01 - Kill The Willing

This book takes place before Shay ever met Brownstone in the Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Series. It encompasses her life from the time of her "death" as an paid killer, to her final development as a field archeologist, and her meeting with anticipated first meeting with Professor Smite-Williams, "Father O'Banion". It includes the development of the relationship between her and Peyton, and the four retrievals they did before she got into the big-time: the Nazi Pins in the Lake, The Lost Dutchman's Gold, the Oriceran Stone, and the retrieval of the Golden Owl. When this book ends, she has yet to meet either Smite-Williams, or Brownstone.

Chapter One Background and Introduction to Settings Shay Carson, a hitman in her prior life, faked her death so that she could better start a newer, safer life as a field archeologist. But as she still maintains contacts with her old life, she noticed that an old friend Jefferson Peyton Coolidge, had a price on his head. He had been put out as a hit, so she came to contact him, and save his ass. He displays proper anxiety about her (She’s DEAD! He went to her funeral!), and believes her, as he had perhaps confided in a wrong contact. He had discovered some information that linked several members of Congress to a bunch of different organized crime groups. Mafia, Russian mob, Harriken, even a couple of problem Elves that might be involved with some shady Oriceran groups, and was planning to bank it for later use. He was the keeper of secrets for a lot of dangerous people. “The word is a lot of them think you’re about to leak that information.” She’d found evidence there might be more to the hit than worried gangsters, something more personal, but decided it’d be too much, too soon. Takes Peyton to her hotel, and disguises him, so she can fake his death. Thinks his family wants him dead, not his clients. Will take him back to LA, develop a new life for him.

Chapter Two Peyton thinks he’s been kidnapped, she says he’s been rescued. Peyton has to get used to being dead and living in LA, at one of her warehouses. “I just don’t store anything important there. I have bigger plans. You’re going to take what I did and raise it to a whole new level. It’s why I saved your ass. The start of bigger things “I have to live in a warehouse while you live in a condo?” “For now, if you’re going to stay safe and that means mostly out of sight. “if you stick your head up anytime soon, you will die.” Shay explains what she does in her new life. “Bottom line is I’m still breaking into the tomb raider business. I don’t have much of a rep, and I need to take care of that or it’s gonna be nothing but shit jobs for me. Right now, part of improving my rep is locating at least seven high-profile items.” She pulled a phone out of her pocket and tossed it to Peyton. “The list is on there. And keep the phone.” “These are like finding marks when you were a hitman.” “Exactly, but instead of people I plan to kill, these are items I plan to acquire. It’s my new gig, and I plan to be good at it. That may take some of your skills. You’re a gifted little bastard when it comes to finding that one piece of information that someone wanted hidden or everyone else forgot about but changes the game. It’ll help me get a better angle on jobs and potential dangers. I’m not a thief. I find old artifacts, particularly old magical items and recover them from places where people have forgotten about them… or buried them and then died. Since they’re dead, they don’t have any use for them.

“My business model is to research history and figure out how history’s been manipulated to hide Oriceran influence. Because where there’s Oriceran influence, there’s magic, and that means a lot of potential profit to be made. Once I figure out what might be a real artifact, I track down where it’s hidden, and then recover it. The key has been teaching myself to be an expert on history, the fake and the real. History gets rewritten by the winners, and now we know that a lot of history was crap to hide Oriceran and magic. You’re good at sorting crap from the truth.”

Peyton eyed her for a moment. “I’m good at researching information, not translating ancient scrolls or whatever.” “I don’t need you to understand it, just find it. Information is information, and the more important the information is, the better hidden it’ll be. 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 a 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.” “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.” And she went off to a meeting.

Chapter Three Shay has tried to create a “normal” life for herself, and finds its enactment to be boring and inconsequential. Bowling, the newest rock star, sex, men. So she lied about seeing her as she headed to the restroom someone, whom they then wanted to meet. The vapidity of her friends, if she could even call them that, struck her. She didn’t know why she couldn’t find someone who didn’t want to make her throat punch them.

Chapter Four Shay's Personal Routine Shay goes through a training work-out routine in Warehouse One (See Locations- Shay’s Warehouses). Extremely hard, physically. After showering and changing, she was back at Warehouse Two, to find that Peyton had gone though some of her crates, finding himself a pink flamingo sports shirt and a pair of pants. “It looks like some preschooler ate all his crayons and vomited all over your pants, and you didn’t bother to wash them.” And then she tells Peyton how she collected on her own bounty money, by impersonating the lady who was supposed to have killed her, so she retired on her own bounty money, for having killed herself. And that’s why she had decided to change her life, so that she wouldn’t die, bleeding out in someone’s kitchen. And she had uses her killer’s body as her own, inside her burned house, using a little money so that the DNA matched. Peyton starts trying to earn her trust by trying to improve her artifact alarm system ( “Spiders crawling the web and the dark web, mostly. They are looking for certain combinations of information.”)

Chapter Five The Nazi Pins Shay brings some hacking equipment to Two (quantum decrypter, and a router here that’ll let me interface with the signal receiving drone I’ve got outside.”) so that they could borrow a little microwave remote-sensing data from a satellite that happens to be going over an area I’m very interested in. Lake Toplitz,in Austria No gold. Most of the jobs I’m looking into involve things that are a little more portable. No one’s even sure there is gold there. The only thing we know for sure is that the Nazis sank lockboxes into the lake for a few different reasons. I want to find magical items. Some people believe they had the Spear of Longinus at the beginning of the war, and that’s why they were so successful at first. The higher-ups in the Nazi regime, especially Hitler, were really into occult and dark magic shit. They collected a lot of artifacts with alleged powers. Like they knew about Oriceran. I’ve found some information to suggest that there could be a magical artifact, an enchanted golden eagle pin that when activated with the right kind of magic can make a person super-persuasive. A few pictures in historical archives show Hitler wearing something like that. And not just any satellite. Needed one with the newer technology that can detect difference in density between water, wood and metals. The lake is a mile long, over 300 feet deep, and over a 1000-feet wide, and there’s always a chance someone else might be on their way. I need to really narrow down my search area. The scans should give me a better chance of figuring out where something interesting might actually be buried once I cross-reference it with my other info. And then the earthquake. The point is the earthquake may have unearthed shit that was buried too deeply for detection until now. Like I said, other people might have this information, so it’s time sensitive. I have to go. Now. “ And she left. She first went to Warehouse Three, to outfit her expedition. (See Locations-Shay’s Warehouses), then to the airport (private plane), then a rental van, and she was in her work clothes (all black and a snug fit, with her long hair tied back). Little traffic on the road. She would stop in the village of Grundlsee for a bite to eat. She’d hidden everything dangerous beneath false panels, leaving nothing more than totally legal, if conspicuous equipment. The border guards took one look at the way she was dressed and immediately realized the implications of her cargo. Their only real response was to mock her as Fräulein Schatzjäger, Miss Treasure Hunter.She called Peyton – all still OK. If she died? “Then get my body, put it on a wooden raft, and give me a Viking funeral, along with some of the same kind of flowers from my first funeral.

Chapter Six No traffic at the lake. Could pull close and unload. Shay surveyed the area with the drone, taking one last look around to make sure no one was nearby. She decided not to waste a lot of time. She sent the relay drone into the dense green water, followed by her main scouting drone. Had three possible spots t look. The drone closed in on the first location three hundred feet down. The drone saw several large cracked open crates filled with empty beer bottles. A twisted mass of rotted logs rested, layered one on top of each other at the second set of coordinates, inside of which were two rusted scuba tanks. Shay started maneuvering the drone to the last of her three likely locations, another tangle of rotted logs. She piloted the drone through the maze to the lakebed. Four metal lockboxes lay half-embedded in the mud, two small, two large. The larger two were cracked open, the reflected gleam of the light on gold bars, even obvious through the AR goggles. Not an artifact but still gold, enough to make the trip profitable. The smaller boxes couldn’t fit gold bars, but they could fit a few pieces of magical pins. It was time to put on her diving gear and grab herself some treasure. She swam down to the mass of logs, examined them tried a few pushes which cleared a narrow path down, decided to go into the mass. Shay swam over to the first of the smaller lockboxes and tried to open it. She followed that lack of success with a quick bash from the handle of her knife to the rusted-out lock allowed her to pulled the top off. Her eyes widened as she peered into a small pouch filled with diamonds. She carefully picked it up, gently slipping it into her mesh bag, then turned her attention to the other lockbox. A few strikes from the knife took out another rusted lock. Several golden eagle pins sat inside the box, no hint of tarnish or damage on them. The magical pin had to be among them. As Shay reached down a jolt of electricity shot through her hand. She winced and yanked her hand back. The top of the lockbox glowed a luminescent red. Runes burned themselves into the lid with no obvious source of heat. Shay’s eyes widened behind her mask as she recognized the symbols as Futhark, an old Germanic runic script. A bright orange pulse suddenly shot from the box. Shay reflexively threw up her arms, shielding her head. A trap! The trap started an earthquake somehow. Perfect! I’m 300 feet down about to be buried alive. She reached down again, but an invisible force and another jolt of electricity stopped her. Shay knew she couldn’t stay down there with an earthquake moving the logs, so she started to swim upwards. Her mesh bag of diamonds caught on one of the logs, and she was forced to cut the mesh away, but saving the diamonds. She made it out. “I still think I’m gonna avoid any underwater jobs for a while.”

Chapter Seven A Look into the Past For a few hours before her flight home from Munich, Shay stopped in a street café for coffee and a sandwich. As she was sitting there quietly, A man in a dark suit with close-cropped blond hair stepped in, adjusting his tie as he surveyed the café, a tense expression on his face. A faint bulk disrupted the lines of his suit, both a fashion crime and an indication he was wearing a shoulder holster. Shay thought he had come for her, but, upon watching, found that he had come for another old man in the café. She followed them, curiosity being the factor., as well as the fact that she liked killings. When she looked again, the old man wasn’t limping, but was all but jogging away from the hit-man. The old man pulled a sword from his cane, and a gun from his pocket. Regular people don’t carry around swords hidden in canes. That old man was another hit-man past his prime… just like Natalie. Just like I would have been if I stayed in the job. And she left. She had a flight to catch.

Chapter Eight This last expedition confirmed in Shay’s mind that she knew what she was doing. She was the real damned deal and now could claim the successful location of two magical artifacts. Shay and Peyton go out for thin-crust pizza (the only kind Shay will allow) to celebrate. Peyton gets to talking about his family, and the disadvantages of being wealthy. Shay related facts about her family, a few, and they ended with a toast in Mountain Dew: To all of us who got fucked over by our families, may we control our destinies from here on out.”

Chapter Nine The New Business Shay’s new business barely profitable. Peyton an asset? She had known she needed him, but didn’t like giving up complete independence in the business. Maintaining five different warehouses and all her equipment wasn’t cheap. The various casual bribes she had to throw around for everything from keeping her warehouses secure from local scum to ensuring certain powerful people didn’t look her way, even accidentally were eating into the profits, too. Running out of money wasn’t an immediate concern. her previous career had left her with a generous savings. Some of it was hidden in various accounts throughout the world, while enough to start all over again was in a vault in the most secure warehouse. Decides to ask Peyton for business help.

Chapter Ten The Lost Dutchman Gold Shay asks Peyton’s advice on ways to improve business performances. Peyton wants to hit dark web forums, cross-checked with other info. Wants to investigate who might be interested (future owner), rather than who has already expressed an interest. Wants to mix in normal quests, as well as magical ones. Normal quests might pay the bills. Already has a client he wants her to interview. Greg Abbot, current legal owner of the Lost Dutchman Mine, except that he can’t find it. Descendant of the original Peraltas. Has already funded other expeditions, failed. Many men have died, looking. Adolph Ruth, killed after allegedly finding a map to mine. Others killed, and not found. Curse involved? Will put $25,000 retainer up front,+ $250,000 if she finds mine, plus 4 bars of gold with legal mark on them, from mine, plus bonus, if more found. Shay bargains. $250,000 + 5% of any recovered gold, or $1 million if she finds the mine. OK .

Chapter Eleven Peyton having second thoughts about Lost Dutchman Mine deal. But Shay makes the decisions, and her gut says this one OK. Going after the gold, not the mine. Should be in Baja California Sur. Remembered old books, old info. Peyton worried, as that is Neuvo Gulf Cartel country, the one that wanted her dead, before. She was excited, perhaps because some of her own knowledge would help solve this case. Shay went to Warehouse Four, to do her research.

Chapter Twelve Dutchman Retrieval Shay in Baja Sur in a Land Rover. . Her plan was to locate the cache, then use a small cargo drone to transport all the gold, bar by bar, back to the Land Rover. After a simple drive back to town, she could unload the gold into the private plane she’d chartered and get the hell out of Mexico before any cartel assholes had a clue anyone had ever been in the area. She’d read the Nuevo Gulf Cartel was close to being pushed out of the area by another cartel. There was one statement she had found in an old reference that gave her concern. All those who seek the gold of the Peralta family should know that greed blinds a man to the truth. The phrase had been scrawled on an old map of the area. Shay had no idea if it was a simple moral observation or a riddle about the treasure meant to warn off seekers or help them find it. Two plumes of dust following her. Avoiding being linked to a single dead body was easy, almost trivial. Trying to avoid attention when you left dozens of bodies in your wake, not so much. Minimizing deaths would be to her benefit both in the short and long term. The area offered plenty of places for good cover if she wanted to hide. But any good hunter didn’t give up on the hunt just because they lost sight of the prey for a few seconds. She would need to both conceal herself and give her pursuers another rabbit to chase. She found an overhang for the LandRover, and covered it with a camouflage tarp. Would be hard to find. Two white Escalades barreled toward her general direction, stopped, talked, continued. Shay pulled a drone out of the Rover, sent it into air, set off two flares, crashed drone. One of the cars went toward the drone’s crash. Shay proceeded 100 miles further. The terrain had become impassable even for her four-wheel-drive vehicle, meaning the last leg of her journey involved a combination of climbing and hiking. No convenient mountain path presented itself as she closed in on the coordinates. Now that she was farther up the mountains, the cacti had given way to sparse shrubs and bushes. She wasn’t seeing much life of any kind, other than the occasional lizard scuttling away from her or a buzzard circling in the distance. (Or four of them?) No convenient mountain path presented itself as she closed in on the coordinates. Now that she was farther up the mountains, the cacti had given way to sparse shrubs and bushes. She wasn’t seeing much life of any kind, other than the occasional lizard scuttling away from her or a buzzard circling in the distance. Shay finally reached a sheer cliff leading to a deep canyon. A small ledge protruded from the cliff wall about one hundred feet down. She looked up at the rock face easily picking out small handholds and picturing the direction she would need to take.