“Priorities.”
“Exactly, Miz Carson.”
He hung up.
So much for a low-key job. Now there was a crater and she needed to find more leads, but at least the Professor was taking it well.
She sighed and navigated the drone back down to her vehicle. It was time to get a little cardio and view the damage directly.
Minutes later the tomb raider crested the hill. The crater was even more magnificent to the naked eye and extended deep into the ground.
Shay retrieved her AR goggles from her backpack and examined the area using several different frequencies, but didn’t find anything unusual. She’d been half-expecting some residual thermal energy in the crater, but it matched the background temperature.
“The artifact is still around? How can he be sure? Nothing could have survived this.”
After a few more minutes of inspecting the crater, Shay made her way back down to the black SUVs. Both were locked.
Shay grabbed a universal key remote from a box in the back of her car. She didn’t have much use for the gadget under normal circumstances, but since her adventure with a damaged car in Russia she’d started to bring it along on raids in case she needed to borrow someone’s vehicle to escape. Soon both vehicles were unlocked.
Shay slipped on some gloves. No reason to leave any fingerprints for the Japanese police.
The vehicles were clean, with stickers indicating they were rentals from a place in Sapporo. There was nothing in the back of either: no weapons, no drones, no equipment.
Shay looked back up the stairs. The poor bastards were dust now. Or were they? The Professor seemed convinced the artifact was still around, but if it’d blown up the other tomb raiders it shouldn’t have been able to go anywhere else.
Unless those fuckers meant to set it off, for some reason.
The sedans didn’t have any dust, leaves, or any other indications they’d been there for any length of time.
Shay checked for nearby cities on her map app. There was a small town about an hour away. It wouldn’t hurt to check.
The tomb raider popped the back hatch of the first SUV and pulled up the back mat covering the spare tire. The tire was absent, and several guns and gadgets lay inside.
She chuckled.
This seems like some shit Brownstone would pull.
Shay preferred her equipment to always be available.
A cell phone lay next to one of the guns and she took it. At least she had a lead if she couldn’t find out anything in town.
She touched the screen, then frowned at the lock screen.
Shay pulled out her phone and dialed Peyton.
“I don’t have anything new about Brownstone,” he answered.
“If I brought you a cell phone could you break into it?”
“Sure. No big deal.”
She could almost hear the grin in his voice.
“Okay, then I’m bringing home a present. Talk to you later.” She hung up.
Maybe she didn’t have the item, but if the other tomb raiders had it the phone would lead her right to them. Even if they’d been vaporized, their friends might have some clues she didn’t.
“Big blue explosion,” the bar owner offered, gesturing with his hands. He rattled off something in Japanese to one of the other customers, and she nodded her head in agreement.
Shay brought up her phone and tapped the translate function. She didn’t need quality for this conversation. “Please repeat that,” she said into the phone.
The phone rattled off her request in Japanese.
The man repeated himself.
“Foreigners came in black cars,” her phone translated. “Then drove up to the old temple. Then a big explosion. We could see it all the way from here.”
“Thanks.”
Shay had asked a half-dozen people if they’d seen anything, but everyone gave her the same basic story. Some non-Japanese men drove up, the temple exploded in a bright blue flash, and no one came back. According to the news, a plane had crashed in the area.
She snorted at the thought. She’d been there a little over an hour before and hadn’t seen any crashed plane. The Japanese government obviously knew a magical explosion had occurred and were covering up the truth. It was funny how even after the truth of Oriceran had come out, so many people still lied about magic.
The job was on hold until she could get the phone to Peyton.
Shay blew out a breath. It wouldn’t hurt to follow up at the rental place in Sapporo and check out the site again. If she couldn’t find anything, she could head back home to help Brownstone out in his war against… Well, probably everybody.
The tomb raider laughed.
Yeah, that is the smart play. Damn, Brownstone, if you weren’t such a badass I wouldn’t even want to help you. Funny how that works.
Chapter Fourteen
Shay grumbled as she sat on the edge of the soft hotel bed. There was nothing like traveling halfway around the world only to find your target site was now a huge crater. At least she hadn’t been in the place when it’d become a hole.
Now that the field archaeologist was back in civilization she needed to catch up on her mail and messages, so she pulled out her phone and started skimming the subject lines of her messages. One in particular caught her eye, and she opened it to read the detail.
“Oh, shit,” Shay muttered. “Damn. Guess that explains it.” She immediately dialed Brownstone.
After their brief and unsatisfactory conversation, Shay gritted her teeth and slammed her phone down on the nightstand so hard her fingers hurt. She shook them out and looked at her screen, which now sported a jagged crack
“This might have been a cheap burner phone, Brownstone, but I’m still gonna make you pay for it,” Shay ranted. “All this stupid machismo crap from men and their stubborn asses. Plus… You know what,
