“There has to be a way to decode that. Can’t you search one of your databases? Or just, I don’t know, play it and let the computer do the work?” I came behind Meg and Felipe to see what they were looking at. The screen was covered with blurry images taken from traffic cameras at the moment one of our trucks had been stopped by a black van. Right under the photos and feeds, there was an audio file ready to be played.

Brent joined me and studied the images. “Any luck with the plates?”

“Nope. The driver and the men who were there were killed, so we have no witnesses, and this camera footage is so shitty I can’t even see where the license plate is, let alone read it,” Felipe said.

A warning popped up in the corner of the screen and Meg quickly typed something to remove it. “The cops got to the scene too quickly. They still have the bodies, but our inside guy removed any identifying information. They’ll probably guess what this was, since we have five dead men and an empty truck with traces of coke.” Hugo had actually sent a few of our men to the police academy, and now they were working with the cops while working for us too. It was a nice, lucrative arrangement.

“What about the tattoos?” Brent asked. “I know at least two of those guys and they had our symbol on their chests.”

“I said it was taken care of.” Meg gave him a pointed look, which meant our cop must have spilled some kind of an acid that would burn off the tattoos and make them unrecognizable before anyone else could’ve gotten to the bodies.

“That’s good,” Brent said. “But we need to find our shipment. No one can steal from us and go unpunished.”

“That coded conversation you mentioned,” I said. “Do you know who was sending a message to whom?”

“We think it was Romeo Desalti himself, and we don’t know who else. He doesn’t sound like anyone we can recognize,” Felipe said. “Do you want to listen to it?”

“Yeah, play it.” Maybe it was something easy to crack. But as Felipe let the audio play, I had a feeling I’d ended up in an alternate reality where some alien language was spoken. “They’re reading this from somewhere, aren’t they?”

“Obviously. This doesn’t sound like any language out there, just a mess of letters randomly struck together,” Meg said.

“They’re not random,” a voice from the door said, and I looked up and saw James there. I hadn’t expected him to be here.

“Are you spying on us now too?” Brent started toward him, but I placed my hand on his arm. “Get the fuck out...”