Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80139 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 401(@200wpm)___ 321(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
About a week and a half after I exhumed the dead body, I got another assignment. That one was way more exciting and required a lot more precision. My boss knows I always get things done, no matter how difficult, and he appreciates it. Another reason to stay away from the drugs.
I like my boss. I never knew my father, so having an older man be proud of me feels pretty good. He even gives me a smile now and then, which is more than my colleagues ever get.
It shouldn’t matter, and I wish it didn’t, but it does.
So I’m here until he tells me otherwise. But I’m getting pretty antsy cooped up in this suite. Sure, I’ve got the great food and the great booze. I can get as many spa treatments as I want and work out in the gym. But I can’t leave the hotel unless I’m on assignment. It’s too risky. These days, security cameras are everywhere, and with face-recognition technology, no one’s safe, especially not a Colombian national who’s here for nefarious reasons.
My stomach growls. I check my phone. It’s after six o’clock. No wonder I’m hungry. I ate lunch early. I grab the hotel menu—though I have it memorized by now—and look through it. I’m tempted to go for the ribeye, but equally delicious is the filet mignon, complete with garlic mashed potatoes and blistered green beans. That sounds good for tonight. It’s not my Mamá’s empanadas and patacones, but it does the trick.
I pull up the hotel app on my phone, ready to place my order when—
The other phone vibrates. The burner I use for work.
From my boss.
Diego Vega.
3
ROBIN
When I was younger, I never imagined I’d be using the dark web.
A lot of things have happened since that happy-go-lucky day I graduated from college, looking forward to my summer abroad and then vet school.
I learned to use the dark web while I was in Romania.
Scratch that.
I watched others using it and picked up on what they were doing. That’s me. I notice everything. My dad always said how observant I was, even as a baby. Raven began talking first, but I kept quiet and just took everything in. Dad used to laugh about how I didn’t say anything, but if they asked me where something was—a favorite toy, a bottle—I’d toddle right over to it.
My observation skills are part of what makes me a good vet. Animals can’t tell you where it hurts, so you have to observe everything you can about them to figure out what’s wrong.
Today I’m using the dark web for the first time because what I’m observing right now in my family is not right.
Not right at all.
Still, my nerves are on edge. I mean, this is the dark web. I’m Robin Bellamy. I don’t get into trouble.
Except for that one time…
I steal into a few chatrooms using an alias. Doesn’t everyone on the dark web? I’m looking for information on Diego Vega. I’m pretty sure he’s not dead, even if Vinnie swears it. Call it women’s intuition. Or vet’s intuition. I’m looking, observing. I’ve seen reports of him being in Austin, and of course tons of stuff about his crime in Colombia. But some of the dates don’t line up. It’s like he’s in two places at once.
Could be it’s just a slip in data entry, a bot error, but I doubt it. I open three more tabs and start cross-referencing.
Even the most notorious crime boss can’t be in two places at once, especially when he’s supposed to be dead.
Maybe Vega uses a double. Lots of bloodthirsty leaders used them—Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, for example. Diego Vega isn’t an authoritarian dictator, but he’s just as evil and powerful.
Why wouldn’t Vega have a double? In fact…maybe that’s who was messing with Eagle eight years ago, before Falcon went to prison.
I continue my research, throwing in more names I’ve heard Vinnie and Daniela mention. I start with Hernando Reyes. After all, I did an Oscar-worthy performance as a reporter for a fake art magazine when Daniela and I interviewed his niece, artist Juno Reyes.
More than a few Hernando Reyeses exist, but I home in on the correct one right away. He was a senator in the Colombian legislature, which would make it easy to do Vega’s dirty work, whipping votes in his favor.
I find an uptick in chatter about a proposed bill to open up protected land in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Someone has purchased the mining rights through shell companies that are so typical in this part of the world that tracking real ownership is nearly impossible.
I bookmark what I can and hop to a different set of chatrooms, this time the kind where people write in code and emojis. Parsing this lingo is slow, but it pays off. Reyes is linked to Marco Ramirez, Dietrich Klein, Derek Wolfe, and Isabella Valentini.