by Wren Weston
Lila’s palm vibrated, and she scrolled through Max’s message. As I thought, it was just a drop-off location. Wilson didn’t even get out of the car. I managed a tracker, but it’s not seated well. It might come off.
She called out the tracker’s ID, and a little blip appeared on the cousins’ map of the city. They pumped the verbal directions through to the front of the truck, and Lila heard the muffled, disembodied voice of Jewel Randolph calmly relaying the next street.
“I can’t believe you kept the voice,” she told the chief.
“Your cousins like it. Reminds them of home.”
Lila held her tongue. The Randolph compound had never been their home. They belonged to Bullstow.
It only took her cousins five minutes to figure out that Chairwoman Wilson had not chosen New Bristol International or Stevens for her flight. Instead she had chosen Martins, a small private airstrip outside the city. While their reserve team brought up the rear, a kilometer behind the chairwoman’s car, Tiny passed Wilson’s limo and sped to the airport. The group radioed back and forth to the team already in position, planning the last-minute details of their trap.
“We already have a team in plainclothes at Martins. It’s our own good luck she picked that one. The strip is small and manageable, and Captain O’Bryan is leading the team. It’s his aunt’s airstrip. She’s leaving him and his boys to their playacting, all too happy to assist. She’s told none of her people what’s going on.”
“Of course she’ll help. The bust will be good for his career. What helps him helps the family.”
“Doesn’t anyone do anything just because it’s the right thing to do?” Shaw asked, rubbing his salt-and-pepper mustache.
“Chief, I didn’t know you were such an optimist.”
The driver pulled into the airport and hid behind a fuel truck. The two chiefs peered over the shoulders of Lila’s cousins. As the men brought up the lapel cameras and microphones on the plainclothes blackcoats who roamed the airstrip, Chairwoman Wilson’s limo slid through the gates and pulled inside the hangar.
Captain O’Bryan approached the back window of the limo seconds later. The rest of the blackcoats surrounded the car on every side while Martins staff closed all but one hangar door, blocking the exits. Shaw’s reserve team pulled in front of the last door and parked outside it, waiting.
The chief winked.
“Good plan. Nice execution,” she whispered while the cousins turned up O’Bryan’s mic.
The captain knocked on the limo window. His reflection disappeared as the glass rolled down, farther and farther, until all that was left was a dark hole.
Lila leaned closer to the monitor, the interior of the car too dark to penetrate.
“Oracle’s light,” Shaw mumbled beside her.
She cocked her head as someone peeked out of the window, sunglasses obscuring half his face. It had to be a male, for the jaw was too square and broad to belong to the shrunken chairwoman.
There was a familiar dimple in his chin.
Patrick Wilson removed his sunglasses. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Chapter 23
Lila squinted at the monitor, mouth gaping at Patrick’s face. “I don’t understand. The chairwoman…”
Shaw rubbed his mustache. “I thought you said—”
“Is the chairwoman inside? Is the kid?”
Captain O’Bryan leaned down in front of the window, giving the two chiefs a better view of the interior. Someone sat next to Patrick, hidden in shadow, but it was impossible to see the person’s face. “My name is Captain O’Bryan, sir, and I’m a member of the Bullstow militia. We need to search your car, then we’ll get you on your way. We’re sorry for any inconvenience.”
“Search the limo? Why would you do that?” Patrick chuckled and turned his head, noting for the first time that every hangar exit was blocked. He shifted in his seat. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“It’s just a routine search.”
“Is this a joke? Is someone playing a prank?”
“No, sir. There have been reports of drug smuggling through the airports lately. We take those reports seriously. Everyone’s being searched today. Please step out of the car.”
Patrick tilted his head to the side. Licking his lips, he slipped out of his good humor. It shattered like a thin shell under the pressure of a thousand leagues. “Do you know who I am?”
“No, but I know who you can be. You can either be a cooperative gentleman or a pain in my ass. Which will you choose today?”
Patrick glared at the blackcoat and started tapping away on his palm. “You have absolutely no reason to stop me, officer. I’m calling my mother’s lawyers. Pray to the oracles that you are not still here when they show up.”
Lila tilted her head to the other side, her mouth hanging open wider than it had before. She’d never heard Patrick speak with such distaste in his voice. It was as if a puppy had suddenly turned rabid and ripped into his owner’s leg.
Oskar Kruger was the leg. He sat forward, clutching a satchel to his chest, peering up at Captain O’Bryan and his lapel camera. His eyes were wild and scared, and he stared back and forth between both men.
“So I see you’ve decided to be a pain in my ass,” the captain said. “Please step out of the vehicle, sir. This will be last time I ask nicely.”
Lila finally closed her mouth. “It can’t be Patrick.”
“Looks like you’re only half right about this one. I’m sorry, chief.”
“You don’t understand. I’ve known him all his life. He didn’t send Peter Kruger to kill me. He’s my best friend’s brother, for oracle’s sake! I grew up with him.”
She remembered the day Patrick came home from the hospital, hands wiggling, mouth stretching open in a yawn. She remembered every birthday after that, his tedious violin recitals, his demands for ice cream dinners, the first time she caught him in the music room with a girl and a pillow over his lap, the half-hour before leaving for his first event of his first season when she and Alex stood around taking pictures and straightening his cravat.
She remembered all the smiles, all the winks, all the silly jokes.
Every time he’d teased Simon about his crushes on older women. Every time he’d teased Alex about her conquests. Every time he’d teased Lila about the criminals she would tranq.
He was charming and pretty and dumb.
He was not a master criminal. He was not a murderer.
She would have known. She would have seen it.
She was Chief Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph, for fuck’s sake, in charge of security for the entire Randolph family.
She would have known.
Her mind slipped back to her near-death in the alley, realizing that Peter had never answered her question. He’d never said that Chairwoman Wilson had ordered him to kill her. He’d dodged the question, and she’d assumed.
That was sloppy of her. Very sloppy.
“I know you’re close with his sister,” Shaw said, squeezing her arm. “Don’t let that blind you now.”
Captain O’Bryan yanked open the door to Patrick’s limo and hauled him out. He ducked as Patrick punched, and two militiamen tossed the flailing highborn onto the ground. They pinned him while Captain O’Bryan cuffed his hands behind his back. “Don’t touch me! I’ll ruin all of you for this.” He kicked and groaned at every push and pull that came his way.
Oskar cowered in the car, still squeezing the satchel to his chest.
Once the team had secured Patrick and the driver in the back of a militia cruiser, the captain knelt on the cement beside the car. “Oskar, could you please hand over that bag?” The captain spoke calmly, as though approaching a frightened kitten that might bolt at any moment.
Oskar merely shook. Not his head but his whole body.
Captain O’Brya
n did not reach in and drag him out. He merely talked. Patient and gentle.
It was Bullstow’s way with children.
In the end, it took an hour and a pair of Bullstow social workers before Oskar surrendered the bag and left the limo. Like Captain O’Bryan, they spoke in soothing tones, offering Oskar something to eat if he came out, assuring him that he was not in trouble. The boy cried anyway. Tears streamed down his face as they held his hand and led him away, a boy of fifteen hugging a stuffed blue teddy bear as though it might spirit him from the hangar if he just held on tightly enough.
He cried for a lost dream, for a new life in Germany, promised and stolen away again.
Lila wondered if Patrick had told him about his father.
While the social workers managed Oskar, Captain O’Bryan took the satchel to Tiny. The two chiefs rummaged inside it, digging through the paperwork. As Lila had deduced, the forged visas made it clear what Patrick had planned.
There was no doubt he’d been behind it. The visas belonged to him and Oskar. Lila had given him too much credit, though. Not only had he possessed forged Burgundy visas, but he also had German ones.
Shaw wouldn’t even need a confession.
After a search of the limo turned up nothing more damning than a couple of overnight bags, the group turned toward home.
It was a long trip back to Bullstow. Shaw tried to engage her in conversation, but Lila only half attended it, too focused on Patrick, their history together, and her memory of his always-smiling face.
A smiling face that had ordered her death.
When had the switch been flipped?
She was so engaged with their history that she didn’t even notice or care that Zephyr had broken through another layer of Prolix’s fake identity.
Only one barrier stood between them.
It was almost a blessing when Tiny pulled into a parking spot outside the Bullstow security office. She paced outside of Shaw’s office, drinking cup after cup of hot chocolate, waiting for the officers to process Patrick and wrangle him into an interrogation room.
“We’re not generating a formal report yet. We wouldn’t want to tip off your snoop and give him a chance to run.” Shaw ushered her into a room beside Patrick’s interrogation chamber. From inside, she could peek through the one-sided glass and watch the entire process, participating through a headset. Given the delicate nature of the investigation, Shaw had been reluctant to allow Lila into the room.
At least that was what he claimed. She knew the real reason she was being pushed to the side of the investigation. She couldn’t even blame him for it.
“I have a team discreetly searching Mr. Wilson’s office and personal quarters right now. We’ll hold off searching further for now, but we won’t be able to keep this from the press for long. It’s not like the bombing. We can’t evacuate the whole compound. We don’t have cause.”
“What’s done is done.” Lila slipped on the headset. “We’ll just have to find Zephyr in Patrick’s files. He has to be in there somewhere. There’s no way Patrick has done all this himself. I don’t care what you say. He’s not smart enough for all this.”
She thrust her fists inside her coat pockets.
Shaw left the room.
The door to the interrogation chamber opened. Two blackcoats escorted the irritated figure of Patrick Wilson inside. They ran a chain through his cuffs and into a metal loop on the ground. He still wore his golden jacket, ripped at the shoulder and armpit from all his futile flopping around during his arrest. They had him sit on a wooden stool not unlike the one in her father’s office. He laid his elbows on the table, the only piece of furniture in the bare room while they shortened his chains with a padlock.
Then the blackcoats left.
Chief Shaw and his colleague, Dr. Adams, entered shortly after, both pushing heavy office chairs before them. Dr. Adams was thin, middle-aged, and wore a tailored burgundy coat and breeches.
As an attorney and psychologist, Dr. Adams’s role was to circle, dodge, and strike, getting closer and closer to any information the target held while keeping their questions within the realm of the law. It was important for the High Council of Judges to note what data a suspect had given up freely to the authorities before any truth serum was introduced. It helped them ascertain the most fitting sentence after trial.
Lila hated the circus of it all. This dancing about with a witness was hardly worth the trouble in Patrick’s case. The law did nothing to protect traitors to the commonwealth, and as someone who planned to travel to Germany with a German citizen, Patrick could not be considered anything but a traitor. Legally, Bullstow could do anything they liked to him, just shy of torture.
But the niceties must be observed.
Dr. Adams sat in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Tell us your side of the story.”
She watched the pair work on Patrick, with Dr. Adams offering platitudes and gentle nudging, and Chief Shaw offering nothing at all but question after question. Shaw had not even removed his blackcoat or sentry cap before diving in.
But after two hours, they had gotten very little.
Chief Shaw leaned back in his chair and cut his eyes toward Lila. He scratched his forehead, lifting his cap ever so slightly.
It was a sign.
It was finally Lila’s turn.
Shaw cranked up his earpiece.
Lila pulled her headset’s microphone closer to her mouth. “Ask him about Zephyr.”
Shaw echoed her question, and Patrick’s head snapped up, his eyes instantly latching on to the glass in the back of the room. He knew at once that someone else had been behind it, perhaps even knowing who.
“I don’t know anyone named Zephyr.”
“As I mentioned before,” Dr. Adams said, “the more information you give us freely, the less likely you are to see a noose.”
“I’m not stupid. The visas will see me hanged. It’s only a matter of when.”
Shaw snorted. “How many family members do you want hanged beside you?”
“Don’t answer that,” Dr. Adams advised. “Chief, you cannot intimidate a suspect in that manner. It could be perceived as a threat.”
“It’s not a threat. We have every right to bring in each and every member of his family for interrogation. Should they say anything suspicious, we also have the right to search all their personal data for links to his case. That’s bound to net quite a bit of trouble for them, judging by the state of his family’s compound. I’m just warning him what will happen if we have to dig deeper to find our answers. Is that what you want, Mr. Wilson? Do you want company in your holding cell?”
Patrick stared at the floor, picking at the hem of his jacket. “Zephyr is no one. He just gives me information or advice sometimes when he thinks I need it.”
“He? You’ve seen Zephyr?”
“No, but I’ve heard his voice plenty of times.”
“What sort of information does he give you?”
“All kinds.”
“Did he tell you where to find Ms. Schreiber?” Lila prompted.
Patrick’s head shot up when Shaw repeated the name, and his eyes darted around the room. “Yes.”
“Who is Zephyr?”
“I don’t know. I know very little about him.”
Lila leaned on the glass. “Did he tell you how to send money to Burgundy?”
Shaw’s eyes shot to the mirror, but he repeated the question.
Patrick followed his gaze. “Who do you have back there, Chief Shaw, feeding you all these lines?”
“Quite a few people. You’re very popular at the moment. There’s almost an entire shift of patrolmen conducting a sweep of your living quarters and offices. Your mother has even been brought in for questioning. I wonder what we’ll find out when we speak to her.”
Even after knowing Chief Shaw for her ent
ire life, it was still difficult for Lila to tell when he was bluffing. But it was there, his eyes just a little more intense than usual.
“My men are making short work of your logs and files. Your attempts at subterfuge were not nearly as good as you seem to believe. We’ve already found quite a few links between you and Burgundy. You aren’t going to tell us anything we don’t already know. So I will ask you again, Mr. Wilson, did this Zephyr tell you how to send money to Burgundy?”
“Yes.”
“Did he set up the auctions for his mother’s artwork?” Lila asked, considering Patrick’s face as Shaw related the question.
“Yes. We couldn’t have slipped the money out of the country if we hadn’t.”
“And did your mother know that you were sending the money to Burgundy?”
Patrick nodded.
“Who is Zephyr?”
“I told you. I don’t know. What does it even matter? He’s nothing more than a hacker. He has good business sense. He gives me tips that I can pass along to my mother, but that’s all I know of him.”
“Who approached whom?”
“He approached me,” Patrick admitted, eyes glassy as he thought back. “I’d already been using him for years to help me on certain projects. One day, he said that he could help me save my mother’s estate.”
“How?” Shaw asked before Lila could prompt him.
“After Alex lost her mark, I mentioned to Zephyr that my mother was having difficulty managing another heir and that the family’s business interests were suffering for it. Zephyr said he’d think about options.”
Dr. Adams sat forward in his chair. “Did he?”
“Yes. He said there was a company in Burgundy that would like to do business in Saxony. They just needed someone to represent their interests and get around the sanctions. They’d pay a premium for the privilege. We just needed to liquidate enough capital so that we could buy our way in.”
“Which company?”
“Sun Leasing.”
Lila fiddled absently with her headset. Zephyr had a company called Sun Leasing, but it was just a front. He never intended to do any business with them at all, just take a large chunk of their money and leave them bankrupt and destitute.