“Okay, so I’ve done a tomb raid. That first raid, I think I did okay.”
“One?”
“Yep. One. We all have to start somewhere. It’s not like I killed twenty people the first time I took a contract.”
Peyton winced and nodded. "No casualties during your tomb raid? I mean, you said you’re not a killer anymore.”
Shay shook her head. “There were a few. It went okay, because the return on my investment was okay. I don’t consider zero causalities necessarily part of the scoring for tomb raids.”
“You’ll still just kill anyone who gets in your way?”
She snorted. “Don’t feed me that sanctimonious bullshit, Peyton. If you weren’t swimming around with scumbags, you would have never ended up in the situation you were in.” She waved a hand. “I changed jobs, I didn’t change skins. I’m not going out of my way to kill people, but I’m not suddenly a pacifist, either. You understand who I am, right? You knew me from my past.”
Peyton locked gazes with her. “Yeah, I get that. I also can help you with your business model. Refining it so that it’s beyond what you described.”
Shay shook her head. “You stick with figuring out where things are hidden and help with the necessary background information. Start with getting things set up here, and we’ll see about everything else.”
“Look, Shay, I really can help with this, I—”
Shay cut him with a harsh look. “I don’t have time for this shit right now. I have some people I need to meet.”
Peyton frowned but didn’t say anything.
Shay turned to leave, before stopping to look over her shoulder. “Look, don’t get me wrong about any of this. I didn’t save you because I’m a good person. I saved you because you have skills I need. That doesn’t mean we’re best friends all of the sudden. I’m trying to make a new life for myself, and I figured you helping me out would be a nice trade in exchange for saving your life.”
“Understood.”
“There’s food in a fridge in the office. Get me a list of groceries you need, and I can supply that, too, maybe even a bigger fridge.”
Peyton gave her a shallow nod, and Shay continued walking to her car. She didn’t have time for a bruised male ego.
Chapter Three
Faking a man’s death one day and then having a casual brunch with two women a day later. Shay doubted anyone else lived their life that way.
Her stomach knotted as she pushed into the small café. Two women waved at her from a booth in the back, and she made her way toward them. They represented her latest determined attempt at normalcy.
Her idea of it anyway.
When she faked her death, she got a glimpse of the path of violence she started walking in her teen years. It led her to being more than a little warped, and that was being charitable to herself. The obvious solution was to try and find some normal people to befriend. Place to start, even if she had to mislead them a little, it might help her recover some of the emotional balance she’d been missing.
It might have been the obvious solution, but it was far from the easiest.
Sure, I can fake a man’s death and rescue him from imminent doom, but I can’t find a few people to hang out with who I don’t want to strangle. Why the hell did I think meeting random people in a meetup group would be a good idea?
Shay slipped into a seat opposite the two women, Terry and Lisa, both bubbly bottle blondes.
“We’re so sorry you had to cut out early from bowling last time,” Lisa said with a smile. “You missed out on a very, very tense game. I almost got a strike.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Shay mirrored their smiles back at them. “I’m sure it was as nerve-wracking as being in a gunfight with a bunch of mercenaries.”
Lisa and Terry laughed.
“Oh, you’re so funny, Shay,” Lisa said. “You have such a wacky sense of humor.”
“Thanks.” Yeah, nothing but a joke. Keep believing that.
“But we get it. It’s got to be hard running around all these foreign countries doing archaeology digs. If you ever want to show us your office at UCLA, we’d love to see it. I’m sure it’s so exciting and filled with ancient artifacts. Or even Oriceran ones.”
Shay shrugged, the lies flowing easily now. “It’s just an office. The magical stuff tends to be in the Extra-Dimensional Archaeology or Engineering departments, and not exactly in a normal newly hired archaeology professor’s office. I don’t even have tenure.”
Disappointment passed over Lisa’s face. “Oh, I was expecting it to be all, you know, like Indiana Jones or Caleb Rodriguez.”
“Just a computer and desk. Really not that exciting. Real life isn’t like the movies.”
All strong friendships are built on foundations of mutual understanding and trust. This one is like quicksand.
Shay was lying through her teeth to her new acquaintances about who she was and what she did for a living. As far as they were concerned, she was a newly hired adjunct archaeology professor at UCLA. Okay, that was all true, but it conveniently left out a lot of pertinent facts. Like the tomb raids that took up most of her time. Remembering what to leave out kept her side of the conversation a little stilted. It would feel so good just to shoot someone right now. Bad Shay.
“Find anything interesting in your last dig?” Terry asked. “Like hidden treasure?”
It really wasn’t that hidden. And maybe those mercenaries I had to kill counted as interesting.
Shay forced a smile. “Some evidence that may indicate a tribe was in northern Mexico earlier than we thought.”
“Oh, that’s interesting. How do you tell any of that anyway?”
“In this case by examining pottery and arrowheads found at the site,” Shay explained. “That sort of thing.”
Why am I trying so hard to lie to impress these two? How do people do this shit?
Terry and Lisa exchanged
