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“So my spies put a few bugs in your car, and you park mine in my living room? Doesn’t that doesn’t seem a little bit disproportionate to you?”
“It’s proportionate to how annoying I find it.”
Her mother gulped her wine. “Take over, Henri. I don’t have any patience left. I don’t know what I will do to my child if you do not.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Then stop acting like one. If I thought you were in your right mind, we’d be having a very different conversation right now.”
Lemaire patted the chairwoman’s shoulder. “Settle down, Bea.”
“No, I won’t. Fix it. Deal with her.”
Gods, it was like Lila had been taken back a dozen years.
Her father scooted to the edge of his seat and scratched his jaw. “Elizabeth, Chief Shaw just called. Could you tell us what you were doing driving around the loop at eleven o’clock at night?”
“About two ten.”
Her father swallowed hard. “Why were you driving so fast?”
“Apparently, I was teaching a lesson to a very green militiaman. He wasn’t even going to write me a ticket, Father. Can you believe that? Bullstow’s finest, my ass.”
“Language, young lady.”
“Ass is a word, Mother. Look it up.”
Her father cleared his throat. “And why were you on the loop in the first place?”
“I needed to clear my head.”
“You can clear your head while driving the speed limit. If you’d lost control and hit another car—”
“I could have died. Just as I could have died if I’d had a heart attack, if I’d arrested the wrong criminal, or if the plane I was on went down. Or if I drank milk from a poisoned bottle. Need I go on? I’m not going to hide in an armored house. That’s not living. I needed to think. I went out and thought. And now, I’m going to bed. I’m exhausted.” Lila stood once more, brushing her gloves on her trouser legs.
“Sit,” her mother ordered again.
“Why? What exactly do you want to talk about, other than your car and a ticket?”
Lila peered into her mother’s face, scanning it like she might inspect a possible forgery. But it wasn’t anger she found. That was gone. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think the chairwoman hadn’t found out about Tristan’s visit.
Lila owed Isabel a bribe.
“I humored you once tonight. Don’t ask me again.”
Lila slipped her satchel over her shoulder, heaved herself to her feet, and stalked away.
“When did she turn into a rebellious teenager?” her father muttered.
“I’m not a teenager,” Lila called out over her shoulder. “I’m pushing thirty.”
“She never stopped behaving like that with me, Henri. Why did she start behaving like that with you? That’s the question.”
Lila trundled upstairs, making a great amount of noise, since her mother knew exactly where she was anyway.
When she entered her room, she found Alex sitting on her couch, her pumps on the floor, her legs curled and tucked to the side. The slave worried the hem of her skirt and kept her eyes on the ground.
Lila’s grouchiness faltered, but it didn’t fade. She wasn’t in the right frame of mind for another yelling match.
