The vehicle pulled away. A slight hum from above caught her attention, and she stuck her head out the window. A small drone hovered overhead.
Like to watch, huh, Erin?
Shay smiled as she leaned back in her comfortable first-class seat. James sat beside her, his eyes closed, again depending on his typical plan of sleeping through any plane flight that lasted more than an hour. People were still shuffling onto the plane. Boarding was taking far longer than she would have liked, but the successes of the day blunted her annoyance.
Why do I care if I have to wait around a little longer? I just scored forty million dollars and I got to take out Durand. Looked like James was going to do it there for a second, but it wouldn’t have felt right if I hadn’t done it with my own hands—or at least my own Atlantean super-lance.
Shay snickered.
Her phone rang, and she dug it out of her pocket. No reason not to chat when it looked like they wouldn’t be in the air for another half-hour at the rate the things were going. Planes might have gotten faster, but boarding seemed to have gotten slower.
She frowned as she looked down at the phone. The call was from Peyton, but she’d already texted him about the payment and he’d texted back to verify it on his end. He should have known not to call with any quick jobs on the way back, given that James was with her.
“What’s up, Peyton?” Shay answered, keeping her annoyance out of her voice. She would at least give him a chance to explain himself before going into bitch mode.
“Where are you right now?” Peyton all but shouted.
Shay winced. “Dial it down there, Pizza King. I can hear you just fine. We’re at the airport in Phnom Penh, still getting ready for takeoff.”
“Shit.” Peyton groaned. “Damn it. You didn’t happen to put a tracker on the lance by any chance, did you? You didn’t say you did, but maybe your old instincts kicked in and you got paranoid and did it. Did that happen?”
“Huh? If it were anyone else, I’d ask if you were high,” Shay whispered. She frowned and sat up. “No, I didn’t do that. I delivered the goods, and I got paid. Why the hell would I do something like that? There’s still a good chance I can get more work off North after how well this job went. No reason to piss her off.”
“Because I think we got played by North.” Peyton sighed. “I was poking around some more and managed to trace the money flows. I was trying to figure out if Durand had been sent by the government. There were a few things that didn’t add up about the job.”
Shay looked back and forth as people shuffled past, some looking tired, others excited. None of the other passengers were paying her any attention, but she kept her voice quiet. She never knew who might be in a crowd.
I not only need better defensive artifacts, but I also need a fancy silencer artifact or tech like North and Goldstein had.
“He said he wasn’t working for the government on the job,” Shay replied. “And he gave me no reason doubt him. I think he just wanted to grab an artifact on the side, especially since this was a newly rediscovered site. I figure he was gonna grab it and sell it to someone. He might have even sold it to the government and billed it as a powerful weapon they could use against special visitors.”
“I wanted to be sure, and now that Durand’s dead, I can poke into certain systems without as much risk. I’d already set up searches, and just finished everything in the last few minutes.” Peyton took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “It took some doing, and I’ll admit I got a little lucky, but I found an airplane reservation to Cambodia for yesterday that seems to be him or at least someone who looks exactly like him. That, combined with some of the stuff I’ve been able to pull off the phone, has let me have a field day with his personal stuff. It’ll take me days to process the potential system targets, but it seems like he was smart enough to keep that phone separate from his government jobs. To be honest, for such a ghost, his personal phone wasn’t that well defended. Yeah, it would have been hard to find this stuff out without direct access, but I think he was banking too much on no one ever getting direct access to his phone.”
Just before leaving the ruins, Shay had grimly checked Durand’s remains for anything useful. Convinced the silver pistol was some sort of government weapon that might be trackable, she ignored it, but she’d grabbed Durand’s phone and placed a receiver on it so Peyton could try his best to exploit her dead nemesis’ information.
She’d left the actual phone on and hidden in an airport bathroom since she didn’t want any of Durand’s friends using it to find her once she returned to the US. She figured that by the time they did locate the phone, Peyton would have gleaned most of the useful information. He might at least be able to find leads on lucrative tomb raids.
Shay rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Okay, so you found his plane ticket. Big deal. I often fly commercial myself. What’s so special about that? How does that mean we got played? I feel like I’m missing something important.”
James’ eyes snapped open, and he grunted. “Played?”
Shay held up a hand. She wasn’t going to have a three-way conversation.
Peyton sighed. “Because I was also able to trace his accounts, including some of his crypto wallets. Because I had the phone data, I was able to associate specific accounts with Durand and found out he got a major payment yesterday. The thing is, the people making the payment weren’t nearly as careful, and I traced the money to a Scottish shipping company.”
“A Scottish shipping company?” Shay frowned. “I’m kind of lost here. Why would a Scottish shipping company pay Durand to go after an Atlantean lance?”
“Exactly. Remember that I told you about Gordon Anderson?”
“The Scottish arms dealer? Yeah, what about him? He’s probably decomposing in Malta.” Shay snorted. “Did he come back from the dead specifically to fuck with me?”
“No. It turns out that he used to control this shipping company, but shortly after his disappearance, it changed hands. I’m not going to go through the details right now, but my earlier guess seems right. All my evidence points to the company now being controlled by Erin North.”
“What the fuck?” Shay shouted. “Seriously?”
“Exactly.” Peyton let out another long sigh. “Like I said, we got played.”
Several passengers in the first-class seats turned and frowned at her, as did an elderly woman escorting a young child deeper into the plane.
What’s the matter? You’ve never heard a tomb raider ranting after a billionaire manipulated her before?
James frowned and crossed his arms, clearly unhappy that he didn’t know what was going on.
She glared at everyone until they averted their gazes. When she spoke again, she lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “Are you telling me that Erin North hired both Durand and me to get the same artifact?”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” Peyton replied. “And everything I’ve found so far points that way.”
James narrowed his eyes, his frown deepening.
Shay groaned. “But why? It doesn’t make any sense. I get that she wanted to make sure it was recovered, but in that case, it makes more sense to send one of us after the other failed. Not only that, she was the one who mentioned Durand to begin with. She acted like she didn’t want him near the lance.” She gritted her teeth. “Damn it, you’re right. We did get played, or Durand did. Maybe we both got played.”
“What do you mean?” Peyton asked.
Her heart thumping harder, Shay leaned into the seat and stared out the window at the tarmac. “If she knew anything about my history, mentioning Durand was a good way of getting me to take the job. The only thing I’m not sure about now was her final goal. She might have wanted me to assassinate Durand. Her refugee obsession didn’t seem fake, and she knew Durand worked for the government. Maybe she blamed him for being involved in some incident that caused trouble and made refugees? If your mysteriously-disappearing arms dealer theory is right, she’s more ruthless th
an she lets on.”
The clack of Peyton’s keyboard sounded over the line. “How do you know it wasn’t her trying to assassinate you? That’s the theory I was working on after I realized she hired Durand.”
“No reason to send me halfway across the world on a tomb raid to do it if she could track me to UCLA.” Shay frowned. “And sending me on a tomb raid means she knew I’d be geared up and on alert. It’s probably the worst time to try to kill me, versus just showing up in the middle of a lecture and gunning me down or throwing a grenade at me when I’m in the bathroom.”
“You think someone would try to kill you in the bathroom?”
Shay snorted but kept her voice quiet. “Why not? Someone tried to kill me in my kitchen.”
“That makes sense,” Peyton replied. “But doesn’t the same thing apply to Durand? The whole being-armed-and-ready thing?”
Shay watched a meal truck drive toward the back of the plane, her paranoia now feeding the theory it contained a secret mercenary team. Once you got burned, it was hard not to worry about fire.
James continued watching her, a stony expression on his face as he listened to her quiet side of the conversation.
Don’t worry, James. No matter what that bitch did, we still came out on top.
Shay’s eyes widened, and her confidence waned. “Oh, crap. You’re right. Sending Durand after me meant she had to have a good reason to suspect I could beat him no matter what. And I did have one. A big one.”
“What?” Peyton asked.
“I had James with me,” Shay explained. She glanced his way.
He shrugged at her, his brow furrowed in confusion.
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Shay mouthed before whispering into the phone, “Any non-dumbass who did their homework would understand that his reputation’s the real deal, and he’d be more than enough to beat some mercenaries and a tomb raider.”
“There’s no way she could know you’d have James with you,” Peyton observed. “You don’t take him on most tomb raids. She met you at school. It’s not like he talks about you online.”
“Maybe.”
Her heart sped up as various pieces of information floated into her mind. One very disturbing possibility tied together the disparate threads of the tomb raid.
Shay nodded. “Durand seemed surprised to see James with me.” She sighed. “But there’s one person who knows that I’m both Shay Carson and Aletheia and one person who might know I’ve had run-ins with Durand; someone who has a vested interest in visitors from far away who aren’t Oricerans.”
Peyton gasped. “Damn it, are you saying Erin North is the same alien who sent the nanites after James?”
“Yeah, I’m saying it’s a good possibility, and a lot of things make more sense if she is.” Shay’s stomach tightened. “Something felt familiar about her when I met her. The image I saw in Alberta was distorted and only vaguely female and the voice wasn’t the same, but there’s no reason she’d use her real voice. Now that I think of it, I understand what was familiar about her. It wasn’t her voice or even her words. Even the accent was different. It was the cadence of her speech. Something unique about it.” She slapped a hand against her forehead. “Damn it. How could I be so stupid? She was getting off on sitting right in front of me, smug and secure in the knowledge she was sending me after the lance.”
James stared at her, a deep frown on his face.
Peyton sighed. “What was the play, then? Was the whole thing another attempt to kill James after all? Wendigo 2.0?”
Shay glanced at her bounty hunter beau. “No. If anything, I doubt she thought sending some weak-ass mercs and Durand at us would have worked. I think she, more than most people, appreciates how tough he is. I think the plan was to get the lance. Given what I saw it do and the legends about it, it might have been able to take him down.” She snickered. “Too bad I fucked her plans up.”
“What do you mean?” Peyton replied.
Shay grinned at James. “Our friend was depending on the lance’s charge, I’m betting. Given what we saw with the Wendigo and its changing attacks, she knows about James’ special friend and she’s obsessed, so she figured maybe she’d get lucky and James would die tagging along with me on the tomb raid. But even if he didn’t, either Durand or I would grab the lance and she’d have the perfect tool to take down James Brownstone, with the added bonus of his own girlfriend potentially having helped. Or some shit like that.”
James grunted. “What the hell is going on?”
Shay smirked at him as she continued talking to Peyton. “But I used it on Durand, so all those hundreds or maybe thousands of years of passive charging and the decades of active charging were used up. I don’t know how powerful it is without a charge, but given what James went through in those ruins, I’m sure he can handle it now.” She snorted. “Joke’s on her. She might have played me, but I still got forty million. She’s got a superweapon that’s all but out of power, so it won’t be useful against James for decades. By then this shit will long be over one way or another.”
James blinked, understanding dawning on his face.
The line of passengers walking past them began to thin, and the noisy chaos from the back indicated the plane was mostly full.
“What do you we do now?” Peyton asked.
“Nothing.” Shay snorted. “Or just concentrate on verification. Maybe we’re wrong, but I doubt it. If she tries to come after James with the lance it won’t do much, and now we can go after her online because we have an identity to target. Do your best to keep digging. She’ll eventually notice, but now, at least this time, we can go on offense. She wouldn’t hide if she could win easily in a fight.”
Peyton blew out a breath. “You’re sure? You’re not worried?”
“Kind of, but not really.” Shay grinned. “Erin North underestimated all of us, and that slip up is gonna earn her a visit from James and me.”
Chapter Eighteen
James stared out the side window as Shay turned her Fiat around the corner. After she’d explained the situation on the plane, he’d decided to go back to sleep. Worrying about the alien woman on a flight wouldn’t do any good, and the explanation made his extraterrestrial nemesis seem less threatening rather than more. If the alien hunting him was relying on Shay scavenging artifacts, he wasn’t worried about her coming at him anytime soon.
I wonder if the lance would have worked on me? I regenerated at the amusement park, but what happens if I’m blown to pieces while Whispy’s bonded to me? Can I crawl back together like those squids?
He grunted. It wasn’t something he was interested in testing, but his continuously improving regeneration couldn’t be ignored. No longer needing healing potions seemed a possibility.
“You okay?” Shay asked. “I get you sleeping through the flight, but you’ve barely said a thing since we left the airport. Don’t worry, we’ll fuck that bitch up. We know the truth now, but she doesn’t know we know, which means we can surprise her. Then you can go all advanced mode on her and kick her ass all the way back to her planet.”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about her.” James shrugged. “If you hadn’t used the lance on Durand, she might have come after me in Cambodia. Shit, I wonder if she would have tried if you hadn’t told that wizard you’d used it. At least this shit would have been over.”
“Maybe.” Shay frowned. “But if Peyton keeps digging, we can go after her anyway. Erin North might be a disguise for her, but she’s a disguise that does a lot of public work. That gives us opportunities.”
James grunted. “Not gonna go after her with a bunch of people around.”
“Sure, but we’ll still have chances. We track her down and show her what it’s like to be hunted. Then we finish her off, and we can stop worrying about that annoying new shit you’ve got going on.” Shay grinned at him. “It’s not fair that I got to take down one of my old enemies, and you have one hanging over your head.”
“Big fucking deal.” James chuckled.
“If it’s not her, it’ll be someone else. She’s just from farther away than Japan.”
“True enough.” Shay smiled. “And if she comes after you, you have Whispy.”
James shook his head. “When I get that pissed, he wants me to kill everything in sight. He’s dangerous. Shit, I’m dangerous.”
Shay snorted. “Only to people who have it coming.” She shrugged. “You keep saying Whispy’s dangerous. Shit, you’ve been acting like that thing is the most dangerous thing in the world since we first met. You’ve had it your entire life and only started using it to its full potential this last year.” Shay slowed to a stop at a red light. “And, yeah, it requires you to get angry, but every time you have a chance to hurt someone you give a shit about, you don’t. I don’t care if he’s the alien devil sitting on your shoulder telling you to murder everyone in sight, you’re resisting the temptation. That’s all that matters in the end.” She shrugged. “You go to church. I’d think you would have long ago accepted it’s not the temptation that matters, it’s if you give in.”
“Yeah, good point.” James shrugged.
They barreled down the street. One more turn would put them on James’ block. After that quick turn, James frowned as he noticed a dark shape on his porch.
At least my house isn’t on fire.
“Were you expecting someone?” Shay asked, slowing the car with an annoyed look on her face.
James shook his head. “Haven’t gotten any texts or shit like that.”
Shay pulled to the curb and stopped about a hundred yards out. “I might not love this car as much as you love your truck, but I don’t want it blown up either, especially with me in it.” She put the car in Park. “Let’s walk to your porch and see what’s up, but I’m gonna be pretty impressed if someone had the balls to come at you at your house again.”
They emerged from the car and strode toward James’ house, their hands resting on their guns under their jackets.
One Epic Ring: An Urban Fantasy Action Adventure (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Book 14) Page 15
