"What's on your head?"
"Rainbow glitter headband."
"What's on your left wrist?" I could do this shit all day.
"Um..." I heard the sound of Teresa counting under her breath. "Fifteen bracelets with purple and orange and pink beads on them. And green."
"Holy shit, sister! You're ready for a night at La Perla Negra."
"Including the police uniform?" She sounded so chill that I knew that she'd totally done that before.
"Of course. You could say that you're cosplaying or something."
"Damn, I had some amazing times at La Perla," Teresa said with a wistful sigh. "Next time you're in Maria we gotta go, even if it's just to the bar."
Didn't see any harm in going dancing at La Perla with Teresa on my way to the airport. "Deal."
"OK sweetie, so the reason I called-"
"Wait wait! Right wrist?"
"Nothing," Teresa sighed.
"Nothing?" I found that very hard to believe.
"A tattoo."
Interesting.
"Of what?"
"My woman's name."
"What's her name?"
"Ruby Oviedo."
Cute name. Wait a second...
"Santa Maria, that is so awesome, Teresa! Your initials are T.O.R.O, like a bull!"
"More like R.O.T.O, like we're broken," she hit back with a hearty laugh. I guessed that poor Ruby was used to hearing jokes like that all the time.
"Where did you meet her?" Was Ruby into glitter and neon shit too? Maybe she just wore sunglasses in bed.
"La Perla, where do you think?"
Explains a lot, Zeph.
"Listen, sweetie, I got like three minutes for you, so can we talk about the case?"
"Sorry! I got carried away." I was having too much fun for a police interview, again.
"Yesterday Sofi's team arrested Oliver Schmidt on charges of counterfeiting, insurance fraud, wire fraud, tax fraud, and minor financial crimes. They want to interview you to corroborate his statements. Are you OK with that?"
I was pretty fucking stunned. How had they managed to arrest Ollie? Sigma was so depressingly like a normal commercial enterprise that their best link to Jones would be through the finance manager. I knew Ollie would tell the police everything to save his cowardly ass. That meant that he might take down Cal, Jones, and any other Sigma managers he dealt with. But not Noah. He was always a few steps ahead of everyone.
"How did they arrest him?" Ollie seemed to work, eat and sleep in his office. I couldn't even imagine what he'd been doing since Seven had burned down.
"The files that the data recovery team found on the printers turned out to be incriminating evidence; receipts and invoices authorized by Oliver Schmidt. So they raided his house."
It didn't make sense. Ollie would never make a stupid mistake like accidentally leaving files in the print rooms, nor would his people.
"No way that anyone in Finance would save stuff like that on print computers. Everything was run from hardware with no file transfer. There wasn't even an intranet in Seven's offices, they were so paranoid about leaks. The only way was if someone from Sigma went up there with a drive, typed in the passwords and manually saved that shit on those computers."
YOU ARE READING
The Sigma Asset 🏳️🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022
Mystery / Thriller**AMBYS 2022 WINNER** He'll never play piano again. That's what virtuoso pianist Zephyr has vowed to himself after escaping Sigma, the sprawling criminal organisation that once held him--and still holds his friends--captive in California's mega-city...
