He looked away seconds later, his shoulders falling slightly.
“Muller?” Davies interrupted, annoyed by his partner’s paralysis. “Take us to your office, Chief Randolph. Now.”
His command and his grating voice pushed her too far.
The violin string snapped.
Slamming the door of the Red Lounge, Lila stalked to Sergeant Davies. “Did you even notice the sign above the reception desk? Visitors should have no expectation of privacy within this building. You gave your consent to both audio and video surveillance by continuing past the reception desk. Every room in this building is wired for it, including this one.”
“Even if that’s true, signs like that don’t always hold up in court.”
“No, occasionally, the courts are fussy, but you both agreed to the recording at the very beginning of this little charade. I think it will suffice.”
“So?”
“Let me make this abundantly clear, you dim little boy. You are caught out, and your partner has been around long enough to know when someone’s not bluffing. You should both be ashamed of yourselves, if not for your distinct lack of morals, then for your flaming ineptitude. If I take this tape to your superiors, do you think you’ll have a career afterward?”
“We have done nothing wrong. We’re just having a chat.”
“A chat without identifying yourself as officers? You left off your titles when you introduced yourselves. You also neglected to bring your badges and guns to this little meeting. I’ve read the Bullstow militia guidelines, you idiots. They aren’t so very different from our own. You can’t have a tranq or your badge on your person unless you’re on duty, but it’s not your fault if someone doesn’t realize that. You’ve been speaking to me as if you’re on the job this entire time. It’s sneaky, but I’ve seen that trick many times before, and I’ve seen it done much better.”
Davies shrugged. “It’s not our fault if you took something we said as—”
“Asking questions off duty without having a case number is one thing, but lying about having a warrant is in a different league altogether. You’ll lose your badges, and you know it. Someone must have claimed I had something pretty damning in my possession to even try it. Someone you trusted not to steer you wrong. Someone not in the militia, since you wouldn’t be able to use the evidence in court due to how you obtained it. I wonder who that could be?” Lila crossed her arms over her chest and stared at them expectantly.
“We’re going to find out what you’ve done. Whether you take us before the captain or—”
“Your captain?” Lila chuckled. “Do you honestly think I would bother talking to him when I have the ear of your chief? I suppose your captain is on the payroll, too?”
Muller’s eyes tracked to his partner.
“Someone picked you, claiming they were digging for evidence against the Randolph family. Did they claim the case would revitalize your partner’s stalled career? Did they say it would make up for that nasty wreck you had after all those beers at dinner? I did my research long before you stopped by. I know your recent difficulties. All you had to do to make it all go away was playact a little. Poke at me so that I would think that Bullstow had an ongoing case. Eventually, you’d get the evidence, or so your puppet master claimed. But he’s either burned you before, or you decided to be clever this time. I’m not sure who is dumber, your master for trusting you so much or the pair of you for trying to double-cross him. I suppose you thought you had an out. If you were brought up on charges, then you’d simply hand over the evidence to your matrons, returning to your families as heroes. It must have sounded like a brilliant plan when you thought of it. Were you drunk at the time?”
Muller bit the side of his cheek, and Lila knew the answer. They didn’t even have that excuse to fall back on.
“I suppose you thought that whatever evidence you found would make up for being cast out of Bullstow, but you didn’t understand that you were being used. There’s nothing here but one highborn batting at another, and you fell for it. You’re nothing more than a cat’s paw, spent in a game that you are not even a part of.”
Davies’s face twisted at the slight.
“I’m guessing that your lunch break will end soon, gentlemen, and you’ll need to get back to work. The next time you come to this estate, make sure that you have a case number and Bullstow’s blessing before you try to question me, or I’ll have you both fired for gross stupidity and brought up on charges. I still might. Perhaps it will be the Park family who will kick the Holguíns off the front page.”
Davies lunged.
His partner tugged him back.
Lila stepped away from the men, disguising her shock as best she could. “I would have expected nothing less from a man parading in his betters’ clothes.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Sergeant Muller said, all bravado deflated from his body. He pulled the still-fuming Davies from the room.
Lila sent a message to Chief Shaw on her tainted palm, knowing he would reply in the affirmative to anything she sent him, exactly as she’d directed him to do after she’d called her father. Let us have lunch tomorrow. I have something to discuss.
Let the Baron chew on that.
Chapter 23
Leaves crinkled under Lila’s boots as she marched down the gravel trail through the estate. The smell of damp leaves filled her nose, and the roses on either side of the path bowed in the wind. Even at half past twelve, fog still slipped around the buildings, obscuring much of the world around her. The people on the compound seemed nothing more than little bursts of red.
Lila entered the security office and abandoned the tainted palm on her desk before crossing into Sutton’s office. The commander had never gotten around to decorating, choosing instead to let Lila’s interior designer give her office the same treatment. The only difference was that Sutton had a dozen framed pictures of her husband, children, and grandchildren spread out along the tops of several filing cabinets. She’d also clogged every outlet in the room with electric scent diffusers. Sutton pipped in a new scent every day.