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“You’re playing in an official investigation. If you’ve—”
“An official investigation!” she whispered. “You don’t hire me for anything official. The oracles aren’t your playthings, Father. Don’t prod where you don’t belong.”
He recoiled at the remark, his own daughter biting back. Lila realized she’d stepped over a line. She might have disagreed with his choices occasionally, but she’d never told him no. She’d always supported him, always agreed to help him, always caved to his every whim.
She felt lonely sitting before him now. Like she’d lost something.
He seemed to as well. As though he’d shot himself with his own gun.
“They’re hiding their own children,” he reasoned. “It’s the only reason why you’d tell me to back off. Why? Why are you helping them?”
“I cleaned up your mistake with Rebecca. She’s been found and returned to her parents, and the other two girls are safe. There were never any kidnappers, just clever girls who didn’t want their futures. Surely you have some sympathy.”
“It’s not the same as with you.”
“Why not?”
“It just isn’t.”
“I never realized you were such a believer.”
He looked away.
“Leave it alone, Father. You’ve swiped at the oracles for long enough. Find some other way to make a legacy or learn to be content with the one you have.”
With that, Lila stood and trudged back upstairs. She opened the door just in time to catch her palm as its vibrations sent it skittering over the edge of her bedside table.
Snatching it up, she tapped the screen. Thanks, her blackmailer had written, including an attachment. After scanning it with her snoop programs, she opened the file. A news story with a very familiar heading appeared on her palm.
The same heading she’d read a week before on Reaper’s server.
Her eyes wandered to the top of the message. She drew in such a sharp breath that she nearly dropped the device.
The asshole had sent it to her mother.
She felt like a whore who’d been forced into an act she hadn’t agreed to and then been kicked downstairs in lieu of payment.
Her head snapped up, and she looked toward her mother’s room. They might have been transported to Max’s home, for she could almost see through the walls and watch her mother opening her palm, reading the article, wondering if it was true.
Knowing it was.
It would only be a matter of minutes before she’d summon Lila to explain herself, before she’d kick her out of the militia, out of the family, off the estate. Perhaps the chairwoman might even turn her in to Chief Shaw if she was angry enough, if he still wandered around the maples.
Perhaps she’d even call for the family’s blood squad.
The thought of her mother being angry at such a little thing she’d done weeks ago seemed funny in comparison to what had happened that afternoon.
She’d killed people.
She was a killer, a murderer.
A little parade of regrets marched through her consciousness. Regrets that she’d been too busy planning Oskar’s escape from LeBeau’s to search for her blackmailer. That she’d wasted too many hours in Tristan’s arms when she had other matters in need of her attention. That she hadn’t gone to Max’s house, just for an hour or two, to track her blackmailer down.
Regrets that she’d slept instead of working.
Regrets that she’d paid.
All her regrets slipped through her mind, one by one by one, her chest tightening until she could barely breathe. It was like a little death, and she had no more time to spare, not when she’d reached the point where they crashed into consequence.
