Disreputable Allies (Fates of the Bound Book 1)

by Wren Weston

  Lila’s stomach rolled at the thought of food, and the pounding came again. She turned her head, squeezing a pillow atop it, hoping the incessant beating would go away. Soon.

  Finally the blows stopped.

  Her stomach lurched. She curled her body, worried that she’d be sick in her own bed.

  “Lila, wake up. It’s almost six in the morning,” Alex whispered. A dull thunk sounded against her bedside table. Her friend pressed something soft and cold against her hand.

  “You wanted me to wake you at five, but you barely opened your eyes when I shook you. This is my third try.” She lifted the pillow off Lila’s face, grabbed the cold thing, and put it on her forehead. Then she disappeared from view. “Drink the water.”

  Lila closed her eyes. She pressed her face against the cold pack as though it might heal her or, at least cool her down.

  Then she hid under the pillow once more as Alex switched on the light in the bathroom.

  Water flowed, striking the sides of the tub like a waterfall.

  Too loud. It was all too loud.

  The bed dipped suddenly as Alex sat next to her. Lila grabbed her stomach at the movement and gagged under the pillow. Luckily, nothing came out. “How do you feel?”

  “I could take out my tranq gun and show you.”

  “Don’t be fussy.” Alex pushed a water glass into Lila’s hand. “Chef is making pancakes. They’ll be ready downstairs in thirty minutes. She said if you can’t make it downstairs, then she’ll send up plain oatmeal. I just thought you should know.”

  Lila sat up, moaned as her head protested, but drank the proffered water in three long gulps. She slid the empty glass back on her bedside table. “I hate oatmeal.”

  “I know. Chef knows too, but she said that if you can’t manage to get downstairs and eat, then you’re probably too sick to eat anything but oatmeal. I agree with her.”

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Close enough. I started a bath for you. Commander Sutton said it would—”

  Lila jumped out of the bed suddenly and rushed to the bathroom. She gagged over the toilet, barely opening the lid before she began to throw up wave after wave of the water she’d just swallowed.

  “Well, at least you’re out of bed,” Alex said at the doorway, glass in hand. She refilled it from a pitcher of ice water and set them both on the bathroom counter. Two tiny pills jingled, bouncing as she placed them nearby. “I’m putting these here for your headache. Take them after you’re done puking out the rest of your intestines.”

  Lila nodded and reclined against the bathtub, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her stomach had settled, at least for a few moments.

  Alex knelt down, sliding Lila’s palm into her hand. “You should go back to bed.”

  “I have work.”

  “You’re exhausted, Lila. You slept four hours at the hospital and another eight or nine after you got back home. It wasn’t enough. Whatever work you have to do, give it to Commander Sutton.”

  “She’s already handling too much. I’m fine. I just haven’t slept much the last few nights. Add a tranq on top of that…”

  “And this is the result?”

  “Yes.”

  “I still think you should be in bed. The news is going crazy, just like you said it would. People think you’re in the hospital, dying. Even Patrick called. He was freaked out and worried.”

  “You didn’t tell him it was just a tranq, did you?”

  “Of course not. He would have gone straight to my mother.”

  “Good. That’s good, Alex.” Lila rested her forehead against the cold tub.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  Lila shook her head.

  “Okay. Take the pills on the counter after you stop throwing up. Commander Sutton said they would help. I’ll come back up in fifteen minutes to check on you.”

  When Lila opened her eyes, Alex was gone.

  Lila crawled onto her bathmat and curled up, checking her palm. Overnight, she’d gotten two more alerts for Zephyr. She deleted them and moved on to her messages. The first was from her father. She’d been nauseated and exhausted on the ride home from Randolph General, but she’d managed to send him a message before they arrived at the compound. Reports of my demise are an overstated fiction, but it’s convenient. Act concerned. I’m getting close to that damn spider.

  Her father had replied soon after. Even though I know it’s false, the news is breaking my heart.

  Lila moved on to her next message, this time from Shaw. After arriving back at the great house, she’d spent twenty minutes in her bathroom, finally letting herself puke up her lunch. Once she was done, she had lain on the bathmat and called the Bullstow chief, telling him an abbreviated version of her suspicions about Chairwoman Wilson. She had not explained how she’d found the information. They’d put together a quick plan for the chairwoman’s capture anyway. Lila hoped he’d fleshed it out since then.

  Everything is ready for tomorrow, his message read. I’m trusting your friend to be a better tail than my men. I could get her now. I have cause.

  Lila stood up and shuffled toward the counter. It was bravado on Shaw’s part and nothing more. The chief knew he wouldn’t get the chairwoman for anything serious that way, for her security would spot them before he got close. Lila had sent Max in place of her own militia for the same reason.

  Lila swallowed the two pills with a few swigs of water, hoping her stomach would behave long enough for them to kick in.

  She scrolled through a whole list of other messages while the tub finished filling up. It seemed like everyone she had ever known was trying to contact her, all wanting to wish her well, to fight on. It was touching in a morbid sort of way. Useful, too.

  Her plan was working. As soon as she had disconnected with Shaw the night before, she’d tipped off a few reporters to the shooting, reporters with a history of not checking their facts before breaking their stories to the world, so adamant that they be the first. Lila had claimed to be a resident of the apartment building where the incident had occurred. In her version, Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph had been shot, perhaps killed, and the Randolphs were trying to cover it up, even going so far as to intimidate her into silence, threatening to evict her from her apartment if she spoke the truth. She even claimed that she’d seen the bullet land.

  Initial reports at the scene backed up her story.

  The ruse had worked.

  Half the reporters had gone on camera almost immediately. Viewers would flock to their station, not merely because someone had tried to assassinate an heir, but because they’d used a gun to do it. The other reporters had shown more patience, only going to air after when they learned a Randolph blackcoat guarded the door of a highborn room in the ER.

  He wouldn’t be there unless the eldest daughter of Chairwoman Randolph languished inside.

  No matter how much her mother denied the story, reports grew and grew about “the heir who favors black.” Everyone in New Bristol knew who the phrase referred to.

  The story grew even larger after sources close to the chief could not reach her. Especially when Commander Sutton refused the chairwoman’s order to remove Lieutenant Randolph from the ER. It was a standing order from the commander’s superior officer. Lila’s authority trumped the chairwoman’s.

  Her mother was probably livid.

  Lila couldn’t help but giggle at that. She deleted the messages from well-wishers, not returning any of them. If only she could get away with such things every day.

  She sipped at her water and composed a new message to Dixon, thanking him for saving her life. It wasn’t enough, but she didn’t have time to say it in person.

  Besides, it would be a little awkward with—

  She closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about Tristan.

  Lila put down he
r palm and slid into the hot water.

  Soon after, her fingertips turned to prunes.

  She was glad that Sutton had demanded that she take the day off. It would make her absence far less noticeable, for she had no intention of remaining on the compound and staying in bed after she finished her bath.

  Alex knocked at the door.

  “I’m not dead yet,” Lila called out, eyeing the soap bottle on the edge of the tub.

  It was so very far away.

  “Glad to hear it,” her friend called through the door. “I’ll check on you again in fifteen minutes and see if you’re dead then.”

  “Okay.”

  The next time Alex checked on her, Lila was just slipping into plainclothes for the day, nothing marked with a Randolph coat of arms. Every bit of energy had been sucked out of her muscles. “Tell Chef I’ll be down in twenty minutes for my damn pancakes. I’ve earned them.”

  Alex nodded, the sides of her mouth twisting as she click-clacked from the room.

  Lila switched on her desk computer and placed a call to a private office inside Bullstow. Turning on her external filter, she made sure that the call had been bounced from at least a dozen locations. No one would be able to trace it. No one would know who had placed it. No one would know who was speaking.

  “I trust you’re ready?” she asked after Chief Shaw picked up.

  “I have a few teams in the field, but their locations are based mostly on guesswork,” he said, sensible enough to mirror Lila’s vagueness. “I have another team waiting in reserve. I just need to tell them where to go. You better be right about this.”

  “I am, and you know it.”

  “Meet me at Bullstow in an hour if you’re planning on coming along. We’re taking Tiny.” He offered up a rare chuckle.

  Lila grinned. Tiny was Bullstow’s roving communications center, built like a wolf hidden behind the face of a kindly grandma. Constructed inside an old mail truck, it offered a whole host of features for Bullstow to use while conducting surveillance and covert operations. Wolf Industries had developed it, winning the contract not through price, but through sheer optimism of its features. Even Lila had a hand in writing the proposal, for she had to ensure that their own wagon could outstrip and counter Bullstow’s capabilities. After all, Bullstow might use it against her and her people.

  “So you’re coming too?”

  “Yes, just to make sure that all procedures are followed to the letter. I can’t let her get away on a technicality.”

  “Understood. I’ll be there soon.” She hung up, noting Shaw had said nothing of how she’d been found the day before, or the AAS flyer.

  Lila started a call to her father, bouncing the signal around once more, but didn’t initiate it. Her father might be worried about her, but he might not even be awake yet. Best to let him sleep.

  Besides, she’d know more about Zephyr after Chairwoman Wilson’s interrogation. She didn’t want to contact him until Zephyr was in a holding cell.

  Lila closed the program and gathered her things, scrambling downstairs to eat breakfast in the morning room. On the way, she hid her coat and scarf in a cupboard so that she could retrieve them later. She just hoped the rest of her family had not woken up early. She didn’t have time for a long conversation.

  Lila breathed a sigh of relief when the room was empty. A plate had been set at the table, already loaded with pancakes and eggs and bacon. Chef must have done it, hoping that Lila would eat more than if she served herself.

  It didn’t work. Though she’d begun to get her appetite back after her shower, the last thing she wanted was to lose her breakfast in front of the Bullstow militia and Chief Shaw.

  Alex stuck her head through the doorway as Lila finished up. “Feeling better?”

  “A bit,” Lila said, following her out into the foyer. She climbed the main staircase and paused halfway up. “You know, I think you were right about going back to bed, Alex. I’m exhausted. Tell the others not to disturb me today. I’ll be resting. I’ll come down if I want anything”

  “Okay. Feel better.” Alex disappeared around the corner, entering the morning room to clear away the breakfast dishes.

  Lila turned immediately and retrieved the coat and scarf she’d hidden on her way to breakfast. Then she slipped from the house and into the dark morning.

  It was still an hour before sunrise.

  Checking her watch, Lila darted behind a tree until the expected patrol passed by Villanueva House. She wound her scarf around her head to obscure the bottom half of her face and avoided the security cameras. Even if someone saw her, they wouldn’t be able to tell who had been caught on screen.

  With some difficulty, she climbed over the wall around the great house, a wall she usually hopped over easily, and nearly lost her breakfast as she flopped onto the ground on the other side. She then slipped into the shadows, dodging the occasional patrol that crossed her path, always managing to find a hiding spot well before anyone spotted her.

  It was an easy feat, since she had designed their routes.

  Scrambling up the stone wall of the compound proved more difficult. Her muscles felt like rubber and barely responded. She might as well have gained a hundred kilograms for how difficult it was to pull herself up.

  It took four attempts before she successfully scaled the wall.

  Luckily, her taxi was already waiting on the corner of Aunt Georgina’s bridal block. She ducked into the back seat, pulling up her scarf until it obscured her jaw and nose. Her unbound curls spilled over the rest of her face.

  “Take me to Eclipse,” she said, pressing cash into the taxi driver’s hand. Eclipse was Suji Park’s cash cow, a coffee shop chain that had spread around the entire state, open by six o’clock in most locations.

  “Which one?”

  “The one by Bullstow.”

  “You gotta be more specific than that, madam. The one by the east gate, the west gate, or the north gate? Come to think of it, I think they just built one by the south—”

  “The east gate.”

  After a quick drive, the taxi dropped her off on Leclerc Street, a block away from Bullstow. Women and men dressed in business clothes bustled up and down the street, ready for another Saturday at work. Half of them formed a line in front of the brightly lit coffee shop, a line so long that it snaked out of the building and twisted in on itself. The front of the building had been made of glass, and a large sign covered the entire top third of the store, its name spelled out in blue.

  Eclipse was not exactly subtle.

  She threaded through the crowd unnoticed and popped out beside the Bullstow gate, right in front of what remained of Slack & Roberts. Sergeant Holguín had taken her into the compound from a different direction on Wednesday night, which meant that she hadn’t seen the destruction. Now it was cast before her in gloomy relief, a blur of twisting shadows highlighted by street lamps and Bullstow floodlights.

  They had all been luckier than she had realized that night. Chunks had been chipped away from the stone wall around Bullstow as if it had been hit by gunfire and a mist of acid. It was even worse near the gate. If the sergeant had taken her there instead of merely dragging her across the street, not everyone in the group would have walked away so easily.

  Only one had remained at the gate, though, closed in the guard post, protected by bulletproof glass.

  Slack & Roberts slumped across from it, bricks charred and blackened, roof collapsed, building pancaked from three floors to one in some places. The whole back wall of the building still stood upright as if it were an unfortunate witness, back bent and cracked by the assault. Filing cabinets stood in a row along one section of the wall, blackened, dented, but unmoved.

  A whistle split the air.

  Chief Shaw waved her over.

  “Almost didn’t recognize you under so many meters of scarf.” He
ushered her toward Tiny, which had been disguised as a bread truck. Bite me had been written above a cartoonish rendering of bread loaves, with a green, childish monster swallowing each one whole.

  “Bite me?” Lila asked. “This is why men shouldn’t go into marketing.”

  “It was Captain McGraw’s turn to paint the truck his month. It was either this or paint Tiny up with a couple of women in bikinis drinking beer. We voted for the less stupid of the two ideas.”

  “Good choice.”

  He paused at the door. “You okay after yesterday?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “I read the report, chief. That would have shaken anybody up.”

  “It helps when you don’t remember much.”

  “All the same. Given the circumstance, I’m going to have to ask you to stay in the truck away from the suspect, away from the other officers. I can’t give the High Council any reason to toss her case.” He scratched his forehead under his sentry cap. “You understand, don’t you?”

  Lila nodded. It was already starting to happen. Shaw wasn’t quite sure of her anymore, wasn’t sure that Tiny shouldn’t race after her next, wasn’t sure about her and the bombing and the AAS, wasn’t sure that he shouldn’t fill her with truth serum and get answers.

  “Of course I understand, chief.”

  Shaw nodded and opened the back door of the truck. The two chiefs slipped inside. A rack of computers hummed along one side of the truck, and two blackcoats sat before them, chairs bolted into the floor, ears covered by headphones.

  “Hello, cousin,” both men, the eldest sons of Randolph highborn, said at once. They turned to their screens before Lila could respond.

  “Let’s head out,” Shaw called to the driver. He and Lila strapped themselves into the chairs behind her cousins, and Tiny lurched away from the curb. For such a large truck, the shocks absorbed a good portion of the bumps in the road.

  “I have three teams out in the field near the airports,” Chief Shaw explained as they passed through downtown. “One’s only a kilometer from NBI, and two more are near Martins and Stevens. We don’t want Wilson’s spies to tip her off, so we’re just waiting for now. When we go in, we’ll claim an anonymous tip has alerted us to black market drug smuggling through the airports.”