The Heirs of New Bristol (Lila Randolph Book 1)

by Wren Weston

  She hadn’t been expecting an apology, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted one yet. “Tristan—”

  “Let’s just forget it, okay?” He gathered the food, working much faster. “I fucked up. I’m sorry. Let’s just pretend I didn’t say anything at all. That I didn’t do anything. We’ll just go back to—”

  “No. We’re not going to just ignore it, Tristan. I can’t do that.”

  He closed the bag and lifted it off the counter, unwilling to meet her eyes.

  “This is the part where you tell me not to order you around.”

  “I don’t feel like fighting anymore, and I don’t know how to fix this.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to fight anymore either. Have you eaten yet?”

  He shook his head.

  “Have dinner with me.”

  Tristan didn’t react right away. He considered her face, the closed apartment door, and then turned back to Lila. Slowly, he placed the food back on the counter.

  “Do you have any plates, Tristan? Real plates?”

  He opened a cabinet behind him, messy with plates, steel utensils, and glasses.

  Lila joined him, her mind on Dixon’s words. It wasn’t just washed clothes. It wasn’t just a plate. “Go sit down,” she said, grabbing what they needed.

  Tristan did as he was told, watching her transfer everything to plates. She handed him a real fork and took down a couple of wine glasses, for a bottle of Sangre had appeared on the end of the counter when she turned her back. She opened the bottle and poured for them both.

  It was strange to be around him for so long without yelling. It reminded her of how they used to be, so very long ago. Much of her distrust toward Tristan had started because of the stolen palm, had continued because he kept taking her jammer. What if he really had been taking the device as a joke? What if he had taken the palm because he just wanted something of hers to hold on to?

  They’d both hurt her when they pinned that flyer on her coat, but Dixon had saved her life. Tristan had saved it as well. He’d jumped into the water to rescue her even when he couldn’t swim.

  They’d never failed to help her when she needed it. She’d always thought it was for money, but maybe it wasn’t.

  Could she say the same? She’d agreed to help them with the Wilson case, but she had done that to help Simon and Alex.

  There’d always been something in it for her.

  “Do you remember that night on the Victory Tower when we made up all those constellations?” she asked, handing him his glass of Sangre.

  Tristan’s face fell. “I told you when I stole your—”

  “I didn’t bring it up because of that. Did we ever come up with a constellation named Klepto?”

  Tristan sipped his wine while she sat down at the barstool next to him. “I don’t remember one named Klepto. I remember one called Buster, though,” he recalled, grinning.

  “Buster?”

  “Yeah, you said he was Rind’s guard dog. He bit Odin in a delicate place after leaving her house. We kind of got into a discussion about divine anatomy after that, and whether or not the gods actually had—”

  Lila couldn’t hide her smile. “I forgot about that one.”

  Tristan chuckled and swallowed a bite of chicken stir fry. “I didn’t think you remembered them at all, just what I did after.”

  “I remembered. It was a fun night. We used to have fun.”

  “We could still have fun. Is this really our last job together, Lila? We could start over. I’d like to start over.”

  Lila dug around in her lo mein. “I was supposed to turn you in the moment you admitted to the bombing.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I should have. You didn’t just destroy a building, Tristan. You destroyed the contracts of dozens of people at that law firm: clerks, paralegals, admins, janitors, people who had nothing to do with—”

  “The payout for their contracts is higher than what they would have received if their bosses had gone into a holding cell. The workborn will have a larger cushion while they look for a new contract, and Bullstow will still get to investigate the information we’re sending them. That was why I did it that way. I figured it would take a long time to bring their bosses to court.”

  “You also damaged the buildings around Slack & Roberts.”

  “Yes, we did,” he admitted, and sipped his Sangre. “The blast was a little more powerful than we meant it to be. It’s been a few years since Shirley did that sort of work, and the army never cared much about precision.”

  “My family owns most of that block. Insurance will reimburse us for the repairs, since it was ruled a gas explosion. If I thought you really meant to hurt people, I’d—”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “Perhaps I should have done it in the first place, and I don’t mean that because of the heat from Bullstow. I didn’t even realize how far I’d gone until we met the next day, until I saw how upset and angry you were. You call me a criminal all the time, but that was the first time you meant it.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “No, you’re not, and I’m not sure that you should be,” he said, stabbing a stray piece of chicken. “I really screwed things up, didn’t I? I screwed them up all over.”

  Lila didn’t know how to answer without sounding like an ass.

  “Now who’s not arguing?”

  “It’s a good plan. The one tonight, I mean.”

  After a few awkward moments, the pair turned back to their earlier conversation. They spent the rest of their meal trying to recall more constellations from their night on the Victory Tower. When their memories failed, they started making up new stories, both pretending they saw stars among the little flecks on the stucco ceiling.

  Her palm vibrated in her pocket. An alert had gone off, but not an alert for the Prolix identity. She had set this alert to capture something else entirely.

  “What is it?”

  A news story opened on her palm. Corruption and Highborn Betrayal: The Heir Who Favors Black Hacks into State Database.

  Lila skimmed the article, fearing the worst.

  She was not disappointed.

  Chapter 26

  At nine o’clock, Lila and Tristan trudged downstairs and joined the assembling group, threading through the jumble of cars, the truck frames on blocks, and discarded machinery. At least a half-dozen of Tristan’s people had gathered in the garage, all talking at once as though they attended a cocktail party with guns.

  For the first time, Lila was glad that a mesh hood covered her face, leaving her eyes invisible to the world. She’d let Tristan read the article, but hadn’t been able to talk about it. There wasn’t anything she could say. Zephyr had posted his suppositions on some anonymous server. It was out there, perhaps being read by any number of people, and she didn’t have time to hack into it and delete the story.

  The only bit of luck was the page stood alone, not part of any larger website, seemingly disconnected from the online world. How would anyone find it? Few people had the sort of programs she’d used to capture it.

  It was out there, though, waiting to be discovered, and it would remain so until they trapped Zephyr and brought him back to Bullstow. Only then could she hack into his server and delete the file.

  She couldn’t even get Toxic to work on it while they dealt with Zephyr. She didn’t trust anyone with such a secret.

  Except for Tristan, apparently.

  She joined Dixon by the front window. He stared out into the night through a small gap in the plywood. His eyes had unfocused, and he didn’t move when she called his name.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, placing her hand on his shoulder.

  Dixon startled at her touch. He nodded quickly and poked at the plywood hole.

  “No, you’re not. What’s got you so jumpy?”

  He
shook his head and refused to take out his notepad to chat. Lila didn’t press him. Since she had no idea what to say, she put her arms around his waist and hugged him as hard as she could. It was what she would have done for Alex or Pax, had either of them been upset. It was what Lila would do when she finally returned to the Randolph estate and faced her friend.

  Perhaps Lila needed a hug, too.

  Dixon wrapped his arms around her, holding on to her so fiercely that she thought her ribs might break. His hands trembled on her back.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered into his ear. “I won’t let anyone take you. Even if they do, I’ll buy your mark at auction, no matter the cost. I’ll send you some place pretty, and Tristan and I will break you out the same afternoon. You’ll be back by dinner.”

  She felt him nod, and the shaking lessened.

  Lila only hoped she’d be able to keep such a promise. Zephyr might not be the only one in a holding cell by the end of the night.

  There was a rustle behind them, and Toxic giggled. “Hood, are you sweet on Dixon?”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “I’m not,” Samantha hollered across the garage, trudging through the dust with a shotgun. “He’s like a foreign film. Looks nice, but you have to do too much reading.”

  Dixon reluctantly let go of Lila. He dug his notepad out of his pocket and scribbled on a new page. I don’t need my notepad in the dark.

  “Yeah, only because your hands are too busy holding your—”

  “We’re leaving in five,” shouted Tristan on the other side of the garage, his head under the hood of a beat-up green truck.

  Lila squeezed Dixon’s hand and kissed his cheek, then joined Tristan, who had been listening to Shirley drone on about the engine. “How old is this thing?” Lila asked, running her fingers over the rust and peeling paint.

  Shirley slapped her hand away. “She’s not old, Hood. She’s experienced and reliable. Besides, she’s all we have right now that doesn’t need to be repainted or repaired. She’ll get all of you there and back again.”

  “So, no quick getaways for us tonight?”

  Shirley gently closed the hood, and her mouth twisted into a smile. “Oh, she’ll fly. I’ve made sure of it.”

  Once Tristan pulled out onto Shippers Lane, his foot became too heavy for the truck’s smooth ride, proving Shirley’s point. Lila watched the speedometer climb higher and higher, warning Tristan to slow down several times as he barreled through the late evening traffic. Lila’s regard for Shirley rose. She suspected that the only parts that the old woman hadn’t tweaked or replaced were the frame and the interior.

  Lila’s eyes strayed to her side mirror. Dixon and Frank rode on Tristan’s Amazon, with Fry and Dice trailing behind on a second bike, the lapels of their coats fluttering in the wind.

  It took twenty minutes to reach the Wilson-Kruger estate. The group parked a few blocks from the front gate, near one of the only businesses left in the area, Brewer’s Pub. While Tristan’s men paced on the sidewalk, peering at the silhouettes that crowded around the entrance of the bar, Lila hacked into the chairwoman’s security system.

  “That’s not a good sign,” Frank said over her shoulder. Few cameras still operated on the estate. Many of the lenses had been broken or covered with spray paint, or were no longer sending images. She picked a dozen such cameras at random and reversed the footage. All but one had been vandalized in the last eight hours. “What do you think’s going on in there?”

  “Rage,” Tristan answered. “A lot of it.”

  Lila couldn’t disagree. “It happens occasionally when families fall. Instead of facing their change in status gracefully, they…”

  “Fight back?” Frank asked.

  “Harsh words for it, but I suppose it’s appropriate.”

  “It’s not harsh,” Tristan said. “Just because it’s not proper for highborns to turn to blood and violence, doesn’t mean that they don’t. You did tranq me once, remember.”

  “Darts aren’t the same thing,” Lila mumbled, stashing the laptop under the passenger seat. “Besides, the Wilson family was never that proper.”

  Tristan led the group away from Brewer’s Pub. Shuttered businesses loomed over them on all sides, windows boarded, front doors chained. Lila’s hand stayed on her Colt as they walked, for too many people marched up and down the dirty sidewalks for such a wasteland, trampling the litter and trash that had been piled into the streets under worn boots. They came in singles, rather than pairs and groups. Many held paper bags filled with booze, and lumps poked out from their pockets. The air crackled as though it might be the hour before a party.

  Or a riot.

  “The two gates are guarded by whatever militia the chief of security has been able to scrape together, but she doesn’t have enough bodies to secure any other part of the compound. That’s why we’re going over the wall instead,” Tristan explained, turning down a dark street that bordered the west wall of the estate. The bulbs had been shot out from every street lamp on the block.

  Fewer people traveled here. The ones who did lowered their eyes and kept to themselves.

  “Several of my people are inside the compound in case we need them. They say that this is the best place to cross.”

  “I’d say they made sure of it,” Frank grunted.

  “They weren’t the ones who did this. The word is, Bullstow whacked a hornet’s nest when they took the chairwoman and her son this morning. We should be careful while we’re inside. Don’t provoke anyone.” Tristan led them behind a group of oak trees planted too near the wall. “This is the place.”

  Lila considered the conveniently placed cover. Someone had planted the trees to hide this part of the wall, but more importantly, someone had let them to grow and had never cut them down.

  She pulled Tristan aside as the men began to scale the wall. “Are you sure this is the best place? I have a similar spot on our estate. I installed turret guns loaded with sedative in the trees, ready to eject anyone stupid enough to jump over, as well as a bank of cameras to catch their idiotic, surprised faces. It makes prosecution incredibly simple. We call it the Hangman’s Noose. Eighty percent of the intruders that try to sneak into our estate pick that spot.”

  “I’m sure. My people took care of the cameras along this part of the wall, and your jammer will take care of any we missed. As for the rest of it, the chief doesn’t have your resources. The chairwoman revoked most of her funding a long time ago.”

  “I know, but—”

  “My people have been slipping in and out for months without trouble, right here, even taking Maria this morning. Peter could have broken out himself and his children at any time. It’s only habit that kept them in.”

  Lila nodded as Tristan’s men tried to scale the wall, a wall that was too high and smooth for them to climb. They fell off again in a flurry of grunts. “So many cameras have been destroyed that it won’t be hard to avoid the ones left,” she said.

  “Good. You’ll keep us from them?”

  “Of course.” Lila backed up and ran at the wall, grabbing the top easily, as though it were another morning at the obstacle course. While the men changed tactics and boosted one another up, she held herself at the top, peering into the compound and the people who dwelled inside.

  Tristan had clearly chosen this spot for another reason, for the warehouses and old factories sat before them, row upon row of abandoned and shuttered buildings.

  Darkness would not be a problem. A few of the abandoned structures had been set on fire. Mobs milled around the burning structures, some swinging cut lumber at their sides like bats. Others passed around metal flasks. From time to time, a member of the crowd tried to get his or her neighbors to start up a chant, but it never seemed to gain any power.

  It would, though. Soon. They only needed a few more fires, a few more sips to fuel their thirs
t.

  Reluctantly, Lila swung herself over the wall.

  “Shit,” Frank said when he hit the ground beside her, staring at the mob. “How badly do you want this guy, Tristan?”

  “Very. Walk quietly.”

  The group crept in the shadows toward an old factory, only a few buildings away from the mob and their fires. The crowd wore torn and dirty clothes, and wandered the area like starved zombies. Some of them had tied red strips of cloth around their right arms.

  Lila didn’t have a chance to wonder about the meaning, for Tristan unlocked the back door of the factory and held open the door. She heard cracking inside, like popping knuckles on bubble wrap, as Fry and Dice broke a few tubes. The men shook them and dropped them inside the back entrance.

  A green glow lit up the interior.

  Most of the machinery had been ripped out of the factory, but several conveyer belts remained, pushing the ghosts of Wilson industry through the abandoned space. The belts seemed so small without the machines beside them, cutting, stamping, and snarling.

  Frank sneezed. The noise echoed off the metal walls.

  Tristan checked his watch. “I told Zephyr to use the back entrance. We’ll keep the front locked, so there’s less chance of surprise from the mobs outside.”

  “That’s also one less exit if things go bad,” Lila said, her boots making prints in the dust. “The back might get blocked.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it. We do have a last resort, though.” Tristan pointed to a row of broken windows along the side of the factory, all placed just a bit too high to reach. His people started off immediately for a lounge in the corner. They dragged dusty, half-broken chairs across the factory floor and placed them under the windows, sweeping away the shards of broken glass from under the chair legs.

  Lila wasn’t sure if the rickety furniture would hold her weight, much less Fry’s. The man was a giant. He might have cleared out the entire factory by himself, one machine at a time.