by Martha Carr
Shay reached for her ear and tapped the earpiece. “Speaking of Peyton, might as well let him listen now.”
Lily mirrored Shay.
“It’s about time,” whined Peyton over the comm. The line was filled with static. “Pull out the drone so I can get you a bird’s eye view and make sure no one is sneaking up on you.”
Shay nodded to Lily. The teen pulled out one of the drones and did a quick check of its rotors and power level. She set it on the ground.
“It’s ready, Peyton,” Lily reported.
A second later, the rotors whirred to life, and the small black machine rose from the ground and climbed to the treetops.
“Well…crap,” Peyton offered. “Not an auspicious beginning, one might say.” He said the last in a faux English accent.
Shay frowned. “What is it?”
“I’ve got a visual on two black SUVs. They’re farther down the road, though. No other drones in the area from what I can detect.”
“So our Japanese friends are here already, but they’ve overshot?” Shay motioned toward the forest. “Let’s go get our coin before it’s too late. Peyton, you keep an eye on them and let us know if they head our way.”
“Will do, boss lady.”
Shay grimaced. “Don’t ever call me that again.”
“You’re so picky about nicknames, Boo.”
Lily picked up her last piece of equipment—two metal divining rods.
Shay tapped an overlay command into her phone, and a pointer appeared on her glasses. Lily would make for a nice backup if she could get her power to work, but on this job, they’d been fed coordinates, and their competition was going the wrong way. Everything would be over before anyone had to rely on magic powers.
They headed into the darkening forest. The alpine trees seemed to grow denser with each step. A few birds fluttered away, but no strange shimmers appeared, nor any bizarre sounds. No monsters or enemies, just Swiss nature.
Shay’s stomach tightened. All this tranquility and peace didn’t feel right. Lily’s vision had suggested that something would piss the tomb raider off in less than fifteen minutes. It’d take them ten to fifteen to get to the coordinates, and from what their information indicated, the box containing the coins would be a couple of feet underground. She wouldn’t be able to dig it up instantly.
Don’t freak the kid out yet. She needs to see me confident.
“Get off my keyboard, you stupid cat,” Peyton growled in Shay’s ear.
She snickered. “That’s some valuable tactical information right there. Our friends doing anything important?”
“Still driving, but they’ve slowed down.”
“Maybe they’ve spotted your drone.”
“I doubt it. This thing is tiny, and I’m skimming the treetops.”
Lily raised her divining rods and frowned.
Shay glanced her way but didn’t say anything. “We’re almost there. If those assholes seem like they’re even gonna look our way, you let me know. I don’t know how long it’ll take to get the artifact out of the ground. Just hoping it’ll only be a few minutes.”
The next few minutes passed in relative silence. Peyton confirmed that the other team had stopped several miles up the road and was already tromping into the forest with their equipment. They had six men in total, the two Japanese treasure hunters and four others. Two of the four were large men who carried assault rifles, and the other two, who were equally large, only carried shovels as far as Peyton could tell.
Guess that’s the difference between treasure hunters and tomb raiders. These guys aren’t ready for the level of heat that can show up on these kinds of jobs. They think it’s all about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and forget about the rabid leprechaun who might be guarding it.
The blinking indicator on Shay’s AR display showed they were at the coordinates, a nice and mostly flat clearing.
“Okay, we’re here. Guess we start digging.” Shay frowned. She’d hoped the digging site would be obvious, but the overgrowth in the clearing didn’t give her any clues.
Damn it.
She turned to Lily. “Guess this is where a little magic tracking would help, after all. You might as well see if you can pinpoint the exact spot to save us some time. If you can’t, no big deal. No pressure.”
The teen stared down at her rods with her brow furrowed in concentration. They pointed together at an angle. “Something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
Lily shook her head. “The coin isn’t here. I just don’t feel it. There’s no magical essence here that I can sense.”
“But these are the coordinates.”
“I’ve been trying to track the coin the entire time, even though you told me not to worry about it. Practice, I figured, but the closer we got to the coordinates, the farther it’s felt. My tracking’s working, but I’m pretty sure these are the wrong coordinates.”
Shay lifted the metal detector and flipped it on. She slowly stepped around the clearing with it close to the ground.
“I have one question for you, Peyton,” Shay began.
“What?”
“Has the other team stopped moving?”
“Yeah, they’ve stopped moving.”
Shay continued walking and swept the metal detector back and forth. “Son of a bitch. Lily is right. These are the wrong fucking coordinates, Peyton.” She shook her fist at the sky. “And those assholes probably have the right ones. Thanks a fucking lot. Damn it, Peyton. Shit. Damn. Fuck.”
“But those are the coordinates we were sent. The client sent them, and I cross-checked and found another dark web source that was talking about them. This isn’t my fault.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter, because the other guys are about to dig it up.” Shay groaned. “Damn it. Are they digging in a particular place?”
“They’ve brought metal detectors. Four of them are using them. It looks like they’re working some sort of expanding circle.”
“What are we going to do?” Lily asked.
“We can still salvage this. We’re gonna march over there and get that coin.”
“You gonna kill all those guys?”
Shay shook her head. “Not unless they try to kill us first, but we don’t know if they’re near it. The Japanese guys are nice enough to show us at least the general location. Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna find the damned thing once we’re close, then I’m gonna distract them while you dig it up. Okay?”
Lily nodded quickly and took a deep breath. “Okay. I… What if I can’t?”
“You can try, and that’s all I ask.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s do this, then.” Shay tossed the metal detector on the ground, and they both kicked into a jog.
Peyton continued to update them as they closed on the other team. The Japanese treasure hunters and their hired hands were walking in expanding circles with no indication that they’d located the coins.
Shay and Lily slowed as the distant figures of the men came into view. They both ducked behind a bush before breaking away to dart from tree to tree.
“Okay,” Shay whispered. “Any visions?”
Lily shook her head.
“Can you trace the coin?”
The girl lifted her divining rods, and they turned slightly. She let out a sigh of relief and nodded. It’s still way off. I think about a hundred yards.”
Shay grinned. “Close enough. Here’s what we’re gonna do now. First, Peyton’s gonna buzz them with the drone to get their attention. Be really obnoxious about it.”
“Sounds fun,” Peyton commented. “I can do obnoxious.”
“Don’t I know it,” Shay and Lily muttered simultaneously.
Shay chuckled. “Anyway, after that, I’m gonna get the rest of their attention. Lots of noise and nonsense, but not a lot of shooting unless they want it. Lily, you go straight to the coin, dig it up, and run back to the SUV.”
“But what if you need me to back you up? What if
they try to hurt you?”
Shay snorted. “I’ve taken on way more guys than this by myself. We’re not gangsters looking to prove shit. We’re tomb raiders. The artifact is everything. You concentrate on that, and you let me worry about the rest of these assholes.”
Lily nodded.
“Okay, you stay here until I tell you to go. You ready, Peyton?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.”
“Wait for my signal.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Shay snorted. “Don’t call me that again, or I’ll pull a gun on you when I get back.”
She used the cover of the pines to make her way closer to the other team’s vehicles. She was surprised that their guards didn’t seem to be doing much to monitor the perimeter.
Should have hired better guys.
“Anything?” shouted Daisuke in English.
“No,” replied his partner.
The other men shouted their negative results.
Good. At the rate they’re going it’d take a while for them to hit the location based on what Lily said. Just need to lead them away.
Shay wouldn’t hold back if the men tried to kill her or Lily, but gunning down a half-dozen men might be a harsh lesson for the teenage elf. Unlike Shay, she hadn’t transitioned from professional killer to tomb raider. Maybe the girl wanted to be a different kind of tomb raider. Maybe she even needed to be.
She’ll have to learn to defend herself, but wanting to waste Yulia isn’t the same thing as me taking down people left and right because they’re in my way.
“Okay, Peyton, get their attention.”
The distant buzz grew louder and closer as the small drone zoomed toward the area. The men looked up, and the two guards lifted their rifles.
“We’ve got company,” one of the guards shouted. He squeezed off a burst, only narrowly missing the drone.
“Geeze,” Peyton shouted through the earpiece. “These guys are trigger-happy.”
With the attention of the men diverted, Shay took her chance to rush closer. She stood on the other side of the vehicles just behind the guards. The loud report of their rifles rang her ears as they tried to take down the juking drone.
Nice flying, Peyton.
Shay reached into her harness and pulled out a small dart gun. Previously, she hadn’t worried much about taking people alive, but Lily’s continued presence on missions reminded her that on some occasions it might help.
It also never hurt to test-drive different equipment. Since some of her personal investigations pitted her against the government, it’d also occurred to Shay that at some point she might have to break into a government facility, and murdering large numbers of federal agents and soldiers wouldn’t be the best way to keep her freedom or her life. Trying non-lethal alternatives on her tomb raids would help hone her techniques.
The tomb raider lifted the dart gun and edged around the corner of the vehicle. With two quick hisses, the gun fired its sedative-filled missiles. As she ducked back behind the SUV, the guards grunted and batted at their necks.
“What the fuck?” one of the guards yelled. “I’ve got a dart in my neck. We’ve got a sniper…in…the…woods.”
He collapsed face-first to the ground. His partner joined him a few seconds later.
Shay holstered the dart gun, then pulled out a five-franc coin and waved it above her head. It wasn’t like any of the men could tell what it was from yards away.
“Looking for this little piece of history, boys?” she shouted.
“Get the coin,” Daisuke screamed.
Shay smirked. She wished they were in a city so she could lead the men on a little parkour-fueled chase, but the alpine forest would have to do. She spun and sprinted away, the remaining four men right behind her. None went for their weapons, but from what Peyton had said they didn’t have any.
You guys are lucky I’m not a little more ruthless, or you’d all be dead now.
The men continue to shout and chase her. Shay headed in the opposite direction of her vehicle. After thirty yards or so, she had to slow down because the men were falling behind.
You guys need to do more cardio.
Shay let them gain a yard every once in a while as she continued leading them away from Lily.
After a few minutes, Lily’s voice crackled in her ear. “I’ve got it, and I’m on my way back to the SUV.”
“Great, Lily.” Shay let out a loud cackle.
The wrong coordinates thing was annoying as shit, but this is kind of fun now.
No longer worried about them following her, she cut a hard turn and picked up the pace. The yells of the men grew distant, and soon she’d lost them.
“Do you have eyes on them, Peyton?”
“They are kind of wandering around in different directions looking for you.”
Shay chuckled. She hurried back to their SUVs and tossed the franc coin on the hood of one—a little tip for their help narrowing down the location.
Sweating from the exertion, she ran back to her vehicle. Lily was already in the passenger seat, staring at a worn gold coin.
Shay threw open the driver-side door and hopped in. “You’re sure that’s it?”
Lily bobbed her head. “If it’s not the coin, then it’s another magic coin. She patted a rusty metal box on her lap. “And it was the one in here.”
“Works for me. Good job, Lily.” Shay started the engine. A quick U-turn had them zooming back down the dirt road and away from the treasure hunters.
“What about the drone?” Peyton asked through their earpieces.
“Keep an eye on them, and after that, just ditch it. After this payday, we’ll be able to afford a new drone or two.”
Lily stared at the coin for a few more seconds before she put it back in the box. “It doesn’t look like much.”
Shay laughed. “It doesn’t have to look like much, just has to be enough to get the client to pay out. Congrats on a nice successful tomb raid, Lily.”
The teen grinned.
Peyton chuckled. “They don’t look like they’re even trying to follow. I think they still believe you’re in the woods.” He sighed. “By the way, I didn’t want to mention it while you were on the job, but I did some checking into the coordinates.”
“Don’t care,” Shay replied. “It was annoying, but mistakes happen, even with you.”
“You see, that’s just it. I was checking, and I realized the coordinate data file sent to me had the checksum off.”
“Damn it.”
Lily frowned. “What is Peyton getting at?”
Shay sighed. “Someone fed us bogus information on purpose, probably someone other than the client.”
“But why?”
“Good question. Aletheia has a rep now, and not every other tomb raider appreciates what I’ve done.”
“You’re saying it was just someone who is jealous?”
Shay’s hands tightened around the wheel. “If I’m lucky, that’s all it was.”
The conversation died. They had no proof or leads at the moment, but they’d scored the artifact.
What if someone’s testing me? And if so, why and who?
7
The next evening, Shay sat at her computer in her bedroom checking a few things. The coordinate-spoofing occupied her thoughts. No one had gotten hurt, and they’d escaped with the artifact. She’d have to be careful on future jobs until she figured out who might be screwing with her.
The harsh truth was there were too many possibilities, which made it hard to narrow down the list: Yulia, Francois Durand, and a myriad of other tomb raiders she’d beaten out for prizes during her new career. For all she knew, Irina the rusalka had reached out somehow to teach Shay a lesson about overconfidence in alpine forests.
Someone fucked with me. Maybe it was to send me a message. Those treasure hunters weren’t exactly hardened killers, so whoever screwed me with must have known my life wasn’t at risk.
Shay had thought when she was a killer that she�
�d understood the world and its dangers, but she knew now she’d been ignorant. Dangerously, painfully ignorant. Even though everyone knew about magic now, secrets and hidden pockets of dangerous wonder covered the world—pockets that altered everything she’d believed about what it meant to be tough, smart, and dangerous.
It wasn’t that she’d stopped believing in her abilities, but now she better appreciated their limits and how the kinds of challenges she might face as a tomb raider could easily exceed her existing abilities, especially if she kept pissing off powerful magical beings.
If I wanted a career where I didn’t piss anyone off, I should have been a florist.
Shay frowned. Nope. Even that wouldn’t work. She’d probably screw up some mobster’s wedding bouquets and end up with a hit on her. At least as a tomb raider, she earned enough money to justify everyone’s enmity, and she wasn’t dead yet. That had to mean something.
The excitement of history coming alive, even if it involved the occasional monster or magical trap, made tomb raiding addictive in a way that killing never had been.
She’d killed because she was good at it and savored a well-executed hit, but the satisfaction didn’t linger like that of a good tomb raid. Now, someone wanted to screw with that satisfaction.
Asshole, you should have come straight at me instead of planting a fake clue.
Shay shook her head and sighed. Worrying about problems she couldn’t solve was a poor use of her time when she needed to make sure her solutions to other problems were working.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she checked the alerts both she and Peyton had set up to monitor his brother’s investigative efforts. Everything had been quiet in the days since she’d Scrooged the man, but it’d be a long time before she was convinced that he’d given up. Killing him might still be necessary, even if Peyton wasn’t comfortable with the idea.
Satisfied Randy wasn’t trying anything, she stood and made her way to her closet. She accessed the hidden panel in the back wall. Several guns and knives hung on racks inside, along with appropriate ammo. A briefcase filled with cash also sat in the hidden alcove, alongside another briefcase.
If Shay needed to bug out, the money in the case would be enough to sustain her until she could access some of her hidden accounts. Even in the worst-case scenario where all those accounts were compromised, there was more than enough money in the case to give her a good head start on a new life. She might not be able to buy herself five custom warehouses anytime soon, but she wouldn’t be eating ramen either.