Peyton shrugged. “I like them. I had an outfit a lot like this back home. Well, back East. Guess I should stop thinking of it as home.”
“How the hell did you ever hide from anyone? Shit. People can now see you from space. Darken!” The lights immediately dimmed overhead, and blackout screens fell in front of the few windows near the top. “I knew it. I can fucking see you in the dark. Lights!” The lights rose again as the screens came up, uncovering the windows.
Peyton scoffed and stomped over to a desk set up in the old office surrounded on three sides with glass. “Hey, a man has to have some small comforts after he dies.”
“Whatever. You adjusting okay, other than feeding into your increasingly twisted and masochistic sense of fashion?”
“I’m fine for a man stuck in a city he doesn’t know who can’t talk to anyone. Sure.” Peyton stared at Shay, burning curiosity in his eyes.
“What?” She glanced down, hoping that the man hadn’t decided he suddenly wanted to hit on her. She didn’t want to have to beat him down.
“I heard all about it when you died, you know. Burned down house, confirmed body. They said they even did a DNA test using material from your teeth. It wasn’t just some fuzzy pictures on some dark net forum.”
“Is there a point to any of this, Peyton?”
“Yes.” He nodded, rubbing the rough blonde whiskers on his chin. “You turn up here, all respectable as a professor and a badass tomb raider. How? How did you pull all that off?”
Shay chuckled. “It helps when you know someone’s coming for you. It means you can plan.”
“You knew someone was coming for you?”
“Oh, yeah, Natalie Leon.”
Peyton’s eyes widened. “Wait… I heard she retired right after your death, after collecting on the hit contract for you.”
“Retirement’s one way of putting it.”
“You’re saying she’s dead?”
“I’m saying I killed her first.” Shay grinned. “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet to collect on your own bounty. That was a lot of money. Nice to know I was worth so much.” She winked, her hands on her hips. “I had a solid lead that Natalie was coming for me, and I started preparing…”
The memories flowed freely into her head as if the event happened only the day before.
Shay glanced down at her watch and stood up from her couch, shaking her head. “It’s fucking rude to keep a woman waiting when you’re coming to kill them. They had a new damned pizza sauce over at Gino’s I wanted to try.”
Her lights died.
“Huh, guess, you’re here after all.”
Shay smirked and flipped down her night-vision goggles. The trained killer yanked her 9mm from her shoulder holster and crouched behind her pale yellow upholstered love seat, the only noise the sound of her own shallow breathing.
A squeak from the kitchen cut through the silence. Shay spun and stood, blasting several rounds in that direction as another woman in night-vision goggles rolled away from the back door and returned fire, piercing the love seat. “So much for paying for interior decorating.”
Shay pivoted behind a wall. “If you were going to kill me, Natalie. You should have just blown this place up.”
“Where’s the fun in that? Explosives and sniper rifles are for chickenshits.”
“Why are you even here? I thought we were friends.” Shay ducked.
“We are friends, and this is business. The Nuevo Gulf Cartel isn’t happy with you. You killed one of their big boys not all that long ago. The money they’re offering for you…” She gave a long whistle. “It’s too much to pass up. You would do the same thing. Be glad the end is coming from a friend.”
Several bullets blasted through the plaster wall. If Shay hadn’t changed position, she would have taken three to the chest.
Should have worn a vest if I was going to get all fancy for this shit.
“Yeah, I probably would have gone after the money,” Shay called back, and rolled toward the edge of the doorway. “Glad to hear that at least I’m not a cheap date.”
After several more rounds pierced the wall, a faint click reached Shay’s ears.
The bitch is changing mags.
Shay grabbed her phone and brought up a light app. She set the app to maximum brightness and strobe mode. She tossed it into the other room as she pulled the night vision goggles off her face.
Natalie hissed, and Shay took her chance, running into the kitchen and firing in the general direction of the other woman’s voice. Something hard clattered against the tile floor.
The eerie strobe light highlighted the room in sharp relief, making the overhead fan seem as if it was moving in jerking motions.
Shay carefully walked toward the granite-topped island in the center of the room, her gun still drawn. Natalie was a tricky bitch. An arm rested on one side of the island, along with a gun several feet away. A dark pool of blood was already starting to puddle out toward the center of the kitchen. Doesn’t mean she’s dead.
The trained killer trusted her instincts and burst forward, snapping her gun down to finish Natalie. But no gun or knife awaited her, just a middle-aged assassin bleeding out from bullet wounds to the gut and chest.
“Too fucking slow,” Natalie said through gritted teeth. “The second I saw even a hint of light I should have shut my eyes and pulled the damn goggles off. Fuck.” Blood gurgled in her throat as she spit hard. “I’ve even done that exact shit to people before. Well, not with a damned phone, nice touch.”
Shay kept her gun pointed at the other woman’s head. “Do you regret coming after me now?”
The other woman let out a harsh laugh. “Fuck no.
