James snorted. “You were genuinely pissed there. I struck a nerve, which means you actually gave a shit about that guy. Why are you so hell-bent on pretending like you don’t give a shit?”
“Just because I’m looking out for myself doesn’t mean I don’t care about anyone else,” Harper explained. “So, yeah, you win.” She threw up her hands in mock surrender. “I did care about him, and for the record, no, I didn’t leave him to die. If you have to know, he died saving me from a trap.” She gestured to her face and then her body. “Then again, what man wouldn’t die to save all this, right? It’s a net win for the universe.”
“Is that why you quit being a tomb raider?” James asked. He didn’t need to be a psychiatrist to see the obvious defense mechanism.
“Why did you quit being a bounty hunter?” Harper countered.
“I didn’t. I still do the occasional bounty.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. You’ve even said publicly that you’re semi-retired.”
“I suppose family was a big reason I stopped,” James admitted.
“You didn’t stop when you adopted Alison.”
“It took a few years for me to absorb it all. I had something else I cared about, and that made me care less about bounty hunting. I haven’t needed the money in a while, so I only do the occasional hunt to keep my skills up. Alison went into security because she wants to help protect people, and it’s a way she can do that without too many restrictions.”
Why the fuck am I telling her all this?
Harper gasped. “It’s weird. Spooky, even. I just thought of something.” She pointed at him. “I’m around her age. There could be some sort of timeline where I end up as Harper Brownstone.” She giggled. “Can I call you Dad?”
“If you do that, I will call up the Southguards myself and turn you over,” James growled.
“Oh, you’re no fun.” Harper stuck out her tongue. “Loosen up, James.”
James grunted. “Yeah, and I doubt that shit you said anyway. It’s not like Alison had a fun time getting to that point. She suffered a lot. Is that your deal? You get fucked over by a parent? End up an orphan or something? That’s your excuse for not giving a fuck?”
“Nope. Not at all. My life was spoiled and easy-peasy,” Harper related. She munched the bite off her fork. “If anything, my parents were too loving. They don’t know about my careers, of course. I’ve told them I’m a personal shopper for this rich businessman in Singapore, which is why I have to travel all over the world. But Alison? I know about all that stuff your daughter went through. I saw the movie, the one with that one actress. You know, what’s-‘er-name.”
James shrugged. Several different movies had been made about Alison’s adoption, all unauthorized, and all of which took liberties with reality. He was particularly annoyed with one that implied he had been in a relationship with Alison’s mother before meeting her, the implication being, Alison was secretly his biological daughter.
Harper set her fork down and folded her hands, then set her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her hands with an amused expression. “I don’t have a sad story of abuse or poverty, James. My parents were rich and kind, and I could have cruised through life pretty easily without a want in the world. I ended up with that tomb raider because my life felt empty. I tried charity like my mother, and I tried a few internships to satisfy my father, but I wanted something more, and things never felt more alive than when I was risking my life. I did some extreme sports, but that seemed pointless. I found out pretty quickly that I needed a real goal for it to mean something. I need risk plus reward. That was the formula.”
“And you quit being a tomb raider after the guy died? That finally shock you and make you realize it wasn’t a game?”
“Life’s a game, James. Everyone agrees it is. They just disagree on how we should keep score.” Harper shook her head. “And, no, I didn’t want to quit after that. I did it for another year, actually, but then I realized something important. I liked the thrill of it all, but I hated the caves and nastiness associated with it. When I was with him, I didn’t mind as much, but once he was gone, it became obvious. I mean, no surprise. It’s tomb raiding, not spa raiding, right?”
James scoffed. “Yeah. So you switched over to being a courier?”
“It was surprisingly easy.” Harper tapped her forehead. “Especially when you’re as smart as I am. I already had the relevant contacts from my tomb-raiding days, so it was just a matter of putting out a new shingle. It took me a couple of years, but I ended up with a decent rep, and everything was going along well until this annoying little incident.” She sighed. “Such is life.” She clucked her tongue. “But this will all be a nasty bump in the past soon enough, and I can go back to being fabulously cute and awesomely talented.”
“You know what all this tells me?” James stared at her, watching her expression carefully.
“That I’m awesome, and you should worship my beauty and talent?” Harper grinned. Any hint of the introspective woman was gone, replaced by the mask.
“That’s just the point. You are talented. Talented enough to survive as a tomb raider and a high-value courier.” James pointed to the top of his head. “To think ahead about disguises.” He nodded at the cube. “And how to keep yourself from being spied on. You were brave enough to break into my house. This means you’re not a total piece of shit, and you could do something halfway worthwhile with your life instead of being an errand girl for criminals.”
Harper rolled her eyes. “Not all my clients are criminals. Just…some.”
“You don’t even verify most of your clients, so how the hell do you even know?”
Harper snorted. “What am I supposed to do? Go open a security company or become a college professor? Run a barbeque restaurant? I don’t play well with others, James, and I don’t like being tied down to one place. I know exactly what and who I am, and I’m going to continue to be that person. Don’t think you can give me a few stories about loving your wife and daughter, and I’ll repent and start attending church with you.”
“I don’t really give a shit either way. I’m just saying.” James shrugged. “You’re right. I have a restaurant now. I’m mainly helping you now because Shay convinced me, but even if we stop the Seasons, nothing will change if you don’t change. You’ll end up in this same situation six months from now, or two years from now. Someday. You’ll bat your eyelashes, but no one will come and help you. The next thing you know, the people you thought were your friends are trying to kill you in your own house.”
“Boring lecture, pseudo-Dad,” Harper replied.
“What did I say about that?” His nostrils flared.
“You said I couldn’t call you ‘Dad,’ so I called you something else.” Harper smirked. “Looking out for number one isn’t evil, or even selfish. It’s pragmatic. Let’s be real. That’s all anyone in the world can do.”
James shook his head. “I used to think that. I don’t anymore. I have friends and people who actually give a shit about me. I have a family.”
Harper offered a flirtatious wave to a man in a few tables down. “Is this all because your wife is about to pop?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
James forked up another piece of brisket. He wasn’t sure. The whole thing might be a combination, perhaps, of what had happened with Calista and the fact Harper was so young. She wasn’t totally wrong. Something about the courier vaguely reminded him of his daughter, a talented young woman in a dangerous field. It just seemed like a waste, just as it had with Trey and his boys.
There was potential there, but it wasn’t his responsibility. She wasn’t a child, and unlike Trey, Alison, and many others he’d helped, she didn’t have an excuse other than selfishness.
She chose her life, and now other people are suffering for her mistakes.
“Don’t worry about it,” James rumbled, the souring mood muting his enjoyment of the brisket. “Let’s just finish and get out of here.�
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Chapter Fourteen
James rolled to a stop and pulled off the highway onto the shoulder. “This is it?” He peered into the dark forest. A faint shadow of a hump stood in the distance—Granite Mountain if the map had been right. It was hard for a Californian like him to consider it a true mountain. The night was clear, but they were in the middle of nowhere, only the dim glow of a nearby town helping push away near-complete darkness.
“I didn’t tell you to stop because I needed to go the bathroom,” Harper answered, rolling her eyes. “Yes, this is it.”
“And you know where you’re going?” he asked.
“You don’t just lose something like that,” Harper replied. She pointed. “We need to get the car off the road. We don’t want any cops grabbing the car or investigating.” She smirked. “Even if you think law enforcement should get involved, think about how dangerous it is. I’m here just to do my part to shut the Seasons down before they beat the containment and dampening artifacts.”
He pulled forward, the car shaking as it moved off-road. “Too bad we don’t have a nice big Ford truck about now.” He slanted a glance at her.
Harper shrugged. “Trash the car if you want. It’s not like I’m dropping this thing back off. I’m disappearing after all this is done. If the cops want to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the driver after this is over, all the better. They’ll probably just assume I died when they find the remains of the Seasons’ work.”
“I’m not gonna knock you too much. It’s not like I haven’t trashed my share of rental cars in my day.”
“See, pseudo-Dad? We’re bonding!”
James let out a long grunt. “Every time I stop being annoyed with you for five seconds, you go out of your way to fix that.”
“Words hurt.”
“Magical death factories hurt.”
Harper laughed. “They do, but this one won’t very soon.”
This hasn’t been the best road trip, but at least the barbeque has been good, and this shit isn’t even in my top ten of annoying jobs.
James continued for a few hundred feet, the forest assaulting the bottom and sides of the car. The trees soon grew too dense and forced him to stop. Driving through an unlit forest at night was pointless. They would end up wrapped around a tree. “We’re hoofing it from here.”
Harper reached into a backpack in the back and fished out some pearl cat-eye glasses. She slipped them on. “Ah, that will do it.”
“What, you suddenly care about fashion? We’re stopping some doom artifact here, not taking selfies for dating profiles.” James sneered.
“We’re close enough now, is why I got these out.” Harper tapped the side of the glasses. “These let me see the magical emanations from the Seasons, despite them being mostly muted. We can walk straight toward them with my help.” She opened the door. “Don’t worry, pseudo-Dad. If all goes well, this will be over in a few hours, and you can go back to ignoring me because I’m not the daughter you always wanted.”
“You’re not my daughter.”
“You could always adopt me.” Harper batted her eyelashes.
“Let’s just get this shit over with,” James rumbled.
Harper saluted. She grabbed her backpack, stepped outside, and slammed the door, then donned the backpack and shook out her hands. “Ah, you have to love that crisp forest air.”
James reached under his shirt to pull the spacer off his amulet. He hissed, the pain of Whispy’s bonding pushing out the building fatigue from his lack of sleep.
Initiation, the symbiont sent. What is the nature of the enemy?
Don’t know yet. They may be adaptive.
That suggests increased probability of symbiont adaptation, Whispy suggested, eagerness radiating from him. Engage and kill enemies for maximum potential adaptation.
I don’t really know if we’re going to be killing anything as much as breaking things, but we’ll definitely have some enemies to fight.
James opened his door and stepped outside. He squinted. “I can’t see shit. I have my own tricks, but did you bring a flashlight?”
“Something better,” Harper suggested. “Flashlights are boring.” She tapped one of her rings and a glowing orb appeared a few feet above her, bathing the area in soft light. A few small, furry animals scurried away from the light.
“That works,” James mumbled. He patted his coat down to confirm his Shay treats and magazines were still in there. It was likely to be a Whispy-intensive night, but if he could solve the problem with a few bullets, he would. “Lead on.”
Harper skipped a few feet before settling into a normal walk. “It’s just a few miles from here.”
“It’s a few miles off the highway?” James asked, surprise in his voice.
“Yep.”
The light buzz of cicadas and the occasional rustle in the bushes revealed they were not alone, but insects and animals didn’t concern James. There wasn’t a natural animal on the planet that had a chance against him while he was bonded. Most wouldn’t do well against him even when he didn’t have the amulet.
Maybe I should fight a bear, he thought.
Little adaptation potential from potential engagement, Whispy reported.
It was an idle thought. Wait, a few miles from the highway?
“From what I saw on the maps, there are a lot of small towns around, and Austin’s only about fifty miles away,” James observed.
“You’re correct,” Harper replied, glancing at him with a bemused smile. “What about it?”
“That’s a lot of people very damned close to the Seasons, and as you just pointed out, we’re only a few miles from the highway.” James glanced into the woods. The light reflected off yellow eyes. Whatever animal owned the eyes bounded deeper into the undergrowth. “How the hell did you end up basically dropping a WMD near a major city with a straight path to it? There are millions of people in the greater Austin area. Do you have any idea how many barbeque restaurants there are around here?”
Harper snickered. “So if there were no barbeque restaurants, would it be okay?”
James hesitated for a moment before shrugging. “Of course not. I just don’t get you. Behind all the bullshit games and fake smiles, there’s a brain, so I’m just trying to see how it went so wrong. Usually, if you’re smuggling something like this, you keep it away from major areas. Or were you taking it to Austin?”
Harper spread out her arms to her sides. She jumped over a few raised roots. “I was supposed to drop it off in Seattle.”
“Seattle?” James scoffed. “You would have caused trouble for my daughter, then.”
“You’re really bumming me out, pseudo-Dad. It’s not like I planned any of this.” Harper lowered her arms. “This is probably the worst situation I’ve been in.”
An owl fluttered overhead, ignoring the intruders and disappearing deeper into the forest.
“Most of the times I’ve helped transport a really dangerous artifact, they didn’t risk flying it,” James explained. “You put that thing in a plane, meaning you risked it dropping almost anywhere, and all that ‘planes are safer than cars’ shit only applies when they are big commercial planes, not whatever little glider you were flying.”
Harper rubbed the back of her neck. “Ornithopter, actually.”
“Wait. Isn’t that…” James snorted in disgust. “You weren’t even flying an actual plane. It wasn’t just a mechanical failure like you claimed. You were using some flying artifact, then?” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Aren’t you the person who specializes in dampening artifacts?”
Harper raised a finger. “Got it in one. I’m still not sure why it failed, but I’m not a total idiot. I know how to use certain artifacts and still protect myself. I don’t even know how to fly a regular plane. The only way I’m getting through the air is with an artifact, and I needed the speed for the job.”
“I don’t get it.” James pointed at the sky, most of the stars hidden by the trees. “You were here,
you crashed, the artifact gets activated. You spend some time setting up the defenses, and then what…you call AAA and headed to town and flew to LA in a real plane?”
“Nope. Not entirely.” Harper shook her head. “I had a portal artifact. It was supposed to be short-range, but I combined it with an amplifying artifact I had to get it to open a portal to LA. Both artifacts died and turned into puddles of goo, but at least I didn’t. I got my bearings, made a few calls, and sent a few messages to get certain things in motion and misdirect the Southguards, then I wandered over to your place, where we had our lovely chat, and I convinced you via your very pregnant wife to help me fix this problem.”
James fell silent for a long while processing all the details. There were federal agents and bounty hunters trying to clean things up. Spies, and even the Fixer, but how many people were flying around in magical contraptions with deadly artifacts tucked into the back? It was almost a miracle a major city hadn’t gone up in a magical mushroom cloud yet, but that didn’t mean everyone had escaped unscathed. The destruction of the Seattle kemana was proof of just how many people a few bad magicals could kill when left unchecked.
“That was risky,” he rumbled. “Everything about this was risky. How did you know when you left that the Seasons would stop pumping out an army? Millions of people might have already been dead.”
“Because I know the capabilities of the artifacts I deployed.” Harper gave him a bright smile. “I thought we already established that I was talented. One reason I’m not dead is that I’ve always got backup plans. I knew the containment and dampening artifacts would keep it under control for a few days, so even if I couldn’t convince you right away, I’d have a margin of error to either keep working on you or figure something out.”
“Or just run?” James asked.
“Maybe.” Harper shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Plus, with the magical signature muted at a distance, certain people wouldn’t come accidentally sniffing around and find it. It’d be safe from the Southguards and others. It’s not like I gave them a detailed flight plan.”
Road Trip: BBQ Delivered with Attitude (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Book 20) Page 11