A Little Bit Pyro

11: Sweaty Pizza and a Heimliched Burrito

Never mind that Kenzie has no right to agree for me to do this without even talking to me first. Never mind that I don’t even want to tutor a bunch of chemistry-tarded jumping beans—no offense Kenzie, and any other intelligent cheerleaders that may be out there—to pay back my debt to society. Never mind that I never even told them the schedule I can work around and they are already signing up. All of those objections slip from my mind when my brain computes her assumption that they can come to my personal laboratory.

“No!” I’m almost as shocked by the vehemence in that word as she is, but nobody is allowed anywhere near there. It’s occupied, and will be much too hazardous for the foreseeable future. “Uh, I-I’m, uh. The school will work better.”

The bright smile on her face slips a bit, but she does her best to keep it plastered in place. She just nods and backs slowly away from the table. I must have come off really harsh because her distress is visible. But I don’t have time to smooth things over because I’m on an info harvesting mission during today’s lunch; first with George, next with Ajay. Once Ashleigh is out of earshot I forget about the happy tutoring club and go back to Georgie.

“Start talking,” I say through the five ketchuppy fries I push into my mouth.

George swipes another batch of sweat beads off his brow then fingers his pizza again before answering.

“Their firewalls are awesome.” He shivers in delight, overcoming his nerves at the recollection of whatever internet security he blew past to get the dirt on these people. “They’re running a cryptographic application with their VPN that actually authenticates the IP—which slowed me down a bit—but now I should be able to do an IP session hack without a problem. But the most suspicious files are double encrypted which is why…”

As he continues in fluent techno-babble for at least two minutes, I can only understand the small words, like “that”, “are”, and “file”. The discombobulation happening in my brain is probably starting to show on my face so I finally interrupt him, giving him a flat look.

He clears his throat, “Sorry. Basically the first thing I figure, from comparing their cash flow statements and acquisitions, is that they are probably into heavy duty money laundering—unless they really do spend thousands of dollars on the supplies to make each batch of fan merchandise, and clients actually buy those same products for millions of dollars. Anyway, when it comes to money laundering, you know it’s coming from an illegal source.”

“What kind of stuff do they make?”

“Oh, they have quite a wide variety. Their biggest profit maker is Justin Beiber fan apparel, followed by Miley Cyrus, Brittany Spears and other celebrities.”

“How big is a batch?”

George W. shrugs, “A hundred items, I think.”

If they sell a batch of just one hundred hoodies for one million dollars, it would mean hoodies go for ten thousand dollars apiece. My own sister—heaven help her—happens to be a big Justin Beaver fan, and while I could picture her and girls around the world saving their pennies to spend a few hundred dollars on Beaver crap, ten thousand dollars is outrageous, unless the hoodie comes with the Beaver himself inside it, and I highly doubt that’s what is happening. 

“Maybe they sell really nice stuff,” I say half joking, to try to ease the goose bumps sprouting all over my skin. George W. doesn’t smile, and that is the last thing I feel like doing either. If what Georgie says is even close to the truth, then this plot to overthrow Abe, Jade, and Anton’s enemies is just as risky as they tried to express this morning. I didn’t have much time to listen though because I was still finishing my Lucky Charms and I was in a rush to get to school. They did mention that Jade and Abe’s kidnapping went down at a Beaver concert in front of the kid himself, so maybe these criminals have more than just a friendly affiliation with the celebs they print fan wear for.