One Bad Decision

by Michael Anderle

  Logan wanted to smash his phone against the ground. How the fuck had this all happened? They’d planned this operation well, but everything was going completely to shit.

  He took a few deep breaths. Failure was part of all high-risk operations. He understood that. Tak had to understand that, too.

  Logan gritted his teeth. Lying to others was one thing, but lying to yourself was pathetic. Every man on his team understood that it was better to die than surrender to the police. Tak and his shadow bosses would make sure that anyone who surrendered on a job would suffer a painful death no matter where they tried to hide.

  He should know. He’d already seen it.

  The man sucked in a breath. They could salvage the situation. The only significant loss thus far was the circlet. Some minor losses in funds could be made up for by pay cuts. The artifacts of true importance hadn’t been recovered.

  Logan lifted his phone and took a deep breath. At least he’d survive to the end of the job. It wasn’t like Tak could handle the men directly. If he could, Logan wouldn’t be there.

  He dialed Tak and waited.

  The dwarf answered on the first ring. “Explain to me why I’m hearing things I really wish I wasn’t. It’s almost like the universe is conspiring to give me a bad day.”

  Logan cleared his throat. “I’ll admit there have been some complications.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “The police and Brownstone have raided several of the vans and transfer points.” Logan took a deep breath. “As far as the vans go, everything but the research and vault artifacts has been secured by the authorities or Brownstone. All our men have been killed except for the team in the decoy van. They abandoned the van and the police have discovered it, leaving them with two empty vans. I’m having the vault artifact van pick those men up for reinforcements.”

  Tak sighed. “So what you’re telling me is that much of the financial benefit of the job has already evaporated, which will impact future operations. Many of the men working this job are also highly trained and hard to replace. Does all that sound correct to you, Logan?”

  “Yeah, it does.” He rubbed the back of his neck, happy the dwarf hadn’t insisted on a video call.

  “And what of the specialty artifacts?”

  “Those are safe.” Logan let out a sigh of relief. At least he had some good news to report. “We got those transferred to the SUV, and there’s nothing to indicate the cops know about them.”

  Tak chuckled. “Was there anything that indicated the police knew about the vans?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “You will fix this,” the dwarf hissed. “If you can’t fix it, end my trouble for me. Do you understand?”

  The man gritted his teeth. “Yeah. I understand.”

  Tak ended the call.

  Logan stared at the phone. Ending Tak’s trouble would mean Logan eating the end of his gun. If he didn’t, the dwarf would make sure he suffered before he died.

  Logan shook his head. He grabbed his phone and texted the drivers of the two remaining vans and the SUV.

  Grab additional weapons and artifacts and go to Plan C. Use the illusion powder and the resonant teleport beads. I’ll take responsibility for the cost

  The drivers of one of the vans and the SUV texted back a simple OK

  The other van didn’t respond for several seconds. Logan frowned when he read the text.

  Brownstone is already on our tail. Don’t have time to pull over and use the items

  Logan texted back, I’ve got an idea. Make sure you do exactly what I say

  19

  James grunted as they closed on their next target. The van had sped up but wasn’t trying to swerve or take any other obvious evasive action. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Like you assholes are gonna outrun my F-350 in a delivery van anyway. Just give the fuck up.

  The bounty hunter snorted and pushed down the gas pedal. The whole situation was ridiculous as they sped along surface streets past gated communities and multi-million dollar homes. Maybe the thieves had hoped that staying in a ritzy residential zone would lower the chance of anyone noticing them and calling the police.

  Surprised I don’t have some asshole calling to beg me not to show up in their neighborhood like that fucker did when the hitmen were after me.

  Shay pointed to the van. “Just ram him already.”

  James shook his head. “Don’t want to ram too many of these fuckers. Might mess up my truck.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “Yes, I’m sure it’d be awful if you have to get a truck that was made this decade.”

  The van screeched around the corner. James yanked on his wheel to follow.

  His phone rang, and he nodded at it. “Answer that. Don’t want to take my hands off the wheel while we’re chasing them.”

  Shay picked up the phone. “Huh. It’s from Maria.” She touched the screen to answer it. “We’re right behind the next van. Yeah. Yeah.” She nodded. “I understand. I’ll pass it along. Thanks, you too.”

  She ended the call and set the phone down with a smirk.

  James glanced her way after another hard turn to keep up with the van. “What’d she say?”

  “We should execute the capture with extreme prejudice. She wants those fuckers to go down, and that ‘Brownstone should do what I think he does so well.’” Shay’s smirk disappeared. “There are times when the only way to fight a monster is with another monster. We’ve got a responsibility to become those monsters and do bad things to bad people now.”

  The bounty hunter grunted. “I’ve got no problem taking down assholes. It was my plan anyway. Glad everyone else is on board with it.”

  Kill, the amulet chanted.

  Yeah, working on that. Keep your tendrils on.

  James tried to focus on the road. At least the amulet shut up when he actually started killing people. It was almost like it was too busy soaking in happiness to talk. It claimed it’d somehow strengthened his skin at the expense of his telekinesis. Maybe the last fight would have been harder without the modifications.

  This shit’s getting more complicated. Guess there’s no simple way to have a living amulet that modifies your body.

  He snorted and shook his head before taking a corner to keep up with the van.

  “What?” Shay asked.

  “Nothing. Just thinking.”

  Shay nodded, undid her tactical harness, and stripped off her shirt. She tossed the burned and hole-filled mess into the back before pulling another shirt out of a suitcase, along with her adamantine knives. She slipped the knives into three sheaths on her harness and put on the shirt.

  James smiled a little. Too bad she wasn’t going to get completely naked, but that might have been too much to ask for since they were hurtling along surface streets at sixty miles per hour chasing artifact thieves.

  The tomb raider winked at him. “Get through this, and you’ll find out what it feels like when your mind goes to the moon while your body is in bed.”

  He chuckled. “Better stay alive then.”

  The van blew through a red light, as did James, but fortunately there was no cross-traffic. A little collateral property damage was one thing. Innocent people getting hurt wasn’t acceptable.

  “Wonder when these fuckers are gonna give up?” the bounty hunter rumbled. “We’re pulling out of the neighborhood. Maybe he’s gonna hit the highway. They haven’t even shot at us.”

  Shay waved a hand. “Just ram him already. You can buff out the dents.”

  James grunted. “Easy for you to say. You don’t love your car like I love this truck.”

  “First, a man should not love his truck. And, yeah, I don’t love my car that much because I have like fifty of them. They are just a fancy way to get from Point A to Point B.” Shay sighed and frowned pensively.

  Shit. This seems like a podcast moment. Uh, what should I do? Oh, yeah. “Asking questions is never wrong. Trying to force a solution is. She’ll want to know tha
t you care about her emotions and thoughts.”

  “You okay?” James asked.

  The van accelerated, and he matched their speed.

  Shay nodded as she checked her 9mm. “Yeah. Just funny how since I stopped being a professional killer, I kill more people than ever. If not working with you, then on tomb raids. I’ve been trying to dial some of this down, especially when Lily’s with me, but it’s not like everyone or everything I run into on my jobs can be convinced to not try to kill me.”

  James shrugged. “Like you said, sometimes monsters need to take out other monsters. You that worried about it?”

  “Nah. Not really.” The tomb raider smiled and holstered her pistol. “My past doesn’t define me anymore. It’s what taught me the skills I use to defend myself, my friends, and my family. I’m Shay Carson, just with a badass wicked alter ego.”

  James shrugged. “Don’t care. Love you in all ways, and you’ll have to kill a lot more people if you want to reach my count.”

  Shay snorted. “Keep in mind I was with you for the final Harriken assault, not to mention the cartel.”

  He grinned. “Just saying.”

  The tomb raider reached over to pat him on the shoulder. “That’s one thing that has helped me learn to be me. There’s nothing I could do that would shock you.”

  James shook his head. “I might be scared if you do that thing in the sex book you showed me.”

  Shay burst out laughing. “Oh, you can’t handle the power of the 101 Nights of Kinky Sex?”

  He grinned.

  Still snickering, she pointed to the van. “Looks like our boys are turning into that parking garage. It’s gonna be hard for them to lose us in there.”

  James chuckled. “Good, they finally want to stop being pussies. Glad to take them up on that. At least this way I don’t have to dent my truck.”

  Shay laughed. “Maybe I should be giving you the book 101 Nights of Kinky Truck Sex.”

  Peyton’s fingers flew over his keyboard. He wasn’t used to not having a direct comm line to Shay, but she’d told him to concentrate on finding the last van and to leave everything else to James and her.

  Maybe it was habit or a desire to feel out the competition, he’d instead contacted Heather to chat with her while they both worked the job.

  We can do this. Two hackers are better than one, right?

  Peyton blew out a breath. “I’ve got bots searching through camera and drone footage for Andercarr delivery vans with suspicious plates through the west half of the county now. You’ve got everything covered in the east, right?”

  “Yes,” Heather replied. “Getting a lot of hits on vans, but all with normal plates.”

  “Huh. Maybe they figured out we were homing in on them because of the plates.”

  Heather sighed. “I doubt it. Every plate I run through the system is registered with Andercarr. If they’d stolen actual company vans, they wouldn’t have had to disguise them in that warehouse, right?”

  “Yeah. Good point.” Peyton picked up a piece of the freshly made pepperoni pizza and took a bite. There were many fringe benefits to being the Pizza King, but having great food was the major one. He swallowed. “I’ve been trying to track weird reports as well.”

  “Weird reports?”

  He took another bite before responding. “Yeah. When magic’s involved, sometimes you get weird stuff. I was hoping they were using artifacts and leaving a trail of wackiness. Shay and I have seen that kind of thing before.”

  Heather laughed. “It’s a good idea, but we’re in LA. It’s Freaktown, USA. How are you going to notice something weird against all the background weirdness?”

  “It’s an idea in progress. You trying anything else?”

  “Working on trying to hack into satellite image data. I was hoping that if I can get the data and then filter for the vans, that I could just kind of follow their path. It’s going to take me a while, though.”

  Peyton set his pizza down. “Not any longer than filtering through all the background weirdness. Too bad there are no general magic detection satellites or drones.”

  He smirked. They didn’t exist yet, but given what he knew about Project Nephilim and Project Ragnarok, he wouldn’t put it past the government to develop something like that sooner rather than later. For all he knew, Amber was helping some project create one.

  Heather sighed. “We could use drones to do different types of scans. Do these artifacts give off any unusual heat or EM radiation?”

  “Not that I know of, and it’s still going to be too hard to filter through the all background crap in LA.” He frowned. “At least without having some general idea where the last van might be. I guess I’ll keep at monitoring weirdness reports and looking for Andercarr vans. Also going to send a few bots into the dark web to poke around see if there’s any talk of other transfers or sales. Kind of doubt it after the cops hitting that first one so quickly, but it won’t hurt to try.”

  Heather chuckled. “You sound like we’re losing. Look, between the cops, James, and Shay, they’ve found four out of five vans.”

  “Yeah, but a couple of those were empty.”

  “They were probably just the vans that had already delivered the artifacts. The cops grabbed a bunch at the first raid.” Heather tapped at her keyboard a moment, the clack coming loudly over the line. “And two other vans were filled with artifacts. Good bet the last one is too, so we just need to stop whining and find it. I came home early from my vacation for this crap.”

  Peyton sighed. “You’re right. Let’s do this thing.”

  The van screeched to a halt in the darkened and shadow-filled parking garage. James stopped the F-350 a good hundred feet away and pulled to the side. The last couple of guys had been tougher than he’d anticipated. He wasn’t worried for himself, but his poor truck couldn’t defend itself, and it’d already been through a lot in the last year.

  Rows of vehicles filled the parking lot. At least they’d have a lot of cover.

  Guess I’m gonna have to pay out a lot of my money from the job to people for their cars getting damaged.

  Kill the enemy, Whispy Doom chanted.

  Don’t need to be told that. Just wait a fucking second.

  James threw open his door and jumped out. Shay followed, this time kitted out with both her adamantine knives and her enchanted tachi. She reached into a box in the back and pulled out a few other small items, including a gold ring inscribed with glyphs.

  “I underestimated the last guys,” Shay commented as she slipped the ring on and closed the door “This ring might not be as useful as Whispy Doom, but it should at least help me.” She sighed. “And ignore the next part. It doesn’t mean I’ll be going to church with you.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’ll see.” Shay held up her right palm. “Michael to my south. Gabriel to my west. Uriel to my north. Raphael to my east. Grant me thy protection.” The ring glowed brightly for several seconds, then a pulsing gold aura surrounded Shay.

  James smirked. “Yeah. I’ll have you confessing to Father McCartney soon.”

  “I’d burst into flames if I stepped into a church.” Shay frowned. “It’s just the incantation. I didn’t make the thing.”

  James grunted. “Now we can both go all-out.”

  “Yeah, by the time this job is over, I’ll be lucky to break even. Even limited-use objects are expensive as shit, you know.”

  The bounty hunter shrugged. “You should look into getting yourself a whispering amulet of doom.”

  “Very funny.”

  Shay narrowed her eyes as five men filed out of the van. Two held guns, and the other three held wands. Footsteps echoed as a dozen more men carrying a variety of weapons marched around the corner. Most held pistols or rifles, but a few were carrying RPGs or rocket launchers.

  James grunted. He yanked out his .45, sprinted away from his truck, and ducked behind a Dodge pickup on the other side of the row. “Guess we know now why they didn’t try that hard to
lose us.”

  “Sonofabitch,” the tomb raider muttered. She frowned at James. “Why did you run over there?”

  “Don’t want them to use that rocket launcher on my truck.” James shrugged.

  Shay rolled her eyes and found cover behind a red Porsche, yanking out her pistol.

  That’s love, when your woman tries to avoid getting your truck blown up.

  “I figure we take out the small fry first, then focus on the magic users,” Shay suggested.

  “Whatever ends with them all down is fine by me.”

  One of the wizards stepped forward and raised his wand, a smirk on his scarred face. “Looks like you’re a little outnumbered, Brownstone.”

  The bounty hunter snorted. “I was outnumbered when I took on the Harriken, too.”

  The wizard snorted. “A bunch of pathetic gangsters.” He nodded at the other two men with wands. “Three wizards, Brownstone, and two gun mages. Not to mention all our friends here.”

  James shrugged. “Lars Hansen had a bunch of souped-up guys with him, too. You should go find a necromancer so you can ask him how well that worked out for him.”

  The scarred wizard narrowed his eyes. “Got any last words, Scourge of Harriken?”

  New damage, the amulet whispered. Adapt and become stronger.

  “Yeah, I do.” James shook his head. “You know what I’m fucking sick of? All you assholes think that you’ve got something new to bring me. You think you’re gonna take me out, but then you just end up dying. If you’re gonna talk a big game, you should actually bring it, fuckers.”