“Baxter to Wendy?” the man asked again impatiently. After a slight pause, he tried again. “Baxter to Thomas?”
“I believe our fearless leader got Thomas.”
“Baxter to Lewis?” the man pleaded, naming another downed blackcoat. Frustration replaced panic when no one answered. “Doesn’t anyone have their damn radios on down there?”
“Ah, Hood tranqed Lewis. That guy really needed a bath.”
“So everyone got a point?” Toxic asked.
“It’s generally not good to get a point. It means someone found you when they shouldn’t have. It means we’re out of time.”
“Natasha to Baxter, what seems to be the problem?” Another voice had broken in on the militia’s channel.
“We’re being robbed, that’s the problem. Go check on the art.”
Lila flicked to the relevant security footage, watching a capable-looking blackcoat in a hallway near the basement. Upon her whistle, a half-dozen blackcoats trotted to her position and fell in line. “Switch to the emergency frequency,” she ordered Baxter. “Someone might be listening in.”
“I’m on it!” Toxic squeaked, all humor gone from her voice.
“Abort now,” Lila hissed at Tristan as the militia’s audio fell silent. “You have one minute before they realize you’re not here for the art. Maybe less if they get the basement cameras back up.”
“Not yet. We just need more time.”
“There is no more time! Get out, and get out now!”
Tristan turned off his blowtorch.
The small-framed teen inside the holding cell stepped forward, his cheap trousers and gray t-shirt too big and too new.
“Please,” Oskar wailed, tears running down his cheek. Once again, freedom had slipped through his fingers. He shook the last steel bar madly as though he might be able to break it. “Don?
??t leave me, please. I’ll do anything!”
Tristan hesitated before the red-faced, crying boy.
“We’ll fetch him later,” Fry promised, shoving his boss toward the hole in the floor, a hole Dice had cut while the others had worked on the bars. “Hood, if you’re still there, we need you. Tell the boss what the militia is doing.”
Lila looked up to check.
A well-manicured hand snatched her palm.
Chapter 2
“Whatever work you have on the compound can wait,” Chairwoman Randolph said, turning off the device without looking at the screen. “You’re surrounded by the most eligible senators in all of Saxony, Elizabeth. Do try to appear interested.”
Lila snatched back her palm and slipped it into her clutch. “I was just about to visit the ladies’ room.”
“No, you weren’t.” Her mother straightened her silvercoat as though the matter had been decided. The garment marked her as the matron of the Randolph family and the CEO of Wolf Industries. As such, its fabric was even finer than Lila’s tonight. Its hue matched her silver hair, which had been curled to perfection on the ends.
The chairwoman took Lila’s arm and dragged her further into the room. “You expect me to think highly of Commander Sutton, yet you seem to believe she cannot fill in as chief for a few hours without supervision. The woman spent ten years in the infantry. She’s not a toddler.”
A crash sounded in Lila’s earpiece, followed by a muffled curse. If Tristan had just been caught, then one prick from a DNA wand would ferret out his true identity, that of a long-escaped slave. It was only luck that he’d never been caught before. “Get out of the ballroom and keep an eye on the militia!” he shouted.
Lila took a quick look at the front of the auction house. “A lot can go on if a blackcoat isn’t paying attention, madam. It’s not like every blackcoat just paces around with their thumb up their—”
“Elizabeth!”
“Hood says the militia isn’t onto us yet,” Tristan told Fry. “Shirley, there’s not enough fuel left in the blowtorches! We won’t be able to collapse the tunnel.”