Barren Vows (Fates of the Bound 3)

“She’s practically your new partner. You have to coexist peacefully with your partner even when they’re a pain in the ass.”

“Was I a pain the ass?”

Lila winked. “I’ll be along this weekend to clean out my office. I’ll have to leave it boxed up for a bit until it’s official.”

“One office is as good as another. Take your time, madam.”

“Madam?” Lila grumbled, stopping before the garage. “Has it really come to that? I’m to be madamed to death?”

“Literally. You’ll be on your deathbed at eighty years old, and some young doctor—”

“Eighty? I’m to die at eighty?”

“Eighty is respectable.”

“So is ninety!”

“So is a hundred.” Sutton gave an overly exaggerated bow, her blackcoat rustling and fluttering in the wind. “I will message you if Bullstow calls again.”

The commander gave a stiff nod, turned, and headed toward the security office.

Lila wished she could follow.

Instead, she pulled out the slip of paper as Sutton’s footsteps receded on the gravel. The calls from Davies could have been a coincidence. Bullstow’s tech department might have asked him to do them a favor. They might have asked him to fetch some small piece of information before they informed Chief Shaw of her hack. But Lila didn’t believe in coincidences, and it didn’t seem likely that they would have asked a man outside their department for assistance.

Another explanation seemed fa

r more plausible, now that her mind had cleared from the fog of wine and anesthesia. She had rattled the blackmailer by stealing into BullNet again. She had been seen. And Sergeant Davies had found himself a new employer, only a few weeks after being disciplined by his superiors for the very same thing.

Or perhaps he and Muller had worked for Reaper’s partner all along, rather than Reaper. Whoever had found her in the BIRD that night had gone by the name Zephyr. But what if she’d been wrong in assuming that Reaper and Zephyr had been the same person? Reaper had boasted he was Zephyr, but only after she’d pressed him.

Just because he’d claimed to be Zephyr, didn’t mean he was.

Reaper had never been that great a hacker, anyway. What if the real hacker still lurked in New Bristol?

Lila punched Davies’s contact information into her palm.

“Sergeant Davies,” he answered, voice honeyed with the highborn drawl.

Bullstow had served the lowborn well.

“This is Chief Randolph. My commander informs me that you have twice demanded a list of my family’s logins.”

“That is correct,” he said with barely contained amusement.

“Do you understand how irregular that is?”

“Bullstow has asked such things before.”

“Asking and receiving are two different things, sergeant. Would you mind telling me why you’d like the list?”

“Yes, I would mind.”

There was a pause. Lila expected him to offer up something besides smug arrogance, but she received nothing but silence. “How many other families have assented to this highly illegal and evasive demand?”

“We’re not looking at other families. We’re looking at yours. I assumed that as chief, you would be concerned about illegal activity within the Randolph household. I assumed you would want Bullstow to resolve the matter quickly and quietly.”

“What matter? What illegal activity?”