It was a birds-eye view of a shipping yard. Crates lined up with shadows of figures moving between them. Time-stamped and geo-tagged, the images were fresh. Less than forty-eight hours old.
"It's an abandoned shipyard in East Los Angeles."
"Can you get access to those cameras?"
She smirked smugly and I rolled my eyes at her but leaned in as she clicked on the screen. "Already on it."
The video footage came up and we both watched as crates were being brought up to the garage doors. One after the other.
"Are those motorcycles?"
"Holy shit," my eyes went wide as I realized millions of dollars in assets were locked up in that garage. “He was watching the drop.”
She turned in her chair, eyes wide now. “No, babe. He wasn’t just watching it… he was planning to intercept it. He logged everything. Crate numbers, routes, shipping manifests. Alan was about to rip the Turks off big time.”
My stomach turned to stone.
And the worst part? He almost pulled it off.
Obsidian tapped another few keys. “Looks like a lot of money, babe. But there’s more in here. You want it all?”
I nodded slowly. “I need to find out how Alan was moving this product and exactly how much is in the account. Can you dig in deeper?”
“I can try to retrace his steps, but it may take a few hours.”
“We don’t have a few hours.”
“You gotta gimme some time, Steph. This isn’t easy.”
I sighed. I had very little patience but right now, my life depended on her.
She went to work as I paced her apartment nervously. Caleb could barge in at any second, asking questions and threatening us for answers. He wouldn't kill us, not right away. But he would torture until he got what he wanted. He’d already cornered me, and I was glad I didn't have any information to give him. I had to admit he wasn’t a good liar, and now I knew more than I should.
My thoughts were interrupted by Obsidian’s yelp. “I found it!”
“Whatcha got?”
“Motherfucker stole twenty-million dollars!” She twirled in her seat to look at me, her eyes wide.
I nodded. “Yeah. Can you get into the account?”
“Easy enough but it looks like Alan was in on it with another source,” she began to type in code again as I slowly stepped away. “I can’t pinpoint who though. All I can see are outgoing messages, not incoming. Whoever he was talking with knows how to hack the system and become invisible.”
Alan had betrayed their trust and Caleb had been onto him. I would bet those fucking twenty million dollars that Caleb was the one who put that bullet in Alan’s head. If not Caleb then someone in that family did. Someone found out and wasn’t saying anything. Or they were keeping it under wraps.
“Shit!” I slammed my hand on the desk and stared out the window.
From Obsidian’s apartment I could see the bare rooftops of the Los Angeles clubs and restaurants in the distance. The city landscape glimmered.
I had a shipment of motorcycles that belonged to the Turks, and I had no idea how to get rid of it. On top of that we were dealing with some heavy hitters if they were able to move that type of product.
“Oh fuck,” Obsidian murmured.
I leaned in over her shoulder just as the screen flickered, a black chat box suddenly appeared. The cursor blinked back at us, steady and taunting.
One question appeared.
Going dark?
