by Wren Weston
Lila closed her eyes and leaned back into the passenger seat.
“Well?”
Lila ignored him. After a while, he stopped baiting her.
It was a long trip back to New Bristol.
Dixon already had the dock door raised by the time they approached the shop, as though waiting for their arrival. She had already donned her mesh hood, obscuring her face, ready to jump on her Firefly and return home.
Shirley met them at the door and stuffed her hands into her pockets. She looked at Lila over the top of her bifocals and clucked her tongue. “Hood’s back.”
“Looks like it.” Lila shut the truck door. “You seem to have neglected the radio in this one.”
“Radios don’t get you from point A to B. Radios aren’t important.”
“Obviously you’ve never tried to keep up a civil conversation with that one for longer than five minutes,” she said, jerking her chin to Tristan. “Trust me, it’s important.”
Shirley and her assistants smirked. A woman sitting on Shirley’s swivel stool cackled as she twirled around and around. “That’s what I like about you, Hood,” Samantha said, the purple feather in her black derby hat floating while she spun. “You always say the loveliest things.”
“Out, all of you,” Tristan barked. “It’s lunchtime.”
Samantha hopped down from the stool and followed Shirley’s assistants. The old woman herded a little ginger boy out from behind the tangle of automobiles and quickly joined them.
“Would you mind not insulting me in front of the others?” Tristan grumbled, slamming the truck door after they’d gone.
“Stop leaving yourself open to it, then.” Lila snatched up her helmet.
Fighting again? Dixon wrote on his notepad.
When Lila shrugged, he scribbled a second note. PLD? I’ll bring here.
“Chinese again?”
Dixon rubbed his stomach. His eyebrows twitched roguishly.
“Now that you guys live next door, you’re going to get sick of it in a few weeks. I guarantee it.”
Dixon shook his head.
“Come on. We have work to do, Dixon.” Tristan yanked open the door to the back of the shop and disappeared into the dim interior of the building.
Dixon ignored the order. He’s our chairwoman.
Lila cocked her head to the side.
He takes care of everyone. It puts him in a bad mood. He means well.
“I’ll agree with the bad mood part.”
I’m a senator, Dixon wrote with a smirk.
Lila chuckled. “Is that so?”
I negotiate between families. I smooth things over when required. You are a family.
Lila heard heavy boots clomping across wood. Tristan poked his head back through the doorway. “Dixon, come on. We have a new lead.”
I know who you are, Elizabeth Randolph.
Lila froze. He’d written her name in large block letters.
Dixon’s eyes twinkled. I could be your senator. He tugged off Lila’s hood and grabbed her around the waist, pressing his forehead to hers.
His eyelashes tickled her cheek.
Lila opened her mouth to say something, anything, not to protest but to ask why. And how? How had he known?
But before she could sort out her thoughts and settle on one question among the press, Dixon tilted his head forward and joined his mouth to hers. He sucked at her lips, nibbling as if she were a particularly sweet strawberry.
Lila didn’t feel the lack of what had been cut away from him. She only felt hunger.
Her helmet hit the ground with an echoing thunk in the empty garage.
Lila barely heard it. She barely heard anything. All thoughts of Tristan’s fight disappeared. All memories of him stealing her palm left her. All memories of their near-drowning vanished. All questions she had for Dixon, about how he’d found out her identity, about why he was kissing her, no longer seemed important.
It all bounced and rolled away like her helmet.
Wrapping her hands around Dixon’s neck, she ran her tongue across his lips, testing, tasting, dimly wondering how and when and why their mouths had joined. Her fingers slipped under his collar, and she felt the cut where a slave chip had been yanked out.
She found that she didn’t care.
The thump of his heart beat against her wrist, the gentle brush of skin against skin. She had missed this, had wanted it, had needed it, and hadn’t had it in a very long time.
Alex had been right. She was starved.
She had a dim realization that she was courting trouble.
Dixon moaned at the brush of her fingers upon his neck and pressed her into him closer, his lips hard against her mouth.
She let her hands fall to his waist, walking him toward one of the truck beds, brain turned off, reduced to only a throbbing, pulsing need.
Lila’s eyes strayed toward the door.
Tristan was gone.
Chapter 12
Lila rode her Firefly directly into the family garage, scarf trailing from her neck in a battered tangle. She barely stopped before swinging her leg over the bike, happy to get off at last. The vibrating engine between her thighs had felt far too pleasant after Dixon’s kiss.
Too bad his kiss hadn’t led to anything more. He’d pulled away before reaching the truck, writing that it didn’t make the most comfortable bed but that he’d wanted to kiss her for a long time. The wait had been worth it, though. For a man with no tongue, Dixon had been good at his job, far better than she could have imagined. She was too hungry not to wonder what else he might be good at. Perhaps the next time she visited the shop, Dixon could show her his room, could kick off those blood-red boots, the purple scarf, his trousers, and whatever else lay beneath. She’d wrap her legs around his waist and let him ease into her—
“No,” Lila chided herself, taking off her helmet. “Totally out of bounds.” The poorer classes frowned on casual sex. Dixon might make more of it than it was.
He might already have.
“What’s out of bounds?” asked Commander Sutton at the open garage door. When Lila didn’t answer, she frowned. “I saw you come in at the front gate, and much too quickly, I might add.”
“You might add, but I might not listen.” Lila snatched up the bugs she had laid on her sister’s bike earlier that morning. She slipped them into her pocket before the commander could close the distance between them.
“I don’t care if you are my superior officer. It’s my job to protect the heirs. All of them. Your life matters more, chief, whether you like the implications or not.”
“I don’t. I shouldn’t matter more than anyone else on this estate.”
“That’s two different statements. Perhaps it shouldn’t matter, but it does.” Sutton held up her hand to stop Lila’s expected rebuttal. “I also don’t want to explain to the prime minister how I allowed his eldest daughter to die in such a trivial manner.”
“He wouldn’t blame you.”
“You obviously have never been a parent.” The commander snorted. As the pair walked down a flower-strewn path toward the great house, Sutton filled her in on the morning’s meeting.
“So nothing out of the ordinary?” Lila asked after she finished.
“Boringly so.”
“Good. That’s how I like it. Thanks for filling in.” They stopped at the front entrance of Villanueva House. “I’ll be working from home for the rest of the afternoon, commander.”
“As you wish, chief.” Sutton bowed, then stepped onto Villanueva Lane and marched back toward the security office.
Lila messaged the same to Sergeant Jenkins on her palm and stepped inside the great house. She didn’t waste much time on her work after she returned to her room. She handled the few things that could not wait, then tossed the rest aside, paging Isabel to bri
ng her lunch.
Using her web of proxies and fake logins, Lila broke into BullNet once more and accessed the militia’s employment records. It didn’t take long to bring up Muller’s file. He was a below-average cop who had never been part of a high-profile bust until the raid on Club 137. Davies was much younger, a rookie, but had already marred his career by wrecking a militia truck after a few beers at lunch the year before. He had been suspended without pay for a week while Bullstow sorted out what to do with him. Though he hadn’t lost his job, he had been required to attend counseling for his drinking habit.
She ignored the notes from his time in therapy. It would likely all be lies.
Their biannual evaluations didn’t offer much help, either. Both men had been cited for a slew of infractions: poor recordkeeping, tardiness, apathy, and aggression. They’d barely kept their jobs, and had both been tagged for new partners and new assignments in the hopes that they could be retrained.
Their parentage was far more interesting than their biannual reviews. Muller’s aunt was Chairwoman Weberly, whose family ran Weberly Memorial, Randolph General’s closest rival. Davies’s mother was Suji Park, an elite lowborn who had bought her son’s way into Bullstow at a very high price.
The act marked the first step into becoming highborn, and from what Lila knew of Ms. Park and her daughters, the family would likely make the transition as soon as the next highborn family fell. They certainly cleared more profit each year than the bottom quarter of highborn families in the state, and several of her sons and nephews had been elected into the Low Houses of New Bristol and Saxony.
If Simon’s allegations were true, Officer Davies might have ruined the family’s chances.
Lila sent a message to two of her spies, taking them off a few nonessential cases, and transferred them to Rossi’s Pub for the evening. Perhaps they’d find out something that wasn’t in the files, something useful. Bullstow militia didn’t speak freely to highborn heirs, much less to a chief, so there was precious little she had to gain by going to the bar herself.
Not unless she wanted a drink. That was about all she’d get.
That and fawning respect.
A knock sounded on the door.
Lila turned off her monitor. Isabel entered, balancing a plate of turkey and cheddar sandwiches and a kettle of tea. The young woman was twenty, with lush red hair, green eyes, a thick body, and a look of permanent annoyance that could only come from dealing with Jewel on a daily basis. She set the tray on the corner of Lila’s desk.
“Thank you, Isabel.”
“Will you join the family for dinner?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll tell Chef, madam.” Isabel dropped into a quick bow.
“I’m not to be disturbed for the remainder of the afternoon.”
The woman nodded and scampered back to the kitchens. Lila always had the impression that she made Isabel nervous. She’d never met Lila as a child. She’d come into Randolph possession several years ago as a slave, then stayed on after signing a servant’s contract. Lila couldn’t help but recall Tristan’s words, that she’d only stayed on because she was indoctrinated.
Lila knew it wasn’t true for Isabel. They’d done a lot for the young woman and her family. Besides, Isabel had fallen in love with the food—at least, that was what Chef claimed.
Lila turned her monitor back on and nibbled on a sandwich. She used her proxies and a fake ID to hack into Bullstow Financial Solutions. It did not take long for her to bring up Muller’s and Davies’s accounts. As expected, she discovered payments soon after the club raid and Simon’s trial, originating from a Liberté bank account. It was the same account listed in Slack & Roberts’ files.
“Well, well, well, Chairwoman Wilson. You have been naughty.”
It wasn’t the only account that she found. A second Liberté account had paid off Muller and Davies around the same date, matching the amount. It could have been a coincidence, but Lila didn’t believe in them.
She broke into BullNet once more and dug around in Muller and Davies’s case files. From what she could tell, the men had not been on duty the day they received Chairwoman Wilson’s payment, and had only been involved in routine matters on Bullstow property the day they showed up at Club 137.
Lila drummed her fingers on her desk and stared at the screen. Two accounts. Two patrons. Perhaps the officers had one price for all their dirty deeds, but Lila hadn’t seen the same amount repeated anywhere in their account history.
Her palm beeped with an alert.
Zephyr had broken through a fourth layer.
Lila tossed her palm on her desk and brought up all data from the senate job, looking for a lead on Zephyr. The only thing she had was the fire alarm. Its activation had not been a coincidence. Zephyr must have done it, though she was unsure of the motive. The snoop might have meant it as a distraction, something to help her escape, but any half-competent snoop would have assumed that she could get out of the building on her own. A distraction would have been unnecessary, and calling more guards to the area might have hampered her exit.
Lila doubted the purpose was to assist.
Was it just a case of amusement, then? Had Zephyr raised the stakes so that the game was more fun for both of them? Lila couldn’t see how adding a few firemen in the mix would increase the entertainment value.
Had Zephyr meant for her to get caught?
That was much more likely.
Perhaps the snoop had followed her hack, realized her skills were much better than the previous hackers, and decided that hiding from her might be too difficult. It might have been nothing more than a defensive response, and now the snoop wanted to know who had shown up on the playground.
Lila switched her attentions back to the trap itself. It had been crudely buried deep inside the senate’s network, clearly without the knowledge of Bullstow. That meant access to BullNet. It also suggested a certain knowledge of security and a team. Even Lila required one.
She tried to dig deeper into the BIRD to figure out when the trap had been set, but she came up empty. She might be able to pinpoint it, but it would take time that she didn’t have. There were more pressing questions, and her Monday deadline loomed.
Lila rubbed her eyes, needing a break. She took off her jeans and sweater and crawled into bed, exhausted from staying up Tuesday night and getting so little sleep the night before.
She only meant to lie down, but her eyes soon closed.
She turned her head, unsurprised to see Tristan beside her, the cold stone of the Victory Tower against her back as she stared up at the starry sky.
“Klepto,” he slurred, pointing with a wobbly finger, “the oaf who stole Odin’s sword. Odin put him in the sky because he believed that no one should suffer the chains of slavery.”
“Why not kill him?”
“To isolate him, to make him stare down at everything he couldn’t have for all eternity.”
“That’s depressing. I don’t think that’s how the story went at all.”
“Is that so?” Tristan turned on his side and propped himself up on one arm, watching her face. “Tell me how it goes, then.”
“Klepto stole the sword from Odin, you’re right about that, but Odin put him in the sky because Klepto couldn’t control himself, couldn’t stop himself from—”
Tristan rolled on top of her, pressing his lips to hers. His shirt melted away under her fingertips, and she ran her hands up and down his smooth, tanned skin.
The pair no longer suffered on the stone floor of the tower; they kissed on Senator Serrano’s large couch instead. Tristan pressed himself between her legs, and Lila fumbled at his belt. She tugged down his trousers with a giggle.
A giggle that stopped in her throat.
For all that she found was another pair of trousers.
Lila pulled away from Tristan’s mouth
, and he laughed as she unzipped the second pair, revealing a third, and then a fourth.
“How does it feel, Klepto?”
The fire alarm screeched, starting Lila. “We have to go!”
“No. You’re going to get caught, Lila. It’s your turn to be a slave now.” Tristan held her down, gripping her wrists so hard she thought they might break. Lila didn’t even struggle. Instead, she tried to reach his mouth, still longing.
Tristan laughed at her and finally shoved her off the couch.
She hit the floor, smacking her head against the rug beside her bed.
Lila gazed around the room, stunned, her mind hazy, half still in the dream.
She’d never fallen out of bed before.
Kneeling on the rug, she reached for her palm on the bedside table. A new alert had popped up on the display while she napped.
Zephyr had broken through another layer.
Chapter 13
Lila rolled the tip of her cigar in an ashtray perched on her windowsill, then brought it back to her lips and puffed the oaky tobacco. She blew the smoke out the open window, avoiding the thick red drapes tied to the side. Down below, Johnny Beaulieu and a young slave bent over a shaded portion of the grounds, digging despite the chill, calling back and forth to one another in a lesson, rather than a conversation. Little plastic pots of bare twigs sat in a row behind them, looking like claws bursting through the potting soil. The plants were horrid, ugly things, but she knew that after Johnny’s care and devotion, the twigs would bloom into red roses.
Highborns, lowborns, and workborn threaded in and out around the pair, dodging each another, finishing last-minute errands before dinner.
A knock sounded upon the door.
“Come in.”
Alex’s heels clicked against the hardwood floor. “I thought you were working,” she chided, snatching up the silver platter of leftover sandwiches.
“I was. Now I’m resting.”