The Lost of New Bristol (Lila Randolph Book 2)

by Wren Weston

  The other nine families raised their hands.

  Seeing they would be outnumbered, Élise and Johanna raised their hands as well. It wouldn’t do for the public record to reflect the slight. Ms. Park and her family would always remember any family who dared vote against their entry.

  Rarely did families vote against a nomination.

  Not unless you were Ophelia Randolph.

  “Fine,” Élise said, banging her gavel. “Let the record show that the Park family will be admitted into our ranks during the first High Council meeting of next year’s legislative session.”

  Just like that, Ms. Suji Park and her entire family became highborn.

  Chapter 19

  After sweeping her bedroom for bugs, Lila changed into her comfiest pair of cotton pajamas pants and a worn t-shirt with the words Randolph Militia scrawled across her chest. She tended to do her best work in her pajamas, and the High Council meeting had drained her, as had replying to Tristan’s message.

  Or not replying.

  He’d missed her. Again. And he wanted her to know it.

  She’d fumbled for several moments after receiving it, unsure how to answer. When they’d first started up, she hoped things would become less confusing. Unfortunately, the opposite had occurred. Everything was more and more confusing the more they saw of one another. Tristan wanted a great deal from her, and all the messages about how he missed her were pressing down on her chest, suffocating her.

  Her thumb hovered over Delete. Instead of tapping it, she moved the message to Tristan’s folder. She’d not yet been able to get rid of any of them. To make matters worse, she almost wanted to back up the folder on her desktop computer, because if anyone else picked up her palm and didn’t enter her code properly, her palm would erase itself.

  She didn’t care about most of her data, but she cared about Tristan’s. His messages seemed important somehow. Perhaps that was what suffocated her—not necessarily Tristan’s declarations, but that his words held power over her. They spurred her to do things she didn’t want to do, like keeping a host of messages due to sentimentality.

  She sent Tristan a message that she’d see him soon, then tossed her palm onto her desk. It slid, nearly falling off the other side. Seconds later, she found herself grabbing it again and backing up the damn folder, slamming the small device on her bed afterward.

  Her cheeks warmed as she glared at her desktop computer, but at least she wasn’t an obsessive idiot any longer.

  Sipping on a mug of hot chocolate, she checked the search for Natalie’s brothels. Since it hadn’t finished, she pushed it to the background and pulled up the results of the blood tests. The numbers meant very little to Lila, but Captain Randolph had attached a brief voice message explaining them. Natalie had not had been under the influence of alcohol or drugs when she died. Neither had her guards. But the lab director had found something infinitely more interesting. She’d discovered a substance that might be a tracer in Natalie’s blood, as well as the blood of several of her guards.

  Tracers?

  “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” Lila said, leaping from her seat as though she’d been burned, her hand covering her gaping mouth while she fumbled for her palm.

  Tracers were a Roman technology the Allied Lands hadn’t figured out yet, though not for lack of trying. Once they’d been injected or ingested, the target could be located for the next thirty-six hours, so long as they were within a few kilometers. Though GPS bugs might be more lasting and comprehensive, even lowborns had developed ways to detect and deactivate them.

  No such counters existed for tracers. If you had a team large enough to murder almost a dozen thugs, then you had enough people to canvass all of New Bristol in a day and a half, searching for a tracer’s signal.

  “You stupid woman,” Lila whispered as she typed Captain Randolph’s ID into her palm. “You should have known better than to drink with mercs from the empire.”

  Tristan had been right. German mercs were involved. Not even the highborn families had ever been able to get their hands on tracers. The Germans had stolen Oskar, and they hadn’t even been subtle about it. Perhaps they’d assumed that Bullstow wouldn’t find the tracers. It wasn’t as if the Allied Lands had a blood test to detect them.

  “Walk the sample to the Burgess Building,” Lila told Captain Randolph as soon as she picked up. “Personally.”

  Captain Randolph laughed. “No need. I’m in the lobby as we speak. I told Director Randolph to stay at work until you called her. She already knows something is up.”

  “Good. Share nothing except the sample, not even a hint of where it came from.”

  “Of course. I nearly beat down the door of Villanueva House until a footman told me you were at a High Council meeting,” the captain said in a rush, the giddiness palpable in her voice. “I wouldn’t even have suspected if my snoop programs hadn’t caught a whiff of something strange when I scanned the lab. This is serious, chief. And seriously time sensitive. The sample will degrade substantially after thirty-six hours. How old is it?”

  “Best guess? Around twelve hours old. Tell no one else about the sample. No one.”

  “You didn’t procure it legally, did you?”

  “I have to call Director Randolph.”

  Lila disconnected and called Viola Randolph, the director of her bioengineering R&D department, quickly explaining what the sample would contain. She’d barely gotten the words out before she heard frantic button-pushing and the dings of an elevator in the background.

  The director made quick promises to rouse her entire team, assuring Lila that they’d spend the next twenty-fours working on the sample. Then she made the usual vow to not ID-test the blood, and quickly disconnected.

  If Lila knew the group at all, they’d run to the lab and get started immediately without complaint even if stopped mid-orgasm. She’d just handed them the best Winter Solstice gift of their lives, nearly two months early. They’d talk about it for years, and they’d be famous throughout the Allied Lands if they managed to replicate the tracer.

  No one would know where it came from, so long as no one ran a DNA test. The way she’d given the instructions would leave little doubt in anyone’s mind. The sample was the product of corporate espionage. Running DNA tests would effectively incriminate the entire lab team, making them accessories. Neither lab director had gotten their jobs by being stupid, and both knew better than to move against the heirs.

  No scientist had any desire to end up a slave. Slaves didn’t win science prizes, and they certainly didn’t end up in the history books. They’d do whatever it took to duplicate the tracer quietly. Once her people figured out how it worked, they’d figure out how to counter the stuff so it wouldn’t affect the Randolph family.

  Then they’d keep the antidote, sell the tracer, and make a fortune.

  Lila sipped her chocolate and broke into Bullstow’s database, peeking into Natalie’s murder investigation. She and Tristan had been right. Natalie and her people had died around eight o’clock that morning. The ballistics team confirmed that the bullets lodged in the bodies were German-made and fired from German guns.

  Not German hands, though. Bullstow believed that the Holguíns had killed Natalie for the shame she’d brought upon the family, knowing that more of her crimes would be revealed if her case went to court. They, like many highborn families, simply decided to spare their family the embarrassment of a trial and regain their family’s honor and protect themselves from Natalie’s wrath after exile.

  They just hadn’t done it legally. The family’s blood squad should have taken Natalie while she tarried on the Holguín estate. She should have gone missing, never to be seen or heard from again. Instead, they’d surrounded Natalie off-compound, killing nearly a dozen workborn criminals in the process. Even worse, they’d left the bodies for Bullstow to clean up.

  That rankled B
ullstow. They could not ignore it, not that they believed they were meant to. The Holguíns had left Natalie there for a reason. Indeed, Bullstow thought they had the key to the elaborate death scene. Acquiring German guns might have been difficult but not impossible, certainly not when one had the resources of the entire Holguín family at their disposal. The Bullstow teddy bear at the scene had been an easy prop, for Oskar had taken it with him from the auction house. Both pointed to German mercs. With Natalie and the Germans as patsies and a believable cover story, Chairwoman Holguín would be free to make a deal for Oskar with anyone she liked, selling him without the stern eyes of Bullstow focused on her compound.

  Indeed, Bullstow would be too busy chasing kidnappers who did not exist.

  The plan was so thoroughly highborn and brilliant that Lila had to applaud Bullstow for coming up with it. It was certainly much more plausible than German mercenaries stealing into New Bristol, something Chief Shaw thought rather unlikely, given the number who would have to be hidden in the city to pull off the murders. Besides, he probably believed that Natalie was too clever to lead mercs back to her hideout.

  Shaw didn’t know about the tracers, though. He also didn’t have the most discreet militia. Now that Bullstow knew Oskar was missing, the press and the matrons would know as soon as the first spies got hold of the information.

  So would the empire.

  Lila dug into the files submitted by Shaw’s tech department next. The group hadn’t been able to break into Natalie’s star drive. They’d only managed to break the encryption on the palms, but they only found a few naughty photos and silly games.

  Lila closed her connection to Bullstow and brought up the contents of Natalie’s star drive once more. After an hour of digging, all she found that pertained to Oskar was a few incriminating messages. It appeared that Natalie had been contacted by a friend of a friend. For a small fee, that friend offered to connect Natalie with someone who would pay good money for the boy, so long as she didn’t mind who might be buying him.

  Natalie had replied that she didn’t care who bought him or where he ended up, so long as she got paid on delivery. She just needed to know the amount and who was buying.

  The messages made it easy to guess the buyers would be German. It also made it easier for Lila to deal with the image of Natalie and her thugs dead on the concrete.

  Shaking her head, she delved into the palm data, looking for any clues about who might have brokered the deal. There were no blinking arrows, no flashing neon lights. All she found were naughty pictures and silly games, just like Bullstow. She even ran the pictures through a few programs that might extract codes or secret messages from the pixels, but found nothing.

  In the end, she even looked at the games. Two appeared on all three palms. In the first, the player navigated a swiftly swimming fish through more and more precarious surroundings by turning the palm. Since Fast Fish had broken many sales records throughout the Allied Lands in the previous month, she wasn’t that surprised. The second game confused her, though, for she’d never seen it and it seemed to be broken. Nearly a dozen cartoon aliens clumped in the center of the screen, which flickered every few seconds. The score didn’t budge from three thousand no matter how many buttons she pushed, no matter how many times she turned her palm.

  “Stupid game.”

  She poured out her chocolate in the bathroom sink, too full of sugar to drink the rest. Instead, she poured herself a glass of water and checked the results for Natalie’s brothels. She found twelve probable locations, though by her estimates, there should only have been seven or eight.

  Yawning, Lila considered pulling up Max’s data and looking for Xavier, but she still had two days to dig into it. Instead, she began the search for Natalie’s friend. The message Natalie had received had come from somewhere. Someone would be on the other end of the chain. She just had to dig deeply enough.

  Lila was so engrossed in her task that she almost didn’t hear the knock on her bedroom window. Startling, she shot up and grabbed her tranq gun in one fluid movement, aiming at the drapes.

  Tristan waved behind the glass.

  Lila looked down at her attire. He’d never seen her dressed down so completely, and she was dressed down. Way down. All the way to the basement down. Even her hair was a mess. At some point she had wound it into a messy bun with a pen.

  Putting down her Colt, she opened the window and quickly herded him into her room, worried someone would see him before he hopped inside. He’d dressed in black trousers with a dark hoodie over a dark gray t-shirt, probably so he wouldn’t be seen. But if anyone did see him, he’d look so suspicious they’d have to chase after him. “How did you get in here, you idiot?” she whispered, closing the window behind him.

  “I walked. You seem to forget sometimes that I’m quite capable—”

  “Of doing really stupid things? The first thing militias do is a DNA stick.”

  “They’d have to catch me first. You’re never afraid of your identity being exposed when you come into my shop. Why should it stop me from waltzing into your compound?”

  “Your people can’t arrest me and throw me into slavery,” she said, glad her sister had run off for the night with Senator Dubois. Pax and her mother slept like logs and the walls weren’t thin, so it wasn’t likely they’d hear Tristan’s voice.

  Not likely, but not impossible. Pax sometimes came into her room for a chat when he couldn’t sleep. After her mother’s words at dinner, Lila couldn’t help but think he might.

  “Any one of my people could ruin your career, and yet you still come.”

  Lila frowned and closed the drapes, carefully settling the cloth around the window.

  “I shouldn’t have said that.” Tristan pushed a lock of hair from her face. “None of them would ever say a word if they found out. They’d respect you more for helping, for—”

  “You were right the first time. How’d you get here? No one gets into my compound without me knowing about it.”

  “Even after all this time, you doubt my abilities?”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  Tristan stepped away from the window and twirled around her room, his eyes locking on every piece of furniture, every pillow, every picture. He peeked inside her closet, studying every uniform and dress and pair of shoes. He even poked his head into her bathroom.

  “It’s not what I thought it would be.”

  “What did you think it would be?”

  “I thought there would be more to it somehow. Bigger? Filled with expensive things? Like priceless art and a golden bathtub. You don’t belong here, Lila. It’s too drab. You’re too alive for a place like this.”

  “The fewer things you have in a room, the easier and faster it is to scan for bugs.”

  “You do that nonsense in your own bedroom?”

  “Every time I come home.”

  “I thought you said no one could get into your compound.”

  “I don’t do it for outsiders.”

  Tristan tilted his head.

  “I was six months old the first time someone tried to hurt me. A member of the family slipped poison into my bottle. I should have died, reducing the prime’s queue. Checking for bugs is almost quaint in comparison.”

  His jaw dropped. “I can’t believe you have to be that vigilant with your own family. You’re supposed to trust them. Dixon never had to do that stuff.”

  “Dixon is male and probably wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.”

  “He was important enough.” He fingered the silver coat of arms above her couch. “Do you test this as well?”

  “It’s the first place anyone tries to plant a bug. It’s symbolic, I suppose. I wouldn’t even keep it on the wall, but my sister made it, and I couldn’t put up anything else she made me.”

  “That bad?”

  “No, her work is ex
quisite, but none of it is right for me.”

  He wandered back over to her dresser and picked up a picture among the two dozen frames. In it, a very young Lila and a fair-haired girl bowed their heads over a bowl of dough, cheeks brushed with flour. “Is this Holly?”

  Lila took the photo and settled it carefully back on her dresser. “Why are you here, Tristan? Why are you on my compound?”

  Tristan’s arms snaked around her waist, and he dropped his chin on top of her head. “Because I missed you. You don’t miss me when I’m not around, do you?”

  Lila shrugged and lifted her lips, knowing why he’d really come.

  She wanted it too.

  He pulled away. “I didn’t come here for that, Lila.”

  “You found something?”

  “No, but we’re still looking.”

  “An update from me, then?” Lila returned to her desk, kicking her bare feet onto it while she clacked away at the keyboard.

  Tristan stared, stifling a little grin.

  “What?”

  He sat at the edge of her desk. “It’s just that I’ve imagined you at home so many times doing this, doing your research thing. And here you are.” He wrapped his hand around her toes, warming them. “I’ve never really noticed your feet before.”

  “You saw them last night.”

  “I was busy looking at other things. They’re sort of adorable.”

  “Focus, Tristan.”

  “You’re blushing.”

  Lila looked away, but her gaze snapped back when he began massaging the balls of her feet. She slid down in her chair as he worked, trying not to moan.

  “I didn’t come here for an update, but go ahead. Update me if you can.”

  When she didn’t immediately start speaking, he deepened the massage. “Focus, Lila.”

  Lila wiggled her ankles, but he held on, grinning wider. Oh, how she hated that grin, the grin that let him get away with so much, so often. “Why did you come? You used to be all about the job. You used to send me message after message about nothing but work. Kids are missing, and you don’t seem to care.”