by Wren Weston
Lila said nothing against it. Instead, she fought the urge to curl up against his shoulder.
Her palm vibrated. Prolix, you’re testing my patience. Surely you could have spared a moment before breakfast to send me a message. I’m sure you father wouldn’t have minded.
Lila swallowed.
Reaper’s partner had followed her to Bullstow.
“What’s wrong?” Tristan asked. “You just got pale.”
“It’s nothing. I’m just tired.”
Moments later, Tristan pulled into an abandoned tire shop and stopped the truck, brakes squealing faintly in the morning heat. The building was one of many stand-alone businesses on the dying block, a row of loosely cracked and crumbling structures, lost amid fields of weeds. The businesses’ names had once been painted on the buildings, but the lettering had faded on most. Perhaps the names had been lost to the neighborhood, just like the residents.
A pit bull barked nearby, already aware and unhappy with their presence. They closed the truck doors gently, and Tristan winced as the noise echoed off the empty buildings.
The pit bull barked louder.
“I should get a dog for the shop,” he said. “I doubt you’d be able to get in so easily.”
“Dogs love me.”
“Barking or whining at the door, they’d still hear you coming. Dogs are good like that.”
They padded down the sidewalk, the weeds thwacking against their knees. They did not wait for the others to join them. The two trucks circled the neighborhood several streets away, waiting to be called only if needed.
The pair walked along a chain link fence and slipped behind a junkyard. It smelled of engine grease and rotting food. Lila had to breathe through her mouth to avoid gagging.
The pit bull rushed, jaws clenching on the fence between them, his nose dotted with crimson flecks. Drool flew and landed with a splat on the sidewalk.
Lila backed away, her boots unscathed.
“He might have torn his nose up on the fence, but that doesn’t look promising. What do you suppose—”
Lila sprayed a mist in the dog’s direction, ensuring both she and Tristan were upwind. The dog whined and stumbled, falling in a cloud of dust.
“What the—”
“I told you.” Lila grinned mischievously, sliding the metal container back into her pocket. “Dogs love me.”
“Lila, just so we’re clear, love doesn’t mean that someone has a rabid desire to be tranqed.”
She rolled her eyes and flipped on her jammer. “Come on, I estimate we have twenty minutes before it wakes up.”
“Wait. Estimate? Explain estimate.”
“Research is still in the testing phase. It’s an aerated tranq solution. Works particularly well on little yappy dogs.”
“A pit bull is not a little yappy dog, Lila!”
“Yeah, I know. There will be a much bigger mess when it wakes up.” She hopped over the fence.
Tristan did not follow.
“Is it going to stay down?”
“I don’t know. It’s a mystery. That’s what makes it science.”
Tristan gave her a long stare before finally jumping over the fence and following along behind her. The pair crept toward a dilapidated structure in the center of the property, more wood pile than building. The smell grew worse and worse as they approached, the stench of piss and excrement cutting through the rot. The pair skirted piles of ripped batteries, coffee filters, and bottles of soda and drain opener.
“I don’t think Natalie would have chosen this place. It stinks too much. I put it on the list because of its owner, but Natalie has her limits.”
“Who owns it?”
“A disgraced Hardwicke. He was caught stealing funds from his wife and bugging her office. He passed information to his former matron and other families before getting caught.”
“Chairwoman Hardwicke wouldn’t take him back after that?”
“Of course not, both for sharing intel with other families and for getting caught. Turns out he had dividends stashed away that the government couldn’t get to. He bought back his mark after he served his sentence.”
“Where’d he stash the money while he served his slave’s term? Burgundy?”
“Wasn’t smart enough to do it and not get caught,” she said, shaking her head. “He gave his money to Natalie Holguín to hide. They go way back, if you know what I mean. She still took thirty percent, but that’s downright charitable for her. In any case, Mr. Hardwicke holds a few properties in East New Bristol—won them in card games, mostly. This property is an anomaly, though. It went out of business almost two years ago, and he hasn’t tried to lease it.”
The pair made a brief circle around the structure, peeking through broken shards in the painted-over windows. Nothing moved inside.
“I haven’t seen any guards,” Lila whispered, fishing her lock-picking tools from her pocket.
The door clicked open less than a minute later, and the pair stepped into a one-room structure. The dirty linoleum floor muffled their footsteps as they approached a long table in the back. Glassware and hoses spilled out of a box. Someone had stacked two large box fans in a corner.
“He doesn’t even have a decent security system.”
“Of course he wouldn’t.” Tristan sniffed the air. “It’s smart to hide this place in the middle of a junkyard. Bravo, Mr. Hardwicke. It’s just like a highborn to find a use for something this worthless.”
“What use?”
“Do you smell that? This was a meth lab. Recently.”
“Meth? How do you know what a meth lab smells like?”
“Not everyone I deal with is as sweet and carefree as you.” He pushed her deeper into the room and curled his arms around her waist, grinning at the contact. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I saw you at the shop this morning.”
Lila squirmed out of his grasp. “No, my stomach can’t handle that here. Besides, I don’t have time. I haven’t even begun to look for the oracles.”
“Later, then. Are you going to call this into Shaw?”
“No. I’m bound to find more after we search the other properties. I can’t call everything in today. Shaw will know exactly where it’s coming from, and he’ll know what I’m doing.”
One spray to an unsteady pit bull later, and the pair returned to the truck, ready to scout the next location.
Lila pulled a laptop from her satchel, working through her inbox while they drove between locations. Before the clock struck noon, they’d ferreted out a hydroponic pot operation, a chop shop, and a dominatrix’s secret dungeon. Although no one watched over the grow house, cameras had dominated the entire operation. Lila had merely turned her jammer up to maximum and peeked inside a few windows, satisfying her curiosity. They hadn’t needed to go inside the chop shop either, for Tristan knew one of the men who worked inside. A quick call had ended that search. No one matching Natalie’s description had been inside. As for the dominatrix, she’d been surprisingly sweet, given her chosen occupation. Mistress Lola Whiplash had liked the look of Tristan, offering them a forty percent discount on her normal couples pricing.
Tristan had gone red immediately, and bowed from the chain-filled dungeon as though he’d become a slave once more. Mistress Lola had handed Lila a whip free of charge, claiming to be charmed. “You’ll have to break that boy in slowly before you return.” She elbowed Lila, her thigh-high leather boots creaking as the women watched him flee.
“I’ll get right on that,” Lila said, smacking the whip handle against her leg. “Thanks for the gift.”
Despite his original reluctance, Tristan seemed quite comfortable with the whip after he got his hands on it. He’d already smacked her twice on the ass before they reached the truck.
“You’re really good, you know. Someone’s been doing something they shouldn’t at
every location we’ve checked so far, except for Mistress Lola. I don’t really know what she was up to.”
“Bribery. Information. Spying. I’m sure she made me as soon as I came through the door. Why do you think she offered the discount?”
Tristan stopped suddenly. “Is that bad? Do we need to—”
Lila shook her head. “My jammer was active, so she didn’t get me on camera. Even if she had, who the heck would care? Her sort doesn’t trade in that sort of blackmail. It would be bad for business. She pries information directly from the target’s mouth. She wouldn’t learn anything about me unless I was drugged, horny, and begging for release.”
“I don’t know whether to be terrified or incredibly turned on.”
“How about frustrated? After all, Natalie wasn’t there.” Lila opened the truck door and vented the afternoon heat. Tristan tossed the whip into the back seat. “I can’t believe you’re keeping that. It should be dipped in disinfectant. Repeatedly.”
“I like it.”
“Fine, but stop smacking me in the ass with it. It’s tedious.”
“Make me.”
“I have tranqs.”
Tristan’s grin faded. She’d shot him once before. “That’s not even funny.”
“It’s a little funny.” Lila leaned against the truck bed while Tristan pulled out his palm and made a quick call to Frank.
“Dixon’s still asleep,” he said when he finally disconnected. “He slept all morning.”
“That’s good, though. He needs to sleep.”
“And we need to eat lunch. The others want a break for chow. It looks like we’re going to have our first date.”
“Date?”
“Yep.” He slammed the truck door and wrapped a thin scarf around his slave’s scar. “A quick one, just you and me. There’s a great place up the street. If it can’t tempt you, there’s no hope for you at all. You’ll just turn into sticks and bones, and I’ll have to toss you into the lake and find a fluffier woman.”
“You’ll just rescue me again.”
“No, I won’t. Next time you fall in the water, you’re on your own. I’ll buy you one of those inflatable life vests to keep in your pocket.”
“One of these days, I’m going to teach you how to swim.”
“Never. The only thing that could get me into the water again is if you didn’t have any clothes on. If you’re going to drown, Lila, drown naked.”
As Tristan led her down the street, Lila’s thoughts filled with images she didn’t want, of Tristan pushing her under a dock, shoving her against one of the thick wooden beams while he thrust into her, the sound of his muffled moans as he came, as he called out her name.
She grew wet between the legs, hungry for anything but food.
Soon the pair reached an unmarked, dilapidated structure, not unlike the buildings they’d trudged through all morning, except that this one had been cared for and cared about. Though the wooden building had weathered and warped over the years and needed a fresh coat of paint, Lila couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been made to look that way.
Tristan led her through the swinging front doors. The walls had been painted in pastel blues and greens, hung with black-and-white photographs of Mexico City, the capital of the Mexican Commonwealth. Banners honoring their ancient gods hung beside saddles pegged to the wall. Stained glass filled the window, tiled into portraits of flowers and ivy.
Lila slid into a booth, making sure she faced the wall in case of spies. Tristan sat across from her and pushed a menu forward. “They have the best queso and fajitas in Saxony.”
“And the worst architect.”
“It’s not as if the lowborns who run this place had a great deal of capital, Lila. Fry and Dice helped build this place.”
“They should have helped more.”
Tristan poked her on the nose. “Hush. It matches the picture of a little restaurant in Mexico City, a tribute to the owner’s great grandmother. She opened the first El Dorado a hundred years ago.”
“Sentimentality has no place in business.”
“You’re so highborn sometimes. Dice’s little sister is probably in the back ordering the poor cooks around. She’s married to the owner.”
“His sister is gay?”
“No, the owner is male. She moved up in the world and became lowborn by marriage.”
Lila raised a brow. “Interesting,” she said as a young waitress stopped by their table.
She let Tristan order for them both, as she didn’t know enough about the place to pick wisely, and she wasn’t even sure that she was hungry. But when the waitress brought out a bowl full of queso, her stomach changed her mind. Even though it was the spiciest queso she’d ever eaten, she kept shoveling chip after chip into the golden sauce.
“Told you.” Tristan slid his palm across the table.
“What’s this?” Lila said, munching as he spun the device and tapped the screen. A video of a red-nosed Peter Kruger filled it. The camera quickly pulled back. The small man stood next to a mound of dirt with King Lucas, a golden shovel in his unsteady hands.
“A photo op?” Lila squinted at the captions that flew along the bottom. Her father had been forced to attend such occasions for years, usually to break ground on some major project for Unity or for a highborn family that he had tied himself to by seed. “Why am I watching this? It’s just the empire, breaking ground on some government building.”
“Keep watching,” Tristan said, and sipped his water.
King Lucas finished his short speech and handed the microphone to his elder half-brother. Peter gripped it as though it were a weapon. He made a far different image than the budding revolutionary he’d been a week before. Gone was the mysterious, passionate twist to his face. Gone were his workmen’s boots. His clothes had been tailored to fit his form. They might have fit better if he stopped fiddling with his collar and tie.
His eyes were bloodshot, too. Lila didn’t need to understand German to hear the slurring.
“He’s drunk,” she said after the short video played out.
“Yes, but that’s not the point. Watch his hand.” Tristan tapped the screen, replaying the video.
As Peter spoke to the crowd, he tugged at his ear. Not just once, but on three separate occasions. “That was the sign, wasn’t it? He’s asking you to take care of his kids.”
“Partly. To be more specific, he’s signaling that Germany is unsafe for them, at least for the moment. I’ve seen him do it in the last two videos as well. We have to find Oskar, Lila. I promised Peter that I’d look after him. As much as I hate the guy for trying to kill you, he did save my people from Bullstow’s attention.”
“That makes you even, not indebted. I want to find Oskar as much as you do, but not for his father.”
“I know. It could make us all safer, though. If Peter did get into power, perhaps he’d end this stupid war once and for all. It’s always my people who pay when war thickens.”
Lila wanted to disagree with him, but she could not. The workborn filled out the military, though a quarter came from the oracle children, the extended families of the oracles. Many left their compound to join, staying with the army until retirement. Most lowborn stayed away from conflict altogether, choosing to grow their family’s business.
Almost no soldiers came from the highborn, not unless they’d been promoted directly to officer, and usually only if they’d been disgraced, exiled, and had nowhere else to go. Only the highborn senators participated in war, offering a hurried debate in High House whenever the Roman Empire poked a little too forcefully at the Allied Lands.
“Oskar and Maria aren’t safe here, and they aren’t safe in Germany,” Lila said. “Where’s safe?”
“Nowhere. That’s why I’m going to make them disappear.”
“How? People are never going to stop looking fo
r them.”
“I have a few ideas.”
Lila narrowed her eyes.
“I do. Trust me.”
“You’ll run your plan by me before you decide to act. I don’t want to get stuck cleaning up your mess again.”
The waitress saved them from an argument, returning with sizzling plates of fajitas.
Tristan hadn’t been lying about the food. If Lila had thought the queso had been amazing, it had nothing on the fajitas. “What’d they marinate this stuff in? Unicorns and rainbows?” she asked, wrapping up strips of steak in fresh tortillas.
Her mouth watered as she chewed, the slight tinge of lime biting her tongue. “I should send Chef over to ferret out the recipe. She’s like a walking food analyzer.”
Tristan gave her a long look. “If I’d thought your family might steal the recipes, I never would have brought you.”
“We don’t steal. We partner. Voluntarily. Our deals are very generous.”
For a first date, it wasn’t half bad. Tristan spent most of the meal rubbing his leg against hers under the table. She didn’t pull away, though it made concentrating on her food more difficult. That and her constant worry that a spy might be watching.
After Tristan hopped up to visit the men’s room, she finally sent a message to Reaper’s partner. Are you going to keep blowing up my palm, or will you actually tell me what you want?
She received her answer a few seconds later.
One hundred thousand credits. You have two days.
She wrote back immediately. Just money? Is that all you want?
For now, my sweet. I’ll send you my account number soon. Fail to pay, and you’ll receive a very different sort of message.
Lila pinched the bridge of her nose. Paying would begin a dance she didn’t want. She’d never paid a blackmailer in her life, and she refused to start now.
After the meal, the pair returned to the truck. Lila finished her work for the security office while Tristan drove them to the fifth location, then she returned her laptop to her satchel. Unfortunately, location five turned out to be a waste of time. It was nothing more than another chop shop. Lila scowled on the way back to the truck and said nothing as Tristan drove to the next address. Her unmarked servant’s shirt scratched against her neck in the heat.
