to the passenger side, and Jack noticed he was dressed entirely in black: shoes, slacks and fine silk shirt.

When Cy opened the passenger door a woman in red rose from the seat, long sunset curls falling on an elegant, if somewhat concealing crimson dress: Lena. The dress was lovely, but not her usual style; it was long, calf-length, with shoulders and sleeves, and revealed absolutely no cleavage. Jack knew Lena to be quite proud of her voluptuous breasts, and rarely did she hide them.

In fact, they both looked a little overdressed. He wondered what the occasion was.

When they approached the front entrance, Lena, in more than one step, betrayed a hint of a limp. By the time they walked inside, Jack was growing concerned.

Jack nodded a greeting to Cy, who remained expressionless behind his sunglasses. Once he got a closer look at Lena, he was sure something was amiss.

"Hello Lena. Are you all right?"

Lena's face rose to meet his, her eyes concealed behind dark sunglasses. Jack could see several small abrasions and cuts on her face, and small transparent bandages covering wounds on her forehead and on the bridge of her nose. She otherwise looked perfect; her hair was clean and styled, her dress immaculate.

"Don't I look all right?" she asked mildly, her face an emotionless mask as she came to a slow stop before him.

"You look beautiful."

"Then don't ask stupid questions."

She walked around him, taking care not to touch him as she passed, and Jack caught the scent of lavender as he watched her go. He said nothing, but turned to Cy, who removed his sunglasses to reveal a subtle mirror of Jack's own puzzled concern. Cy waited for Lena to reach the hall, and the conference room beyond, before he spoke confidentially to Jack.

"She will tell me nothing, but I know it has something to do with Wolfe. She went to see him yesterday."

Jack nodded, his features sombre. He could already guess what might have happened, as no doubt Cy had as well. Jack replied truthfully.

"At my instruction."

Cy said nothing, but his demeanour shifted, his puzzlement turning now on his employer, and Jack thought he felt a hint of hostility there as well. Jack didn't feel a need to explain himself, and had grown quiet in thought. He turned to head to the conference room.

"Let's do this meeting."

Cy followed silently.

Jack gestured for Cy to enter the conference room first, but then only leaned in the doorway after him instead of following.

"Lena. A word?"

Lena hesitated a moment, silent behind her opaque black shades. Then she rose demurely, brushing politely past Jack as she exited the room. Cy's steel gaze followed her out, locking onto Jack's for a moment after she left. Jack definitely saw a simmering hostility there now, and concluded Lena's wounds must be more severe than they appeared.

Kiki and Sonya merely sat at the table watching the two men with keen interest.

"Be right back," he said curtly, and then closed the door with a soft click.

Lena stood in the hall, waiting with her eyes downcast. She removed her sunglasses.

Jack put his hands gently on her shoulders, crouching to seek out her hazel eyes, hidden behind a veil of sunset curls.

"What happened?"

She lifted her gaze to meet his, brushing a lock of curly crimson out of her face to reveal her eyes, smouldering with intensity, one of them puffy and swollen.

"I was really pissed at you last night for sending me up there, Jack." Her eyes flared as she nodded to enforce her words. "Really pissed."

Jack waited patiently, his instinct telling him what must have happened, but his mind dreading her coming words all the same. Lena drew a slow breath as she glared at him, but then her gaze softened as she released it in a long sigh. She looked back at the floor, shaking her head.

"I just got up there too late," she began, her voice soft, stricken. "I had so much to do, by the time I arrived it was getting dark. I could have turned back. I should have. I should have waited until morning."

She lifted her gaze to his again, her eyes determined.

"But I didn't. Like Harlan said when I got there: I took a risk." She smiled wanly. "I paid for it."

Jack opened his mouth to comment, to reassure, to say something, though he really knew not what, but Lena raised her hand, forestalling his words, and shook her head.

"It doesn't matter what happened. I'm a little banged up, but you know me—I'll heal. I intend to have a little talk with Wolfe when he comes back, but I know it's not entirely his fault, either. I won't hurt him too badly."

She smiled, but Jack found it more malicious than mirthful. For Wolfe's sake, he hoped that she cooled down a little over the next few days.

"If you want out of this one, I'll understand."

Jack would have some rethinking to do if he was going to be short a body, but he was more than willing to make the sacrifice. When it came right down to it, his team was always the top priority.

But Lena was shaking her head even before he finished the question.

"Come on, Jack. You'd be lost without me." A spark of humour at last lit her beautiful eyes. "Besides, risk is part of what we do, and part of what I love about it. Now let's figure this thing out."

She tried to turn away, to re-enter the conference room, but Jack held her a moment as he looked apologetically into her eyes, his mouth fighting to form words that wouldn't come. After a long moment watching him struggle, Lena smiled up at him and nodded.

"I know Jack. I know." She patted his hand with hers, as though he were the one who needed consoling, and then removed it from her shoulder. She turned back to the door and opened it on the waiting conference room.

Jack took a deep breath, and then followed her. He felt like an asshole, but sometimes shit happens. As Lena so aptly put it, risk was certainly part of the job.

Cy watched them both enter, Lena moving to sit beside him while Jack made his way to the head of the conference table. Sonya and Kiki both looked on with keen interest, but remained wise enough to say nothing.

The conference room itself was little more than a large rectangular space, brightly lit by windows lining the back wall, streaming in afternoon sunlight. Windows along the wall opposite spied upon the spacious reception area out front, one-way glass that looked like a huge mirror from the front desk and atrium. Vertical blinds, all currently open, hung across the windows. Long white dry-erase boards hung to either side of the door, while a huge flat screen monitor, currently dark, dominated the wall opposite. In the centre of the room stood the long table, with ten comfortable leather swivel chairs surrounding it, four currently occupied.

Jack touched a panel under the edge of the table and the darkened glass surface came alive with light, like a waking computer monitor. Photographs taken of the Vance estate, daylight shots by Jack yesterday and night pics by Cy last night, shone brightly up at them next to detailed blueprints of the sprawling place retrieved digitally by Kiki and Sonya. Treatments and reconciliation sketches, maps, plans, and a plethora of information shone up at them as the four chairs were emptied and the team stood to get to work.

"Excellent job on prep, everybody. Thank you." He looked at Lena in particular as he said this, and then rubbed his hands together in anticipation before addressing everyone. "Okay. Let's begin..."

Three hours later everything was decided, planned, and memorized. Jack, Cy, Lena, and Sonya would begin tomorrow morning at the Vance estate with the client debriefing and some paperwork. Vance's household staff would be escorted to a motel if Vance had not already done so, and their quarters and the guest house would be sealed off, leaving only the main mansion and adjacent pool house to be concerned with. When Vance left the premises, the Cy Contingency would be decided.

Would Cy be accompanying Vance on his little excursion? They wouldn't be sure until they knew what precautions Vance was taking. Kiki had discovered little about the trip: a departure time from the Vector Lake airstrip with few details about accompaniment and no destination names or contact information. Whoever he was meeting with, he was doing a damn fine job of blurring the trail.

Kiki had tracked his private and business accounts for the last five years and noticed some peculiar activity to say the least, and in more than one instance finding the name Ricardo Spinoza. It was all circumstantial, Vance's systems were intricate and vast, but if—as Kiki seemed certain—Vance was in business with the Spinoza Syndicate, and if—as she suspected—he was high enough up the echelons of that insidious organization that he dealt with Spinoza himself, they had better hope that this was not the business relationship he wished to sever, or Cy would definitely need to covertly tag along. The Spinoza Syndicate dealt in everything from drugs to arms to black market slavery, and was a powerful, international criminal organization.

Whether Cy stayed or went, the schedule would remain the same. Sonya would escort Violet to school on Friday, just to be safe, even though Vance probably wouldn't be severing anything until at least Saturday morning. After school and for the rest of the weekend, either Lena, Kiki, or Sonya would be close to Violet at all times, rotating in eight-hour shifts. Jack and Alex (and Cy if he remained) would watch over the grounds of the estate. Barring any problems, Vance would return on Sunday morning and A.I. would go home.

As the meeting drew to a close, everyone in agreement, Jack reflected on how few times any operation had gone as planned. It was certainly a rare occurrence, but he knew the plans had to be laid nonetheless. Careful preparation was the one thing they could control; once they were out there, anything could happen.

They adjourned to the main reception area afterward, and Sonya ran upstairs to get some tasty beverages. She returned with three bottles of Bud and a bottle of Dom, two crystal flutes held between her fingers. Jack, Lena, and Cy took their beers, Jack twisting the cap off his while Cy popped the other two with his thumbnails and handed one to Lena. Sonya squealed, as she always did, when the top exploded from the heavy champagne bottle and sudsy froth erupted from the neck, bringing a smile to everyone's face. She quickly caught the bottle top in her mouth, swallowing the bubbly champagne that gushed from the head until the pressure in the bottle ebbed. Then Kiki held the glasses as Sonya filled them with sparkling wine.

"To another job well planned," Jack began as he held his bottle up, the others joining their drinks to his. "May the execution be as flawless."

"May the client be on the level," Lena hoped.

"May this client not be trying to fuck us over," Kiki amended, and everyone smiled, nodding in eager agreement. That had happened before.

"And speaking of fucking, may I come at least twice tonight!" Sonya finished, and they all laughed before drowning the motley toast in champagne and lager. Even Cy was displaying his hint of a smile, Jack noticed.

The conversation turned from business, becoming livelier as they finished their drinks, but then Cy and Lena began to make for the door.

"You two leaving?"

Jack caught them as they drifted away. Sonya and Kiki giggled over more champagne in the background.

"Nine o'clock reservations," Cy said simply.

Jack looked to Lena, who stepped to him and kissed him gently, her lips soft and forgiving against his.

"You three have fun," she said playfully. "We'll see you in the morning."

Jack nodded as she stepped away from him and turned to follow Cy.

"The Compound at five," he reminded them, and both nodded their ascent as they reached the door. Then they were gone, the tinted glass closing softly behind them, and Jack was left with a only a vivacious brunette and a blonde bombshell.

"So ladies," he said with a sly grin as he turned back to the beautiful young women, "however shall we entertain ourselves this evening?"

"They're not coming back?" asked Sonya, indicating the door with a subtle tilt of her head.

Jack shook his head.

Sonya frowned.

"Oh well." Kiki shrugged, and then her hand snaked out to smack the blonde's tight, leather-bound ass. "I'm hungry, and not for food."

Sonya jumped, Kiki caught her by surprise, and then turned a hurt expression on the petite brunette as she massaged the injury with her hand.

"Hey, easy there, ninja girl."

Kiki smiled.

"You like it."

Sonya grinned at Kiki's sultry expression, her hand still rubbing her tender behind. Jack felt compelled to agree, for he was hungry as well, and like Kiki, not for food. He had a feeling Sonya's toast might ring true before the night was out.

Kiki put her hand on Sonya's, helping her massage her wounded posterior for a moment, and then led her away, both girls smiling seductively at Jack as they passed, to a long leather sofa at the side of the reception area. Jack followed more slowly, his fingers absently unbuttoning his shirt as he crossed the room, his blue eyes focussed on the lovely ladies he was following

Kiki pushed Sonya playfully onto the couch, then knelt before the beautiful blonde. Sonya eagerly began unbuttoning her leather pants as Kiki stripped off her own shirt and tossed it forgotten over her shoulder to land at Jack's feet. He stopped and looked down to see part of the shirt's logo staring up at him from the rumpled heap of cotton, but instead of HACK THE PLANET, he could read only THE PLAN. Jack was not a superstitious man, but he tilted his head as he marvelled momentarily at this strange omen, hopefully a good one. Then he smiled and kicked the shirt aside as he returned his attention straight ahead, the direction a part of him was already straining to point.

Sonya had unbuttoned her pants, and now Kiki was peeling the leathers from Sonya's shapely legs, revealing a noticeable absence of underwear.

"Well, we know what you came here for," Kiki noted, and Jack heard an unmistakeable mirth in her voice.

"Damn right," Sonya purred. "I looove mission briefings."

Kiki tossed Sonya's pants over her shoulder, right into Jack's arms. He peeked inside the jeans, then lifted the leather to his nose, inhaling Sonya's sweet scent as he gazed over the folds of leather into her pale blue eyes. She watched him hungrily a moment before her eyes fluttered closed as Kiki spread her legs and bent her lips to Sonya's secret sweetness. Jack dropped the pants and knelt behind Kiki as she leaned over Sonya, her head moving gently as she licked the delicate folds of Sonya's smouldering pussy.

He gently ran his hands up Kiki's back, then drew them slowly down to her hips. He held her hips steady as he pressed the hardening bulge in his pants against her ass. She pushed back against him, and his cock was crushed maddeningly between them. Blood throbbed through him. Sonya moaned as Kiki administered an expert tongue bathing.

Jack caressed Kiki's sides, his touch searching under her, his large hands reaching forth to cup her pert little breasts, rolling her nipples deftly between his fingers. Kiki ground her hips into his groin, a soft moan rattling in her throat. Sonya stretched her arms languidly above her, her head falling back on the couch cushion as she spread her legs wider with another agreeable moan.