“You can’t be done. I’m here to hire you.” He squeezed the grips on his Amazon, just as Shaw had worked at the doorknob the evening before.
“I’m not looking for work. With my dividends, I hardly need whatever paltry cash you could offer me.”
“I’m not offering cash. I’m offering you something better.”
“What could you possibly offer me that I can’t get for myself?”
“Chairwoman Wilson and her estate, a couple of decades early,” he said, smirking when her eyes widened. “I thought that might interest you. Go get changed.”
Lila considered Tristan, considered the amount of trouble he might get her into with this latest ploy, considered whether or not she could trust him.
The answer was simple. She couldn’t.
It couldn’t hurt to hear him out, though. Chairwoman Wilson’s estate would bring in hundreds of millions of credits for the Randolph family, not to mention what it could do to the New Bristol economy if the businesses had proper management—her family’s management.
Even better, her mother would be far too busy with the changeover to talk of senators and babies and the season.
Intrigued, Lila did as he bid.
Chapter 9
Lila followed Tristan into East New Bristol and turned onto Shippers Lane, passing the Plum Luck Dragon, which now bore a Closed until Eleven sign behind the glass.
They stopped next door to the restaurant in front of a run-down gray brick structure. The five-story building seemed slightly ou
t of place in a slum, for the windows on the top floor arched so expansively that they would have fit nicely in a gothic cathedral. The ones on the other floors imitated them like a baby brother emulating his elder. Someone had nailed a piece of weathered plywood over the busted window near the front door. It had been tagged by graffiti dilettantes, rather than artists, with one of them stenciling a red phoenix in the corner. Above the plywood, a neon sign spelled out Mechanic. Half the letters had dimmed or cracked. Only the M remained whole.
A familiar man with a shaved head sat on a little wooden chair in front of the unfamiliar shop. He balanced on the back two legs, bouncing a green ball the size of his fist, and a purple scarf covered his neck. Before Tristan had even stopped the bike, Dixon hopped to his feet. He tugged on the handle of the steel dock door at the front of the building, allowing it to roll up into the ceiling.
The entire first floor had been hollowed out as a working repair shop. The sign out front had not been mere cover. Tristan rode his Amazon inside, stopping behind several new trucks. All were black Cruz N-47s.
Lila followed him inside, the oil and grease covering the smells next door. She parked her Firefly near a jumble of other cars and motorcycles, many rusted and likely dead. They were so tightly packed that only the most careful driver might untangle one from another. Tool benches and shelves sat along one wall, everything neatly packed in its place.
Lila traded her helmet for a mesh hood and threaded her way through the Cruz trucks toward the front of the shop, pulling her workborn peacoat around herself more tightly.
Two men in their early twenties bent over the frame of a Barracuda, unscrewing rather important-looking parts from the motorcycle, a hushed string of curses flowing freely between them. An old woman dressed in coveralls and a brown coat supervised them from a workbench, underneath a sign that read Clean Up or Suffer. She adjusted her bifocals and squinted at a piece of thick tubing in her hands. Several of her fingers and part of an ear were missing.
“Hello, Hood,” she said, her voice more crotchety grandmother than criminal mastermind. She didn’t look up from her work.
“Hello, Shirley. Hiding the evidence, I see.”
“You’re one to talk. You ever going to tell me who you stole that bike from?”
Lila shrugged.
“Let me know if it needs a repaint. My boys work fast. I’ll even cut you a deal. Course, my prices—”
One of the men dropped the Barracuda’s gas tank. Its echo boomed in the metal shop. “Sorry, Shirley,” he said instantly, chasing after it.
“I’ll let you know about that repaint.”
Lila turned and followed Tristan, who had moved toward a door at the back of the shop. “You weren’t eating your dinner last night, were you? You were here the entire time.”
“I was eating dinner. I just wasn’t eating at the Plum Luck Dragon.”
“You moved for the food, didn’t you?”
“No, it didn’t hurt, though,” he admitted, pulling open the door. He turned and started up a narrow flight of stairs.