Brownstone had more immediate concerns. One way or another they’d need to handle the assassins soon, and she suspected his troubles would only end if they snuffed it out at the source in Japan.
Time to take a trip. Peyton would have to babysit Lily. Maybe that was the other way around.
It was a rare clear sky over Los Angeles as Shay drove into Warehouse Two, exhausted after the world’s bloodiest and most thrilling vacation.
It wasn’t a huge surprise, but worrying about killing high-end assassins and helping Brownstone murder hundreds of Harriken had cut into her research time. The days had blurred together, starting with an ambush at LAX where they’d killed the first assassin, and then the trip to Japan where they’d finished the rest of the assassins and the Harriken.
All the bloodletting and massacres had given her some important tips. First, Shay was still good at her old job, and second, the shadow of her past lurked closer than she realized, courtesy of her encounter with one of the assassins, a Japanese woman, Hisa. The memory lingered in her thoughts.
Shay whipped out a knife and stabbed Hisa in the back. “He’s not disrespecting you, bitch. He’s respecting me.”
The assassin collapsed to the ground, coughing blood. She turned her head, her eyes wide, to stare up at Shay. “No, it can’t be! You’re dead!”
“Yeah, I’m dead,” Shay murmured to herself as she stepped out of her car.
She’d changed her hair color when she’d left her old life behind, but she hadn’t gone through the trouble of plastic surgery or magic to alter her appearance. Stubbornness, some might say. Or stupidity.
Lily stepped around the corner. She was holding a cheese sandwich. “Oh, didn’t know you were coming in today.”
Shay shrugged, taking a long look at the girl, wondering what she wasn’t saying. “What am I gonna do, sit at home?”
Peyton came around the corner with his own sandwich, dressed in breeches and laughed. “It wouldn’t hurt to take a little while off after helping end an entire international criminal gang.”
“Screw that. I’m ready to stop with the whole helping-Brownstone-for-free thing and go back to making money.”
“Well, I’ve got a line on something in Australia. Just checking the background still.”
“I helped him ferret out the background.” Lily flounced down on the couch.
“Shouldn’t you be hanging out with friends or something?”
“Friends around here are overrated. What would I do with them? Talk about buying shoes and boys and summer plans? Or how about the best gun to take as a backup and how to defeat an Ice bitch.” Lily’s lip curled as she mentioned the witch.
“We have to find you another girlfriend besides Peyton.”
“Hardy har.” Peyton took a large bite of his sandwich. “Someone had to add some feminine energy in here, besides Lily.”
Shay arched an eyebrow at him and waved a hand. “Will it be ready by tomorrow?”
“Probably.” Peyton took another bite of his sandwich and stared at her.
“What? Something on my face?”
“This is what I mean. You’re not an easy sharer. How it’d go?”
Shay shrugged. “You know how it went. We came, we saw, we massacred.”
He walked into the office to place what was left of his sandwich on a plate on the desk. “Not talking about that. I’m talking, you know, personal stuff. I meant what I said about having your back in that sort of thing.”
The tomb raider grimaced. She’d almost put the conversation out of her mind, which had been easy enough with the busy days in Japan.
“Look, um… He understands now that I’m interested in more than just a partnership on jobs.” She shrugged, glancing over at Lily, wondering if she was venturing into TMI.
“You don’t have to edit yourself around me. There wasn’t a lot of privacy in that nuclear escape tunnel. Not a lot I haven’t already seen.”
Shay cringed, wondering yet again if she was doing right by the teenager.
“I already know that look and for the hundredth time, no to the school of hormonal magic. I’m not going,” said Lily, her leg draped over the arm of the couch. “Back to you. Peyton already told me everything anyway.”
Shay scowled at Peyton. “I thought you were better than that at keeping secrets.”
“I’m selectively brilliant at it.”
“Not much to say. Neither one of us is running around sleeping with other people, but we’re together.”
Peyton shook his head. “Yet you still call the man ‘Brownstone.’”
“It’s his fucking name isn’t it?”
The man offered a placating gesture. “Okay, okay, but did you tell him about the alien stuff?”
“Yeah. Don’t think he buys it entirely, but I told him about his amulet.”
“What about the other stuff? The government stuff?”
“Nope. Not gonna.”
“Really?
Shay nodded. “Look, the guy likes everything simple as possible, and is already OCD because of how he was raised, or maybe that’s just how they are on his home planet of Interior Decoratis IV or whatever. I don’t know. One interesting clue. He’s not Oriceran.”
“Then what is he?” asked Lily.
“To be determined, I think. The last thing he needs is to obsess over is the other alien shit if we’re not even sure it’s connected.”
“You don’t think it’ll be dangerous? That someone might come after him?” asked Peyton, sitting down at his computer.
She burst out laughing. “Who? The government? Given what Brownstone has done to the Harriken, even if the government figured out he was an alien, there’s no fucking way they’d risk coming after him. You’re the one who said he’d win against a country.”
“Good point.”
“Wow, not Oriceran, not from Earth… maybe.” Lily let out a low whistle.
Shay let out another chuckle. “Nah. We’ll keep looking into the other angle. If something comes up that he needs to know about, I’ll tell him.” The mirth vanished from her face, and she glared at Peyton. “And that means you don’t tell him, either. Understand?”
“Sure, sure. And same goes for our junior tomb raider.”
“Shay’s not worried about me.” Lily sat up
