Dark Web (DARC Ops Book 2) Read online

  “They’ll be paying more,” added Taylor. “So, we thought, you know. . . .”

  Megan and Taylor were talking about their other business. Their other product. Marijuana hash oil. It wasn’t something Carly normally dealt with, and she was by no means a smoker, but it offered another reason to drive from Colorado to Nevada. It was also a much more profitable reason, a means to quadruple their returns from every dive bar gig combined.

  “So, what do you think?” asked Megan.

  “Yeah, should we?”

  Carly thought for a moment, reflecting on how much a pain in the ass it was to securely package the oil. They’d spent the night before the tour driving in the opposite direction, toward the pot-friendly city of Denver. A friend’s restaurant, after hours. A professional kitchen with a professional-grade vacuum sealer. Triple-sealing a Tupperware container of the sticky, candy-like substance that was illegal outside of Colorado. Especially illegal in conservative, pot-unfriendly Nevada, where a friend of a friend was waiting to pay top dollar for it.

  “That means we’ll have to open the vac-seal,” Carly finally said.

  “So?” said Megan. “We’ll be in Nevada by tomorrow night.”

  “But it’s not like we’re meeting them at the border. We still have a few days of driving. And if we get pulled over . . . or if something happens . . . is it worth ripping it all open just to make a little extra cash?”

  “Yes,” said Megan.

  “The difference will pay for a shower at a hotel,” Taylor said, and then laughed. “That’s huge.”

  “And they said we could reseal it at their friend’s place. They’ve got a vac-sealer.”

  “So, hold on,” said Carly. “We’re going to someone’s house for this? When?”

  Megan smiled. “Before the show.”

  Carly understood the predicament. It meant they’d have an hour to drive to some random person’s house, break the seal and weigh out the honey, make some awkward small talk, make the deal, reseal the container, and then rush back to Changez to make the opening set. What a fucking circus act this whole thing had become.

  “Unless you want to do it after,” said Megan, frowning as she opened the lid of her cigarette pack.

  Carly visualized the typical chaos which greeted them after every show, after everyone was sufficiently fucked up on their various preferred substances, after it became too late to reel the circus back in. She thought of foundering inhibitions, the darkness and confusion of the various after-parties, and her band’s sketchy track record of making the right decisions. It was usually after the gig, within the hours of two and six a.m., when musicians would be at their most reckless and self-destructive. What a tired cliché.

  “Fine. Let’s just get it over with.”

  Megan and Taylor grinned at their bassist.

  3

  Carly

  The van had been rented from Megan’s cousin, the one-time owner of a bankrupted carpet-cleaning business. TLC Carpet Care. It was a perfect fit. The name spelled out in big black letters on the side panels provided unlimited comedy material about the true talents of the quasi-feminist, half-butch, all-girl band. And for $40 a day, they had the privilege of driving cross-country in a rust bucket which held the permanent reek of caustic cleaning solvents. It was money well spent. The old workhorse, usually packed full of drums, guitars, and amplifiers, had been getting the job done as reliably as one could’ve hoped for a 1999 Econoline cargo van. And now, empty and unburdened of its usual load, the van felt almost as nimble as a sports car. It accelerated with the slightest touch. It turned, no matter how fast and sharp, with a newfound confidence. Even the shocks felt softer when Carly rode up a curb at the end of her U-turn. And when the car she was following—driven by some idiot from Wolf Taffy—slammed on the brakes for a liquor store, the Econoline’s improved braking distance saved the day.

  Best of all, however, was the lack of constant chatter from her other two bandmates. After almost a week on the road, the silence was truly golden.

  Silence.

  Not even music.

  Just the low, grinding sound of a bad rotor, plus the occasional squeal of old brakes.

  Carly squealed the brakes one last time as she slowed into a parking space along a typical middle-class residential street. They were at the house of a guy named Tubby, a two-story side-gabled bungalow that was definitely the runt of the block. With the lawn’s tall grass and beer cans, and a pile of flattened postal service boxes next to the door, the house was run-down just enough to be flirting on the edge of neglect and vacancy.

  “Heyyy,” called the bearded, dreadlocked hippie from his seat on a weathered porch sofa. He moved an acoustic guitar off his lap and stood up, waving the carload in front of Carly’s van to come out and join the party. And out spilled Megan and Taylor along with their new friends, two shaggy-looking dudes from Wolf Taffy. Carly left the van with her own special friend, a .38 revolver, tucked along her hip in an inside-the-pants holster. None of her bandmates really knew these guys. Carly sure didn’t.

  It was one of the last things her father had given her. And according to him, the most important. She could still hear his frail voice struggling over the beeping of hospital equipment, his slow and careful description of the low recoil and ease of aim of her new .38 Special. How it was the best choice for a young lady. How it was small enough for her hands, and for easy concealment. How it could save her life.

  Her father probably never imagined Carly using it to guarantee a fair and safe drug deal in Salt Lake City. Neither had she, quite frankly. But there she was, at the house of some guy named Tubby, pulling the strap of a backpack over her shoulder while watching her friends climb up a set of crumbling porch steps.

  Immediately upon entering the house, someone had offered Carly a beer and, for some reason, a plastic sombrero. And almost as immediately, she was hit with flashbacks of UC Denver, Saturday nights at frat houses, the smell of old beer and pot smoke. That night, it just made her feel old. At least, too old to be at Tubby’s. He and the Wolf Taffy guys were at least six or seven years younger.

  Or maybe they were just immature and had rich parents.

  “Where’d my band go?” Carly asked the sombrero guy, who, instead of answering, shrugged and asked Carly where she was from. She turned away from him and started out toward the sound of Taylor’s cackling laughter.

  “Hey, where you goin’?” asked Sombrero Guy.

  She ignored him again, moving away from a sparse living room and into a narrow, wood-paneled hallway that smelled strongly of bleach. It made her shudder, thinking about how nasty the mess must have been to have motivated someone who lived there to do a bit of cleaning.

  “Hey,” someone called from the living room. “They’re not back there.”

  After turning a corner at the end of the hallway, Carly was faced with a glass door leading to the trash heap of a backyard. Through the glass she could see a pile of old tires, a trampoline, and a small garage with variously colored car fenders lined up next to it.

  “They’re downstairs,” came Sombrero Guy’s annoyed voice from the living room.

  Carly turned back. “Well, where’s downstairs?”

  “Why don’t you just chill with us?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what? We’re not cool enough?”

  Carly heard the familiar sound of a needle dropping on a record, and when she reached the living room, it was filled with the sounds of ironic classic country music. Sombrero stood in front of her, fanning out a deck of cards. “You like card tricks?”

  Carly forced a smile. “Yeah. I just need to ask my friend something.”

  “What’s the hurry?” Sombrero Guy looked about 25 years old. He was the only one of the bunch with short hair, and he looked like he’d spent the last ten years in a poker room. Carly might have found him handsome if he wasn’t so pale and standing in her way. “Just slow down for sec,” he said with a wry grin.

  She tucked the b
ag closer to her body.

  “Where’s your beer?” he asked.

  “Oh, uh. . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “I left it by the—”

  “Alright, pick a card,” he said, pushing the cards closer. “Any card.”

  The music made it impossible to hear her friends. In fact, she couldn’t hear anything. And she had no idea where—

  “Come on, pick a card.”

  Carly yanked out a random card and held at it at her side.

  “Okay, now look at it and remember it,” he said. “What’s your name again?”

  “Carly.”

  “Okay, Carly, now hand it back to me. There you go. Thanks.”

  She turned to look behind her, chasing away the vague sensation that someone had been creeping up from the hallway. She felt ridiculous.

  “Carly? You watching? Okay, I’m gonna shuffle your card into the deck here. See?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shuffled for a moment, and then stopped. He seemed to be thinking about something, concentrating.

  “Okay, now what?” asked Carly, getting impatient. “You’re gonna find my card?”

  He shot her a suspicious look.

  “No?” she said. “What’s wrong? Can’t find it?

  “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  “What?”

  A smile crept across his face. “An undercover cop? No? Okay, good.” He went back to shuffling, cutting and recutting the cards until holding out the deck face-down. “Alright, Carly, pick up the first card.”

  She chucked nervously. He was probably the creepiest magician she’d ever—

  “Go ahead,” he urged her. “Grab it.”

  Carly reached for her card, slowly tilting it off the deck to see underneath.

  Eight of diamonds.

  “Is that your card?”

  She had no idea.

  Nor did she really care.

  And then the sound of a scream made her care even less. She heard it over the music—Megan’s blood-curdling scream coming from downstairs.

  Carly swung around, her hand clutching the hard bulge of the .38 strapped to her hip. Where the fuck were the stairs? She turned back around to check on Sombrero. He was walking calmly to a closet door. Why was he so calm?

  Why was he opening the closet?

  When the door opened, the screaming got louder and louder until the blonde blur of Megan exploded out from the darkness and into the living room, panting, clutching hard on Carly’s arm.

  “Oh, my God,” she kept saying, red-faced and out of breath. “Oh, my God, oh my God. . . .”

  “Megan? What the fuck!?”

  “A ferret! He had a fucking ferret!”

  Taylor and another guy climbed up the stairs, laughing at Megan’s hysterical escape.

  Megan turned around and backed up against Carly, “Get it out of here,” she said through her teeth. “I swear. . . . Get it away.” She was fully panicked. Carly could feel her shaking.

  “Megan,” laughed Taylor. “Jesus Christ, relax, he’s putting it—”

  “No! I swear I’ll leave if he—”

  “He’s putting it away!”

  “It’s away!” yelled a voice from down the stairs.

  “See?” Taylor said. “You’re fuckin’ nuts.”

  “Don’t worry, everyone,” said the Wolf Taffy drummer, reaching the top of the stairs, “I put him in his home.” He grinned at Megan. “We’re all safe now.”

  Megan unwound herself from Carly’s arm and stormed out of the living room, which resulted in another big laugh from everyone. When they caught up with her in the kitchen, Megan seemed to at least be breathing normally again. She was sitting at the table, looking out the window.

  “You okay?” asked Sombrero.

  “Forget about her,” said Taylor. “I’m worried about poor little Tommy. Poor thing.”

  “Yeah, she really scared Tommy.”

  “Who’s Tommy?” asked Carly, finding her beer on the counter by the stove.

  “You wanna meet him?” asked the drummer.

  “No!” cried Megan, slamming her hand on the table. “No more Tommy.”

  Carly loosened her grip on her bag as everyone laughed again.

  “Alright, alright,” said the drummer. “So, we gotta make this quick. For real.”

  “Yeah,” said one of the guys, turning to Carly. “You wanna just put that down there and we’ll take a look at it?” He pointed to a kitchen table just recently cleared of old plastic party cups.

  “Do you have a scale?” asked Taylor.

  Dreadlocks turned to one of his friends and grinned. “Do we have a scale?” he asked dumbly, as if the question had been completely ridiculous.

  It was in a cupboard above the fridge, one of those old triple-beam scales Carly remembered playing with back in primary school. She took a peek at it while unzipping her bag and emptying its contents onto the table—several vacuum-sealed Tupperware containers packed tightly with little square boxes. Inside each clear plastic box was a dark amber substance—honey, a super-concentrated form of cannabis.

  Carly had no use for it, herself, as even one hit of regular weed would put her out of commission. The paranoia, the laziness, the ice cream. . . . She learned not to dabble with honey oil by watching her other more professional weed-head friends, how they’d break out into sweaty coughing fits for the first ten minutes after taking a single hit. They said it was like smoking for the first time, which, for them, was a good thing. As for Carly, whose first time with normal weed resulted in a panic attack, she was willing to take a pass on the oil—which no one ever minded. It’s not meant for everyone, they’d say.

  “Alright,” said Taylor. “Let’s cut into it.”

  “Yeah, we gotta speed this up,” Megan said, getting up and walking over to a wooden knife block.

  Carly grabbed her arm, stopping her. “Wait. You guys have a vac seal, right? We can’t open it otherwise.”

  Dreadlocks turned to his friend, saying, “Do we have vac sealer?” in that same dumb, sarcastic tone.

  “Do you?” Carly asked matter-of-factly. She was all finished with their games. “They said you did. That’s why we—”

  “Alright, alright,” said Dreadlocks, opening the cupboard under the sink and pulling out a cardboard box. “It’s in here, don’t worry. We’ll get you fixed up.” He pulled out the plastic vacuum-sealer device, assembled it on the countertop, and then asked, “So you agreed on fifty a gram, right?”

  “Eighty,” said Carly.

  Dreadlocks turned and glared at the drummer.

  “Dude,” said the drummer as he started to laugh. “It’s worth it. We vaped it all the way up here.”

  “Yeah? You sure?”

  “Dude. . . .”

  “Alright,” said Dreadlocks, turning back to Carly with a shrug. “Seventy-five.”

  “Deal.” Carly made a conscious effort to suppress her glee. It felt good to gouge these annoying SLC kids.

  The rest of the transaction went much more quickly and with less talking. There was a scientific precision with how they weighed an empty honey box and wrote down the result, how they then weighed six full boxes before doing the math on the inside cover of a phone book. Cash traded hands as the vacuum sealer began purring. And that was it.

  Carly made sure their product was triple-sealed before taking it back to the TLC Carpet Care mobile. She was first to leave, and quite happy about it, walking quickly down the porch steps and across a stone path through the wild front yard. It was nice to be outside the dank frat house confines and into the cool night air. The distant barking of a dog. The smell of lavender. A pleasant reprieve before returning to the harsh cleaning chemicals of the van, where she’d sit behind the wheel and recount a large stack of twenties.

  Despite the shitty timing, it wasn’t so bad of a deal. They had made a nice profit. And the girls seemed to have fun—minus Megan’s run-in with Tommy the ferret. More importantly, Carly never ha
d to use her father’s little gift. Still, dealing to strangers on the road wasn’t exactly a practice she’d like to continue. Transporting the oil—at all—was a new and unexpected low for what little remained of her professional life. Touring in a band had helped, somewhat, in burying the fact that she’d been a drug mule since Colorado. But here, counting a dirty wad of cash in front of Tubby’s house, the grim reality had set in.

  Carly muttered a few curse words to herself while stashing the money in the locked glove box. She checked the time on her phone. They had just under twenty minutes to get back to Changez.

  “Hey, it’s Carly,” she said to her phone in as apologetic a tone as she could muster. “Carly from The Dotties. We’re with Wolf Taffy. We’ll be there in like fifteen minutes, okay?”

  The response from Changez came in a gruff, gravelly voice, a suggestion to get their fucking asses in gear ASAP and return to the bar for their show.

  “Sorry,” said Carly. “We will. But can you just tell me one thing? Is that journalist still there?”

  4

  Tansy

  “Be careful with that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your phone,” said Tansy. “Be careful.”

  Although everyone in the hotel was, by nature, a tourist, the guy who Tansy shared an elevator with actually looked like a tourist. He screamed it. Soft and pasty with a stereotypical flyover-country stupor. Half in the bag at 8 p.m. A promotional Las Vegas t-shirt that was most likely a freebie from some off-Strip buffet.

  Another dead giveaway was that he was using his phone.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, holding on to the railing as the elevator started to move again. He seemed a little unsteady, but otherwise coherent.

  Tansy thought he’d cut him a break. Or at least try to educate him, if it were possible. He seemed like a nice guy. Wedding ring. Family man. Maybe he could pass along a warning to whomever he was staying with. “Did you know there’s a hacker convention going on this weekend?”