“Yes, just to make sure that all procedures are followed to the letter. I can’t let her get away on a technicality.”
“Understood. I’ll be there soon.” She hung up, noting Shaw had said nothing of how she’d been found the day before, or the AAS flyer.
Lila started a call to her father, bouncing the signal around once more, but didn’t initiate it. Her father might be worried about her, but he might not even be awake yet. Best to let him sleep.
Besides, she’d know more about Zephyr after Chairwoman Wilson’s interrogation. She didn’t want to contact him until Zephyr was in a holding cell.
Lila closed the program and gathered her things, scrambling downstairs to eat breakfast in the morning room. On the way, she hid her coat and scarf in a cupboard so that she could retrieve them later. She just hoped the rest of her family had not woken up early. She didn’t have time for a long conversation.
Lila breathed a sigh of relief when the room was empty. A plate had been set at the table, already loaded with pancakes and eggs and bacon. Chef must have done it, hoping that Lila would eat more than if she served herself.
It didn’t work. Though she’d begun to get her appetite back after her shower, the last thing she wanted was to lose her breakfast in front of the Bullstow militia and Chief Shaw.
Alex stuck her head through the doorway as Lila finished up. “Feeling better?”
“A bit,” Lila said, following her out into the foyer. She climbed the main staircase and paused halfway up. “You know, I think you were right about going back to bed, Alex. I’m exhausted. Tell the others not to disturb me today. I’ll be resting. I’ll come down if I want anything”
“Okay. Feel better.” Alex disappeared around the corner, entering the morning room to clear away the breakfast dishes.
Lila turned immediately and retrieved the coat and scarf she’d hidden on her way to breakfast. Then she slipped from the house and into the dark morning.
It was still an hour before sunrise.
Checking her watch, Lila darted behind a tree until the expected patrol passed by Villanueva House. She wound her scarf around her head to obscure the bottom half of her face and avoided the security cameras. Even if someone saw her, they wouldn’t be able to tell who had been caught on screen.
With some difficulty, she climbed over the wall around the great house, a wall she usually hopped over easily, and nearly lost her breakfast as she flopped onto the ground on the other side. She then slipped into the shadows, dodging the occasional patrol that crossed her path, always managing to find a hiding spot well before anyone spotted her.
It was an easy feat, since she had designed their routes.
Scrambling up the stone wall of the compound proved more difficult. Her muscles felt like rubber and barely responded. She might as well have gained a hundred kilograms for how difficult it was to pull herself up.
It took four attempts before she successfully scaled the wall.
Luckily, her taxi was already waiting on the corner of Aunt Georgina’s bridal block. She ducked into the back seat, pulling up her scarf until it obscured her jaw and nose. Her unbound curls spilled over the rest of her face.
“Take me to Eclipse,” she said, pressing cash into the taxi driver’s hand. Eclipse was Suji Park’s cash cow, a coffee shop chain that had spread around the entire state, open by six o’clock in most locations.
“Which one?”
“The one by Bullstow.”
“You gotta be more specific than that, madam. The one by the east gate, the west gate, or the north gate? Come to think of it, I think they just built one by the south—”
“The east gate.”
After a quick drive, the taxi dropped her off on Leclerc Street, a block away from Bullstow. Women and men dressed in business clothes bustled up and down the street, ready for another Saturday at work. Half of them formed a line in front of the brightly lit coffee shop, a line so long that it snaked out of the building and twisted in on itself. The front of the building had been made of glass, and a large sign covered the entire top third of the store, its name spelled out in blue.
Eclipse was not exactly subtle.
She threaded through the crowd unnoticed and popped out beside the Bullstow gate, right in front of what remained of Slack & Roberts. Sergeant Holguín had taken her into the compound from a different direction on Wednesday night, which meant that she hadn’t seen the destruction. Now it was cast before her in gloomy relief, a blur of twisting shadows highlighted by street lamps and Bullstow floodlights.
They had all been luckier than she had realized that night. Chunks had been chipped away from the stone wall around Bullstow as if it had been hit by gunfire and a mist of acid. It was even worse near the gate. If the sergeant had taken her there instead of merely dragging her across the street, not everyone in the group would have walked away so easily.
Only one had remained at the gate, though, closed in the guard post, protected by bulletproof glass.
Slack & Roberts slumped across from it, bricks charred and blackened, roof collapsed, building pancaked from three floors to one in some places. The whole back wall of the building still stood upright as if it were an unfortunate witness, back bent and cracked by the assault. Filing cabinets stood in a row along one section of the wall, blackened, dented, but unmoved.
A whistle split the air.