Today, the room smelled of vanilla.
“I trust our friends from Bullstow have been escorted out?” Lila said, after a curt hello.
“Yes, madam, though I do not understand why you wished to let them inside at all. Their paperwork was sketchy at best.”
“It was in the best interests of the family. Where was our militia? I didn’t see an escort.”
“You’ve grown soft after your vacation. I had them stationed along the route in plain clothes.”
“Clever. I had not thought of that.”
“It’s nice that I can still impress you from time to time.”
“It’s why I made you the new chief. So few do.”
Sutton inclined her head at the compliment. “Should I contact you if they call back?”
“Trust me. They won’t. Chief Shaw will be contacting you instead. You are to follow his instructions, whatever they are.”
“Bullstow, madam?” Sutton asked in surprise. “I thought we were done with them.”
“We’re never done with Bullstow.” Lila sighed as she left the commander’s office.
She retrieved her tainted palm, then started back across the compound, immediately putting Muller and Davies out of her mind. She had parried La Roux’s first attack, but she was not sure what his counter would be.
Lila had other pieces in play, though.
When she entered the great house moments later, she asked Isabel to bring up a plate of sandwiches and fruit as she “had been put off her lunch.” She hoped the flimsy excuse was enough for La Roux. She had left Wolf Tower immediately after seeing the militia out, not pausing in her duties to have lunch with her mother. It was not as if the chairwoman had been expecting her, but she would have certainly found out that the Bullstow militia had been in Wolf Tower.
Lila was not looking forward to that conversation.
She nibbled on a sandwich in the study room, wishing she’d been able to plant a bug on Muller or Davies or in the men’s cruiser. Such an act would be for entertainment, rather than for information, though. La Rou
x had likely been listening in on their interrogation, and he would have seen her text to Shaw. He wouldn’t risk exposing himself by contacting them again soon.
Alex tried to engage her in conversation when she came to take her meal away, but Lila shrugged her off, eschewing all details from the previous night. “I know why you’re so grumpy,” the slave whispered slyly. “You think that horrible woman came by last night and took away all your clothes, but you’re wrong.”
Alex put her finger up to her mouth and backed out of the room. She emerged several moments later, struggling under the weight of two trash bags. “I offered to help, you see. Actually, I offered to do it for her. I even offered to burn all these horribly unfashionable rags. At least, that’s what she called them. The woman was overjoyed to have a slave do her bidding for the evening.”
Lila leapt from Pax’s chair and hugged Alex harder than she ever had before. The scent of honeysuckle and her friend’s arms overwhelmed her.
“You’re the best,” she said, kneeling over the bags, stroking all her old things, unsure where she’d put them. She couldn’t exactly hang them in her closet, for Isabel or Ms. O’Malley would notice, and she had no more space in her secret compartment.
Alex bowed, then took the tray of sandwiches and scampered away.
Lila took a break from scheming and dragged the bags into her room. Unsure what else to do, she hung her uniformed blackcoats in the closet and folded the rest of her clothes, hiding most of them in her fairly empty dresser.
She then changed into a pair of trousers and a militia tank, the same clothes that she usually wore for combat training, the same clothes that had excited Tristan so often. Now that she was dressed comfortably, she returned to the study room and spent the rest of the afternoon on her spare laptop, struggling to tie La Roux and the Baron together.
She also dug into the people he’d trapped within his web, finding more compromised heirs and senators. It was no wonder she’d never found much evidence against Reaper. There was little to find. Reaper had never been the brains behind the operation. As she’d suspected, he was just a hacker La Roux had caught and bent to his will, forcing the man to turn against his clients.
How many highborn had La Roux compromised over the years through people like Reaper? How many had he fed false information? How many ears did he whisper helpful advice into, advice that might have been heeded time and time again, as he’d done with Celeste and Patrick Wilson? How many cat’s paws did La Roux have among the heirs and the senate, using favors piled upon favors, layered under a blanket of blackmail to advance his career?
Was that how La Roux had been elected to Beaulac in the first place?
Was that how Dubois had stayed in New Bristol for so long?
Were they partners or not?