Lila stood and straightened her blackcoat. “I’ll spare your son the exertion. After all, he’s still a highborn. For now.”
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Alex followed Lila out. As soon as they entered the waiting room, Patrick shoved his palm into his pocket. He was too late to hide the telltale signs of colored pixels on its screen. A few bars of tinny eight-bit music still hung in the air.
Patrick led them to the elevator and happily punched the buttons, seemingly oblivious to their mood. He spent the entire walk through the building trying to convince the two women to stay for lunch.
Lila opened her mouth to accept, but Alex shook her head. “I have work that I must get back to, Patrick.”
“Perhaps another time, then? You’ll come back to visit, won’t you?”
“I have a better idea, Patrick,” Lila said. “Perhaps one day you could go to lunch outside the estate. If Alex and I just happened to be there, you wouldn’t be breaking your mother’s rule if we asked to join you. After all, it would be impolite of you to refuse another highborn.”
Patrick laughed at the idea, and a dimple peeked from his chin. “I’d like that. Give me a suggestion of a place I should check out. Just”—he paused, considering his scruffy boots—“maybe not anywhere expensive. Mother will probably have her spies there, and it’s tacky to spend so much these days, isn’t it?”
“Very tacky,” Lila agreed, “and boring.”
Patrick grinned and tried to engage his sister in conversation, but Alex only spoke in hard pleasantries. Her brother didn’t seem to notice. When they arrived at the Adessi, he hugged both of them off the ground and twirled them in a little circle.
Lila watched him jog back into the building. “I’ve missed your brothers. I should have convinced them both to meet us away from the family compounds ages ago.”
“Patrick and Simon have always done whatever Mother told them. Times haven’t changed that much. I doubt they would have agreed.”
“Patrick might meet us somewhere,” Lila said, climbing into the Adessi.
“Maybe.”
As the militia cruiser braked behind her roadster, Lila dug into her blackcoat and pulled out an earpiece. She fiddled with one of the controls and popped it into ear. She heard a muffled voice and took her hand off the wheel to increase the volume.
“You didn’t have any questions at all, did you?” Alex said as Lila backed out the parking spot. “You just wanted to plant a bug in my mother’s office.”
“Of course I had questions. I just knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with them. What do you think about her answers? About her?”
“She looks worse than I had imagined. I wasn’t prepared for it. Perhaps she is sick and half mad, Lila, just as Simon said. I thought he made up his story, but now I’m not so sure. The woman who raised me would have taken the meeting with your Aunt Georgina even if it was only staged to mock her, just on the off chance that it might be real. Mother always said that pride doesn’t nurture business. What’s changed?”
“I don’t know.”
“She didn’t like it when you offered her the deal. You insulted her with it.”
“No, I insulted her when I implied that she should sleep with Mr. Kruger. I hit a nerve when I offered that deal. Am I mistaken?”
“No. She got nervous when you mentioned Simon.” Alex turned her head, and her bun crushed into the headrest. “My mother framed Simon, didn’t she? She’s the reason why he lost his mark.”
“Probably.” Lila drove through the serpent’s gate. The militia cruiser followed them for several blocks before turning back to the compound. “Your brother is why I planted the bug, Alex. I’m sorry if you feel betrayed. I’m sorry if Simon will feel betrayed, too, but my loyalty is to you and Simon. I couldn’t care less about your mother.”
“I’m not mad. I figured there was something more to it. Even your angles have angles. You’re like your mother in that.”
Lila stopped at a red light and turned to her friend, not knowing if she wanted to be compared to the chairwoman. “No. You know what, it’s not all right. I should have been up front about my intentions beforehand. You’re my best friend, and you agreed to—”
“Don’t apologize, Lila. I’ve always admired that about you. I’ve always wished that I could play the game at your level. I didn’t lie when I said I wanted to help. I just didn’t realize…” Alex pinched the bridge of her nose. “I always knew my mother was capable of doing something like that to me. I’ve always been more of a rival than a daughter, but to do something like that to Simon? She loved that boy. What is she doing, Lila? Where is all that money going?”
“Do you really want to know?” Lila asked carefully, digging into the glove compartment before the light had a chance to turn green. She plugged a spare cord into her earpiece and slid the other end into the car’s sound system.
It only took a few seconds before the audio rushed through the car’s speakers.
“Something’s come up. I’ll need them by tomorrow morning,” said a mechanical, sexless voice, filling the car. It was robotic and crackled over the line, a jumble of waves and pitches. Chairwoman Wilson had installed an external filter, a device that scrambled and strained all sounds in her office, bending the waves until a bug could no longer pluck them from the air. The only transmitter that could slice through the tangle would be a computer with the right key. All others would hear nothing but static.
Lila didn’t have the key, but Randolph engineers had devised a counter. Or at least a prototype of one. Unfortunately, the program jammed the speaker’s voice through too many transformations and alterations. The voices were hardly recognizable as anything more than human on the other side.