Narration:
Jack had spent the past two days checking out what he could of the girl he'd agreed to harm in exchange for a well-defended place to stay and to provide himself an opportunity to turn the situation into more than that. The intelligence he'd been given by the mysterious man who had given Jack the assignment was helpful in this regard, because while he couldn't keep track of her movements during the day, he went into the mission with a very good idea where she most often tended to be at night.
It was abundantly clear that trying to get to Jada Franklin inside her home would be a difficult proposition at best. Her father, who worked for the mayor's office, had spared no expense when it came to home security. The fence surrounding the house was sturdy and was covered at the top with razors that had been hidden in the design but would nonetheless be damaging; the yard was landscaped in a manner so as to provide no covered approach; the security camera system looked top notch; and then there were the two Rotweillers that prowled the yard by night. All the windows were solidly barred and security stripped, and from what he could tell the door was quite solid and had excellent locks. Jack wondered if the man was mostly afraid of the sort of reprisal Jack had been assigned to inflict, or if he was simply paranoid.
A slightly better proposition was the idea of striking while she was over at a friend's home, something that appeared - both by what Jack had been given and per his own observations - to be a fairly frequent occurrence. This home was sturdy and had fairly good security, but it wasn't a fortress like the Franklin home, and some of the upper-floor windows were often kept open at night. It was still risky, though, because the neighborhood ranked regular police patrols.
Probably the best bet, Jack decided, would be to act while the girl was going to or leaving the studio where she took dance lessions and practiced several times a week. The studio was located in an upper middle class business district, and the office building across the street would offer an excellent view of both the front door - where Jada was dropped off and picked up by her mother, her father or both - and the parking lot. This had the added advantage of providing for the possibility that one or both of the girl's parents might be able to observe her being crippled, as his employer would prefer. The advantage was that the office building looked to be of the climate-controlled sort with no opening windows, which left mostly the roof as a place from which to shoot, and from 12 stories, the angle would be a sharp one, limiting his options at hitting the girl in the knees, as requested. There were other buildings, but none with so good a view, and there were also possibilities like waiting in a car or doing a walk-by, but the first was too likely to attract notice and the second offered very little in the way of time to aim and prepare.
There were other options, of course. Trying to get inside the dance studio and complete the assignment there, for instance. But all of them carried other risks, and he'd not yet had time to look into any of them. Perhaps that would be the next step.
During the course of all this, Jack had plenty of opportunity to develop an impression of Jada and her parents. The father seemed a dour and frankly cold sort of person - pretty unlikeable, really - except when it came to his daughter. The mother, on the other hand, was friendly and appeared witty. And the girl, Jada Franklin, seemed always happy, often excited and full of life and energy.
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