Stolen Lies (Fates of the Bound 2)

“I told them to hang back until the idiot stopped talking. Then all I heard were gunshots.”

Tristan clenched his teeth. “Toxic, next time we have sixty people ready to rush in and save us, you let them do that, okay?”

“Okay. I’ll tell the other teams to meet up at your location.”

“Good. Have them meet us in the field behind the warehouse. Tell Gwen to start up the fireworks. We don’t need anyone to get suspicious and take a closer look.”

“Already done.”

“Good. Then I need you to make a new AAS flyer. Print up as many as you can.”

“Wait, what?” Toxic asked. “I don’t even know what was on the first one.”

“That’s why it has to be you. Don’t dig up the file for the old one. It can’t look or sound the same. It needs to read like someone copying Peter. Print it on the new paper we bought, and wear gloves. No prints. Tell Shirley to fetch the nitro from the hotel. She has another job.”

“No,” Lila said quietly.

“What?” Tristan dropped his palm to his thigh. He knelt beside her chair, wiping her cheek with his thumb. “We can get it easily. Bullstow’s been too busy to look for it.”

“No, you’re not going to blow something else up.” In her mind, Lila saw bodies exploding. Not just those of the dead, but the bodies of the tranqed.

“This is war. What else can we do? We’ll print off every blueprint we can find of the oracle’s compound, then blow this warehouse to ashes. We could even fake Maria and Oskar’s deaths, make everyone believe that they were killed in the blast. Shaw will get the idea of what they were planning, all the kids will be safe, and none of them—”

Lila shook her head. “I’ll not let you be that person. We’re already drowning. If you do this, we’ll never touch the bottom.”

“Drowning?” Tristan squeezed one of her hands and fumbled with his palm. “Toxic, delay my previous order. Just have everyone meet in the field, you got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

He disconnected and slid his palm into his pocket, then flipped on the jammer in her pocket. “They saw you, Lila. They did this to themselves. I’ll not let them reveal your identity under the serum. I need to

protect you. I need to protect—”

“There are more important things. You kill these men now, and no one knows anything. We need to know what the empire is planning, Tristan, not just what they told us while I was stalling. We need real information. We need the truth serum.”

“You want me to drop them off at Bullstow’s front gate? That’s not happening.”

“No. I want to call the oracle.”

His eyes widened.

“The woman could put a bullet in all of us, confess to Chief Shaw, and still go home for dinner. We partner with her on this one. This is the oracles’ fight, anyway. More theirs than ours, that’s for sure. They should get a say, and it’s more than my father will give them.”

He fixed his gaze upon the sleeping children. “Okay. Fine. We’ll see what she wants to do, but I’m not agreeing to anything. Not yet.”

Lila took out her palm, still numb, her brain barely chugging along. She didn’t need much of it, though, for her call was short. Lila had barely said hello before the oracle interrupted her.

“Are they okay?”

“Yes.”

The oracle breathed a sigh of relief. “I just need the address.”

Lila gave it.

In the front of the room, Maria knelt beside her drugged brother. She’d snatched up Oskar’s hand and brushed her lips upon the back of it.

Oskar dozed on, lost and oblivious to the world.