“Works for me. Good job, Lily.” Shay started the engine. A quick U-turn had them zooming back down the dirt road and away from the treasure hunters.
“What about the drone?” Peyton asked through their earpieces.
“Keep an eye on them, and after that, just ditch it. After this payday, we’ll be able to afford a new drone or two.”
Lily stared at the coin for a few more seconds before she put it back in the box. “It doesn’t look like much.”
Shay laughed. “It doesn’t have to look like much, just has to be enough to get the client to pay out. Congrats on a nice successful tomb raid, Lily.”
The teen grinned.
Peyton chuckled. “They don’t look like they’re even trying to follow. I think they still believe you’re in the woods.” He sighed. “By the way, I didn’t want to mention it while you were on the job, but I did some checking into the coordinates.”
“Don’t care,” Shay replied. “It was annoying, but mistakes happen, even with you.”
“You see, that’s just it. I was checking, and I realized the coordinate data file sent to me had the checksum off.”
“Damn it.”
Lily frowned. “What is Peyton getting at?”
Shay sighed. “Someone fed us bogus information on purpose, probably someone other than the client.”
“But why?”
“Good question. Aletheia has a rep now, and not every other tomb raider appreciates what I’ve done.”
“You’re saying it was just someone who is jealous?”
Shay’s hands tightened around the wheel. “If I’m lucky, that’s all it was.”
The conversation died. They had no proof or leads at the moment, but they’d scored the artifact.
What if someone’s testing me? And if so, why and who?
Chapter Seven
The next evening, Shay sat at her computer in her bedroom checking a few things. The coordinate-spoofing occupied her thoughts. No one had gotten hurt, and they’d escaped with the artifact. She’d have to be careful on future jobs until she figured out who might be screwing with her.
The harsh truth was there were too many possibilities, which made it hard to narrow down the list: Yulia, Francois Durand, and a myriad of other tomb raiders she’d beaten out for prizes during her new career. For all she knew, Irina the rusalka had reached out somehow to teach Shay a lesson about overconfidence in alpine forests.
Someone fucked with me. Maybe it was to send me a message. Those treasure hunters weren’t exactly hardened killers, so whoever screwed me with must have known my life wasn’t at risk.
Shay had thought when she was a killer that she’d understood the world and its dangers, but she knew now she’d been ignorant. Dangerously, painfully ignorant. Even though everyone knew about magic now, secrets and hidden pockets of dangerous wonder covered the world—pockets that altered everything she’d believed about what it meant to be tough, smart, and dangerous.
It wasn’t that she’d stopped believing in her abilities, but now she better appreciated their limits and how the kinds of challenges she might face as a tomb raider could easily exceed her existing abilities, especially if she kept pissing off powerful magical beings.
If I wanted a career where I didn’t piss anyone off, I should have been a florist.
Shay frowned. Nope. Even that wouldn’t work. She’d probably screw up some mobster’s wedding bouquets and end up with a hit on her. At least as a tomb raider, she earned enough money to justify everyone’s enmity, and she wasn’t dead yet. That had to mean something.
The excitement of history coming alive, even if it involved the occasional monster or magical trap, made tomb raiding addictive in a way that killing never had been.
She’d killed because she was good at it and savored a well-executed hit, but the satisfaction didn’t linger like that of a good tomb raid. Now, someone wanted to screw with that satisfaction.
Asshole, you should have come straight at me instead of planting a fake clue.
Shay shook her head and sighed. Worrying about problems she couldn’t solve was a poor use of her time when she needed to make sure her solutions to other problems were working.
Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she checked the alerts both she and Peyton had set up to monitor his brother’s investigative efforts. Everything had been quiet in the days since she’d Scrooged the man, but it’d be a long time before she was convinced that he’d given up. Killing him might still be necessary, even if Peyton wasn’t comfortable with the idea.
Satisfied Randy wasn’t trying anything, she stood and made her way to her closet. She accessed the hidden panel in the back wall. Several guns and knives hung on racks inside, along with appropriate ammo. A briefcase filled with cash also sat in the hidden alcove, alongside another briefcase.
If Shay needed to bug out, the money in the case would be enough to sustain her until she could access some of her hidden accounts. Even in the worst-case scenario where all those accounts were compromised, there was more than enough money in the case to give her a good head start on a new life. She might not be able to buy herself five custom warehouses anytime soon, but she wouldn’t be eating ramen either.
Shay opened the second briefcase to inspect the jammers and AR goggles inside. Everything seemed fine. Other than a little dust on some of the guns, everything was as good as the day she’d bought it. It was a nice set of equipment for common situations.
She eyed one of the pistols, then her three adamantine knives. Even if she left tomb raiding, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few hidden weapons located around her house. She’d been forced from her old place to the two-story brownstone because stupid cartel idiots had shown up in her backyard during a situation that had nothing to do with her.
Sure, I’ll always need guns, but will I always need bug-out cash? I’ve got friends and James and shit now. Maybe there will be a time that I don’t need to worry about that kind
