Veronica Stone is a technology genius and inventor of the groundbreaking holographic cell phone. Her phone is harmless, an entertaining bit of high-tech wizardry, until it falls into the wrong hands. She is unaware of a wasting disease, invented by a Cold War Russian scientist, who lacked the technology to make his illness take effect. Now, years after the Cold War, a nefarious Japanese businessman somehow has gotten his hands on this scientist's notes, but he requires Veronica's phone to enact his horrific plan. He employs Veronica's invention to create a new and virtually indestructible weapon the world has never seen. Of course, she realizes none of this when she is seduced by the businessman's offer of fortune and fame by agreeing to give him the application of her invention. After making this agreement, she is soon framed for the attempted murder of the president of the United States, so Veronica is on the run, in search of a cure for the horrible disease she unknowingly helped to weaponize. Veronica will need more than her intellect to clear her name; she'll need calm calculation and bravery to save her nation, her family, and her life. THE WEAPON By HEATHER HOPKINS Abbott Press Copyright © 2014 Heather Hopkins All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4582-1386-0 CHAPTER 1 Veronica Stone stood behind the podium, looking over the crowd of CEOs and government bureaucrats in front of her. She liked the effect her appearance had on the room. As usual, the conference was 98 percent men, and every one of them was staring at her and fiddling with their wedding rings. As the leading technologist in the world, and because she studiously kept pictures of herself out of trade magazines and newspapers, most people assumed someone as brilliant and successful as she was would look like a female Bill Gates. Veronica was quite the contrary. She was tall, raven- haired, and curvaceous, with startling ice-blue eyes and the classic features of a silent film star. In fact, when people saw her on the street, they assumed she was a model or a movie actress. She kept her picture under wraps. When she was starting StoneCorp, the industry and the stock market would have never taken her seriously if they knew what she looked like. Besides, keeping her appearance mysterious heightened the shock and opened up company wallets. Alex liked to say Veronica's face was the face that launched a thousand microchips. Veronica took a long sip from her water glass, smiling over it to accentuate the suppleness of her lips. She guessed that the pathetic, fidgeting men in the front would make passes at her later at the reception. The conference had been boring, as usual. She continued reciting her speech from memory, having decided long ago that notes were beneath her. "You might have heard of this. In 1872, near Talcott, West Virginia, John Henry, a black steel driver for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad entered a contest with a steam drill. Stream drills were a new technology, unknown to the men cutting through mountains of shale with their bare hands all the way from where we sit here in air-conditioned comfort in Washington, D.C., to Cincinnati, Ohio. That morning, John Henry, the strongest man on the line, and his shaker, the man who risked death by placing the bit in front of John Henry's hammer, lined up alongside Charles Burleigh's new drill. Burleigh, a carpetbagger salesman in a new top hat, had set up the contest. Unless John Henry beat Burleigh's drill, the railroad would buy the new machines, and the infernal technology would make steel drivers and shakers obsolete." The crowd was rapt, as usual. But as Veronica scanned the room in pleasure, she noticed a Japanese gentleman she didn't recognize, glance at his wristwatch. The platinum and diamond-studded band shot the room's lights back at her in a fan of color. The man was dressed in an extremely expensive suit, older, with a white crew cut and the shrewd gaze of someone who was no longer capable of surprise, or of being put off guard by Veronica's looks. He leaned back in his chair and held something up to his ear, chatting amiably into it as if he was sitting alone in his back garden. Everyone was so busy staring at her; they failed to notice this man. He was talking into a cell phone the size of a quarter. She'd never seen anything like it. She took an ice cube from her glass with her lips and let it drop back into the water. The Japanese man was lost in his conversation and failed to see it. The man next to him dropped his fork. Veronica continued, "The gun went off and John Henry hammered, he and his shaker moving faster than wind, their faces sweaty, their muscles tensing and relaxing, faster and faster, their cheeks billowing, their hearts thundering in unison, the two of them turning the shale to dust. The machine followed woefully behind them, spitting smoke and fire, the salesman riding it like a mechanical bull." She looked up again. This was her favorite portio