The officer quieted on the other end of the line.
“No comment, sergeant? Fine. Here’s mine. The only thing I’m concerned about this morning is keeping my family’s rights protected from very vague accusations. You’ll not get any logins from me without a damn good reason.”
“Your rights are not at risk,” Sergeant Davies grumbled, his veneer of professionalism slipping. “We can get a judge’s order. I was extending the opportunity as a professional courtesy. Warrants tend to be intercepted and misinterpreted by the media so easily these days. Ask the Holguíns how much a scandal can cost a family.”
“You let me worry about that. Bring me a warrant and a reason for wanting the list before you trouble me again.”
“As you wish,” he said curtly, and disconnected.
Acting on instinct, Lila searched for his contact information in Bullstow’s official directory. As a member of the government militia, he should have given Sutton his office line.
The hit she received did not surprise her. The number hadn’t come from Bullstow.
Chapter 9
The garage door opened with a creaking rumble in the quiet morning. At least a dozen cars had been parked in two rows, half classics, half new. Lila ignored them and slipped her leg over a silver motorcycle parked on the end. Her Firefly glinted in the beams of the early morning light. Drawing out her palm, she pulled up her snoop programs and waved the device over the bike. It beeped, signaling that a GPS chip had been tucked away in the seat cowl. It beeped again as she waved it over the front fairing, alerting her to an audio bug.
Lila picked them both from her Firefly as if they were chunks of vomit, her face crinkling in disgust, and thumped them across the garage. Her mother’s spies had been at it again.
Once Lila judged her bike to be free of bugs and GPS, she popped her helmet over her head, tugged on a pair of riding gloves, flexed her mostly healed fingers, and sped out of the compound, dodging the few early risers on their way to the bullet train or their offices in the northern half of the estate.
Nodding to Sergeant Hill at the gatehouse, she zipped through the southern entrance and turned toward downtown. The streets were thankfully free of fog, and few people were out so early in the morning. It made Lila feel more confident on the motorcycle. Though she loved the Firefly and enjoyed how powerful it made her feel to ride it, the one embarrassing consequence of riding the bike was when she occasionally tipped the damn behemoth on the street and needed help righting it before she could go farther.
Crowds tended to laugh at heirs in distress, even unofficial ones, and they rarely did anything to alleviate the problem. The only balm was a few well-placed bribes, which Lila had waiting in her pocket.
Resolving not to tip the motorcycle when few people were around to take her cash, Lila flexed her legs and rode on to her destination, squirming a bit on the seat as it roughly vibrated the soreness between her legs and her belly.
Perhaps she should have taken her Adessi roadster instead.
As she was already halfway to her destination, Lila stubbornly rode on. She had never visited her doctor outside of the hospital. Helen did not live on the family estate like nearly every other Randolph in New Bristol. Instead, she chose to live among the poorer classes in a condo near the hospital. It was close enough to be convenient, but far enough away not to be chained to her work. She claimed that she needed to live downtown because the hospital called her out of bed at all hours to tend to patients, but Lila saw it for what it was—a bid for freedom away from the family and the hospital.
Lila respected it, and her, immensely.
As such, she would traverse the city without complaint. There were too many eyes and ears at the hospital, and since Helen’s workday did not begin until ten o’clock, they would have plenty of time to talk without interruption. Even if she asked questions the doctor did not want to answer, Lila trusted Helen to point her in the right direction. If there was one thing the doctor hated, it was subterfuge, which was why Lila’s mother would never control her.
It was also why Lila would never try.
She entered the condo’s parking lot and stopped in front of a building neither gleaming with its tidiness nor particularly grimy in its disarray. No trash littered the grounds or crumpled under her wheels, and the grass had not grown over the sidewalk. That was about all that the place had going for it. It must have been quite an adjustment for Helen after growing up inside the pristine walls of the Randolph estate.
Lila settled the Firefly quickly, giving herself plenty of room to turn the bike around again. She had barely stretched her leg over the seat when she heard furious barking in one of the condos, echoing off the windows. The beast made such a fuss that Lila feared it might wake the neighbors.
Certainly, Helen could not sleep through such an announcement.
Thin fingers pulled down the blinds on the first floor, then quickly snapped closed as Lila passed by, a shadow startled by her nearness. The barking only intensified when Lila climbed the stairs, and when she raised her hand to knock, she realized that the dog was on the other side of the door.
Lovely.
There was nothing like trying to have a conversation while being slobbered upon.
Helen answered the door in sweats and a robe that were both several sizes too large for her frame. Her natural gray hair was mussed. She possessed the oft-coveted silver hue that colorists promised their clients all over the commonwealth, even though the doctor was only a dozen years Lila’s senior. Even unbrushed, it moved like silk across her face.
A black Labrador sat next to the doctor and licked his nose with a short sigh, well behaved now that he had run out of any argument against Lila’s presence. His tail swung back and forth, mouth thankfully free of drool.
Helen took one look at her visitor and shook her head. “I should have expected to see someone like you today.”
“I’m sorry. I know you’re not well, but it is imp
ortant.”