The tomb raider gave him a seductive smile. “Good boys who do what they’re told get rewards later.”
James grinned. “I did what I was told.”
They pulled out of the parking lot. A few minutes of silence passed, with Shay smiling out the window.
Nice. The last couple of days have been nice. I needed something to clean out the old thoughts after that shit in Argentina.
Just pizza and dancing, nothing special on the surface, but it was hard to ignore how the last few days had been something unusual. Spending time with Alison felt like the most natural thing in the world, and now it wasn’t a big deal to have an open relationship with James. It got inconvenient when people recognized him, but they mostly wanted his autograph or to buy him barbeque. Not much she could do about dating one of the most famous bounty hunters in the country.
Part of her worried about someone recognizing her and deciding it was a good time to take her out, but they would have to contend with James as well as her. Neither of them went anywhere without guns. Shay was almost always carrying at least one adamantine knife, and her man almost always had his amulet on him, even if it wasn’t bonded. Unless an attacker killed them instantly, they were in for a world of pain.
“We should stop somewhere,” James rumbled, breaking the silence.
“Stop somewhere? You hungry again? Yeah, I know you’re the man who’d eat a whole cow if they’d offered it to you, but you had so much pizza earlier. I’m honestly surprised.”
He shook his head. “Not that kind of thing. You know, more like dessert shit. Ice cream. Hot summer night and all that.”
Shay smiled, but then it faded. She couldn’t push the image of a melting ice cream cone out of her mind, the thick, dripping liquid all too strong a reminder of the poor bastard in Argentina.
Too fucking soon.
She shrugged. “Screw ice cream. How about we go home and have some hot and sweaty fun?”
James grinned. “Not gonna complain about that.”
Chapter Nine
Shay stifled a yawn the next morning as she sat in front of the office computer in Warehouse Two. James’ stamina was as superhuman as everything else about him, which always made spending a night with him a careful balance of judging pleasure in the moment versus soreness in the future. She wasn’t always sure she always picked the right side of that equation, but she never felt bad about it either.
Not like I’m running off on a tomb raid today. It’ll be okay.
She tapped away at the computer, snickering and pushing the thoughts of her alien lover out of her head. Peyton wasn’t there, and she couldn’t help but wonder where her assistant was.
His earlier issues with getting to Warehouse Two in a timely manner had gone away, and she hadn’t had to worry much about busting his balls about showing up. She’d settled into a comfortable rhythm of just expecting him to be there when she showed up.
“I’ll give him a few more minutes before I call him.”
Shay took a deep breath. It’d been a while since she last hit the dark web for a deep dive into the forums and sites catering to people employed in her original profession of the not-so-kindly art of paid murder. Given how she’d let more than a few people, including James’ friends, meet her, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to double-check and make sure no one new was coming after her.
I wonder how long I can keep this up. Fake professor by day, tomb raider by night. Won’t have to make any big decisions unless the school wants me to do more than guest lecture. What do I do if they ask?
She clicked around with her mouse as she cruised along to the kinds of websites that kept the NSA and FBI up at night. Improvements in cryptography in recent decades had done a lot to facilitate personal privacy, while at the same time allowing criminals to be even bolder on the net.
So many people out there want so many other people dead. Shit. If they just had the balls, they could do it themselves and cut out the middleman. Why not save the money? Fucking pussies. I’m annoyed I helped so many of them.
Shay snorted and shook her head. She started scrolling down a forum message board and stopped. Her heart kicked up as she read a message and spotted a familiar picture.
“Son of a bitch. You’ve got to be kidding me. You fucking moron.” The tomb raider pinched the bridge of her nose. “Talk about no good deed going unpunished!”
The message was a request for a hit but had raised an unusual amount of discussion because of its nature. Hitmen and professional killers tended to prefer straightforward fixed payments, but this hit promised a fifty-percent cut of an inherited fortune once the hitman could find the target, kill the target, and drop off the body in front of a police station of all things to facilitate rapid confirmation of the death of the target.
Shay shook head. “Talk about balls, you arrogant asshole.”
The elaborate requirements might not make sense to the average hitman, but the picture of the target in the forum made it very clear both why so much money was being offered and the reasoning behind the request.
The target was Peyton.
Shay shook her head. Their efforts had taken Randy’s access to serious money away. They’d tried to Scrooge him into behaving, and the financial assault was supposed to eliminate the need to put some bullets into the man, but now he was trying the next step—hiring thugs to go kill a man who was supposed to be already dead by offering ridiculous amounts of future money.
That Peyton’s
