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Her womb wasn’t open for business, and it would remain that way.
Chapter 8
After a quick shower in her private apartments, Lila changed into her officer’s uniform: black trousers, white blouse, crimson officer’s coat, all stretching with every movement to allow her to chase, to leap, to kick, to punch. She tucked her trouser legs into her boots, fixed her concealer, put on a fresh pair of gloves, pinned her four silver stars to her neck, and rammed her Colt and officer’s short sword into her holster, then added her leather blackcoat. Only Randolph sentries were allowed to skip the leather in the heat.
Riding down to the eleventh floor, she bustled past the receptionist and the empty waiting room, then turned into her office. Or, at least, her admin’s office. Sergeant Jenkins sat at his desk, typing, his long fingers dashing across the keyboard, his tanned skin contrasting nicely with his crisply laundered militia coat. Sunlight gleamed off the spokes of his wheelchair and the Colt at his hip.
“Good evening, chief.” He nodded, barely looking up. “You have good timing. I’ve almost finished the edits on yesterday’s reports.”
“I can’t have you sitting around with nothing to do.”
Jenkins smirked. “Captain McKinley wants to speak with you again. I could go down and get her right now.”
“Touché.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. Have Ms. Harris buy more of my special coffee, and the next time the captain comes, I’ll protect you to death. It’ll be quieter for us all.”
“We need her, and I can’t afford to lose you to a lengthy investigation. Please, try not to kill my officers.” It was lucky Jenkins only joked about protecting her to death. Though Lila might be one of the best shots in Saxony and a quick draw, Jenkins was faster. He could pull his Colt, aim, and fire accurately in less than a quarter of a second. Most people had a healthy fear of the man once they saw him on the shooting range.
“Do you have a class tonight?” she asked.
“Yes, another crop of idiots who can’t be bothered to practice throughout the year. Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you at the range for two weeks.”
“I’ll make time.”
“You’re going to get rusty. You already are. Only two out of three shots landed?”
“I was running.”
“Why? You were well within range,” he chided, turning back to his screen. “I taught you better than that.”
Lila opened the door to her office, then sighed at the stack of papers on her ebony desk. The stack would have been larger if Commander Sutton hadn’t taken care of what she could. Lila hadn’t been lying to Pax; her workload had increased after they’d taken over the Wilson estate. Luckily, she’d passed most of the work on to a capable officer, one she had designs on promoting soon. If the woman did well, she’d run the Wilson estate as its commander.
Lila took out her palm, pulled up her snoop programs, and walked around her office, ensuring it hadn’t been bugged overnight. She’d decorated the room exactly like her bedroom and private apartment: an ebony desk and shelves dominated one side, and a black leather couch and coffee table took up the other. A few pops of Randolph red completed the room.
Sitting down at her desk, she scanned the budgets of three militia commanders in charge of family compounds in other cities. She approved each with little fuss, for the figures hadn’t changed much from the year before. She chuckled at the next budget and scribbled a note for Sergeant Jenkins to send it back to the optimistic commander. Commander Ashen Randolph had just been promoted six months ago, and she still needed help learning her position.
She’d have to get it from the other commanders this time. Lila made a quick call to the commander in Beaulac, a woman used to streamlining her own budget. She promised to make time for Ashen the very next day.
The reports of recent online attacks from Captain McKinley’s tech department took longer to wade through, but her people were on the right track in solving them. If they didn’t figure out the culprits in a few days, she’d have to get involved, but the attacks had already been thwarted. It was just a matter of ferreting out the perpetrators, and she’d leave them to it.
Lila shuffled through various other slips of paper, skimmed the reports from the commander-in-waiting at the Wilson estate, called and threatened a few highborn who’d dared yell at her militia over trifles, approved the promotion of a senior officer at the La Porte compound, and reviewed a few arrest reports that would be sent to Bullstow in the coming week: a disgruntled servant caught pocketing cash from her master in full view of cameras, a slave who punched a servant over a card game, and a spy from another family. He’d fallen over the wall after a tranq turret had knocked him out.
He’d pissed himself, too.
Could a spy that inept really be called a spy?
Lila grabbed her pen and signed off on the arrest reports. The investigations had been complete, diligent, and thorough, just as she’d come to expect.
The last thing in her inbox was the updated crime statistics for the compounds. She noted that domestic abuse calls among the poorer workborn had gone up for the sixth month in a row. Noting the pattern, she sent the report to her mother with a recommendation to increase the servants’ minimum wage as well as the slaves’ stipend.
At last, the entire stack of papers had finally migrated to her outbox. As much as she loved being chief of security, her father’s jobs had always appealed to her more. She’d wanted to be in charge of the family’s compounds to make them safe, and she had. The Randolphs were safer than they’d ever been.
But the reams and reams of paperwork, as well as the tedious flow of reports and messages on her palm, made life much more boring. She longed for the thrill of breaking into another compound, trying to figure out puzzles like the oracles, like Oskar, like Reaper’s partner—so long as she caught him before he wreaked havoc on her life. If her father and Tristan ever stopped wanting her help, she wasn’t sure what she would do with herself. Perhaps that was why she broke into her own compounds so often.
Security checks, she’d always called them.
“Security checks, my ass. Your chief of security is bored, my darling militia. Deal with it.”
