Owl and the Japanese Circus

For my spousal unit, Steve.

Hon, we play a lot of video games.

I hate potholes. I hate desert highways too, about as much as I hate wearing high heels.

My Winnebago jolted over a bad pothole before I could swerve around it. I scrambled to keep the wheel straight and grabbed for my water bottle before it toppled and spilled across my laptop keyboard.

Too late.

I tried to mop the water up with my map before it seeped through to the motherboard. Captain howled from the back.

“Yeah, I hate Nevada too,” I said.

That’s one thing that sucks about these nighttime desert stretches of highway. No lights and no cars. You don’t see anything until it’s right there in front of your barreling Winnebago.

I checked my watch. 8:50 p.m. The Byzantine Thief was due online in forty minutes. Damn it, where the hell was that truck stop? I peered at the road for the telltale green sign. I couldn’t have missed the exit yet, could I? Served me right for trusting directions from a
waitress wearing fishnets and a pair of bunny ears. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my line of work over the last two years, it’s to look up the chain of command for advice, not down.

“Hey Captain, I’ve got forty minutes to find that truck stop and get supplies. Pull off to the side of the road and log on, or keep looking?”

The blanket rustled and Captain stuck his seal-point head out. He sniffed the air before disappearing into the back. I heard metal clank and water splash as he upended his food and water bowls.

I took that for,
Keep going, I’m hungry
.

I chewed my lower lip as I peered through the windshield down the highway. Now where the hell was that turnoff?

“Would it kill anyone to have more lights out here?” I said.

Captain mewed. I should have taken the gig in Puerto Rico instead. Can’t get lost on an island.

My laptop beeped twice. I took my eyes off the road for a second to check the message. One of my teammates, Carpe Diem, was already online.

You’re late, Thief. Get your ass online.

Goddamn it. I completely forgot I was supposed to meet Carpe ten minutes early so we could swap gear. Double shit. This was the second time this month I’d blanked on a pregame meeting.

“Remind me to start writing my appointments on sticky notes,” I said. Captain hopped up onto my front seat and chirped before curling up in a ball on my keyboard.

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, I appreciate your enthusiasm.”

You know your sanity is in question when you find yourself in a two-way conversation with a cat. Yet another reason my social life is restricted to an online game. Well, that and my paranoia. But I can’t talk to sane people about that anyways. They’d just lock me up with a lot of meds, and I know I’m not crazy, so it’s not like it’d do me any good.

If anything, my weekends in World Quest anchor me to reality.
For a few hours I can curl up with a beer and forget I live in a Winnebago, running from, well . . .

Let’s just say my line of work doesn’t allow for sincere in-person social interactions.

I pulled the wet map up to check for the exit when I caught reflective white on green in my floodlights up ahead. Bingo, exit 15. I could even see the lampposts in the distance. I steered onto the gravel road and pulled up to an old truck stop that reminded me of something out of a 1950s teen movie. It had the prerequisite convenience store and gas pump, which was all I cared about.

Carpe pinged me again at 9:10.

Screw you, I’ve got ten more minutes.

Fuck you, you still owe me for last week.

I pursed my lips. He wasn’t entirely wrong. I did have most of our stolen loot in my bag of holding—hazard of being a World Quest thief. Everyone always assumes you have somewhere to stash stuff.

Picking up supplies. Gimme five.

I closed the laptop to cut the conversation short and scanned the floodlit parking lot. Two freight trucks and a jeep.

I had the door handle turned halfway when a light flickered inside the jeep. I had the key back in the ignition faster than you can say, “
Backtrack
” and waited, my heart racing.

Nothing.

I checked Captain. He yawned, stretched, and settled back into his nap. I scratched him behind the ears and breathed a sigh of relief. If Captain wasn’t up in arms, they hadn’t caught up to me. Yet. Give them a few more hours though, and one of them would figure out I’d just made a delivery in Vegas. They’d be on my tail until it went cold, and then they’d be right back waiting for one of my jobs to light up their digital switchboard, ready to chase me all over again.

Did I mention I’m really paranoid? Trust me, it’s justified.

Better safe than sorry, I rifled through the glove box for my
infrared night goggles and checked the jeep again. No one inside or anywhere in the parking lot. Just one warm-blooded red form behind the convenience store counter. I shook my head, took a deep breath, and counted to ten.

I’ve been in my line of work for two years. The first year was the honeymoon, when all I had to worry about were the feds or the antiquities department catching wind and snooping out one of my jobs. Year two I ran into what I like to call “the scary shit,” and I’ve been checking around corners, using disposable phones, and bouncing my internet off satellites ever since. Even with that, I still can’t shake the feeling that one of these days I’m going to pull into a gas station and a nasty gang of Parisian men in expensive cars and designer suits will be waiting for me.

But only a handful of people on the planet even know things like the Paris boys exist, and fewer could do anything about them. As luck would have it, I’m on the outs with the few who could actually do anything about them.

It sucks to be me.

Not today though. If there was one thing I could count on to sound the alarm, it was Captain’s spider sense.

I pulled my dirty-blond hair up in a ponytail and tucked it underneath my red flames baseball cap. I tugged the brim lower so it hid most of my face and hopped down into the parking lot. Dust billowed around my ankles, adding another layer of grime to my already dirty clothes. I hadn’t had time for a shower in Vegas, and filling up my water tank was proving difficult in the Nevada desert. I took a deep breath and smelled the cool night air. Not a trace of anything except stale grease and gasoline vapors. I shook my paranoia out of overdrive and braced myself for the walk. Only a few feet to the door, a quick trip down the aisles, then back to the road.

Simple.

“Back in a sec with dinner,” I said to Captain, and with one last look at the empty jeep I headed into the convenience store.

I spilled my basket full of the Friday night usual across the front counter. Three bags of barbecue chips, a two-liter bottle of diet soda, a six-pack of Corona, an assortment of fluorescent orange cheesy twists, and eight cans of cat food fought for space in front of the cash register. The night cashier, a skinny, redheaded kid who couldn’t have been more than sixteen, stared at the pile of junk food and then up at me. A bewildered expression spread over the kid’s face as he picked up the first bag of chips.

I shrugged. I didn’t feel like explaining my dietary choices to a kid barely into his teens. Instead, I focused on my watch as he rang everything up and deposited it into yellow plastic bags. I still had two minutes left to get back to my Winnebago and log into World Quest before Carpe got pissy again.

I pulled out cash—I almost always use cash—and tossed the bills onto the counter as I waited for the kid to finish bagging.

The door chimed behind us, and I froze. No one else had pulled into the parking lot.

The checkout kid’s eyes widened as they fixed on something over my shoulder. He missed the bag entirely, and a can of cat food dropped and rolled across the floor.

Before I could turn around, a heavy hand gripped my shoulder like a vise.

I swore under my breath. The hand squeezed, and I winced as it pinched a nerve.

“Owl,” a deep voice said with a slight trace of an Asian accent. “You are a very difficult person to locate.”

Yeah, and I planned on keeping it that way. I started to shift my weight onto the balls of my feet, readying to reap the guy’s knee, when I picked up expensive cologne tinged with amber. I stopped; it couldn’t be the Paris boys.

I turned around slowly and looked up at the tallest Japanese man
I’d ever seen, wearing a pair of designer sunglasses. He wore a tailored suit with diamond cuff links—real diamond cuff links—and matching shoes, but that wasn’t what got the kid. A tattoo of a dragon wound its way down the right half of the man’s face, the tail wrapping around his neck and disappearing underneath his shirt. It was striking, and a stark contrast to the expensive outfit. It was also a signature.

One of Mr. Ryuu Kurosawa’s goons.

I let out the breath I was holding. Not good, but a damn sight better than a pack of Parisian lost boys.

Dragon Tattoo smiled, showing off a perfect set of teeth. “Mr. Kurosawa sends his regards. He wishes to meet with you to discuss your last contract.”

I already didn’t like where this conversation was headed. I popped a piece of gum in my mouth to cover my nerves and checked the exit while my head was down. Two more of Mr. Kurosawa’s lackeys were positioned just outside the convenience store door. No chance to run for it. My Winnebago was faster than it looked, but I doubted it could outrun whatever these guys were driving.

I make it a rule to never meet with clients in person. Ever. Especially after I’ve finished a job. Not because I cheat anyone—the authenticity of my merchandise is guaranteed, and I’ve built a good reputation on that little fact. The reason I don’t meet with clients is that my services are nonnegotiable. I give you the price with exact specifics of the transaction: certificates of authenticity, photos of the dig site, carbon dating. If you don’t like it, hire someone else.