“For now, if you’re going to stay safe and that means mostly out of sight.” Shay looked away and sighed. “Peyton, I’m gonna be honest with you. It’s gonna take a while for suspicion to die down, and so, yeah, it’s gonna suck for you. I know because I’m dead like you. But if you stick your head up anytime soon, you will die. Do you understand?”
Peyton gave a shallow nod. “We didn’t talk much about what you even need me to do. You mentioned something about being a field archaeologist now?”
Shay stared at the man, wondering how honest she should be. Feigning complete confidence might help him feel better, but they both needed to trust each other if their working relationship had any chance of succeeding.
And Shay had plans for him.
“Bottom line is I’m still breaking into the tomb raider business. I don’t have much of a rep, and I need to take care of that or it’s gonna be nothing but shit jobs for me.” She shrugged. “Right now, part of improving my rep is locating at least seven high-profile items.” She pulled a phone out of her pocket and tossed it to Peyton. “The list is on there. And keep the phone.”
Peyton tapped at the phone and furrowed his brow. “These are like finding marks when you were a hitman.”
“Exactly, but instead of people I plan to kill, these are items I plan to acquire.”
“You mean steal?”
Shay laughed. “It’s not stealing.” She put up her hands and made air quotes. “It’s field archaeology.”
“Semantics.”
“Stealing or whatever you want to call it, it’s my new gig, and I plan to be good at it. That may take some of your skills. You’re a gifted little bastard when it comes to finding that one piece of information that someone wanted hidden or everyone else forgot about but changes the game. It’ll help me get a better angle on jobs and potential dangers.”
Peyton took several deep breaths and nodded, working on how to tell her. “Okay, this is doable. I’m just… well, if we’re going to do this, and you want it to really be secure, I’m going need a better computer than whatever piece of bargain crap you bought. We should probably get some sort of localized low-frequency jammers, some security drones, maybe some—”
“Just give me a list,” Shay interrupted. “And stop wasting my time.”
Peyton held up his hands. “Okay, okay. You know one thing that might help with all of this is if you explained more about what your job actually involves. Field archaeologist? Doesn’t that mean you just go dig up a lot of pots and bones? What does it have to do with the list you sent me?”
Shay shook her head. “No. That’s… different. A lot of people call what I do being a tomb raider. Common nickname in my new business.”
Peyton shot her a confused look. “So… you raid tombs? You went from putting them into the ground, to digging them back up again. Your own kind of recycling project.”
Shay rubbed her hand with her face. Is he just screwing with me? “Let’s not start with you being that annoying.” She sucked in a breath and slowly let it out. “The 1.0 version is, I wasn’t lying when I was talking about not stealing. I’m not a thief. I find old artifacts, particularly old magical items and recover them from places where people have forgotten about them… or buried them and then died. Since they’re dead, they don’t have any use for them.”
“That makes sense then, I guess.”
“My business model is to research history and figure out how history’s been manipulated to hide Oriceran influence. Because where there’s Oriceran influence, there’s magic, and that means a lot of potential profit to be made. Once I figure out what might be a real artifact, I track down where it’s hidden, and then recover it.”
Peyton crossed his arms. “From tombs?”
Shay flexed her hands, fighting the urge to punch him in the neck. “From wherever. Sure, some of it is your stereotypical ancient tomb in the jungle or whatever, but a lot of it isn’t like that. A lot of times it can be things like some old artifact buried under a Walmart parking lot or in a cave under a split-level three-bedroom.”
“You hit up a lot of Walmarts, lately?” Peyton grinned.
“Don’t make me bitch slap you. I’m still getting my business established, and the whole being dead thing hasn’t helped.”
“When you say you’re getting your business established, that means you’ve done what, collected like five artifacts, ten artifacts?”
Shay looked him dead in the eye, even while dodging the question. “The key has been teaching myself to be an expert on history, the fake and the real. History gets rewritten by the winners, and now we know that a lot of history was crap to hide Oriceran and magic.” She pointed at Peyton. “You’re good at sorting crap from the truth.”
Peyton eyed her for a moment, suspicion coloring his face. “I’m good at researching information, not translating ancient scrolls or whatever.”
“I don’t need you to understand it, just find it. Information is information, and the more important the information is, the better hidden it’ll be. We’re a few decades into the twenty-first century, Peyton. Even if the revelation about Oriceran and all this magical energy flowing to Earth has messed a lot of shit up, we’re still a world that depends on information and computers. You can help me find the info that will lead me to an artifact. Once I find it, I sell it. Easy as that.”
“You didn’t answer my question before about how many artifacts you’ve recovered.” Peyton ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I’m grateful that you saved my life, but if we’re going to be working together, I can’t have you hold back on me too much. It’ll make my job harder.”
Shay’s jaw tightened, and she nodded. She wanted to glide right past
