by Martha Carr
A mixture of annoyance and confusion risked giving her a headache. If she got one, she was going to pop the Tech-God in the head so he would have one, too.
“It was your fucking idea,” she said. “Why are you freaking out about it now?”
“Yeah, I know, I know, and I’ve been talking about trying to help you, but I’m not as sure now. The more I’ve looked into the legend, the more I think you were right to begin with. It’s just all rumors and legends. It’s a waste of your time.” Peyton shrugged.
“So what? I can afford to waste my time. Abbot’s giving me 25 K upfront. That’ll take the sting from me spending time on this over the next few weeks. If it turns out to be nothing, then it’s just a lot of money he paid me to do research.”
“I think it’s a lost cause, Shay. And I’m worried that failing will leave a bad mark for you under your new alias. Then I’ll have fucked you over. Maybe I was wrong about all of this. I…”
Shay rolled her eyes. This was the problem with people who played at independence but grew up wanting for nothing. Peyton wanted assurances and no risk. She didn’t live in that kind of world. Never had. And now neither did he, and it was time he accepted that.
“Calm down, Man-Puppy,” she said, “before you wet yourself.”
Peyton stopped pacing. “Man-Puppy now?”
“Would you prefer Man-Boy?”
“Huh. I think I’d like a third option. Tech Genius…”
“Not today. Earn it.” Shay gave him a dead serious glare. “Look, I’m the one who decides on what jobs I’m gonna take in the end. Non-negotiable. If this gold hunt ends up being a big fucking waste of time, that’s on me, not you. Adjust your panties so they aren’t in a bunch already.”
Peyton sighed, putting his face in his hands for a moment. “You’re doing the deal either way.”
“Yeah. You know why?”
“What?”
Shay ran a hand over her stomach. “I’ve got a good feeling in my gut.”
Peyton groaned. “The last time you said that you were almost buried alive underwater.”
“Almost dead counts in my world. It means not dead. You know what else counts? The treasure was there, and I escaped with diamonds. My gut was right.”
Peyton inhaled and crossed his arms. “What about the whole building a rep for your alias? What if it ends up being a big bust and this Abbot guy spreads shit about you?”
“Hey, it’s an alias. If this goes south in a bad way, then you can use your fancy IT skills and knowledge to make a new alias for me.” Shay marched up to the man and leaned in close till they were nose to nose. “I’m doing this. Stop whining and get on board. It’s my time and my life to risk. Understood?”
Peyton winced, taken aback by the tomb raider’s intensity. He held up his hands in surrender, still staring into her eyes. “Okay, okay, message received. Man-Puppy is on board. Tell me your plan. Are you going after the gold or the mine?”
Shay took a step back from Peyton and let a smile appear on her face again. “The gold. Fuck the mine. That is a waste of time. It might be actually lost or filled with motherfucking zombies or some other mysterious shit. The gold I can locate and pile into a truck and drive it right out of there. I’d rather take the easier road this time.”
“Okay, that sounds good in theory, but do you even have any idea where the gold is?”
Shay gave him a sly grin. “Your little Mexican legend, show and tell the other day kept pricking something in the back of my memory. I knew I’d heard some of those details before. Eventually I remembered that I’d already heard of the Peralta family.”
“You have?”
“Yeah, I have some old books from Mexico that mentioned them, along with the ambush where the main members were killed and gives additional details that I think I can use to narrow down the search coordinates. Details that don’t seem to be readily available to others. I just need to review those books.” She pointed at Peyton. “This time you’re gonna help me with data filtering after I do the initial research. I didn’t save you to be an idea man. I saved you for your technical skills.”
“Sounds good, boss.”
Shay winced. “Don’t call me that. Just call me Shay. It’s either that or Your Most Illustrious and Alluring Imperatrix of the Galaxy.”
Peyton chuckled. “I’ll stick with Shay.”
“Glad we’re in agreement.”
“Do you have it narrowed down at all, yet? The possible location of the gold?”
“Yeah, from what I remember, it should be in Baja California Sur.”
The man paled, and he swallowed. “Baja California Sur?”
Shay laughed. “What’s wrong? Get a bad sunburn on spring break there once or something?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Then why so freaked out?”
“That’s Nuevo Gulf Cartel territory.”
Shay shrugged “Well aware, I’ve crossed paths with several of them. All dead now. So what?”
“So what?” Peyton shook his head. “They want you dead, Shay. They are the reason you had to fake your own death and ended up in L.A. instead of New York. I kind of think that’s a big deal.”
Shay wagged a finger. “Correction, they wanted me dead and now, they think I’m dead. It’s not like there are gonna be wanted posters of me in every bar in Mexico or something. If I run into anyone who looks like they recognize me, I’ll just kill them. See? Big problem with an easy solution.” She picked a small piece of lint off the sleeve of her pale pink silk blouse.
Peyton scoffed. “That simple?”
“Yep. That simple, especially since I’m not exactly planning to hang out in the city.” Shay smirked, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s half your problem, Peyton. You’re a rich city boy, who thinks of everything only in rich city boy terms. Hell, I bet your Boy Scout troop had catered meals.”
“Not all the time,” he grumbled.
“Just saying that I’m a tomb raider. My job description often involves me hitting out-there places. This will be no different.”
“The gold’s not under some Walmart or split-level three bedroom?”
“That would be handy, but pretty sure it’s not.” Shay winked, swiveling the chair around to check her phone. No updates on the area where Shay felt certain she’d find the gold. She had set up an alert system using the satellites over the area to let her know if there was unusual activity.
Peyton sighed. “Let’s get this straight. You’re gonna go to, I’m guessing, the middle of the desert in Mexico, passing through territory controlled by the cartel who wanted you dead to begin with, to find some gold that even your client thinks might be cursed, and that’s assuming you can even find this gold.”
Shay nodded. “That’s the long and short of it. Sounds easy and a little fun.” She pursed her lips together for a moment. “I guess I really do like that spice of violence.” She sucked in a breath and chuckled.
“Have I told you today that you’re insane?”
Shay pulled her Spider in front of the gray cement blocks lining the front of Warehouse Four. Unlike Warehouse One and Two, there was no easy direct vehicle access. The cement barriers might not be enough to stop a car bomb, but they could at least cut down on mass damage.
She pulled forward and parked the car under an overhang before walking around the corner toward a recessed back door covered by multiple dome security cameras.
A person of her background might correctly intuit from the excessive security the importance of the building’s contents. Shay didn’t mind. There were enough alarms and alerts that she would know right away if anyone tried to break in. For their sake, she could only hope that any future intruders were long gone by the time she arrived because they wouldn’t leave the warehouse alive.
Before even trying the door, Shay pulled her phone out of her pocket and brought up her custom security app. She tapped the lengthy code to disable the alarms and motion sensors only for the front doors.
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With that accomplished, Shay pulled out her key to get past the first door. Another door with a keypad and retinal scanner blocked further progress. She tapped in the code and placed her eye against the scanner. The huge internal bolts locking the door retracted with a loud thunk, and she pulled the door open to step into a dimly lit metal antechamber.
Hrmm. Never realized how much this looks like the kind of room they stick you in before they start torturing you.
A huge reinforced steel door blocked her progress again. It was a bitch to install since she couldn’t let the workers actually know where they would be working. Instead, she arranged for them to be blindfolded and driven to the site by Shay, after sweeping them to make sure no one had any tracking devices. The workers had all been taken inside before their blindfolds were removed so they couldn’t use environmental cues to begin to try and figure out where they were.
It was amazing what people would agree to when you splashed a little extra cash around. The premium price was painful, but she took comfort in knowing that the workers had no clue where Warehouse Four was located. Of course, the not-so-veiled threat that she’d murder them in their sleep if they ever asked around about the job helped.
Too much? If they came here, I’d have to kill them anyway, so don’t know if that’s better than murdering them in their sleep. At least I warned them.
Shay placed one of her fingers on the door’s DNA reader. A burning sensation followed, and she shook out her hand, waiting for the scanner to confirm it was her. The door bellowed out a loud echoing click, and she pulled the heavy door open.
A few steps into the library brought a smile to the woman’s face. Her history books and records would help her find Abbot’s gold. She didn’t even care about the lack of magical artifacts. Not this time, anyway.
Shay licked her lips, her heart kicking up. Something excited her about this particular chase. Maybe because it was one of the first times her knowledge was helping lead her to the treasure rather than technological tricks or throwing around money.
She also didn’t mind the idea of pulling off a job right under the noses of the Nuevo Gulf Cartel.
Fun, fun. Too bad you assholes didn’t actually finish me off.
Shay took several more steps closer to the books where she inhaled and enjoyed the musty smell of the old books. The collected knowledge represented by the books managed to humble her every time.
Shay had equipped Warehouse Five with traps, but she’d elected not to do that with Warehouse Four, fearing a stray bullet or explosion might set the place on fire and destroy all the accumulated wisdom resting in the pages.
Losing all the books would hurt her more than anything she could imagine. She could easily say it was worth more than a few lives.
I guess I’m just the ruthless pizza and history girl. Too late now to do the history professor gig. Doesn’t mean I can’t have fun on this job.
Shay smiled to herself. It was time to do some more research.
12
“Welcome to beautiful Mexico,” Shay said with an easy laugh. If she didn’t know Cabo San Lucas was in the same state as the mountainous desert wasteland she currently traversed, she would have questioned why anyone ever came to Baja California Sur.
The Land Rover rumbled over the dried, cracked ground, the bumpy terrain worsening by the minute, and the mountains looming over her like some angry Oriceran giant. The clear blue skies stretched off into the horizon, and she could imagine the night sky would be a beautiful tapestry so far away from light pollution. Too bad she didn’t plan to stick around that long.
Her vehicle closed on the coordinates her research had indicated, a triumph of her old-school book collection over her advanced technology. She never imagined that her history books she’d purchased would prove so useful in a future job.
Guess I picked the right hobby.
Her experience in Austria had impressed the importance of having the proper equipment to recover all possible treasure. Her alerts were still quiet. No one around to bother her.
“This should be easy,” Shay muttered to herself. “I have a whole damned vehicle I can shove gold into. This isn’t some sad old-school donkey. Or maybe I should start using donkeys. Probably some Oriceran donkeys that have magic and wings.” She frowned. “Donkeys that could fucking fly.”
Shay shook her head. Spending too many hours alone in her own head could do strange things, but trust for the most part still remained foreign. Bringing Peyton into the operation didn’t mean she was ready to run around with a partner in the field yet.
Trusting someone to have her back in a fight was something she’d yet to experience. Few people she met were as good as she was when it came to killing. At least when it came to normal human methods and not strange magic, and she wasn’t sure how much she could trust someone who relied on magic. The few marks from her old job that almost took her down were almost all people with access to magic. Despite her job, the actual use of magic still left her uneasy.
Shoving a piece of lead at supersonic speeds into someone’s head is a kind of magic, though. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective.
Shay let out an uneasy grunt and tried to focus on the current job.
Her plan was to locate the cache, then use a small cargo drone to transport all the gold, bar by bar, back to the Land Rover. After a simple drive back to town, she could unload the gold into the private plane she’d chartered and get the hell out of Mexico before any cartel assholes had a clue anyone had ever been in the area. Much less a dead woman.
How do you like that, you bastards? You tried to kill me, failed, and paid me for the privilege, and now I’m gonna grab a shitload of gold from underneath your noses.
A smile appeared on her face. She’d read the Nuevo Gulf Cartel was close to being pushed out of the area by another cartel.
Always a bigger group of assholes looking to take over territory. Enjoy the fear, fuckers.
Shay’s only real concern was an odd reference she found in her research.
“Todos aquellos que buscan el oro de la familia Peralta deben saber que la codicia ciega a un hombre a la verdad,” Shay murmured.
All those who seek the gold of the Peralta family should know that greed blinds a man to the truth.
The phrase had been scrawled on an old map of the area. Shay had no idea if it was a simple moral observation or a riddle about the treasure meant to warn off seekers or help them find it. The truth, as much as anyone could know it, would present itself soon enough. She just hoped that the truth didn’t involve another massive volcano.
Shay spared a quick glance in the mirror. She wasn’t expecting to see anything other than shimmering Mexican desert air or mountains, which was why the two dust plumes made her do a double-take.
“Damn it. Of course. This is just my luck for the lack of Nazi zombies in Austria.”
Shay let out an exasperated sigh just as the alert went off on her phone.
Thanks, I know… Nobody followed me from town, that much I’m sure of. Some assholes who just happened to be rolling around in the desert? Maybe cartel or just local jerks, militia or bandits. I could still take them, but that’ll cause a problem.
Avoiding being linked to a single dead body was easy, almost trivial. Trying to avoid attention when you left dozens of bodies in your wake, not so much. Minimizing deaths would be to her benefit both in the short and long term. Now if she could just get everyone else to cooperate with her by not tempting their fate.
Just don’t follow me, assholes, and I won’t have to fucking kill you. I’m here to take some gold. Nothing more.
Shay scanned the area in front of her. Crags, overhangs, and outcroppings increasingly dotted the land, plenty of places for good cover if she wanted to hide. But any good hunter didn’t give up on the hunt just because they lost sight of the prey for a few seconds. She would need to both conceal herself and give her pursuers another rabbit to chase.
A magic invisibility ring would b
e handy about now.
A grin broke out on her face, deepening the dimples in her cheeks. She had just the idea.
Another ten minutes passed, and the dust plumes in her rearview mirror grew closer, the faintest hint of darker shapes as they became more visible. Shay found a nice overhang to provide cover for the Land Rover. She parked and calmly but quickly exited the vehicle.
Out of the cool air conditioning the choking heat smacked Shay in the face.
“Fuck, I bet even the cactuses are thirsty in this heat.”
The tomb raider hurried to the back of the Land Rover to yank out a large desert camouflage tarp and draped it over the vehicle. Unless her enemies already had eyes on her exact location, they were going to have a hard time picking the covered Land Rover out from a distance. A brown, dusty object in the middle of hundreds of miles of brown, dusty landscape.
Shay grabbed her loaded backpack from the vehicle. After retrieving binoculars from the bag, she peered into the distance at the dust plumes.
Two white Escalades barreled toward her general direction. They both abruptly halted after about fifteen seconds.
“Lost me, huh? Just following my dust, assholes? Amateurs.”
Shay could barely make it out as someone rolled down their window, and a man in a brown cowboy hat leaned out. At the distance, she couldn’t pick out much other than the hat. A brief conversation followed, and one of the other Escalades peeled off, pulling hard to the left. Mr. Cowboy Hat’s vehicle continued forward.
Shay grinned and hurried back to her Land Rover. She moved under the tarp to pull out a small emergency drone that came with the rental car. These days, with magic everywhere, just a car to rent wasn’t enough for people. They wanted toys, too.
“I am no different. The app is all ready to go. Let’s play.”
Shay stepped out from under the tarp, placed the drone on the ground, and flipped three switches on the machine. She yanked her phone out of her pocket to bring up the control program and surveyed the options. Her eyes stopped on Direct Control.