Lion's Quest

by Eve Langlais

It helped she listened raptly, and maybe it was time to remove some of the secrecy around it. After all, if he was going to die, someone should know the truth.

  “I was actually playing it straight at the time. Working as a bartender at night, taking welding classes by day.” What he didn’t add was that life sucked. It consisted of work, study, sleep.

  “Sounds like you were busy.”

  “My sister kept telling me it would be worth the effort. Nagged about the fact I was well past the age I should have smartened up and settled down.” It should be noted, he didn’t have a problem living the criminal life. It was the cops and his sister that interfered with it.

  “Ugh. You too? I swear since my sisters all got married and pregnant that’s all I hear. Christmas holidays. ‘When you gonna get engaged?’ New Year’s. ‘Single again?’” She grimaced.

  “You don’t want a boyfriend?”

  “Are you applying?”

  “No.” Although he was attracted to her. Problem being, he had no idea if it was reciprocated. It would really be easier if girls got boners so boys could tell.

  “Good because I like being single. I never want to settle down. Diapers and dishes. Staying home and being blah.” She expressed his sentiments exactly.

  “Right? Like I know some people love the whole ‘let’s stay home and raise a family together’ shit, but personally, I’d rather run a fun con or smuggle in some crab.”

  “You’ve smuggled shellfish?” She blinked at him.

  “Once. Those bastards are creepy at night.” Not to mention, he would have sworn he’d seen faces in the waves when the boat docked with its illegal load. Feminine with flowing hair and beckoning smiles.

  “I see the file I read on you only listed some of your talents.”

  Wait, she’d read a file? “What else did it say?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Her gaze dropped to a spot below his buckle, and he might have shifted, more to hide his growing erection.

  Damn but the woman affected him. Every fucking time she walked into a room, his hormones ran wild.

  “I thought you wanted to know about the two books I found.”

  “Please, tell me more.” She waved a hand, her graciousness giving him permission to speak.

  “An old friend approached me at work and said he knew of someone looking for a man with my skills for a job.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “Yeah.” Despite knowing his sister would be pissed. “I couldn’t resist. Going after the book wasn’t just about the money.”

  “But also the adventure.” She nodded. “I get it. Why do you think I love my job?”

  “What exactly is your job?”

  “Pretty much anything I want. Sometimes it’s espionage. Acquisition. A few on grand scales,” she boasted. “I’ve bodyguarded and kidnapped.”

  “Wait, kidnapped?”

  “Don’t worry. They deserved it.”

  Which didn’t explain shit but did make him see her in a different light. “Ever killed someone?” he asked.

  “Have you?” she countered.

  “Only once. When I was doing time. It was shank or be shanked.”

  “You got caught. That’s sloppy.”

  “That’s my luck.”

  “I’d say your luck is pretty good if you only got caught once.”

  “It’s been close a few times.” Too close. More reason why he should retire, and yet he couldn’t leave the adrenaline behind. The beating he’d suffered was already fading in memory, meaning he’d probably act stupid again.

  “So the book,” she said, drawing him back to the present. “You were hired to find it. Meaning someone knew it existed and what it contained.”

  As the painkillers kicked in, he found it easier to move and began craving food. Did this apartment have a stocked kitchen? He shuffled toward the door. “Obviously someone knew it existed or they wouldn’t have hired my services, but I never met the buyer. In my line of work, it’s rare to meet a client. They like to keep a layer of deniability in place.”

  “How did you track down the book?”

  “More like the client did and sent me in to fetch it. The job consisted of an address and description. A tome bound in black leather, tooled in gold leaf. Inside, an illustrated story. Old.” The job? Crack the safe where it was being hidden and bring it back for a plump reward.

  It proved ridiculously easy to get inside given the target’s teenage daughter left the side gate unlocked every night for her boyfriend. She also deactivated the alarm system on the house.

  No one noticed the extra shadow that entered the mansion. Not a single creak gave away his presence as he made it to the massive study. The painting on the wall proved light and easy to remove, revealing an embedded safe, old-school style, with a dial and everything. His favorite kind. He pressed his ear to the metal and listened, but the stupid fish tank in the office with its gurgling made it difficult and he couldn’t just blow the door off.

  “You’re a safe cracker!” Nora breathed as if in wonderment, having listened with rapt attention to his story. “That’s cool.”

  “I have a knack for locks.” He downplayed his innate skill. “It’s not a big deal. Mostly you need quiet. Pure quiet.” Which was why he had unplugged the fish tank then rested his ear on that big beauty of a safe. He closed his eyes to the outside world and tuned inwards. Click. Tick. Crank. Tock.

  He didn’t even realize he’d relaxed into that happy Zen place until she said, “You love cracking safes.”

  “I do. It’s satisfying.”

  “Can you unlock electronic ones too?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t have the same feel.”

  “If we get a chance, would you show me how it’s done?”

  Show her? He must have looked surprised because she ducked her chin, for the first time acting as if shy. “I’d like to learn.”

  “Sure.” He’d never taught anyone. Would have laughed at the idea until she asked. Now he couldn’t think of anything he’d like to do more.

  “So what did you find inside?”

  “Books. In the plural. Which I wasn’t expecting. It didn’t help they looked identical.”

  Which one did they want? Did they even realize there was another?

  Pulling them out, he’d run his hands over them, the first feeling as it should, grainy and musty smelling. The other…it held a hint of cold to it, as if it had sat in a fridge.

  He shivered as he opened it. Could swear he felt a cold breeze.

  “Since I didn’t know which was the right one, I tucked them both into my satchel. But only handed over one of them. Never said a word about the other.”

  “I’d have done the same thing. How did you choose which one to keep?”

  He wasn’t about to say one of them almost made him tingle. That was just weird, so he stuck to, “I liked the one with the unconventional ending.”

  “Did the people who hired you ever find out about the other book?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Not that I know of. And like I said, it seems like there might be a few versions in circulation.”

  “So when did you go after the key?”

  “I didn’t until they hired me. I was staying low with the book just in case. My plan was to eventually auction it on the dark net.” Not the whole truth.

  He’d gone back to bartending, but on his breaks, he tried to decipher the text in the book, enlarging the pictures he’d taken and doing searches to see what language it was in. When the mighty Google didn’t recognize it, he knew he was on to something. Something big.

  “I’m surprised you’re admitting this to me,” Nora said, interrupting his mental memory. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll rat you out for stealing?”

  He snorted. “As if you always obey the laws.”

  “Do I look like a criminal to you?”

  “Bad girl, definitely.”

  She tossed her hair. “Thank you.”

  “Not going to deny you’re a rule
breaker?”

  “Sometimes they get in the way.” Her tiny smile was too fucking cute.

  He looked away and went back to his story. “You want to know about the key.”

  “First tell me more about the book. You didn’t sell it. You had it translated.”

  She was astute. “I did. After all, a good salesman should know his product. After much research, I discovered it was an unused medieval Russian dialect only taught by one professor.”

  “And rather than email someone in Russia for a translation, you traveled there to meet with him?”

  “Yes. For two reasons. The same people who hired me to find the book were already looking for the key. They had a head start.”

  “But you found it.”

  “Actually, they did. They hired me to go get it for them.”

  “But you never handed it over.”

  “The moment they asked, I planned a way to keep it for myself. That’s when I had the fake made based off the images in the book. I managed to acquire the real one and had the copy ready to hand off when I was…” How to summarize his next terrifying moments? “Detained.”

  “You disappeared, and your buyers didn’t get any key. What’s surprising is they didn’t tear apart your place right then and there. The reports say your sister lived in your place for months before anyone thought to dismantle it looking for the missing key.”

  “They probably thought I had it with me.” Because he knew for a fact they’d been looking for him. Watched his sister for months before acting to threaten her, hoping to use her to flush him out.

  It wouldn’t have worked given he was still catching birdies in the mental institution. A fancy word for an old drafty building with wards kept docile via the administration of drugs.

  “Were you hiding for those six months?”

  “Not so much hiding as detained.”

  “By the asylum. But what about the weeks before that? Where were you?”

  In the grips of pure evil? Too much? He stuck to, “Being held prisoner by someone with an axe to grind.”

  “Who?”

  “The original owner of the key. Only she was more annoyed I’d escaped her and her pet tiger than the actual theft.”

  “Wait, so the tiger and shit you kept talking about was real?”

  “Parts of it were, like the bit where she locked me up and hurt me to amuse her pet.”

  Distaste crossed her features. “That’s sick! I’m going to need the name of that lady.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t do you much good. She’s disappeared. It’s believed the tiger they found in her house might have eaten her.”

  “Happens when they get old,” was her odd reply. “So the old lady tortured you until you escaped. Then what?”

  “I lived like an animal in the woods for a while until they found me and put me in the loony bin. Pumped me full of drugs on account I wouldn’t stop talking about the tiger. That’s where Lawrence found me.”

  “Meanwhile, the people who hired you got desperate to get their hands on the key. What I don’t get is, shouldn’t they have believed the one lost in the river was the only copy?”

  Nora was well informed. He shrugged. “I don’t know why their sudden interest again.”

  “Somehow they figured out it was a fake. Which makes me wonder if they know the book you gave them is different than the one you kept.”

  “Only subtly,” he stated. “Slight variations in the wording.”

  “Such as the tsarina becoming the beast instead of vice versa.”

  “Which is just as dumb as the other version I’ve heard of where the monster turns into a man.”

  “You don’t think it’s possible?” she asked as if utterly serious.

  He couldn’t help but scoff. “Werewolves aren’t real. It’s just physically impossible.”

  “And yet don’t skinwalkers exist in just about every culture in legend?”

  “Doesn’t make it real. In olden days they also used to think the sun and moon only rose because of the gods. That sacrifices could make for a good crop.”

  “There are things in this world that would seem fantastical to people only a century ago. Look at technology and its evolution.”

  “Technology is built. Biology is static.”

  She laughed, as if that were the funniest thing ever. “For a man who believes in a treasure quest, you’re awfully rigid on other matters.”

  “I’ll admit I don’t know if that book and the key lead to anything. Probably fool’s gold, but…” He shrugged. What if he could hit the jackpot? The score of all scores. Even if he didn’t, the adventure itself still appealed.

  “If we assume the book and its story are clues, then we can replicate the hero’s journey so long as we find the starting point. Which would be here.” She found the image she wanted and pointed. “Some kind of place with sandy dunes where we have to enter the mouse’s lair to find the path to the icy field.” She kept flipping, but he jolted forward.

  “Wait, what did you say? Go back a page.”

  “Why? Did you see something?” She flipped to the previous image, the white and silver illustration glinting bright.

  “You called that an ice field.” He pointed.

  “What else would it be?”

  “The book refers to it as the land of diamonds. For some reason, I took it literally. I’ve been trying to find a way to check out some of the mines located in Russia without getting shot for trespassing. I never even thought it might be ice.”

  “The advantage of not being too close to the story,” she quipped. “Which leads me to ask, what makes you think the treasure is in Russia?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  “Somewhere tropical for starters given it starts on a beach.” She pointed to the early image of dunes by an edge of water.

  “Siberia has those kinds of sandy hills.”

  “Sounds like you might be stretching. Especially since the last location clue is a volcano with a tunnel. Still sounds more tropical to me.”

  “Except there are volcanoes in Russia, like the ones by the Kamchatka Peninsula.”

  “I guess it’s possible.” She chewed her lower lip. “But what if you’re wrong and we go off in the wrong direction?”

  His stomach dropped. “We’ll never get the key back or beat them to the treasure.”

  “You said we.” She grinned. “Finally ready to admit you need me?”

  “I need the reward I’ll get for solving this thing.”

  “How sure are you? Ready to put your money where your mouth is?”

  “Meaning?”

  “If you’re wrong, and it’s not in Russia, you don’t get any more money.”

  Wager on a hunch? He held out his hand. “It’s a bet.”

  Chapter Ten

  “So where to first?” Nora asked.

  “A part of me wants to just go looking for that final volcano, but…” Peter trailed off and shrugged, his expression sheepish.

  “I get it. In the book, the hero has to do the quest in order, or he’ll never find it.” She laughed. “Guess if we’re going to do this, we should do it right. First stop, the sand dunes in Siberia.”

  Since she seemed keen on booking their trip, he let her handle it and was glad of it. It meant first class flights into the heart of Russia. Once there, she hustled them off to the train station where they got not just a private cabin but all the bells and whistles.

  He sat down on the plush seating and sighed. “This is the life.”

  “Might as well travel in style, given we could have to rough it at a moment’s notice,” she stated.

  “What is the plan once we get to the next station? Are we riding into the desert?”

  “You’ll see. It’s a surprise.” Scarier words had never been heard.

  Then again, he didn’t get the impression she expected to rough it much. His knapsack of supplies held more than her satchel did. She liked to travel light, or so she claimed. She had also boasted, �
�I’m a most excellent hunter and can easily live off the land.”

  “I’d rather sleep in a bed,” had been his grumbled reply. True and false at the same time. He did enjoy his creature comforts, but he also loved the exhilaration of a quest. Of setting out to solve a mystery. To locate a treasure. To outsmart everyone else.

  “I imagine the dunes have shifted since the book was written,” he said as they waited for their trip to begin.

  She held out her phone on a selfie stick, oddly enough, aiming it at their window. Doing what? Was she videotaping the station outside? Should he remind her about not posting to social media?

  “If the treasure was easy to find, then it’s already gone. We have to assume it’s not.”

  “Surely we’re not the first to try.” The closer they got, the more worried he was they’d gone on a possible wild goose chase.

  “According to the book, you have to use the key to get the treasure.”

  “We don’t have the key.”

  “Yet. You’re a professional thief. Steal it back.”

  She said it as if it were simple. And it might be if they could catch up to the goons who took it.

  “We don’t even know if it’s the right key.” He ignored his gut that said it was.

  “It’s the only key we know about, though. Despite looking deep, Melly hasn’t found shit except for another knock-off copy of the fairy tale, but in that version, the hero dies before he can get the treasure and the heroine throws herself off a balcony.”

  “That’s a Brothers Grimm kind of ending.”

  “I like it!” was her dark reply that had him laughing. “We’re in the process of acquiring it to compare against the version you left behind.”

  “I wonder why all the differences,” he mused aloud.

  “Only the ending seems to change. In other respects, they are almost the same. The quest. The location. Just the outcome shifts based on small things.”

  “It’s the little things that usually get you in the end. Such as the mouse in the first clue.”

  “Surely it can’t be that hard to find a mouse in the desert,” she said.

  “You going to follow every single rodent you locate?” Did she hear the inanity of it?

  “What’s your plan then?”