She was an awful older sister.
Tristan pulled into an empty, crumbling parking lot near the shore of a lake. Several weathered picnic tables and benches had been scattered around the area, lying in pools of mud. “The vineyard is a kilometer up the road. I suggest we walk the rest of the way, unless you want to stroll in to the great house and ask for permission.”
“It’s best if no one knows I’m here. If you’re right and Chairwoman Wilson hears that I visited Simon a day after Slack & Roberts blew up, it might put him in danger.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Tristan opened the truck door. “It?
??s best if the friend who visits is a nobody like me. I doubt a manager would report that to either family.”
Lila buttoned her coat against the chill, and the pair strolled down the muddy road toward the vineyard, one side lined by stubby trees and rocks. Few cars drove by, and Lila turned her head toward the lake each time one passed as though fascinated by the water and the scattered rocks at the bottom, visible through the surface.
It wasn’t hard to pretend an interest. Lila had always been so busy, first with the hospital, then with the militia. She’d rarely even seen the lake, much less spent an entire day on it. She squinted at the boats prowling the water, filled with bundled families and fishing poles, the air punctuated with random shouts and random giggles. Lowborns, no doubt, with enough resources to afford a small vessel and a day off work to enjoy it.
The Randolphs probably didn’t own a boat. Not unless Jewel had bought one.
For the experience.
Lila rolled her eyes, patting her hip when her palm vibrated in her pocket. I’m glad, her father had written. I’m depending on you, Lila girl.
“Who was that?” Tristan asked grumpily.
“The prime minister.”
“Ah, is he sending you off somewhere to do more of his dirty work?”
“No, it was about my last job.” Lila slipped her palm into her pocket. “The work is far from dirty. There are things he can’t get Bullstow involved in and problems that they aren’t able to solve. Someone has to do it.”
“He uses you?”
“No one uses me.”
Tristan spun around to walk backward, studying her face. “Some father.”
“My father is a good man.”
“Fine. Convince me. What was this last job about? Why did he risk his eldest daughter’s reputation? Why did he need you to break into Bullstow when he has access to the whole network?”
Lila considered Tristan’s attitude, his silence on the way over. She had never told him much about the jobs her father sent her on, even when he was a part of them, and she didn’t want to trust him now with the knowledge. She settled on half knowledge, the only knowledge she ever gave him. “Someone has been bribing the highborn.”
Tristan cocked an eyebrow. “I figured that happens all the time.”
“It does, and usually they’re easy to ferret out and take to court. Every family militia has at least one person working bribery cases fulltime. Mine has three, and I might add a fourth.”
“It sounds like your family gets up to a great deal of trouble,” he said, glancing behind him. “So I’m assuming that sometimes these people aren’t so easy to find?”
“Impossible if the target has been up to something they shouldn’t have and refuses to come forward. That’s what happened in this case. We know people are being bribed, but none of them will cooperate with the investigation, not even to give us a name or a file. We can’t even use the serum against the victims. They haven’t done anything serious enough to warrant it. My father suspects that the culprit is a hacker who’s turned on her highborn clients. What’s odd is that the hacker managed to find a highborn who had never hired her, someone who should never have been on her radar. If the victim hadn’t gotten greedy and been busted for something else, we never would have known. Chief Shaw was able to use the serum on her, but in the end, it didn’t matter. She simply doesn’t know who is bribing her.”
“What was this highborn doing to get on the hacker’s radar?”
“Breaking into Bullstow and doing a horrible job of it. If my father was less of a prime minister, he might not have known what was going on, just like Governor Lecomte has no idea that his own government networks have been compromised.”
“So you’re saying that someone out there is doing my work for me? I hope you don’t catch them.”
Lila shoved Tristan into the empty road.
“What?” He chuckled. “You shouldn’t put yourself at risk to defend highborn criminals and their lackeys. Whoever is doing this is a patriot.”
“She isn’t a patriot. She’s a vigilante at best. At worst, she’s a bigger criminal than her victims. You can’t go around bribing people, Tristan, just like you can’t go around bombing them. That’s what we have a court system for.”