So this is what it means to care. It doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.
Shay sat on the edge of the bed while Alison showered.
The teen emerged from the bathroom in a robe, her hair still wet.
“Look, Alison,” Shay said. “I think I should be a little more honest about what’s going on with Brownstone. I kind of gave you a line about what was going on, but that’s not really the whole truth. I thought about lying to protect you, but I think—”
“You shouldn’t lie to me,” Alison told her, tilting her head.
Shay held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Lying’s bad and all that. Like I said, I thought about it, but I decided against it. After everything you’ve gone through, you deserve to know when bad things are happening so you can figure out how you want to deal with them your own way.”
The girl shook her head. “No, you don’t understand, Aunt Shay. I can tell when people are lying to me now. Most of the time, anyway.”
Shay blinked. “You can tell when people are lying? That’s...handy. That’s very handy.”
As Shay explained Brownstone’s situation, the teen’s lips pursed and a dark expression settled over her face.
“Are you okay?” Shay asked when she’d finished.
Alison nodded. “I’m just...tired of people hurting the people I love. I’ll admit that I don’t like feeling this way, but I’m experiencing an overwhelming urge to hurt people.”
Shay sat down next to Alison and pulled her into an embrace. “Don’t worry, Alison. We’re gonna make sure you never have to.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shay sipped her margarita. The Charlottesville bar she’d selected was a nice low-key place. Light country played in the background, but the crowd seemed more upscale than cowboy.
The ambiance was secondary. A little booze after the last few days was hitting the spot.
She hadn’t minded spending the peaceful days with Alison, but regret still lingered in her heart. She let out a little chuckle, thinking about how the bounty hunter had solved his problem in the most ridiculous and over-the-top Brownstone way possible.
Tricking the army of hitmen onto Camp Pendleton had been flashy enough, but his frontal assault on the Harriken headquarters had surprised even her—and she’d already seen what he could do.
The authorities had only made it more spectacular by issuing a rare organizational bounty.
It was just like she’d predicted. The damned Harriken wouldn’t leave him alone, so he’d ended them in America.
Learned your lesson yet, or does he need to come over to Japan and finish you off?
At least things were over and Alison would be safe.
Her gaze roamed the room. Two men at a table in the center caught her attention and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, but she couldn’t figure out why.
What am I missing?
The men, both sipping beers, chatted quietly. There was nothing unusual about them, but something about the way they carried themselves insinuated itself into the back of her mind and wouldn’t go away.
The ex-killer pulled out her phone and held it up like she was going to take a selfie, but she made sure to angle the phone so the two men would be in the shot. After snapping the picture, she forwarded it to Peyton and sent him a quick text.
Need to know if these guys are trouble ASAP.
Shay returned to sipping her drink and only occasionally glanced around the bar to verify the men were still there.
Everybody had a camera, and every modern city was filled with drones. A lot of people didn’t remember that, or even if they did, they didn’t seem to care.
That made it hard to hide, even with magic. That was why Peyton and Shay had both needed to “die” rather than just move. If anyone knew to look for them, they’d be screwed.
Peyton considered those truths as he isolated the faces from Shay’s picture and adjusted the lighting to make it easier for his facial recognition algorithms to work.
He smiled. He might not be able to cook pizza worth a damn, but this kind of work was trivial for him. Even the great Shay Carson needed his help.
A check of public criminal databases wasn’t turning anything up, so he brought up a program that linked him to a few sketchier underworld databases. Even scumbags and criminals appreciated the value of collating data and having it accessible via a convenient API. The trick was mostly knowing who to pay to get access to that sort of thing.
His computer beeped; he’d found a match in seconds.
“Damn I’m good.” He brought up the record. “Ah, that explains why it popped up so quickly. They’re the kind of scumbags who want to pretend they aren’t.”
Bryce Smith and John Southward, both sergeants with Grayson Private Military Contracting Services.
There were a lot of PMC companies all over the world with different levels of repute, but the Grayson crew were nothing more than vicious mercenaries who didn’t care who hired them as long as they got paid.
They also happened to be the company that lost dozens of men in the raid on Belmont House. It hadn’t been Brownstone’s fault, but they didn’t know that. It wasn’t like Shay or Brownstone, at least as far as Peyton knew, had gone out of their way to clarify that.
Angry mercenaries hanging out in the same city as Alison struck Peyton as the very definition of trouble.
Both those guys are with Grayson PMC Services.
Thanks, Peyton. That’s helpful.
Shay sighed. The coincidence of two Grayson mercenaries being in a bar close to the School for Necessary Magic with a picture of Alison was too great to ignore.
How the fuck did they get a picture of Alison? Not good.
Twenty minutes later the men got up to leave, and Shay rose and headed to the front while they were still standing over their table. She hurried out of the bar and peeked into a nearby alley. The security camera near the end might make things
