My face had been scarlet red for an entire day after that.
If he had a video and posted it… oh, God, I was going to kill him.
Elvo leaned over to set his coffee down on the table, calling my attention back to my actual priority. I put my phone in my pocket and ignored the next buzz.
“The situation doesn’t have to be a clusterfuck,” he said. “We could go higher up at the DEA and find someone we trust to give the information to. Someone who’s not connected to Vince.”
Jordan frowned. “But how can we know who we can trust? We can’t assume that Vince was working alone.”
“We have no reason to believe he’s pulled in anyone else at the DEA, though,” Champ pointed out.
“I guess,” Jordan agreed. “It’s just… as soon as we give the government the data, the way they handle it is gonna be out of our control. If the DEA fucks up the investigation—purposely or not—or they decide the evidence isn’t enough to pursue a case, we’ll have implicated our biggest client in a massive public relations scandal for no reason at all. How much of a slam dunk is this evidence?”
Champ looked over at me. “What we know so far is that the data on the cartel’s Horn is a list of high-ranking cartel member names and their corresponding Horn of Glory usernames, right?”
I nodded. “If the Cartel de la Luna is using the Horn of Glory game as a front for their large drug transactions, this list is the key to understanding who’s doing what.”
Jordan ran their hands through their hair. “Yeah, but this has never made sense to me. How can you use a game as a front for tracking large shipments of drugs?”
Their eyes flicked to me, so I did my best to explain. “Two things you need to know about Horn of Glory. One, it allows you to spend actual money to purchase pips, which are HOG’s in-game currency—”
“Like you’d buy coins in a different type of game app, or extra lives or skins. That’s not unique,” Riggs said.
“Not at all,” I agreed. “What makes HOG unique is the second thing you need to know. While Horn of Glory keeps a record of certain information, like pip purchases, IP addresses, and total game-play hours, the majority of your user info is stored on your individual device.”
Several pairs of eyes watched me with similarly blank expressions, so I tried again.
“Okay, here’s an example. Let’s say that I go and spend ten thousand American dollars to purchase ten thousand pips with my credit card. You with me?”
Everyone nodded.
“Once I make that purchase, HOG Corporate will keep a record of it. HogMasterHux, who is playing on his green Horn with serial number 12345, purchased ten thousand pips for ten thousand dollars. They’ll also track where I am every time I’m playing—the internet address where I logged in—so they’ll know I’m in the Thicket now, and last summer, I was up in Pennsylvania for my dad’s thing, and so on. And they log my total game-play hours. Still with me?”
“So far,” Champ agreed.
“They do not track what I do with my pips once they’re on my Horn, just like the bank doesn’t track what I do with my cash when I withdraw it from the bank. So I could bury my pips in a coffee can on my homestead like an old prospector. I could buy a couple of Ferny Redwoods and then chop them into kindling.” I shuddered at the very idea. “I could spend it all on rutabagas that die in a Root Vegetable Blight, leaving me with nothing but sad memories. Orrrrr—” I looked around the assembled guys. “—if I’m the sort of person who wants to do illegal, criminal things, I could take my pips and buy sixteen hundred bushels of sparrowflox powder from a player named NaboEnojado7—who, according to the list, is none other than Mauricio Leon, a known cartel member—”
“The fuck is sparrow powder?” Jordan demanded.
“Sparrowflox.” I tried not to sound like I was explaining simple things to a toddler, even though that’s kind of how I felt. “It’s a magical substance that allows a creature to heal faster, and it’s incredibly common, which makes it not particularly valuable… in the game.” I paused. “But according to our intel, to the cartel it represents cocaine.”
“Ohhhhh,” Elvo said, eyes wide. Then he frowned. “Wait, no, still don’t get it.”
I tried hard not to smile, and fucked-up as it was—because I was still seriously pissed at him—I had to stop my eyes from traveling around the room, trying to seek out Kev’s. Working together on the wedding op for the last couple of weeks, I’d gotten used to having someone else in the room who spoke my language, and I… I missed it.