Page 5 of Tony

He always does.

Like I said—he’s my rock.

CHAPTER THREE - TONY

When my older brother, Alonzo, said one of us needed to come up here to Fort Collins and check out this rumor that the Northern Colorado witness protection program was being run by sketchy black ops FBI agents, I volunteered.

Here’s why this is important. Alonzo and I, along with our father, run an illegal smuggling ring down in Key West. The only reason we’re not in prison for this is because these same sketchy black ops FBI agents were covering for us.

I do admit that we should’ve been more suspicious of this little arrangement. But we’re good people and we figured these sketchy black ops agents were too. That they weren’t really sketchy, just sneaky. And they, like us, disagreed with the United States immigration policy and wanted to do the “right thing”.

We now realize that we were naïve. These black ops partners are sketchy, have some as yet unknown ulterior motive for helping us, and they didn’t save Rosalinda when they offered to send her up here to Fort Collins to start a new, safe life—they were most likely just keeping her out of the way until such time as she could be useful.

The problem is we can’t prove this. It’s all conjecture.

Enter me. That’s my job. That’s why I’m here. At least, the official reason.

I don’t like Vann Vaughn. When he showed up in Key West with Belinda and her friend Tara—who is now Alonzo’s full-time, real-life girlfriend—I hated him immediately. He’s good-looking, he’s charming, and he has inserted himself into Rosalinda’s life in a way that kinda pisses me off, if I’m being honest.

But. He did mention that he had some inside information about the witness protection program as it pertains to his home town of Fort Collins, Colorado.

So I tolerated him and before we all went our separate ways, we got his theory. Which goes like this:

The FBI in this area are all corrupt. He offered up some evidence for this idea—all of it based off an encounter his brother-in-law, infamous custom motorcycle mogul Spencer Shrike, had with the FBI about a decade ago. He spilled some details about that involved crazy assassins, a secret shadow government called the Company, and, of course, a dirty FBI agent who was exposed and took the fall for a bunch of complicated illegal shit that his brother-in-law and friends were actually responsible for.

But he figured that wasn’t the end of it—just a new beginning. And all the “witnesses” who have been sent up here ever since were a part of some bigger, darker scheme.

And since Alonzo and I had a part in the plan to send Rosalinda up here to start her new life, we’re also—unwittingly—a part of this darker scheme too.

And that will not do. We do not risk our necks and our freedom twice a year to smuggle good people into the United States for a chance at a better life just to let our supposed partners take us down in the endgame.

So that’s the official version of why I’m here. I need to talk to Vann, get more info, poke around town, find some other witnesses to corroborate his theory, and then take that back home to Alonzo and our team so we can stay a few steps ahead of the dirty FBI.

Because we have a sneaky feeling about all this cooperation they’ve been handing out over the years.

A sneaky feeling that we’re the fall guys in some grand plan. That they’ve been setting us up and we’re about to go down for all kinds of sins that have nothing to do with smuggling refugees.

Rosalinda works at Vann Vaughn’s family tattoo shop called Sick Boyz Ink. I’m standing across the street from it right now. Hiding in the shadows of an alley next to a restaurant called Anna Ameci’s.

It’s one forty-five AM and Old Town Fort Collins is still pretty busy. There aren’t a lot of bars on this part of College Avenue, but there are enough to keep the crowds steady. And the Fort Collins Theatre, which doubles as a restaurant and coffee shop, is running some kind of black-and-white movie fest so there’s a ton of people over there milling about near the street.

My focus is on Sick Boyz, where there is also a crowd of people, all of them college students from the university just a few blocks south of here. A few ponytail girls, a few sporty guys, and the blue-haired girl who I know works at the bookstore next to the tattoo shop.

She’s in the alley between the two establishments, leaning against the side-entrance door to the bookstore, talking to another girl who is holding the leash of a frantic, yippy white dog wearing a green and white CSU sweater.

Plus there’s a ton of people just walking by. Not just students. Regular young couples and a few older ones too.

Rosalinda gets off work in fifteen minutes and then she either gets into Vann’s truck for a ride home, or they walk the two blocks down Mountain Avenue to his family mansion. She lives in an apartment above the detached garage.

Mansion is probably a generous word for this house. It’s big, I’m not saying it’s not. Huge, actually. And Mountain Avenue is lined with similarly large houses on this particular block. Some blocks further down have smaller homes. Some much smaller. Almost cottages. But this block is where the rich people live.

Except the Sick Boyz people aren’t rich and the house is mostly a falling-down mess. There’s a few reno projects going at the moment. New roof in progress. New porch halfway finished. Someone started to paint it, but then maybe ran out of paint?

In fact, all the reno projects are in some halfway stage of completion. I’m sure the neighbors are thrilled.

Anyway, the point is—she leaves work at two AM and most nights she’s with Vann Vaughn. Sick Boy number four. The youngest tattoo-artist brother working in the shop.

He has a thing for Rosalinda.