Something Wicked 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)

5: Tattoos aren't worth it, kids

"Ya haraam! Is he OK?"

"Yeah, yeah. He landed on another building like a fucking superhero and kept running, swinging off cell towers into the sunset. He was incredible."

Rayan raised an eyebrow. "There's only one man who can do that kinda shit." He lifted his laptop screen and typed manically into the Police Database, before rotating his screen in my direction.

A serene smile, beautiful black eyes, hair in mussed-up perfection looked back at me.

"That's him," I breathed. "He's stunning, mashallah. Who is he?"

"Ya rab, Jason." Rayan slid exasperated hands down his face. "This is the last dude in the universe you wanna—"

The door swung open. Sylvia clicked into the office on stiletto heels that probably cost more than a month's rent for my shitty Vogel trailer.

"So sorry I'm late, Jason. We got some intel from Dante. A potential Alcor sighting, right here in María."

Sylvia held out her phone. Grainy footage of the port, and a seemingly-endless line of colossal shipping containers being winched onto the wharves. One of them was loaded onto a familiar truck bed. "Dante tracked cargo arriving from Jeddah. It was repackaged in Istanbul, but Turkish intel confirms that it's the same cargo from Saudi."

I recognized the cabin from my trips around the Vogel perimeter: plain orange, scuffed and scratched, but unmistakable. "That's an unmarked Vogel cab."

I was fucking dumbfounded. A global corporation like Vogel couldn't possibly be doing sketchy deals with Alcor. It didn't make sense; Casper Vogel was a public figure, opening malls, holding charity galas, offering scholarships to brown kids less dumb than me.

"Dante has suspected connections between Vogel and Alcor for a few weeks, but he can't enter the Vogel site to get evidence. Good work for confirming, Jason."

This fucking woman. 

"That's why you made me join Vogel's community program! To spy on them!"

Sylvia winked at me.

I was suffering poverty and Charity Graves's insults by serving my parole at Vogel, which was apparently a criminal enterprise, when I coulda served on the humane parole program offered by McCloud Technologies all along. Sylvia was playing me like a fucking chess piece.

But I didn't have the energy to rail at Sylvia fucking Payne. Alcor were in María. And in a pretty huge business deal with Vogel. Whatever she was planning, it wasn't to get me back. Looked like Alcor had way bigger American fish to fry.

But what if this was a false alarm, a paranoid Sylvia jumping at shadows?

"So Vogel has a Saudi supplier. Doesn't necessarily mean that Alcor has business interests in María, or that Vogel is operating illegally."

Sylvia gave a proud nod. "Dante will find out which Saudi supplier. If there's Alcor personnel or branding, he'll find it."

"How's he gonna do that?" The Amazing Dante, prize intel officer, probably knew shit about the situation. "Alcor cells don't recruit dipshit petty criminals like the Genovese or Falcone gangs do. Alcor operatives are skilled and deadly. If they're guarding those crates, they'll do a wide security sweep."

Sylvia's eyes gleamed. "Dante uses surveillance, break-ins, stealing or guessing passwords, and collecting electronic data as evidence by intercepting files sent by criminal organizations. He's very effective. He won't get caught, and if he does, he's trained."

Whatever.

"He could be the world's best hacker for I care, but if he comes up against an Alcor operative, he's dead."