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“Yep. I heard you,” Champ said easily. “Who said you can’t get lucky in Vegas, eh?”
I blinked. “Lucky? What the fuck?”
“Kev can get the data off this guy’s Horn. Flip the scenario. Scam the scammer. Grab the data off this Anoma-whatsie’s Horn and see where he fits in the cartel hierarchy.”
“You want… you think he should…” Was Champ out of his fucking mind? “That’s… not going to happen,” I said as calmly as I could. Which wasn’t very calm.
Silence came from the other end before Champ finally said, “Oh?” in that way of his that brooked no disobedience.
On the monitor, Kev moved away from the Marigold Fairy and pulled out his Horn device. It looked like he was checking his messages, but I couldn’t read the words on the screen through the button camera view.
He glanced around the room, and I was positive—like, 96 percent sure—that he looked apprehensive. What if it was a message from Anomaly insisting on a meetup… If so, it meant the man I was falling in love with was in danger.
Which meant disobedience be damned.
“Gotta go,” I said before hanging up on my boss and bolting for the door.
17
KEV
Normally, I was a nervous weirdo at parties like this where I didn’t know anyone. But as soon as I saw all the costumes and felt the shared passion for my favorite game, it felt more like entering a room of friends I simply hadn’t met yet.
I’d put on a nicer pair of jeans and my “Proud Homesteader” shirt—the limited-edition one, with the Coral Reef Princess and the Double-Eyed Gatekeeper pretending to be friends, even though everyone knew they were mortal enemies in real life—before coming down here to look for our targets. All I had to go by were some photos of the people we thought were connected to the Horns in question, based on Horn location data and the surveillance that a few of Champ’s operatives had conducted. The two likely suspects didn’t look nearly as easy to engage as Camila Dacosta had been.
Luis Estrada was a baggage handler at DFW, the largest international airport in Texas. Despite earning just under twenty bucks an hour at his job, Luis was known for the six-thousand-dollar Nike Air Yeezy sneakers he wore when he wasn’t at work. He was also known to me as the man with the terrifying face tattoo.
Camden Mallon, on the other hand, wasn’t physically intimidating, but he was backed by an incredibly wealthy and influential family. He was a slight gamer-geek like me, but his family were the Mallons of Mallon Shipping fame. They owned one of the world’s largest cargo container logistics companies, which meant they basically owned the docks at America’s largest ports.
As soon as Champ had learned the various identities of the people on the Horn’s list of cartel contacts, he’d put one of his data analysts on each of them. He’d hoped to be able to give the DEA a detailed dossier on these players to speed their own investigation when the time came.
I was secretly relieved not to see either Luis or Camden at the party right away. I’d meant what I’d said to Hux in the hotel suite earlier—this was the area where I thought I could help this operation best, I didn’t want him to underestimate me, and I really could take care of myself—but I wasn’t quite as confident as I’d wanted him to believe. I was employing the fake-it-until-you-make-it mentality that had helped me break out from my lair over the past few months.
No lie, though, slipping a tracker into someone’s pocket—heck, just getting close enough to do that—was fucking scary. My hands were sweating just thinking about it.
Thankfully, enough people came up to compliment me on my shirt that I ended up having some enjoyable conversations while continuing to scope out the room. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of discussing my recent Duchess of Moon Flower Quest with a high-ranking healer in a gorgeous fairy costume that I saw a man who looked like Camden Mallon across the room.
Okay, I could do this. I was as capable as I’d told Hux I was. As brilliant as Hux believed me to be. And I was going to prove to him I was a contributing member of this team who didn’t need handholding.
As I moved away from the Marigold Fairy, my Horn buzzed with a message.
Anomaly451: Angel-face, are you here? I’d love to meet up. Even a quick hello. I’m standing by the table with the chocolate fountain.
My hands started sweating again as I glanced in that direction. There were too many people between me and the food tables to be able to see much, especially when I didn’t know who I was looking for. Suddenly, the whole let’s-promise-not-to-Google-each-other, let’s-see-each-other-for-the-first-time-in-person thing seemed ridiculous rather than romantic. At the time, I’d been thinking that I could never be brave or stupid enough to have chat sex on-camera with someone, but now I realized how shortsighted I’d been.
