Now that her quarry was out of his vehicle, shadowing him from above was trivial. Shay continued jumping from rooftop to rooftop, with the help of the occasional ledge or balcony. Durand continued walking at a swift but not extreme pace, as if he had plenty of time to arrive at his eventual destination.
Just taking a stroll? Looking for your favorite bakery?
Durand glanced around every once in a while, but never up. Good instincts, just not good imagination. Shay grinned.
Hitting the ground at this point would only increase the chance he’d spot me. I’ll just follow him to wherever he’s going and figure out how to handle him from there.
The blond man stopped right in front of an alley and spent even longer than usual looking around. Once finished, he ducked into it, disappearing from view.
“Damn it.”
Shay sprinted forward to get a better viewing angle on the alley from the roof. Durand was nowhere in sight, but he hadn’t time to walk all the way down the alley either. Several doors faced the alley, but none were open.
Doubt you teleported, you slippery bastard. Which door? Guess I have to get closer.
Shay jumped from the roof edge onto a fire escape, grabbed the handrail and flipped down to a nearby balcony, then to a closed trash bin. A quick jog across the street brought her to the mouth of the alley after a few loud horn blasts from angry motorists.
She entertained herself with the thought that she’d just pissed off some douchebag Congressman.
The back doors to several buildings—restaurants, by the looks of them—opened into the alley. Boxes, trash bags, and two commercial-sized green garbage bins were in the alley, but there was no sign of Durand.
He went in one of these buildings, but which one?
Shay took a few careful steps forward and searched for a stray footprint or handprint that might mark the man’s trail.
“Impressive, Aletheia,” commented an annoyingly familiar French voice from behind her.
The tomb raider spun and yanked out her gun.
Durand already had his gun out and pointed at her, an amused smirk on his face.
Shay narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you shoot me when you had the chance?”
“It’s as I told you before—I’m impressed with you. Very few people can follow me for any length of time without me being aware of it. Not only that, the fact you could even find me to follow me is impressive. Even though I don’t hide behind an alias like you, it’s not as if I announce my movements to the world.” He gave her a cheerful grin and shrugged. “I’m guessing, though, that you aren’t here to kill me.”
“That’s undecided as of yet, asshole.”
“So feisty. If this is about the wheel, you’re too late. It’s already been passed along to my clients. Even if you tortured me for days, you wouldn’t recover it.”
“Your clients at Project Nephilim?”
The corner of Durand’s mouth turned up. “You’ve made a lot of assumptions, but that doesn’t mean I need to verify them. You know far less than you think you do.” He gestured with his gun toward her. “Put your weapon away and I’ll stow mine, or we could try to kill each other now. It seems a pointless waste of talented lives, but it’s a cruel world we inhabit.”
He’s probably wearing a vest, so I’d have to tag him in the head, but I’m not wearing a vest because of mobility, so he gets my head and whole center of mass for lethal target practice.
Shay slowly lowered her gun. Durand mirrored her movement, and both holstered their weapons under their jackets.
The Frenchman let out a contented sigh. “It’s so easy to accidentally shoot someone. That feels much better, don’t you think?”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Don’t be so annoyed, Aletheia. You’re much better at this than I was when I started, but you’re still a…” He frowned. “What’s a good word? Trainee, perhaps? Ah, I know.” He snapped. “Still a rookie.”
“I’m not a fucking rookie. My record speaks for itself.”
Durand shrugged. “From my perspective you are. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have. I long ago even abandoned the silly pretension of calling myself a ‘tomb raider’ or ‘field archaeologist.’”
Shay snorted. “Oh, ‘retrieval specialist’ is so much better?”
“There’s a certain clarity to it, but it also reflects the larger scope of what I do. I retrieve things, not just from musty old ruins or strange out-of-the-way places, but sometimes, as you saw, from people who no longer deserve to have them.”
“How useful you are.”
Durand shrugged and scratched his cheek. “You’re on your way to becoming more than a mere tomb raider. That’s something to look forward to.” He clucked his tongue. “So many interesting adventures! Pulling those artifacts off the Mahogany Ship for instance, and whatever you were doing in Paris. I don’t know what you were after, but there certainly was a lot of strange things reported, even though using an EMP like that in a crowded area was a sloppy move.”
Shay didn’t care if that hadn’t been her fault. The retrieval specialist didn’t need to know anything about her. Just because they weren’t shooting each other in that alley didn’t mean things wouldn’t end in blood eventually.
“You think I’m gonna tell you anything?” Shay snapped.
“No, I don’t, but as I’ve just proven, I know more about you than you know about me. I’m going to give you a little friendly advice, Aletheia. You need to stop poking your nose into my work. You’ve already lost the wheel, so you have no reason to follow up on any of this just because you think you know a few things.”
“Like the fact you snatched a three hundred-million-year-old out-of-place artifact from an old lady?”
“It’s just a hunk of metal. In many ways, it’s worthless.”
Shay snorted. “It was worth a million dollars to me, and if it’s so worthless, why did your employers care enough to have you go get it?”
He waved a hand dismissively.
