"Perhaps we might return to the business at hand," Montgomery interjected.
The stationmaster granted Lilia a cold glance. "You ought to take an impression of her teeth and charge her with assault," he told Montgomery, then pushed up his sleeve. "Look at this." There was a red bite mark just above his wrist.
"I think that then we'd have to discuss who assaulted whom first," Lilia said. "That was self-defense."
"Worked out real well for you, didn't it?" the station-master sneered. His two lackeys chuckled.
"It took three of you," Lilia said. "Against one little woman."
One of the lackeys took a step toward the cell but Lilia didn't even blink. Montgomery swallowed a curse and was glad that he had arrived as quickly as he had.
He wished she hadn't been so intent on making it worse.
Lilia glared at the lackey until he averted his gaze. Then she turned that look on the stationmaster. "I think if we tally the bruises, you'll be the one charged with assault. Or maybe with using unnecessary force. I was pushed from the train and the yard was where I fell. You could have treated me with courtesy."
"You were on a train without a ticket," snarled the stationmaster. "I'll add that to your list of charges."
"I was going to buy one on the train," Lilia replied.
"She's trouble," the stationmaster told Montgomery. "Never met a woman with such a mouth. You want to take her into NGPD's custody, you're welcome to her."
"That's exactly what I'm here to do," Montgomery said mildly. He completed the necessary files for the transfer.
Maybe, just maybe, he'd have the chance to give Lilia a bit of advice. He flicked a glance her way, saw the set of her lips, and doubted the discussion would go well.
Lilia left the station with her wrists handcuffed together and linked to a securoband that locked around her waist. Montgomery had found it difficult to cuff her, the scent of her skin and her proximity distracting him from the job. It was too easy to remember how she felt wrapped around him.
Never mind how much he wanted to do it again.
Apparently, getting Lilia Desjardins out of his system wasn't going to be simple. The fact that he didn't really want to be free of her spell might have been part of the problem.
He liked the idea that they were working together.
Montgomery's cloak was spread over the cuffs to hide them from casual view and he walked beside Lilia with one hand on the small of her back. It was all too easy to conclude that the woman needed a permanent escort, given her talent for getting herself into trouble. He was ready to volunteer.
"Don't say it," Lilia murmured when they were in the throngs of people in the station.
Montgomery said it anyway. "In some situations, you should just shut up," he muttered, hearing the anger underlying his own words. "You're going to have a whopper of a bruise on your face."
She flicked him a poisonous glance. "A small price to pay. I wasn't raped and I wasn't beaten up."
"It could have gone otherwise."
"A woman has to fight back, Montgomery. A woman has to show that she has some spirit, that she won't just roll to her back and let all comers have an easy go of it. They need to be a little bit cautious, a little bit surprised."
"Even if it makes them meaner?"
"They only get a shot in when I lose." Her lips set defiantly. "And if I fight with my teeth and my heels, then they never guess what other assets I have."
Montgomery blinked. "They never took your laze?"
Lilia smiled up at him, confident again. "As chivalrous as it was of you to rescue me, I wasn't planning on staying long."
Montgomery didn't doubt that she would have taken care of herself. "What happened to our friend?" She glanced to his stud and he shook his head. "It's still out, at least until I get back to the precinct."
"He said he had to go to New Seattle. Just as you said, he had a plan. I blew your tokens on getting him dressed, showed him how to book a train ticket, and sent him on his way."
"How'd you end up in the lockup?"
Lilia frowned. "He wanted a memento of our time together that I didn't want to give. I also didn't want to go to New Seattle." She closed her mouth suddenly, as if there was something else she might have said but changed her mind.
They headed into the street, Lilia walking dutifully just before Montgomery. "Your story about the bulletin on me was a good one," she said as they dodged rickshaws and bicycles.
"It wasn't a lie, Lil." Montgomery saw her surprise. "The homicide was the circus owner—"
Lilia pivoted to face him so quickly that he nearly bumped into her. Her eyes were round with shock. "Not Stevia?"
"Stevia Fergusson," he agreed and she looked away with obvious distress. "A norm and one left in exactly the same way as the two shades. This one's a homicide."
Lilia swore. "The only upside is that I won't have to tell her about Micheline going with the angels." She looked up at him, her eyes bright. "Do you think they knew? Do you think they were protecting her from whoever attacked Stevia?"
"I don't know," Montgomery had to admit, then knew lie had to tell her more. "It gets worse, Lil. The system is lingering you as a suspect. It's hotlinking security vid files that put you on the scene just before the killings."
"I didn't know it did that."
"It doesn't. Remember how I said that you had powerful enemies?"
Lilia chewed her lip as she considered this. They turned as one and began to walk again. "Who hacks the angels' identities into the system?"
"I don't know."
"But we know at least that the system isn't impenetrable. There are ways to modify the Republic's information. There may be one group of hackers or a lot of independent ones."
"I'd put my creds on independents."
"Me too."
"Do you know anyone with connections?"
Lilia shrugged. "Depends on the price, doesn't it?"
Montgomery could see that she was thinking, even as every step took them closer to the precinct. He was ready to give her a bit more time to think about possible connections.
"Do you know anything about a group called the Council of Three?" he asked on impulse. He hadn't even tried a search yet.
Lilia looked at him in surprise. "They're supposed to be the secret team that runs the Society, but no one's sure they exist. Well, except Doc Mina."
"Doc Mina?"
"Don't ask. What do the Council of Three have to do with anything?"
"I don't know. I hoped you might know who they were."
Lilia laughed. "Hardly! Not for lack of speculating, though." She didn't seem to think they were a threat to take seriously. Montgomery would have to do some research on his own.
He lowered his voice. "We're going to go down Main Street in a couple of blocks, Lil. It's always busy there."
Lilia slanted him a glance, her eyes dancing with the mischief that made his heart leap. "You should be worried that I might escape your custody in such a place."
Montgomery smiled. "I'm worried that you just might."
Her smile flashed. "You really know how to sweet-talk a lady, Montgomery." She leaned closer to him, her arm brushing against his, her lips tantalizingly close. "I'm going to tell you a secret, just for that. Gid left me something."
"Something like what?"
"A datachip. I need to read it, but not anywhere it can be tracked. I don't want to use my palm, because I was palm-raped and there might be a worm installed ..."
"Palm-raped?" Montgomery stalled on that single word. "When? Where?"
"Last night." Lilia shrugged, no longer interested in the details. Montgomery didn't share her view. "Someone must have given me a Mickey Finn, probably in the lobby bar, then broke into my room. My palm said it was emptied at 01:16:47."
"Emptied?"
"He copied everything."
"Everything that was on your palm," he corrected and they exchanged a knowing smile before Montgomery sobered. "He? Who was it? Could you tell?"
Her gaze was assessing. "Not you. Beyond that, I'm not sure."
Montgomery wondered how she could be so certain.
"It's not like I'm overwhelmed with friends here in New Gotham," she added. "Can you access the security vid for the hotel?"
"Possibly." Montgomery wouldn't have been surprised to find that it had been someone from NGPD, since the system was so determined to frame Lilia.
"What's more important is that I read this datachip," Lilia said. "I need to know what's on it. I know where there are public readers that aren't monitored on the Frontier—"
Montgomery interrupted her, knowing what she wanted and realizing that they had very little time. "Go into the netherzones in the pleasure fringe then head uptown. In Forest Green, there's a beverage bar for sex-shades on the primary level."
"Their public readers aren't monitored?"
"They're all monitored here, Lil. But I can get around it."
She gave a shiver. "There's something about a man with the right tools," she murmured, then cast him a smile filled with promise.
"I'll meet you there at 15:00, just before I go on shift." He pursed his lips. "I'm going to have a lot of forms to fill out, what with you escaping from my custody."
"And your ear stud needing maintenance again," Lilia reminded him cheerfully.
"That too. It's already 10—I hope I'm not late."
"Main Street closing fast," Lilia said, jingling her cuffs with anticipation. "How am I going to get these babies off, Montgomery? Do you have a plan for that?"
"Just a key."
"Works for me."
Montgomery reached beneath the cloak and unlocked the cuffs with one hand. "You can cut the securoband once you're away," he advised. "Ditch it fast because it has a homing device."
"Does it? In that little thing?" Lilia shook her head. "It looks so innocuous, but the Republic thinks of everything."
There was nothing Montgomery could say to that.
They walked on to Main Street together, letting the crowd jostle them. It was busier than Montgomery had anticipated. Lilia held her hands as if they were still fastened together and walked beside him with careful steps. She might have been a respectable middle-class wife, her manner as unlike the Lilia he knew as was possible.
He slanted her a skeptical glance. "What's going on?"
She blinked. "Whatever do you mean, dear sir?"
Montgomery glanced behind them and to either side. "What happened to the real Lil?"
She laughed and her smile was wicked. "I'm trying to be demure. How am I doing?"
"A bit too well," he said. "But it can't last."
Before he managed to say more, Lilia proved his prediction true. She flung the cloak at his head and ducked behind a wheeled cart selling snacks.
Montgomery was plunged into darkness and he chuckled to himself before he pulled the cloak away. Lilia had lunged into the crowd and was covering ground fast. He shouted in mock dismay and gave chase without real heart.
If he'd been in uniform, the crowd might have stopped her, assuming that she was a felon of some kind. As it was, people watched her run, then glanced to him. Lilia chose to work with that, with her usual skill at improvising.
"He's a barbarian!" she cried, pointing back at Montgomery and holding her other hand over her heart. Montgomery noticed that she had managed to ditch the securoband already. "We've only just been introduced and he tried to touch my hand!"
She had pulled down her glove so that the skin on the back of her hand was bare. She looked down at the exposed skin and flushed crimson as if mortified. Another woman handed her a hankerchief to cover her flesh.
Men roared with anger at this breach of the rights of a member of the fair sex. Montgomery immediately found a wall of furious citizens confronting him, blocking him from pursuit of Lilia. He would have laughed if it hadn't been his role to look outraged and falsely charged.
Lilia, meanwhile, trotted away, surrounded by supportive women.
He blundered and blustered until she had completely disappeared from sight, then managed to talk his way out of the confrontation.
It was only when he reached the precinct that he realized he hadn't reminded Lilia to not return to the hotel. Whoever was hunting her would look for her there first.
Lilia was starving. Hunger amplified her other reactions of the morning. She was overwhelmed with information, saddened by Stevia's death, skeptical of Montgomery's claim that the system was fingering her as the villain.
By his own admission, the system didn't do that.
She remembered his fleeting expression of cold fury when he'd come to the lockup in the train station and was sure that he was telling her a story, one intended to ensure that she behaved demurely for the rest of the day.
As if that would happen. She was going to eat, investigate, check out the datachip's contents, and jump Montgomery's bones again, either before or after she quit the Society for all time. It wasn't safe but nothing was safe. The stakes were high and Lilia believed that she could outsmart—or outmaneuver—anyone who was out to get her.
Even the Republic.
She wasn't going to worry about Delilah. Delilah was safe.
Gid had ensured it and Gid had been utterly trustworthy.
To Lilia's relief, when she got back to the hotel, the breakfast buffet was still set up, if picked over. Most people were in Doc Mina's special session, probably in dire need of artificial stimulants. Since she'd already paid for the meal with her conference fee, Lilia cruised the wreckage of the buffet. She'd be safe enough in a public area like this, especially if she kept her eyes open.
It had been a nice spread, for that kind of thing, with some sweet breads and "fruit," "coffee," and "tea," as well as the usual array of breakfast substitutes and energy pills. Lilia took a couple of Danish, which looked reasonably unextruded, and ate one right at the buffet.
She thought about chicken tortellini and salivated.
She glanced across the room, mildly curious as to who else had skipped Doc Mina's session. There were three dozen Nuclear Darwinists in the room, all pretending that Lilia was invisible. The last thing she expected was for anyone to acknowledge her, but Dr. Malachy was waving his cane, apparently at her.
Lilia glanced behind herself to be sure, but she was standing alone at the buffet. She waved back tentatively, and he flailed his cane with greater enthusiasm.
The mathematics professor from the Institute, Dr. Malachy had a full mane of silver hair and eyebrows so unruly that they seemed to possess lives of their own. He had walked with a cane for as long as Lilia had known him. Even though she had been abysmal at solving the convoluted mathematical formulas in his courses—she still had nightmares about derivatives—she'd always liked him.
She liked him enough to give him a chance to change his mind about inviting the conference pariah to his table. He could, after all, have been having a seizure or calling for more substitute dairy product for his "coffee."
All doubt was removed when he yelled at her. "Lilia Desjardins! Have you gone blind?" He rapped his cane on an adjacent chair. "Come here, my dear, and sit with me. I could use some scandalous company." He harumphed and settled back in his chair. "A man my age has to court rumor wherever he can find it."
Fair enough.
Lilia smiled, even as the others in the room began to whisper. Dr. Malachy returned to his breakfast, apparently considering his summons to be so irresistible that it was only a matter of time before Lilia claimed the seat beside him.
He pretty much had that right.
"Good morning, Dr. Malachy," Lilia said, being as polite a schoolgirl as she could manage to be.
"So, Gideon taught you some manners then, did he?"
Lilia sat down. "How nice to see you again."
He shook a spoon at her. "You mean that you're surprised that I'm not dead yet. Well, my dear, some days I'm surprised as well."
Lilia laughed and he winked at her.
Then he s
obered. "Terrible business about Gideon," he said gruffly and gave her hand a pat. "Gave me a shock, that did."
"You and me both."
He shook his head. "It's a shame to lose a man with such promise. I've never encountered a mind so attuned to mathematics." He paused, then glanced around, as if waiting for a correction. When it didn't come, he made it himself. "Except my own, of course."
"Of course," Lilia agreed, realizing she'd missed her line. "Weren't you Gid's advisor at the Institute?"
Dr. Malachy nodded with satisfaction. "That I was. Do you know that I accused him of plagiarism when he turned in his first lab report to me?" He chuckled and shook his head. "I couldn't imagine that a second-year student could do such an intricate proof."
"Gid never cheated."
"No, he never did. Honest as they came, that boy." Dr. Malachy sighed and stirred his "coffee." Lilia didn't think it was the beverage mat was troubling him. If he wanted to talk about Gid, the least she could do was give him a place to start.
"Dr. Malachy, do you know what Gid was working on?"
He snorted. "I wouldn't be much of an advisor if I didn't."
"I thought you had retired." Lilia got a sharp glance for that.
"You thought I was dead. We've been over that."
"No, but—"
"I always swore, Lilia, that I'd die in my lab, working until the end." He gave her another of those playful glances. "I didn't, however, think it would take so long."
"You'll probably outlive all of us."
"Terrifying prospect, that." He sipped from his cup, obviously less worried about that possibility than he claimed to be.
"But what was Gid working on?"
Dr. Malachy waved a hand. "Oh, more mathematical probabilities. I won't bore you with the details—I do remember that mathematics wasn't your strong suit, Lilia."
"No, it wasn't. Fortunately, I met Gid before I'd flunked out completely. He was a good tutor."
"Well, yes. He was motivated—" Dr. Malachy harumphed "—as only a young man prepared to court a lady's affections can be. You know, Lilia, if you hadn't been my student before you met Gideon, I might have thought that you pretended to be worse at mathematics than you were, simply because you were similarly motivated."
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