“I could take out my tranq gun and show you.”
“Don’t be fussy.” Alex pushed a water glass into Lila’s hand. “Chef is making pancakes. They’ll be ready downstairs in thirty minutes. She said if you can’t make it downstairs, then she’ll send up plain oatmeal. I just thought you should know.”
Lila sat up, moaned as her head protested, but drank the proffered water in three long gulps. She slid the empty glass back on her bedside table. “I hate oatmeal.”
“I know. Chef knows too, but she said that if you can’t manage to get downstairs and eat, then you’re probably too sick to eat anything but oatmeal. I agree with her.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Close enough. I started a bath for you. Commander Sutton said it would—”
Lila jumped out of the bed suddenly and rushed to the bathroom. She gagged over the toilet, barely opening the lid before she began to throw up wave after wave of the water she’d just swallowed.
“Well, at least you’re out of bed,” Alex said at the doorway, glass in hand. She refilled it from a pitcher of ice water and set them both on the bathroom counter. Two tiny pills jingled, bouncing as she placed them nearby. “I’m putting these here for your headache. Take them after you’re done puking out the rest of your intestines.”
Lila nodded and reclined against the bathtub, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her stomach had settled, at least for a few moments.
Alex knelt down, sliding Lila’s palm into her hand. “You should go back to bed.”
“I have work.”
“You’re exhausted, Lila. You slept four hours at the hospital and another eight or nine after you got back home. It wasn’t enough. Whatever work you have to do, give it to Commander Sutton.”
“She’s already handling too much. I’m fine. I just haven’t slept much the last few nights. Add a tranq on top of that…”
“And this is the result?”
“Yes.”
“I still think you should be in bed. The news is going crazy, just like you said it would. People think you’re in the hospital, dying. Even Patrick called. He was freaked out and worried.”
“You didn’t tell him it was just a tranq, did you?”
“Of course not. He would have gone straight to my mother.”
“Good. That’s good, Alex.” Lila rested her forehead against the cold tub.
“Can I get you anything else?”
Lila shook her head.
“Okay. Take the pills on the counter after you stop throwing up. Commander Sutton said they would help. I’ll come back up in fifteen minutes to check on you.”
When Lila opened her eyes, Alex was gone.
Lila crawled onto her bathmat and curled up, checking her palm. Overnight, she’d gotten two more alerts for Zephyr. She deleted them and moved on to her messages. The first was from her father. She’d been nauseated and exhausted on the ride home from Randolph General, but she’d managed to send him a message before they arrived at the compound. Reports of my demise are an overstated fiction, but it’s convenient. Act concerned. I’m getting close to that damn spider.
Her father had replied soon after. Even though I know it’s false, the news is breaking my heart.
Lila moved on to her next message, this time from Shaw. After arriving back at the great house, she’d spent twenty minutes in her bathroom, finally letting herself puke up her lunch. Once she was done, she had lain on the bathmat and called the Bullstow chief, telling him an abbreviated version of her suspicions about Chairwoman Wilson. She had not explained how she’d found the information. They’d put together a quick plan for the chairwoman’s capture anyway. Lila hoped he’d fleshed it out since then.
Everything is ready for tomorrow, his message read. I’m trusting your friend to be a better tail than my men. I could get her now. I have cause.
Lila stood up and shuffled toward the counter. It was bravado on Shaw’s part and nothing more. The chief knew he wouldn’t get the chairwoman for anything serious that way, for her security would spot them before he got close. Lila had sent Max in place of her own militia for the same reason.
Lila swallowed the two pills with a few swigs of water, hoping her stomach would behave long enough for them to kick in.
She scrolled through a whole list of other messages while the tub finished filling up. It seemed like everyone she had ever known was trying to contact her, all wanting to wish her well, to fight on. It was touching in a morbid sort of way. Useful, too.