Peyton laughed. “I think I can survive a day or two without you. Hey. Wait. Were you seriously worried?”
Shay snorted. “If you get killed, that means someone’s been in one of my warehouse, which means my security’s been compromised. You being alive means I’m safer. That’s all.”
“You’re just a bundle of rainbows and unicorns pouring out my ass, aren’t you?”
“Fuck yeah. I’m almost to the lake. I probably won’t contact you again until I’m on my way back.”
“Is there some sort of protocol if you don’t?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if you die out there?”
Shay laughed. “Then get my body, put it on a wooden raft, and give me a Viking funeral, along with some of the same kind of flowers from my first funeral.”
“I’m serious, Shay.”
“Don’t worry. I already died once. It didn’t take.” Shay hung up the phone before Peyton could whine.
You’re a big boy, Peyton. If I die, you’ll figure it out soon enough.
Chapter Six
No killers around so far. Well, other than me.
A quick aerial drone inspection of the area revealed no one remotely suspicious, and the only other people out on the lake were two older men on the other end. They were already pulling their rowboat out of the water and didn’t look like a concealed threat.
She’d been able to roll her truck to the edge of the lake and unload all her equipment without having to deal with anything more troublesome than a stiff breeze.
It was like the universe wanted her to find treasure that day, and Shay wasn’t one to question the universe.
“Your will is my command,” she said, and chuckled as she got out of the black truck, stretching her legs.
She eyed a few bent pine and spruce trees near the lakeshore and the line of younger trees planted after the loggers left. The place must have been stripped bare at one point. She could see how so many logs ended up in the bottom of the lake.
Shay surveyed the area with the drone, taking one last look around to make sure no one was nearby. But, just because no one else was there right now didn’t guarantee that no one was coming. Shay decided not to waste a lot of time. Time to go after her target. She sent the relay drone into the dense green water, followed by her main scouting drone.
Okay, my coordinates are right, and we’ve got three possible spots based on that satellite data cross-referenced with my other info. This should be relatively easy.
Shay tapped a few commands into her phone and slipped on AR goggles to sync with the drone’s cameras. Even if she couldn’t use the goggles in the water, they’d at least make the search process with the drone a little easier.
The drone quickly disappeared beneath the surface. Shay switched on its lights and watched through the drone’s cameras as it descended from the well-lit top layer of the lake.
She tensed at movement in the left corner of the drone’s field of view.
Am I already too late?
Shay turned the drone to the left, hoping to get a clear view of her competitor. She didn’t see a mercenary or diver. Instead, she saw a fish hurrying away from the drone.
Yeah, you better run. She chuckled to herself and took deep, even breaths. Steady.
The seconds passed as the drone dropped even lower. She spotted more than a few more fish, but nothing human or even humanoid. No lake monsters for that matter.
A deep darkness swallowed the drone as it hit the lower depths, only allowing Shay to see what was floating nearby through an eerie tunnel of light via the AR goggles.
The drone closed in on the first location three hundred feet down as she activated more lights to illuminate the area.
“Come on, treasure. Don’t be anno… What the hell? Are those…?”
She maneuvered the drone closer to the lake bed. Shay stared at the screen, unable to accept what she was seeing on the bottom of the supposedly pristine lake. Not gold, jewels, or magical eagle pins, but several large cracked open crates filled with empty beer bottles. Environmental assholes. Nothing new. The labels were long gone, but she could make out words embedded in the glass itself.
Stiegl? Congrats. You guys are still around. Good for you.
Shay shook her head, annoyed and switched the drone’s sensors to cold thermal view. She couldn’t make out anything else of interest. The beer bottles had to be from jerkwads partying on the lake and not some sort of mystical artifacts. Then again calling a Nazi a jerkwad was redundant.
Maybe I’ll be kicking myself in a few weeks when I read something about how a bunch of genies were trapped in beer bottles by Nazis.
She sighed and began maneuvering the drone to the next set of coordinates.
Her heart almost leapt out of her chest as she spotted someone in a diving suit with a spherical helmet, their head down and their arm flapping behind their back. She stopped the drone’s movement waiting for the other person to act. The seconds ticked by, and she realized it wasn’t an arm flapping, but a torn air hose.
Shay nudged the drone forward, shining the lights more clearly on the head. She winced as the lights highlighted a fleshless skull. Whoever the poor son of a bitch had been, he’d been dead a long time before she’d shown up. The bulky diving suit dated the ill-fated attempt to the forty years prior to her attempt.
Closer examination with the drone revealed tears in the suit, and huge cracks on the other side of the helmet.
“Rest in peace, you poor bastard. Sorry it didn’t work out for you, but I brought better toys.”
Shay took a deep breath and moved the drone away from the skeletal diver remains to continue toward her next destination.
Unlike the accessible crates of beer bottles, a twisted mass of rotted logs rested, layered one on top of each other at the second set of coordinates, blocking any
