A short excerpt from the upcoming novel I’ve been working on:

A thick veil hung in front of her vision.  She strained to see, but the air was dense, foggy and thick.   

“Amor, Ayudame, por favor, ayudame,” she heard a weak voice calling from beyond the fog, a voice she knew too well.  She tried to call back, but her voice drew silence from her.  The sky darkened, and rain came pouring from the skies.  For a moment the veil parted.   Cybil saw a figure in the distance, head hanging low, arms dangling from a lifeless form tethered to  a heavy metal ball at his feet.  Behind him loomed a shadow of an obese woman drifting on the edges.  The veil closed.  The sound of the rains drowned out the man’s calls as the dream faded into the dawn of the day.  

Cybil woke to the familiar sounds of the pueblo awakening and soft kisses across her forehead stirring her into the day.  She was relieved to wake from the dream that haunted her nights through the thick veil of the world between the worlds.  Almost every night she was plagued by his calls from the other world.

Firm but tender hands stroked her skin and sweetly brought her to the day.  She snuggled into his arms for a few last moments to linger in the comfort with a million memories and thoughts racing through her quickly waking mind.  The strong, sculpted mulatto next to her in the bed was a welcome distraction from the throbbing in her head from too much rum last night. She indulged herself in a few more moments of his caresses, but she knew she had no time today to surrender to his desire. She pushed him away from her and peeled herself out of the silk sheets and quickly dressed herself for the work ahead.

“Maria,” Cybil called out to her friend who owned the casa on the hill where Cybil stayed.

“Voy,” she heard Maria respond.

A few moments later, coffee and a tray of fruits showed up with a happy, smiling, plump woman behind it.  “Y tu noche Cybil?” Maria jested with her friend of 10 years.

“We had a perfect night, we danced until 5 am,” Cybil smiled as she turned to kiss the beautiful man in her bed.

“I have to run, I’ll see you later.”  She put the tray of food down on the bed for him, sucked down the coffee, grabbed a banana and a slice of pineapple and dashed out the door leaving Maria and the young man together in the room to chat and enjoy the morning.

Strolling through the cobblestone streets of this pueblo that had once been her home, Cybil greeted her friends along the way before finally reaching the stairs to do her morning reports.  A few minutes after her arrival, she felt eyes on her.  She glanced up above her computer screen from behind her mirrored glasses and saw two men observing her carefully. In a moment, Cybil sized them up.  One was in his late 50’s, with white hair and steel blue eyes.  His gaze was cold, and pierced the air around Cybil.  The other one had brown hair, a playful charisma that tried to hide his brutality.  He was likely in his late 30’s. Both were very well dressed, with leather Italian shoes and expensive watches.  She knew they were no ordinary tourists.

She feigned indifference, but the camera built into the lenses of her glasses was snapping images and sending them to Headquarters over a secure VPN connection and sending her the identities of the two men.  A few moments later a glass of juice arrived from the waiter at her table.

“The gentleman up there asked me to bring this to you Cybil,” the waiter, a long time friend, said to her.
“Gracias Manuel.  Do you know them?  I have never seen them here before.” Cybil said, and looked up, tilted her glasses down and waved to the two men sweetly with a smile and a toast.

“They are Italian tourists, it is their first time in Cuba,” Manuel said but already Cybil knew it was not true.  They did not look Italian at all, and by the looks of the older gentleman’s eyes and demeanor, he was likely Russian.  The younger one, she guessed to be Czech or perhaps also Russian, but most certainly they were not Italian.

Moments later the in ear monitor built onto her glasses dictated their identities to her.  The white haired one with the piercing blue eyes was Anton Abdulov.  He was traveling on an Italian Passport under the name Luigi Restivio, that had been identified by Cuban authorities to be falsified for “Investigative” purposes but honored by the Cuban government under secrecy with Russia.  The young one, Danylo Dupliy was also on an Italian passport but had ties to human trafficking rings, and organized crime.  He was an agent gone rogue,  born in Ukraine, with a decade of experience in investigations before he went to the dark side.  Both of them had suspected ties to the human trafficking case now referred to as “Katya’s Fall” by the CIA and FBI that Cybil was here to investigate.

Young Cubans, both males and females alike, nieve to the dangers of the internet, and desperate to find an escape from Cuba’s hopelessness, were being lured into internet honeypot scams by human traffickers.  Because Cuba had so little exposure to the dark side of the internet and scams, they were perfect targets for criminals looking for new recruits or sex slaves for their vast network.

Katya was an overweight, pasty skinned, manly looking woman.  She had been the victim of trafficking herself, being desperate to leave Russia as a young, impressionable girl from a broken home.  She met Danylo at the turn of his career from working to serve justice to becoming part of organized crime rings responsible for the trafficking of over 20,000 Russian and Ukrainian youth since 2015.  Katya was swept off her feet and fell in love with Danylo’s charm.  She thought she was going to live a life of luxury with him, but he tired of her quickly as he began to have so many options of young women to choose from the deeper he fell into the world of sex crime.   The two had a young girl, and by the time her daughter was 5, both Katya and her daughter had been delivered into the hands of traffickers for the sex trade to Europe.  This marked the beginning of the current open investigation of Katya’s Fall.  Katya had seemingly climbed and conned her way out of being a prostituted victim to create her own empire of sorts by leveraging the power of the internet to lure innocent young people into her web where she sold them into organized crime, organ harvesting, or the sex trade.  Katya had become a brutal “donna” in her own right and it was Cybil who first discovered her 3 years ago.

Cybil closed her computer, packed her bag and coyly smiled and waved at the two men up on the terrace above her, blowing a soft kiss on her hand and nodding her head in thanks for the drink.  On her way out she stopped to embrace one of the musicians and whispered in his ear, “It’s time, they are here. Keep your eyes open and never let them out of your sight,” as she kissed him on the cheek, danced a few steps in time to the music and happily skipped down the steps like she had not a care in the world.