“You would.”
Lila ignored Tristan and scrolled through the transaction history of the other account. She needed more time to dig through the information, and she had a nagging feeling that she was missing something. “Look, I held up my end of the bargain. I found data linking Chairwoman Wilson to Slack & Roberts, even though it doesn’t prove much. I need to get home now, though. It’s late.”
“What do you mean it doesn’t prove much?” Tristan said. “It’s proof that money—”
“I already told you. It’s not illegal to give money to a few blackcoats for helping out an estate. Any decent lawyer can argue that away. Besides, if they tried to arrest Chairwoman Wilson for having a fake bank account in Burgundy, even if Liberté chose to assist them at their game, they’d have to arrest half the highborn and lowborn elites in the Allied Lands. It’s suspicious, but it’s nothing unusual.”
“So then we break into her compound. We search her office and find—”
“You mean we jump in feet first and hope for the best?”
Tristan balled his hands into fists.
“How about we do something else first?” she said.
“What?”
“Speak with—”
A whistle cut through the air downstairs.
Chapter 16
Lila slapped down the lid of her laptop, shoved it into her satchel, and joined Tristan at the window. Downstairs, a cruiser with the Wilson-Kruger coat of arms parked half on the street, half on the sidewalk. The militia lights gleamed on its roof, spinning white and gold, white and gold.
The driver cut the engine, and two blackcoats hopped out. The women put their hands on their hips, fingers grazing their revolvers. The pair stared up at Chaucer’s Ghost suspiciously.
“Shit,” Tristan said as one of them pointed to the office. “They’ve seen the glow stick. Toxic, get up. Move!”
Toxic shot up from the floor, not waiting for further instructions. She jammed her laptop into a bag, flung it over her shoulder, and hurtled past Dixon. Lila cringed as the young woman raced down the stairs, her boots clomping against the cherry wood.
“It was the glow stick, right?” Tristan hissed.
“The glow sticks, Toxic’s job on the door, the truck in the alley, take your pick,” Lila whispered, racing downstairs after Toxic and Dixon, all three much quieter than the hacker. Lila straightened her hood and thrust the star drive into her bag. “Even if their techs saw me on the network, they wouldn’t be able to pinpoint my location.”
Tristan grabbed Toxic’s shoulder at the foot of the stairs. The group paused, peering through the green glow at the front door. One of the blackcoats grunted and kicked the wood. The chains strung through the handle clinked and thumped, holding the door in place. A thin beam of light shot through the cracks in the frame, shifting through the room like a searchlight.
The pigeons stopped cooing. Wings fluttered and slapped. New pools of white and gray struck the floor.
“Do we have a master key?” said a woman behind the door, her voice hard, yet strangely childish.
“We have a bolt cutter in the back of the truck.” Her partner snickered, words already shifting pitch as she stepped away to retrieve it.
Tristan turned Toxic toward the kitchens and gave her a shove, spurring the group toward the side exit. The green light went out behind them mid-flight as Tristan tucked the glow stick into his coat pocket.
Another rolled in the kitchen, back and forth near Frank’s body. There wasn’t enough light for Lila to see if he was breathing.
Toxic glanced back at Lila, jaw slack, her brown eyes wide and staring. She winced as one of the frustrated women kicked at the restaurant’s front doors.
Dixon brushed Toxic back, raised his scarf over his nose and mouth, and stepped over his comrade.
Pushing open the kitchen door, he functioned as the group’s canary, freezing in place almost immediately, telegraphing what was in the alley. His gun fell to the ground at his feet, and his hands shot into the air, two fingers raised.
Two fingers. Two people waiting.
Toxic didn’t care. It woke something in the young woman, seeing a glimpse of the world, and that something didn’t pay attention to Dixon’s raised arms.
Lila lunged for her, fiercely clasping one electric-blue sleeve, but it was yanked free of her fingers, the fabric burning her skin as it slipped through.