“They added gasoline and a few other chemicals to the mix. It was a precise explosion, professional, but it was designed to look far worse and far cruder.”
“If it was made to look far worse, then they could have made the explosion worse if they’d wanted to. Did you trace the source of the nitroglycerin?”
“That’s about all we’ve been able to do. We tracked it to Weberly Demolitions. The family had a break-in several months ago. They don’t have any leads. The thieves were in and out just like with the bombing. We’re taking another look.”
“What about your security cameras around Bullstow?”
“The footage is all gone. A virus wiped out the recordings. We requested the security footage from the lowborn businesses around the compound, but every single one went down the night before the blast. Someone paid a group of children to knock the cameras out, but the kids couldn’t say who had given them the money. The man just walked up to them out of the blue with instructions written on a piece of paper and gave them half the money up front. They hit the cameras and came back for the other half. Then he simply walked away.”
“Identifiers?”
“None. He wore a hood over his face, black trousers, plain gray coat, black boots. He never spoke, so they wouldn’t even recognize the sound of his voice. There was absolutely nothing interesting or out of place that they could identify. We caught him on a camera a block away, but he ducked inside a building and never came out again. Search turned up nothing. He just disappeared.”
Lila didn’t believe for a second that the man had simply disappeared. He’d likely escaped by climbing onto the roof.
Dixon enjoyed making such escapes.
“Tech is looking at the virus. Perhaps you’d give it a look too. See what you see?”
“Sure,” Lila said. “That’s why you thought I had something to do with it, then? Because of the virus?”
“I know that you’re not the only hacker in Saxony, chief. I’ll admit that I was grasping when I realized you’d been there, but I have nothing. My men are out in the city right now, asking slaves to turn on an organization whose sole purpose is to free them, asking servants to do the same. A third of the workborn have a family member serving a slave’s term. I’m not numb to the futility of it, especially when they do not understand why we are asking, but I have to do what I can. These fanatical types never stop at one. They might not have hurt anyone this time, but they’ll grow bolder and bolder until they do. It’ll be my head when that happens for keeping it from the press.”
Lila couldn’t help but wonder if Shaw was correct. What if Tristan did strike again somewhere else in the city?
If she turned him into Shaw later, would Tristan flip on her? Would he tell the chief that she’d sat in his office and pretended not to know who had been behind the bomb? Would he smirk at her again, just like he’d smirked at her outside the Plum Luck Dragon?
Perhaps it didn’t matter what he wanted to say or what he didn’t. As soon as Shaw used the truth serum, Tristan would talk. He wouldn’t have a choice. Once the drug hit his system, he’d feel like a drunk wanting to confide in his best friend, only the pull would feel a thousand times stronger. He’d spill everything; everyone did under the serum.
But so far, Shaw had nothing. Zilch. That one fact might be enough to delay her father, perhaps even convince him to overlook Tristan’s transgression.
Lila looked Shaw in the eye. “What else can you do? If you talk to the press before you know more, it will only cause a panic.”
“All I can do is hope for a lead. Someone, somewhere knows who these AAS people are. There are rats in every organization. We just have to offer up enough cheese.”
He slid a packet across his desk. Inside she found the rest of her things, things she had been forced to surrender as soon as she entered the Bullstow holding area.
“At least the bomb covered up your activities, else we would be having a very different conversation. Why are you dressed like that, anyway?”
“Meeting with spies.” She grinned innocently. “As unseemly as it is, it’s perfectly legal.”
“Fake plates aren’t. See that it doesn’t happen again,” he said. “You should probably ditch the bike in East New Bristol, anyway. Half the highborn in the city own one, as well as the richer lowborn. It marks you as one of them the moment you ride up on it.”
“No, it marks me as a damn good thief.”
An hour later, Shaw cleared her to leave, the virus saved on a fresh star drive in her pocket. She dodged a few men and boys wandering the grounds in impeccably tailored coats and breeches and stepped across the street toward her waiting cab.
Her taxi driver barreled back toward the Plum Luck Dragon and her Firefly. Shaw had apologized that Sergeant Holguín had failed to make arrangements for it. They both knew the neighborhood. Lila didn’t have much hope that it would still be there.
When her taxi rounded the corner, she wasn’t surprised that her Firefly and her helmet had disappeared.
Chapter 8
Lila’s stomach woke her several hours before her alarm. She stuffed her head under her pillow, doggedly unwilling to venture out from her warm bed to feed it.
Her belly insisted again only a few moments later, growling. She’d barely had breakfast or lunch the day before, and she’d been too angry about Tristan, her near-arrest, and her stolen Firefly to remember dinner.
As four o’clock in the morning was too early for Chef to have anything prepared, she sat at her computer and worked her way through a packet of stale cookies, reviewing the output of several searches she had left running overnight.