Shay shook her head. “I can never assume that I’ll have a truly quiet life. If I try to go be a soccer mom in Wyoming, eventually someone will catch up to me unless I have the resources to see them coming and deal with them. Even then, a lot of people around me might get hurt.”
“So that’s what all the money’s about? Protection from your past?”
Shay locked eyes with Peyton. She could tell him about her plan to go move to another country or buy an island, but she had no real details to share, and even if she trusted him more than she did yesterday, sometimes it was best to not let him know how much she was making up as she went along.
Confidence was important in getting people to trust you. If you didn’t have it, you might as well fake it.
“Long-term plans are for suckers,” Shay said. “Tomorrow I might be dead or teleported to some Oriceran swamp.”
Peyton stared into his wine. “Cheerful thought. I’m going to keep assuming I’m going to live and plan accordingly. If someone kills me early, well, it won’t matter that it messed up my plans because I’ll be dead.”
Shay gave a dark chuckle. “True enough. You never know, you could get lucky and come back to haunt their asses.”
Chapter Six
Shay’s phone blared a harsh tone, jolting her out of her carb-induced deep sleep. A few seconds passed till she remembered she was at her condo. She shook her head to clear it before grabbing the phone.
Everything was going too well. I should have expected something like this.
She killed the alarm and checked the security feeds. The muffled crack of automatic rifle and pistol fire reached her ears.
A regular person might have thought they heard car noises or something else, but Shay recognized the weapon fire and likely scenario without any trouble, even some of the weapons being used. Someone was going to town with some AKs and pistols.
Her heart rate kicked up, and she took a deep breath as she went over her evidence. Her security set-up wasn’t limited to her home, and the weapons fire was obviously not coming from inside or being fired at the condo based on the noise. She wasn’t under attack, but whatever was going on was close and involved more than a couple of gangbangers shooting at each other with .22s.
Fucking perfect. Just fucking perfect.
Her security feeds revealed armed men pouring into a home a few buildings down. Several black SUVs lined the street.
Shay let out a long groan. “Are you kidding me? I just got done dealing with Warlocks and zombie rods, and now this shit?”
Judging by the lack of obvious gang colors and the weapons, Shay figured out it was a cartel raid. She was aware of a stash house down the street but didn’t care. If anything, she’d figured the presence of such a juicy and obvious target would shield her own presence from attention, even if she was renting the place under a false name.
Yeah, not surprised, but doesn’t mean I’m happy, either. Hiding next to the blindingly bright target didn’t work out as well as I wanted. File that under failed experiments.
Shay adjusted her cameras to get a better angle on some of the assault force. She flipped on the night-vision mode and ran the faces of the men she could get a clear view of through a facial recognition algorithm that fed into data sources Peyton helped her set up. Maybe she’d get lucky and could figure out who had showed up to play.
Her stomach knotted as several names popped up linked to the Nuevo Gulf Cartel. That was attention she didn’t need, especially since those men wanted her dead, and she’d killed several of them recently.
Technically, they already thought she was dead, and she didn’t want to do anything to disabuse them of that notion.
Should just let the assholes shoot it out. It’s not my business if one group of assholes gets butchered by another group. The cops will come soon, or some bounty hunter like Brownstone.
Now that would be funny. I’d like to see what we could do to the sicarios out there.
Shay furrowed her brow at another thought. It wasn’t like she was the only one who could use technology to disrupt communications. There might not be anyone on their way to deal with this mess. The bloody raid might play out in its entirety, with the authorities not investigating until the next day.
Damn it. Is this gonna get worse before it gets better?
Even if the raiding party was using some sort of jammer, it still didn’t mean she needed to get involved. One side would win, and it still wouldn’t be her problem. There was no innocent blood getting spilled over in that house, just scum gutting scum. In a sense, they were both doing the world a favor.
Several of the men who’d entered the house burst out. One clutched his side. They fired rounds into the house as they ran down the sidewalk in the direction of Shay’s condo, passing by another home. The raid wasn’t going as well as they hoped.
“Of course. Damn it. No one’s good at their fucking job anymore.”
Shay sighed and threw off her nightgown, replacing it with some shorts and a tank-top. So much for staying out of it, and she wasn’t about to paint her nightgown red with the blood of the Nuevo Gulf Cartel.
She pushed a false wall in her closet to the side to grab her emergency tactical harness. It already held a Glock, a few spare mags, and several knives.
Luck was where opportunity met preparation, which is why Shay never, ever let herself be unprepared.
Thanks for really ruining my night, assholes.
Most of the raiding party remained inside the stash house, but she wasn’t sure if they were pushing back against the enemy
