Disreputable Allies (Fates of the Bound Book 1)
Page 22
“Patrick might meet us somewhere,” Lila said, climbing into the Adessi.
“Maybe.”
As the militia cruiser braked behind her roadster, Lila dug into her blackcoat and pulled out an earpiece. She fiddled with one of the controls and popped it into ear. She heard a muffled voice and took her hand off the wheel to increase the volume.
“You didn’t have any questions at all, did you?” Alex said as Lila backed out the parking spot. “You just wanted to plant a bug in my mother’s office.”
“Of course I had questions. I just knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with them. What do you think about her answers? About her?”
“She looks worse than I had imagined. I wasn’t prepared for it. Perhaps she is sick and half mad, Lila, just as Simon said. I thought he made up his story, but now I’m not so sure. The woman who raised me would have taken the meeting with your Aunt Georgina even if it was only staged to mock her, just on the off chance that it might be real. Mother always said that pride doesn’t nurture business. What’s changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“She didn’t like it when you offered her the deal. You insulted her with it.”
“No, I insulted her when I implied that she should sleep with Mr. Kruger. I hit a nerve when I offered that deal. Am I mistaken?”
“No. She got nervous when you mentioned Simon.” Alex turned her head, and her bun crushed into the headrest. “My mother framed Simon, didn’t she? She’s the reason why he lost his mark.”
“Probably.” Lila drove through the serpent’s gate. The militia cruiser followed them for several blocks before turning back to the compound. “Your brother is why I planted the bug, Alex. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed. I’m sorry if Simon will feel betrayed, too, but my loyalty is to you and Simon. I couldn’t care less about your mother.”
“I’m not mad. I figured there was something more to it. Even your angles have angles. You’re like your mother in that.”
Lila stopped at a red light and turned to her friend, not knowing if she wanted to be compared to the chairwoman. “No. You know what, it’s not all right. I should have been up front about my intentions beforehand. You’re my best friend, and you agreed to—”
“Don’t apologize, Lila. I’ve always admired that about you. I’ve always wished that I could play the game at your level. I didn’t lie when I said I wanted to help. I just didn’t realize…” Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “I always knew my mother was capable of doing something like that to me. I’ve always been more of a rival than a daughter, but to do something like that to Simon? She loved that boy. What is she doing, Lila? Where is all that money going?”
“Do you really want to know?” Lila asked carefully, digging into the glove compartment before the light had a chance to turn green. She plugged a spare cord into her earpiece and slid the other end into the car’s sound system.
It only took a few seconds before the audio rushed through the car’s speakers.
“Something’s come up. I’ll need them by tomorrow morning,” said a mechanical, sexless voice, filling the car. It was robotic and crackled over the line, a jumble of waves and pitches. Chairwoman Wilson had installed an external filter, a device that scrambled and strained all sounds in her office, bending the waves until a bug could no longer pluck them from the air. The only transmitter that could slice through the tangle would be a computer with the right key. All others would hear nothing but static.
Lila didn’t have the key, but Randolph engineers had devised a counter. Or at least a prototype of one. Unfortunately, the program jammed the speaker’s voice through too many transformations and alterations. The voices were hardly recognizable as anything more than human on the other side.
The High Council would never accept a single word as evidence.
Lila could still gain information, though.
“Yes, I know, and I don’t care,” the voice said after a pause. “Plans change. I don’t want to hear that it’s short notice. I’ll pick them up tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock.”
“That’s not a lunch order,” whispered Alex as they came to another red light.
“Clearly, mine is the most important,” the voice continued, “but I need the boy’s too. Finish them, and forget about the others. The girl is of little use, as is… Yes, I expect your work to be completed when I arrive in the morning. No excuses, Ms. Schreiber.”
A crash nearly blew out the speakers, Wilson’s palm computer smacking against the desk, if Lila had to guess.
Alex swallowed. “Do you think she was talking to—”
“Valandra Schreiber? It’s likely.”
“What does my mother need a forger for?”
Lila shrugged. “Valandra Schreiber is as good at creating fake documents as…”
“As your mother is at making money. I’m not sorry that I helped now. This is about more than revenge. More than Simon, too, by the sound of it.”
The pair drove down several streets before Alex spoke again. “Do you think she’s leaving? Mother said that the girl was of little use. You don’t think… Lila, the boy could be Patrick.”
“Could be.”
“But then why would she need to forge anything for Patrick? He’s not a slave. He could go anywhere at any time. You don’t think she’s talking about Simon, do you? That she’s moving him somewhere he could be free again, like Brazil or Burgundy?”
“It’s hard to know what she meant from such a short conversation.”
Alex’s thumb twitched. “You’re appeasing me again.”
“I’ve only had a moment to think about it.”
“You wouldn’t rat her out for that, would you? You’d let her take him away?”
Lila turned down another street, getting closer and closer to home and her security office. “I’d keep my mouth shut if she took him, or you, for that matter, so long as she took you somewhere nice. Some place tropical, with a nice beach, and lots of men who look like Johnny Beaulieu.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Alex gave a half-smile. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. Ms. Schreiber is from Burgundy. She specializes in Burgundy—”
“Zephyr?” interrupted the voice through the static. “You were right. She came by. Take care of it. I don’t care what you do, just do it right.”
Chapter 19
“Damn it, Lila, I said no.” Alex turned on her heel and scooted into the kitchen.
Chef eyed the slave as she snatched an apron from a peg near the door and slipped into the scullery. The music, an instrumental punk waltz from Burgundy, paused instantly. “Ms. Wilson is willingly doing the dishes?” Chef asked, gesturing with a knife laden with chunks of zucchini. “Have the gods gone completely bonkers?”
“Something like that.” Lila frowned, searching the countertops for cookies. “She’s just upset. Will you see that she eats lunch?”
Chef nodded. “I saved a plate for both of you. Cookies, too, so stop eyeballing my kitchen.”
“Yes, madam.” Lila bowed, far more deeply than an heir should bow to anyone, much less a workborn.
Chef chuckled and smacked her in the arm with her dishtowel. “Would you like to eat in the dining room? I’ll send Isabel to get it ready.”
“No, my bedroom. I have work to do.”
“Bedrooms and desks aren’t the place for eating. You work in there too much lately. You eat without focusing on your food.”
“When was the last time you sat and focused on your own lunch?”
“Don’t use my own words against me.”
“Of course,” Lila said, brushing her finger across the countertop. “Look, Chef, in a few minutes a blackcoat named Sergeant Tripp will attend to his new post here in the kitchens. He’ll be looking after Ms. Wilson for the next couple of days. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Looking a
fter her? Is she in danger?”
“It’s just a precaution. I’ll feel better if someone is watching out for her and those around her. She’s agreed to that much, at least, but I’d rather not have Sergeant Tripp tromping all around the great house. It’ll be harder for him to do his job.”
“I’ll inform Ms. O’Malley about Ms. Wilson’s amended duties,” Chef said, unpausing her music. “Isabel will be along shortly with your lunch, madam.”
Lila nodded her thanks, then climbed upstairs to her room and woke her computer. As she typed in her ID, her mind strayed to the question of Dixon’s identity once again. It had stuck with her all night, all morning, and all afternoon, like an intense craving she couldn’t get rid of no matter how much she ate. It would be easy to spend a few minutes recalibrating her search parameters. It could run in the background and wouldn’t even take up that much of her computing power.
But she had promised.
Besides, she had other work to do.
Isabel roused her from her trance with a knock on the door, bringing her lunch.
Nibbling on Chef’s curried chicken salad, Lila checked her palm. Sutton had sent a message, informing her that the militia patrols had been doubled, just as Lila had asked. Sutton had sent another confirming that the Masson militia would pull Simon from the vineyard immediately, excusing him by illness, and place him under guard. Since Commander Sutton’s sister-in-law was the commander at the vineyard, Lila had faith that the job would be taken care of discreetly, with no word leaking to either the Massons or the Wilsons.
Lila’s luck had run out by the third message. Sutton insisted that unless Lila gave her an explanation for the orders, she’d request a protective guard for her, too. Lila typed out a reply, assuring the commander that she had no intentions of leaving the compound that afternoon.
But Lila knew Sutton. The woman was no fool, and Lila had exhausted her patience. Her commander knew something was going on, something that had spooked her chief. She’d start demanding answers the moment Lila returned to the security office.
So would her mother.
Lila wasn’t even sure if she was overreacting or not. Every scrap of information she found on Zephyr said that he was just a hacker. Bribery was recent, something he had branched into during the last couple of years. He’d never featured in any reports of physical violence, at least none that she had heard about. His attack, if one came, would come from online.
But she wasn’t about to take any chances with her friends.
She added a thank you to Commander Sutton and skimmed the auto-transcription file from Wilson’s bug. Nothing more had been captured by it.
With security in place and no new information, Lila turned her attentions to Valandra Schreiber. Finding the forger meant trapping Chairwoman Wilson, which meant capturing Zephyr. Then, and only then, would the threat looming over her father’s head, Shaw’s head, and her own be lifted. Only then would Tristan be ejected from her life. Dixon might have been right: perhaps she did like looking at Tristan. She liked looking at a lot of men, but that didn’t mean anything. Highborn casualness wouldn’t suit a former slave.
After she wrapped up the Wilson situation, they could both go on with their lives. She was just hungry. She’d take a short vacation. Perhaps she’d even let Dubois pair her up with one of his cousins this season, if he was so keen to play matchmaker.
Lila slipped a few grapes into her mouth, thinking of the Closing Ball, and set her programs to search for Ms. Schreiber. She even tried a few manual searches, all longshots but valid nonetheless.
But after an hour, she’d still found nothing.
She didn’t have time to continue searching on her own. The forger had always been good at erasing all traces of herself on the net. Or, at least, paying the right sort to do it for her.
She bit into a chocolate chip cookie and typed a familiar name into her palm.
Max Earlwell.
Named John Poole by birth, Max had a modest start to life. His mother had been a slave, caught stealing corporate data from the Salazars, an old highborn family based in La Verde. Trudy Poole might have dodged the loss of her mark if she had been highborn, but with no family to pay her lawyer’s fees, she had been sold at auction. More correctly, she had been given away. Even a steep discount had not been enough to tempt any of the highborn families into allowing a corporate thief onto their property. Wolf Industries had been the only family to acquiesce, for Beatrice Randolph had understood Ms. Poole’s unique worth.
She also knew she wouldn’t have to pay for it.
Lila had not understood as a child that every rule, every barrier preventing her from visiting Ms. Poole had been carefully constructed by her mother to entice her. Ms. Poole had been Lila’s cookie jar, set up on the highest shelf in the kitchen. Always there, always ready to teach Lila something new. A new way to infiltrate a family’s network, a new way to sneak into locked buildings, a new way to disengage security systems, a new way to divert an alarm. Visiting her father and Shiloh at Bullstow had been test runs for Lila’s future mischief. How far could she take Ms. Poole’s lessons? Could she go one step further?
Could she go one step after that?
Lila wondered if her mother had ever intended for her education to go so far. Instead of her daughter learning corporate defense, Lila had reveled in its offense.
Max had also learned at his mother’s knee, had competed against Lila in silly, childish games, even as he aged out and left the estate. It was Max who had bragged that he would break into Liberté one day, though to Lila’s knowledge, he had never attempted it. Perhaps he had been successful and not revealed it, just as Lila had kept her own victory to herself, for she had been well tutored by her mother against such trust. She didn’t require a high five from Max or a hug from Ms. Poole after a job well done.
No, Liberté had always been a quiet, hidden pride. Every time she polished her sapphire ring, the ring she had commissioned from Jewel as secret congratulations for herself, she felt the glow wash over her anew, felt a smile come to her lips. She flaunted her mischief in front of everyone, and no one else could decode it.
Now she’d done it twice.
Max might not have matched her feat with Liberté, but he had definitely succeeded in ferreting out useful information for Beatrice Randolph over the years. It was what he was good at; his skills were superior to both Lila’s and the chairwoman’s. After he had found an information leak that led to the arrest of five Randolph workborn and two family members, as well as the recovery of three million credits, Max had earned a condo for himself and his mother in one of the nicest buildings on the Randolph estate. The chairwoman also promised him a lucrative contract after he aged out.
Max took the condo and declined the job offer, leaving the estate one week after his mother’s death. Eight years later, he lived on the lake in a house fit for a highborn heir.
Lila chewed her cookie, waiting for her old friend to pick up.
“Lila, you little minx,” he said at last. “What box of trouble will you throw me in today?”
“The best kind. The finding kind.”
“You know me too well. Who am I finding?”
Lila poked at her cookie, smooshing it in half. “Valandra Schreiber.”
“Valandra Schreiber? You want me to find Valandra Schreiber? Just like that?”
“Yes. Just like that. I need to find her before nine o’clock.”
“Nine o’clock when?”
Lila slipped a chocolate chip into her mouth. “Tomorrow morning.”
“You’re not even joking, are you? No one ever finds Valandra, Lila. She finds you. If you need some forgery work done, send a proxy. Oracle’s wrath, I’ll go for you at half my usual rate. Valandra’s an ugly little creature, but she’s a bigger flirt than I am. We always have a fun afternoon.”
“And a fun night?”
“Chairwoman Wilson knows where Ms. Schreiber is, Max. She’s meeting her at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Wilson is lying. She knows a drop address at best.”
“Even so.”
Max sucked in a breath. “I’m not going to rat out Valandra. She’s a business acquaintance, Lila, a profitable one. She’s also a friend. Besides, I know several highborn families who would share an interest in finding the snitch who ratted her out. You couldn’t pay me enough to be that guy.”
“Point taken. My beef’s not with Ms. Schreiber, anyway. I just need to know where Wilson is picking up whatever she’s getting from her.”
“Forged visas, most likely. That’s Valandra’s bread and butter.”
“Probably. I already have an idea where the chairwoman will go after that. She’ll be headed to an airport, a private airstrip, most likely, somewhere she doesn’t have to file a flight plan. I just don’t know which one.”
“You either don’t have a bug on her, or you do and don’t think she’ll be dumb enough to talk about her plans. Or you think she’ll find the bug before she says something useful.”
“She’s either gotten smarter, or she was never as dumb as I imagined. Either way, I can’t rely on my bug. Just find her.”
“Double my usual rate. This is a speed job.”
“Twenty percent above the usual.”
“Lila—”
“Twenty. Otherwise I’ll send out my entire militia to tail every car that comes out the Wilson-Kruger compound, as well as cover the local airstrips, and you’ll get nothing. It’s risky and involves a great deal of paperwork and overtime, but it’d be cheaper than hiring you.”
“And you’d alert every spy in the city to your intentions before you even left the Randolph estate, and you’d get nothing in the process. Fifty.”
“Done.”
“I’ll stick a GPS tracker on her car. It’ll be more discreet than tailing.”