Shay waited for her phone to buzz. Peyton had consolidated most of her various alerts to the device. I put a key detail for the mission in the hands of someone who went behind my back and created mutual destruction. Kind of clever.
The alerts indicated the successful suppression of the security system. She approached a door and looked it up and down. All electronic locks.
Shay gave a satisfied smile. So many people thought complicated locks were more secure, but in most cases, they were easier for a person like her to defeat than something older with tumblers.
Shay pulled a small black disc from her pocket and placed it above the handle. She pressed a button on the side and counted. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. A faint buzz filled the air, and the door opened.
She resisted the urge to clap. She half-wondered about recording the whole raid on a body cam to share with Peyton later. Not an entirely bad idea. Another time.
Okay, need to focus. Snegurka could be waiting for me in there.
No Russian Ice Witch ambushed her inside the building. The only enemy was the dust. She barely resisted a sneeze.
Shay sighed and pulled a small flashlight from her pocket. She’d brought her AR goggles in her backpack, but the job didn’t require that level of hardware, yet.
She swept the room, looking for anything out of place. Nothing but a storage room filled with boxes and shelves. A quick inspection didn’t net her a golden owl. The question remained if the owl was in the building, or if there was simply some other clue she needed to recover.
Deciding a systematic top-to-bottom search would be her best bet, Shay headed upstairs. Various bedrooms and closets contained interesting nineteenth century bric-a-brac, but nothing looking remotely like a golden owl. Her gloves kept her DNA and fingerprints off all the cabinets, boxes, chests, and drawers she opened.
Shay knew she could take her time.
She contacted Peyton after her café epiphany and he hacked into the place’s systems and reviewed the security tapes. He verified no guards patrolled the building at night. Shay had hours to play around inside.
The lack of time pressure didn’t ease any of her frustration at not finding any evidence pointing her toward the owl.
Is this one of those things where it’s hidden in plain sight in something else?
Shay shook her head, trying to think of anything she’d seen that might hold the owl.
Maybe I’m in the wrong place.
Not likely. Peyton’s additional background research discovered that the place had changed hands a few weeks prior to the theft of the golden owl. Coincidence wasn’t something Shay believed existed. Magic yes, coincidence, not so much. If the damned artifact wasn’t there, let there be some small scrap of evidence.
If necessary, she would track down the owner with Peyton’s help, but roughing up people for information wasn’t smart. The more you threatened violence, the more she risked forcing the hand of the authorities.
Okay, nothing on the second floor. But still the rest of the place to check.
Room after room, hour after hour of careful searching, Shay summed up her situation standing in a baroque bedroom. “I’m fucked.”
Her inspection of the first floor resulted in no more success than the second floor, other than the greater diversity of room types. The building didn’t appear to be anything other than what they advertised, a living museum dedicated to old lame aristocratic living.
Inspections with her goggles didn’t pick up anything more important than the fact the place was surprisingly well insulated.
Shay moved between the expansive dining room and the commercial kitchen a few times, looking for more clues, before heading down to her final hope, the large underground wine cellar that stretched under half the building.
What the hell am I missing?
Stacked barrels dominated one side of the room, and she didn’t see any other exits. Shay sucked in a breath and lowered her AR goggles.
Come on. It’s been a nice little trip to Paris, but I need that damned owl.
The tomb raider activated the goggles and shifted to thermal mode, looking around the darkened room. The back wall displayed large temperature differences from the rest of the room. It was several degrees colder than the rest of the room.
Huh. That’s the only weird thing I’ve seen since getting here.
Shay made her way over and felt carefully along the wall. Her patience was rewarded, as her hand brushed over a small hidden button.
Shay let a stupid grin dominate her face as a secret passage slid open in the back of the wine cellar, the loud scrape of the shifting wall against the floor echoing against the concrete walls. A cold breeze passed over her, making goosebumps appear on her arms.
“Guess this really is gonna be the easiest money I’ve made in a while.” Still, the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up, anticipating trouble. Shay didn’t do well with easy.
Shay moved through the passage and down rough spiraling stone stairs that were connected to the hidden opening. She arrived in a narrow hallway with oddly textured walls. She lifted her flashlight to get a better look. Skulls stared back.
“What… the… fuck?”
Shay stumbled backward, going for her gun, her heart kicking into a measured gallop. Several seconds passed as she realized she wasn’t being attacked by a horde of undead. Instead, skulls and femurs formed the walls.
“Ugh. The Catacombs? Of course. Fucking Paris. I think I prefer the stupid desert now.”
Shay holstered her gun and looked back and forth. There were two paths, both curving away in opposite directions.
“Yeah, this isn’t annoying or anything.”
Thirty minutes into her exploration of the right tunnels, Shay decided she’d gone the wrong way, but that meant she’d lost a good hour by the time she’d returned and took the left tunnels instead.
Five minutes later, Shay threw her hands in the air and
