“Sure thing.” Lana waved and headed inside, a troubled look lingering on her face.
“What’s up?” Shay answered.
“There’s a job on the table.”
“So? We can talk about it later this afternoon.”
“No can do.”
“Why?”
“It’s a time-sensitive job that’s in Russia and out of this world.”
Shay rolled her eyes at the pride in the man’s voice over his wordplay. “Fine. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
Fuck. Guess I’ll call an Uber to take me back to my car.
Chapter Seventeen
Shay snapped her head around at a foghorn blast from the bay. A small fishing vessel puttered along, but a blue speedboat rushed past them, missing them by feet.
What an asshole.
She narrowed her eyes, not liking being back in Russia and near water, even if she had no reason to believe that vodyanoy or rusalka were waiting to drag her into the bay. Vladivostok might not be LA, but it also wasn’t some pissant village in the hinterlands.
That rusalka bitch had delusions of grandeur, though. Who knows where she might end up?
Shay shook her head. She needed to concentrate on the current job.
A few chatting dockworkers pointed toward the fishing boat and rattled off something in Russian. Even though they weren’t talking to her, the lack of understanding annoyed her.
I can’t depend on translation software. I keep coming back here, so maybe I should look into studying Russian.
Shay made her way down the road, sparing looks for the workers, trucks, cranes, and forklifts scattered up and down the docks.
If Peyton’s information was correct, the old woman holding the artifact Shay was interested in ran a small bait shop in the area. After locating the artifact, the tomb raider could figure out how to best acquire it with minimum attention from the local authorities.
A few dockworkers eyed her as she passed them. She had elected to wear a brown wig and a simple dress to attract less attention, but she wasn’t fading into the background enough.
Would jeans and a leather jacket have worked better?
Shay chuckled, still not sure about the job. Her thoughts drifted back to Peyton’s briefing.
“What’s the big rush?” Shay asked as she stepped into the office of Warehouse Two. “I didn’t stop to take a shower because you were whining about me getting here, so this better damn well be as time-sensitive as you claimed.”
“Sure is. The rush is that we’ve got a job, and it pays well. Not only does the client want a real quick turnaround, someone’s already on the way to collect the artifact.”
“Did the client hire them?”
“Nope. I stumbled onto them when I was doing some background research.” He grinned. “You’re going to love this.”
Shay narrowed her eyes. “Who is it?”
“Guess.”
She scrubbed her face with her hand. “Francois-fucking-Durand?”
Peyton clicked a few times on his computer and a fuzzy picture of Francois Durand appeared on the screen. He was an athletic middle-aged man with close-cropped blond hair. Attractive enough, but he lacked James’ solid build or the handsome face of many of the local Hollywood stars.
“I was double-checking the client information when I got some alerts.”
Shay frowned. “That means this is Project Nephilim shit, then? Alien stones?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
Peyton nodded. “The short version is that a few decades back, a Russian man found a small piece of metal embedded in some coal he was using to light a fire. He took that metal to local scientists, and their examinations revealed it was a tooth-wheel made of pure aluminum.”
Shay snorted. “Wow. That’s spectacularly unimpressive. I can find aluminum in my kitchen drawer.”
“The problem was, the wheel was embedded in the coal. As in, the coal had formed around it, and that coal was three hundred million years old. The wheel showed every indication of having been machined. It wasn’t like humans were around to whip up tooth-wheels back then unless they were using time travel.”
“Okay, I admit that’s more impressive. So, best bet is alien litter?”
Peyton shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Does it have any symbols on it?”
“Not that I could find reported, but I don’t know the extent of the examination. The information on it is pretty light on the details.”
Shay snorted. “Could be bullshit. Just because a lot of weird shit has turned out to be true doesn’t mean it all is.”
“True enough, but the client’s willing to drop a million for its recovery.”
“That’s a pretty strong motivation.”
Peyton laughed. “I thought you’d say that. Or you could not take the job and just grab it.”
“Nah. I’ll image the shit out of it before I turn it over, and you know what? The fact that Durand is looking for it is enough proof for me that it has something to do with alien shit, and I’m not gonna let that guy grab any alien artifacts first. Who’s the client? The Professor? Correk?”
Peyton shook his head. “A Cypriot antiquities collector who now lives in Hawaii. The guy’s very clean. He spent years running charities. Made most of his money in biotech research, but cashed out early to focus on his eccentric interest in proving that aliens inhabited the Earth millions of years ago. The only odd thing is that he’s made it clear that somebody already owns the wheel.”
“Why didn’t he just buy it from them?”
“From what he said, he wants to keep his involvement really low-key. Claims that Men in Black showed up to threaten him a few days ago, which is one of the reasons he was pushing for this to happen quickly. He didn’t mention Durand, though, so I don’t think he knows about him.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Those guys were probably Project Nephilim assholes.” She took a deep breath. “Did he specifically mention any restrictions on how I could recover the wheel?”
Peyton shook his head. “Nope, only that he needs it ASAP.”
“And who has it now?”
“Marina Mikhailova. She runs a bait shop in Vladivostok. The weird thing is, it’s hard to figure out how she got the artifact since the wheel disappeared from history after the original owner
