by Wren Weston
“I saw her mother before she died. I’m guessing her daughter has learned the same parlor tricks. I bet she even gives the same prophecy to every heir who steps into the temple.”
“Go again.”
“I’d rather not.”
The woman drew her sword in one deft movement, the blade hissing against the leather.
Lila drew faster.
“The nerve. You would point a weapon at me?”
“You drew first.”
Lila’s grin faded as her Colt shivered in her palm. A searing heat burned her hand. Lila dropped the gun, her hand weak, her skin burning.
The weapon landed at the oracle’s feet with a dull thunk.
It was the oracle’s turn to grin, but she didn’t. The woman merely raised her nicked blade to Lila’s throat. “When you wake, you will go see the oracle. You are running out of time, Lila of New Bristol. You are all running out of time.”
“All?”
“Some more than others.”
The woman pulled her arm back. The flat of her blade crashed toward Lila’s face, smacking against her skull.
Beeping woke her. Its steady cadence, its pitch, its closeness to her head, its likeness to an alarm clock—it all worked together to eject Lila from her deep slumber.
Rudely.
Lila covered her ears. “Kill it to death.”
The noise quieted, though not enough to soothe the headache looming behind Lila’s eyes. Dr. Helen Hardwicke-Randolph peered over her, an OB/GYN by practice, but the only doctor that Lila had trusted since she turned eighteen. Her beautiful silver hair, wrapped in a bun at the nape of her neck, contrasted prettily with her dusty orange scrubs. Scrubs that were out of place against the light blue décor behind her.
Blue. Calming. The sea.
“Emergency room,” Lila muttered, nose crinkling at the smell of rubbing alcohol and cinnamon-scented cleansers.
“Yes. Do you remember being brought in?” Helen twisted a ring on her thumb, turning on its bright light, then brought it up to Lila’s face.
“Do it, and I will eat your brain.”
Helen turned off the light and sat on a rolling stool beside her bed. Snatching up her stethoscope, the doctor listened to Lila’s breathing. Several machines leaned over the pair, filled with numbers and blinking lights that Lila did not understand. She only knew that she was connected to a few of them. An IV had been taped to her arm, and something was clamped to one of her fingers. She tried to shake it off, but Helen smacked her fingers and reseated the clip.
Lila had been given a private room on the highborn side of the hospital, rather than a nook with a curtain. She even had a real bed encased in plastic, instead of the cheap foam tables that the poorer patients were given. It crunched and squeaked underneath her as she rolled her body.
“Do you remember being brought in?” Helen asked again as she flipped her stethoscope back over her head.
“No.” Lila yawned. “I picked the color scheme for the hospital. Blue is calming. I thought it worked best in here.”
“So you are responsible for making me wear these ugly orange scrubs every day?”
“I could change the color. Do you want to risk it?”
“I might. My coworkers might want to as well.”
“Put it to a vote, then,” Lila said, thumbing the clamp. “What happened? Why am I here?”
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I got shot by a tranq. Why do I feel like I got shot by a tranq?”
“Because you got shot by a tranq. You’d think it was a bullet by the way your mother and Commander Sutton are carrying on. They nearly came to blows in the middle of the emergency room.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” came a familiar voice from the doorway. As Sutton brushed a gray strand out of her eyes, Lila glimpsed a few drops of dried blood on the sleeve of her red jacket. Her blackcoat was missing.
Lila’s eyes opened wider.
Commander Sutton was on guard duty.
In a hospital.
“Don’t sit up, fool. Not yet,” Sutton warned. “Get a bucket, doctor.”
“But you’re in Randolph General.”
“So are you. I’d much rather be guarding the door than in your position. Lie back—”
Lila lunged toward the side of the bed, barely grabbing the basin Helen offered before she gagged. Her brain spun in circles and slammed against her skull as she hunched over it. The chicken salad she’d eaten for lunch clawed at her throat, but Lila stubbornly held it down.
Memories of academy training at Bullstow flooded her thoughts. A quick announcement after physical training. Mats dragged out and spread on the gym floor. The humid air. The smell of sweat from exercise and nerves. The new recruits pacing in drenched workout clothes, hoping their physicals had found them fit enough for the full dose. Their mentors, those they’d be partnered with in their family militias after graduation, loading the tranq dart in front of them. The sting when the tiny dart hit their neck. Falling. The aftermath.
Oh, for oracle’s sake, the aftermath.
Sutton. Sutton shot her.
She had looked just as sympathetic back then, too. Sutton knew what it was like. They all did. Everyone had to go through it at least once. You had to know its effects so that you didn’t start shooting everyone just because they annoyed you. You also had to be healthy enough to take the full dose, or you couldn’t join the militia.
Perhaps it was karma for tranqing so many people lately.
Helen patted her back. “Get it out, you’ll feel better.”
“No, damn it. I’m fine.” Lila pushed away the basin.
“Stubborn child.”
Sutton brought her a glass filled with ice-cold water. Lila accepted it gratefully and gulped down half the glass in one long swallow.
“Your mother nearly had Commander Sutton in a holding cell after they found you.” Helen settled the basin in Lila’s lap.
It was only then that Lila remembered what had happened. Peter Kruger, his guns, and the thoughts that had gone through her head as she lay in the alley. The ancient oracle, invading her dreams while she slept.
She patted her chest, her head, her belly, her neck, but felt no wounds.
“Bullstow would never accept the charges.” Lila gagged again over the basin, knowing she’d be sore from it later. “It didn’t happen on the compound.”
“So you do remember?”
“It’s coming back to me.”
“Well, the chairwoman doesn’t care where it happened,” Sutton said. “She said I should have known something was up when you increased security. I think I’m only alive because she’s trying to decide between handling it privately or orchestrating a very public accident.”
“How long was I out?”
“Only four hours. You were hit with a standard militia tranq dart, but you must have pulled it out before the injector triggered completely. Could be that you won’t get as sick.”
“I should be that lucky.”
“You already are.” Helen rolled her stool next to a computer at her bedside with a loud squeak. She typed a few notes into Lila’s medical records. “Your blood work came back an hour ago. We barely got a blood sample in time to test for tranqs. From what we can tell, you received the standard sedative. There’s no poison in your system.”
Lila breathed out in relief. She hadn’t even considered the possibility.
“How much do you remember?”
“I don’t remember blood.” Lila pointed at Sutton’s sleeve. She hadn’t bothered to hide it.
“Lila, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I went to go look in on one of the apartment buildings and then…nothing. I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Nothing?” Sutton asked.
Lila shook her head, stalling, lying.
Helen swiveled back to the bed. “It’s not unusual for tranq darts to make the last few moments of consciousness fuzzy, especially after a stressful situation. The memories might come back, but they might not. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“I was hoping you could tell me more,” the commander said. “It all happened out of range of our cameras, except one of the new ones I installed yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I hadn’t finished setting them up, so it’s a miracle that it was even pointed in that direction. All we have is an out-of-focus clip of a man in a peacoat herding you back into the alley. Twenty seconds later, he falls, bleeding.”
“So you have him in custody?”
Sutton shook her head. “Two men picked him up and tossed him in the back of a dark-colored truck. We didn’t get a good look at any of them. The camera was pointed much too low for that.”
“A dark-colored truck?”
Sutton nodded, withdrew her palm, and cued up a blurry picture. Lila’s body lay half out of frame, completely vulnerable to anyone who might happen by. The bottom half of a green truck sat in the right foreground. A figure jogged toward it, caught mid-stride by the camera. Only his black pants and dark crimson boots had been captured.
Dixon. Dixon had been there.
The other figure must have been Tristan. Both had walked by and left her like she was nothing.
But they had saved her life, hadn’t they?
Why had they taken Peter Kruger with them? Why had they left her behind?
“We’ve had no luck tracking the truck. The suspects took your gun, too. We only found your tranq. I didn’t even know you carried a live backup. On any other day, I would have thought it a bit much.”
Lila licked her lips. Sutton now thought of her as some Roman barbarian, ready to kill at the slightest provocation.
“I have to give you credit for shooting him after you were tranqed. All those lessons with me and Sergeant Jenkins paid off, even if your hand-to-hand training never did.”
“How did you find me?”
“Someone who lived in the apartment building heard the shots, saw the blood, and fetched Sergeant Hill at the gatehouse. It went out over the radio as a shooting. Took about ten minutes to get the information straight, but by then your mother was in hysterics.”
“Don’t worry,” Helen assured her. “I saw photos of the scene. Unless that truck delivered your assailant directly to a trauma center, there’s no chance he could recover with that amount of blood loss. Even if he made it to an ER, he might not pull through. We’ve sent messages to every hospital within a hundred and fifty kilometers. No one has been admitted anywhere near New Bristol with a gunshot wound. He’s crawled into a hole, and he’ll die there.”
Helen’s palm computer beeped, and she retreated from the room to check it.
“Chief, I promise you, I will find the man who did this,” Sutton said. “I shouldn’t have let you go without an escort, not after you increased security. I should have found you and asked why. I should have been taking your security much more seriously. Just because you’re not the prime anymore, doesn’t mean that others accept it. Assassinations are rare, but they still happen. I should have—”
“You shouldn’t have done anything. I’m the chief of security. I should be able to handle myself.”
“Not against an assassin. All it takes is one slip. I won’t make another mistake. I promise you that I will keep you safe from now on.”
“Stop it. You’re wigging me out with all the—”
Helen walked back into the room and sat upon the swivel stool, her mouth slack, eyes wide. “The results just came back on the blood. They wouldn’t release them before, kept saying they needed to re-check. I thought…”
“What?”
“The blood belonged to Peter Kruger.”
Sutton laughed, a nervous little skitter that died in her throat when Helen and Lila did not join in. “You’re serious. Peter Kruger tried to murder the chief?”
“Peter?” Lila asked, feigning ignorance.
Sutton raised a brow.
“The asshole tried to kill me. I refuse to call him Mr. Kruger ever again.”
“It’s his blood at the scene,” Helen confirmed. “Tell her about the other thing, commander.”
Sutton dug into her coat pocket and handed Lila a baggie filled with a single piece of cardstock. Lila instantly recognized the flyer for the American Abolitionist Society. The red text swam as though she had been hit by another dart.
“This was found, pinned to your blackcoat under one of your stars. We couldn’t pull any prints or DNA off it, but it looks like Peter has friends. I’m trying to run the name of this organization, but so far…”
Lila gripped the sheets as Sutton droned on, suddenly feeling very exposed in the hospital, just as exposed as her body had been in the photograph. Her breathing quickened, and she heard the beeping of her heart-rate monitor slowly increase.
Tristan had left her.
He’d left her after he’d done something to her body, and then just walked away.
All that she’d felt after Peter’s dart struck her, all her feelings for Tristan, all her wants, all her desires, all of it crumbled.
It didn’t leave a shell behind; she became the shell, and all at once, that shell filled with stupidity.
She’d trusted Tristan before and found it misplaced. When would she learn?
It had been a stolen palm and a jammer almost every time they met, but she knew the score. Stealing led to bolder and bolder crimes. Tristan had been angrier and angrier with her lately, more impatient and more demanding, especially after she’d told him it was their last job together. Chairwoman Wilson was all but in a holding cell. She’d told him as much on the roof.
He’d left her there, pinning the evidence to her coat to be done with her. She was the only outsider who knew about the AAS, and she’d already admitted to Shaw that she had been at the scene.
Tristan had always said he’d protect his people no matter what.
He’d only saved her so that he could frame her.
If Shaw didn’t suspect her before, he certainly would suspect her now.
Lila’s heart-rate monitor increased its pace, and she ripped the clamp off her finger. “When can I get out of here?”
“Now, if you wish.” Helen pulled out her IV. “I just need to finish the paperwork.”
“Commander, how many people know what happened to me?”
“Not many. We’ve tried to keep it under wraps as much as possible. You know how the press gets.”
Lila nodded. The press was so very predictable.
And predictable could be useful.
“I’ll fetch Sergeant Norwood from the lobby,” Commander Sutton said. “We’ll bring around the car after we check it for… After we make sure it’s safe for you. Give me half an hour.” She patted Lila’s hand and turned to leave.
“Wait. Who’s going to be on the door after you’re gone?”
“Lieutenant Nathaniel Randolph. He’s a good—”
“I know of him. Leave him guarding the door after we depart. This door. No matter who occupies the bed. No matter what my mother says against it. And relieve Sergeant Tripp from his current assignment.”
“Chief?”
“You have your orders.”
Sutton nodded and left the room, bound for the lobby.
Helen followed her out.
Lila, alone in the room, shoved away the flyer.
Chapter 21
Lila did not remain alone for very long.
She had just taken a sip of water when the door opened. A man entered, dressed in a pair of pale blue scrubs. A surgical mask had been tied around his face, obscuring his mouth. One eye bulged slightly.
Tristan locked the door
behind him and pulled down his mask. It caught on one ear and dangled to his shoulder.
“Please tell me that you haven’t been operating on anyone in that getup.” Lila slid her hand toward her gun holster. She cursed silently when she found her Colt missing. Some well-meaning nurse had set it on the room’s back counter.
Tristan yanked the mask free and shoved it in the back pocket of his scrubs. “You’re awake early. That’s good, right?”
“Neither good nor bad.” Lila shrugged, squinting at his face. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“Maybe. Do you honestly think that Sergeant Stick Up His Ass wouldn’t notice the black eye? Do you honestly think that he would have let me in?”
“That’s Lieutenant Stick Up His Ass.”
“Whatever.” Tristan’s gaze fell to the baggie containing the AAS flyer. “Good. They found it.”
“It was kind of hard to miss.”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. My people are worried that this heat over the bombing won’t go away until they have suspects in custody. When I saw that guy bleeding on the street, I thought he might be our ticket out of the heat. The AAS doesn’t just do bombings now. They’ve gone in for assassinations. At least it’ll muddy the waters.”
Lila thumbed the edge of her holster, eyes fixed on the AAS flyer. “It certainly has.”
Tristan cocked his head, noticing the placement of her hand under the blanket. “Damn it, Lila. You think that guy worked for me, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to think. All I know is that Chief Shaw will be looking at me much more carefully for the bombing. I’ve been his only suspect for days, and now I turn up with one of those damn flyers he can’t seem to find anywhere else, and I’m not shot but tranqed? That’s convenient, don’t you think? It’s almost as if someone planned it that way.”
“You’re not a suspect. You’re a target now.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what he’ll believe. I’m sure that’s what you were going for.”
