by Wren Weston
“I wish.”
“Good.”
“No. Not good. I needed him alive. I needed him—”
“We’ve been through this, Chief Randolph. It’s not going to help.”
“The man had a partner, and we both know it. He didn’t go from a two-bit hacker to a man who influences a chairwoman overnight. His tech didn’t just wipe itself, either.”
“I’m not disagreeing, but Zephyr is dead. We don’t have a complete list of his contacts yet. We have nothing except the gaping hole in our security plugged.”
“This case isn’t over.”
“What do you want me to tell you, chief? Our programmers are reviewing the patch you delivered for the BIRD. Since it breaks Zephyr’s trap but doesn’t delete it, his partner might assume he hasn’t been caught. We might still have a chance to catch him. In the meantime, we’ll just have to work backward from Wilson’s bank accounts and figure out what he was up to that way. If he had a partner, we’ll find him.”
“I could help.”
“We don’t need that sort of help from you right now. My men can handle it,” he said. “We could use another kind of help, though. Chairwoman Wilson and her son will be ready for trial soon. We’re just waiting for the New Bristol High Council to convene. Since you sit on that council—”
Lila shuddered. “They’re my best friend’s family. I’m recusing myself, chief. The rest of the families will have to deal with it. I’ve hurt Alex enough.”
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have asked.” He cleared his throat. “You can tell Chairwoman Randolph that we’ve already contacted Burgundy and ensured that every Wilson account will be turned over to your family by court order. They stopped their bellyaching when they realized your mother gave birth to several of the prime minister’s children. I’ll send the chairwoman a message when I find out more information.”
“She’ll appreciate that.” Lila drained her mug of chocolate. “Call if you need any extra blackcoats, chief.”
Lila stood, but she had not made it two steps from her chair before Shaw called her back. “Wait,” he said, rubbing at his mustache again. “Have you turned on the news this morning?”
She raised her brow and sat back down. Her stomach pretzeled as her mind rushed back to Reaper’s news story.
Perhaps it hadn’t only been on his server.
“Something happened last night. I figured that I should be the one to tell you, to… Oracle’s light, I don’t know.” He scrolled through his palm and slid it across his desk.
A video had frozen. Lila touched the screen to let it play.
Peter Kruger stood before the capitol in Vienna, dwarfed by the Emperor’s Palace. In rusty German, he claimed that he had shot the American prime minister’s eldest daughter and bombed Bullstow for the glory of the mighty Holy Roman Empire. He’d then stowed away on a barge headed for the homeland. He spoke so quickly that she could barely read each English caption before it disappeared.
When he finished his speech, a large crowd cheered around the newest member of the aristocracy, the king’s elder half-brother returned home.
The rightful king. The rightful emperor.
Lila wondered how long Peter would last. King Lukas had not yet released a statement, and the men surrounding Peter were known critics of the crown. At best, he’d be a slave again, a pawn to bored and bloody aristocrats.
Perhaps he knew and didn’t care. He’d been a pawn to the same sort in America all his life. At least now he wouldn’t have to clean the bathrooms.
“I’m sorry, Chief Randolph. I’m sorry he got away.” Chief Shaw looked at her as though he held a glued-together vase.
But Lila had known the vase would be broken.
Tristan had called, asking for her permission. The plan was good. Peter had wanted to leave the Allied Lands, and had been overjoyed that Lila had forgiven him and given him her blessing. He even agreed to claim responsibility for the bombing, knowing it wouldn’t hurt his reputation in Germany. Tristan had told him plenty of details about it. He’d even given Peter a few AAS flyers before burning the rest at the shop. Then he’d left the rest of the nitro so that the militia could find it after Peter’s confession.
Tristan had not been sorry to see the explosives go. He’d told her that he didn’t have a use for the stuff any longer. The violence of the Wilson mob had tempered his excitement for armed rebellion. A child had died in the fighting, a consequence he had never before considered.
He finally understood the tragedy of causalities.
Peter had shaken hands on their agreement, vowing to drop the nitro’s location into his speech. He claimed it was the least he could do, for no one had ever done anything to help him before, not in his entire life. His only request was that Tristan keep Maria safe while he tested the ice in Germany.
Tristan had done him one better. He’d promised to try and recover Oskar as well.
Deep down, Lila knew they weren’t helping him. Not really. She’d offered halfhearted counsel, asking him to stay, but Peter wouldn’t hear of it. Like Oskar, he’d spent his entire life dreaming of going home to Germany. He was merely being cautious. He was merely setting up a place for his children to live.
He was walking into a devil’s trap.
Perhaps if Peter had not tried to murder her, Lila might have spent more time persuading him. And she couldn’t silence the thought, deep down inside, that Peter’s return would shake up the empire and would waste a great deal of King Lukas’s energy and focus.
There was still a war, even if there was a lull in the hostilities.
“It’s not your fault, Chief Shaw. My own militia couldn’t find the man. I should have put more blackcoats on it. I thought discretion would be a better way of handling it. I was wrong.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I doubt he stayed in New Bristol for very long. I still find it hard to believe that a slave bombed that law office, though. From what I’ve heard, the man can barely read.”
“He doesn’t need to know how to read to set off a bomb. Besides, look how wrong I was about Patrick Wilson.”
“True. He also has information that we did not put in our official reports. He couldn’t have gotten it any other way. I don’t know why it’s bugging me so much.”
“Because you’re ignoring the help he had carrying it out. He didn’t act alone. I doubt he did anything but watch.”
Chief Shaw slumped in his chair. “Yes, according to Peter, we’ve had German spies in New Bristol this whole time, and we didn’t even know it.”
“I doubt his conspirators were German spies. I suspect Zephyr hired them to hide something for the chairwoman and her son. That’s why you can’t find the others. He probably bused them back to wherever they came from the moment they were finished.”
“I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse.”
“It is what it is,” she said. “You can waste time shooting up the chairwoman and her son with truth serum, but I doubt they knew what Zephyr had planned.”
“You think Zephyr bombed that law office?”
“I think he planned my attempted murder and called Peter in for the hit. Find out how that law office connects to the Wilsons, and you’ll have the evidence you’ll need to close that bombing case.”
Shaw studied her face. “What do you know?”
“Perhaps I was looking into Slack & Roberts as well, chief. Get a warrant for their records. Pay special attention to the files from the raid on Club 137 six months ago. You’ll want to look into the bank records of the two blackcoats involved while you’re at it. Do it quickly, please. Simon Wilson-Craft and the others who were caught in that disgrace of a raid shouldn’t be forced to spend another day in slavery. Besides, I owe Ms. Wilson the return of at least one member of her family, don’t you think?”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you
? You think the Wilsons had something to do with the bombing?”
“Something they said or did caused it. Of that, I’m absolutely certain,” she said, lying with the truth. “There won’t be any more bombings, chief. It was only a distraction.”
An hour later, Lila walked out of Shaw’s office after having made an official statement about Reaper for Shaw’s confidential files, files that only he and the prime minister had permission to access, files she couldn’t even hack into because Shaw didn’t keep them on the Bullstow network. She caught a taxi and gave the directions for the Randolph estate.
Halfway home, she had a change of heart. “Take me to Starfield Dry Cleaners.”
The grizzled old man in the front seat sucked his teeth, gave a heavy sigh, and did a sharp U-turn.
Lila settled into her seat as the taxi carried her toward East New Bristol, a block away from the mechanic shop.
She knew that she’d end up on Shippers Lane when she left that morning. She wasn’t actually due in the security office until the afternoon, and she’d brought along her hood and extra cab fare. She’d worn nothing with identifiable Randolph markings or colors as well.
She’d done it all for a reason.
She’d had a lot of time to think since the riot.
Lila disembarked from the taxi and walked to the mechanic’s shop, sliding the hood over her face as she rounded the corner.
Samantha spied Lila the minute she came into view. She poked the brim of her derby hat, lifting it slightly in greeting, and hopped out of her chair next to the dock door. “Hey, Hood.”
“Hey, Samantha.”
“I’ll take you up.”
Samantha must have had several cups of coffee during the night, for she bounced rather than walked. Dust coated the floors, and Lila wondered if Shirley and her team had made much progress on the trucks. All three frames still sat on cinder blocks in the middle of the garage. It looked as though they had not yet finished the sand blasting.
Tristan answered the door on the first knock, his t-shirt marred with a small splotch of green paint. “Is something wrong with—”
He stopped at the sight of Lila, the dark circles under his eyes almost like bruises on his pale face, his eye still ugly and black from Dixon’s fist. “Thanks, Samantha.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, not budging.
“Goodbye, Samantha. Go check on Maria.”
“Great. You’re pawning me off on babysitting duty. Hood, keep him from sandpaper, hammers, and paintbrushes for five minutes, will you? He’s driving us all crazy.”
“Shut up, Samantha,” Tristan called out as she clomped downstairs. He bit his thumbnail and jerked his head toward his apartment. “Come in.”
Lila tugged off her hood and stepped inside the room. It looked as though a hurricane had hit the apartment, a hurricane of slaves who suffered from massive OCD. Everything in the room had been scrubbed and polished and repaired, and every wall had been prepped to paint. Even the knob-shaped hole behind the door had been fixed. She peeked back into the hall and noticed that the window had been fixed. The baseboards had also been repaired and scrubbed and painted green, one of Dixon’s favorite colors.
“It looks nice,” she said, tossing her hood and coat on the counter.
“Things have been a mess. I let them go too long.” He paced around the room and gestured to one of the couches.
Lila ignored him. She peered into Dixon’s room, but the bed hadn’t been slept in. All his posters and flags had been removed, leaving sad, barren walls. They’d also been prepped for paint.
“Doc wanted to keep an eye on him downstairs. He seems okay, just tired and sleeping a lot. Can’t keep anything down, either. He writes that he feels okay, but I suspect he’s just trying to—”
“Get you to relax?”
“I don’t need to relax.”
“Yes, you do. You’re worried about your brother.”
He dropped his hands to sides. “Dixon’s fine.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, sounds like it.”
“Sometimes I clean.”
“And bite your nails?” She gathered up his hands and looked at his fingertips, wincing at how close they’d been cut. “And paint?”
“Dixon’s been complaining that there’s no color in here for ages. He says that it’s too boring.” Tristan pulled away. He marched over to a few canisters on the ground and started lining them up. “I’m doing the main room in purple, then I’m going to do his room. I bought a ton of tacky colors. Which do you think? I thought it could be a surprise for when he gets back. I could do each wall in a different color, or maybe even stripes. I’m kind of curious if a room can be too colorful for him.”
“Is the hall window a surprise as well?”
“No, it just needed… That’s how you came in the other day,” he said, spinning around. “You jumped across.” His eyes went from amused to worried in a split second. “What on earth were you—”
“Don’t worry. You’ve fixed it. I’ll have to find another way in the next time I want to be a brat.”
“How are your hands?” he asked, biting his thumbnail again. “I thought you said they were fine. They’re all wrapped up.”
“It’s just a few stitches, Tristan. I can’t ride my Firefly for a few weeks, but I’ll be fine.”
“That looks like more than a few stitches. What about your neck?”
“It’s fine.”
“I was worried.” He stepped in close and put his arms around her. He held on a little too long, and he knew it. “I’m like the silly boy at the vineyard now.”
Lila didn’t let him pull away. She smelled whiskey, his soap, the smell that covered his sheets and clothes. She closed her eyes and held him around the waist, leaning her head upon his shoulder, breathing him in. “Everything’s okay, Tristan. You’re fine. Dixon is fine. I’m fine. All of your people are fine.”
“How is any of this fine? I told you that you’d be okay, and you almost died. Reaper had a knife at your throat.” Tristan’s heart beat faster and faster against her chest. “Dixon…”
“Dixon is okay.”
Tristan pulled away from her arms and backed against the wall. He thrust his fists in his pockets as though he didn’t know where to put his hands. “No, he’s not. I chose, Lila. Reaper raised that knife, and I chose.”
“Chose?”
His gaze strayed to the heater. “If that had been poison, I would have lost my brother.”
“You didn’t choose. You didn’t have time to think. Reaper was going to hurt someone, and you acted.”
“No, he wasn’t going to hurt someone. He was going to hurt you.”
“Tristan—”
“I didn’t just act. I thought. I decided. I chose, knowing what could happen. I chose you, and I don’t know if Dixon is ever going to forget that.”
Lila frowned. “Did he say something?”
“He hasn’t said anything, but he knows. He’s got to understand what I did, what I—”
“Tristan.” She touched his arm, but he batted it away.
“I have to get the place fixed up for him. It’s a shithole.”
“Do you regret it? Would you take it back if you could? Would you have let Reaper stab me?”
“Oracle’s light, no.”
She grabbed his waist, insistently this time, and slid her arms back around him. “Then stop.”
After several seconds, he sighed, loud and long, and dropped his head to her shoulder. “I killed him, Lila.”
“You saved my life.”
“I see him. I close my eyes, and I see him. That look.”
“He loaded that gun. He did it to himself.” Lila cupped his cheek. “Tristan, when’s the last time you got any sleep?”
/>
“I’m not tired.”
“If you can’t remember, then it’s been too long.” She grabbed his hand, leading him to his room. He stood at the door awkwardly while she turned down his bed. “You need to sleep.”
“I’m not tired,” he said again.
“Fine. Stand there and watch me, then.” Lila kicked off her work boots and lifted her sweater over her head, tossing it on the dresser. The strap of her undershirt slid off her shoulder, and she slipped in between his sheets.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve been up for days, catching up on reports, dealing with the Wilson estate, and coding a patch for Bullstow. I’m not due back in the security office until this afternoon, and I could use a nap,” she said, placing her palm on the dresser. “Are you in or not?”
Tristan looked back at the paint cans in the living room.
“It will all still be there when you wake up, Tristan. All of it.”
He stepped into the room at last, his t-shirt joining her sweater on the dresser.
Keep reading for a preview of the next book in the series: The Lost of New Bristol, ready for release on December 4, 2016!
Chapter 1
The only flaw in Lila’s plan was Tristan.
Again.
She cast a not-so careless eye toward the LeBeau militia gathered at the base of the auction house stairs. The dozen women and men tugged at the collars of their formal uniforms, the sweaty fabric chafing in the muggy afternoon. The LeBeau coat of arms, a scorpion with its stinger poised to strike, had been stitched in lavender on the breast of their summer-weight blackcoats, cut in ankle-length cotton rather than leather. The group chugged bottles of ice water, a balm against the late October heat wave, and fanned their coats to reveal tranq guns underneath. One of the militia whispered something. They all chuckled before separating once more to pace.
As the chief of her family’s militia, Lila had been party to such jokes for years. It was likely a barb against the paparazzi, or the so-called press behind the stanchions. Microphones in hand and cameras at the ready, they stood at attention while their flashing bulbs captured the scene. Of course, the joke might have been aimed at the heirs who flowed up the silver-carpeted stairs toward the auction house, wilting under their finery.
