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“I had a few hours. I need to keep working.” Hitching her laptop higher on her shoulder, Lila trudged into the bedroom, giving one last look behind her. The couple had fallen back onto the couch, their eyes closed, their lips pressed against one another. Blair had thrown her leg atop Dixon’s thigh, and her fingers skated under his shirt and up his chest.
Lila closed the bedroom door and booted up her laptop, then slipped into the compound’s medical records. If Camille had seen Dr. McCrae, perhaps Lila could find a marker, something to help her investigate the Alleanza database.
The records did not disappoint. Dr. McCrae had taken an x-ray of Camille’s leg for a potential fracture the year before, and one of her chest for pneumonia. Dr. McCrae had noted that it wasn’t the first time Camille had broken her leg. She’d also noticed a scar on her chest. During the exam, Camille had claimed that a dog had bitten her as a child, but Dr. McCrae believed she’d been stabbed. The wound was too neat and the scarring too straight. The doctor had treated too many purplecoats over the years to be fooled so easily.
“Well, well, well…” Lila mused, breaking into Randolph General’s records. She found Camille there as well. She’d broken an arm, and the doctor had noticed evidence of past fractures in her x-rays. Another doctor had treated her for a busted lip, a swollen eye, and a possible concussion, suspecting domestic abuse.
Lila copied the files to her laptop, then hacked the Alleanza database, searching for Camille. Fifteen women in the Italian army had been stabbed in the chest over the last ten years.
Only one looked like Camille.
Skimming through the woman’s file, she quickly learned the reason why Camille always seemed wiser than her years. Camille was not twenty years old but twenty-five. She’d first been seen for a health assessment at age six, listed as a new volunteer recruit in the Alleanza database.
How in the world did a six-year-old volunteer for anything besides ice cream and ponies?
Lila read on, her frown deepening. The doctors had found a plethora of injuries in the bones of young Camille. Breaks, mostly, and far too many for one rambunctious child.
Lila backed out of the database and closed her laptop, snatching up her palm as it vibrated. Lila girl, her father had written. I regret to inform of you of my impending retirement.
For the first time in days, she breathed easy. Her father had not been given a death sentence or a slave’s sentence after all. And Mr. Shaw?
He must face the auction house. I promise we will speak later. I just need a few hours’ sleep.
Lila dropped her palm on the bed, wishing she had more energy to celebrate. Instead, she took a quick shower and dressed for the day in a gray sweater and gray trousers, no color to speak of, no coat of arms on her breast. That fact weighed more deeply somehow this morning, especially when Dixon knocked on the bedroom door.
It’s still early, but Connell’s probably up.
Lila dried her damp hair with a towel. “I found the proof I’d been looking for an hour ago. It’s definitely Camille.”
I rather liked her.
“So did I. What do you think they’ll do to her?”
Probably stick her in the basement with the others for a while, then shoot her in the head.
Lila quickly updated him about her father, then wound her damp hair in a bun and grabbed her coat. She took her satchel too, not wanting to take any chances with the information she’d found.
Dixon and Blair held hands as they walked across the compound, their clothes still wrinkled from pressing against one another in a sweaty, happy mess all night.
When they arrived at the oracle’s front door, Connell answered. He led the group into the parlor, a grim expression on his face, then fetched his lover. It took nearly twenty minutes for her to join them. She sat heavily on the couch next to Kenna, her feet curled underneath her, her eyes red and drooping, her head resting on her sister’s shoulder. The oracle hadn’t even dressed in her oracle’s robes. Instead, she wore a flannel bathrobe, an oversized one, likely one of Connell’s.
Blair was right. The visions had ravished her too often lately.
“I’m not dead yet,” Mòr grumbled.
Connell’s mouth twitched. “Kenna and I made you some biscuits and gravy. That’ll perk you up.” But his expression wasn’t loving this morning—it was worried.
So was Kenna’s.
Mòr didn’t even have the strength to pretend today.
It worried Lila, too. She’d seen the oracle stride into the aftermath of a bloodbath. Mòr had had visions back then too, hadn’t she? What made today so different?
Lila found the audio bug in the parlor and moved it into the kitchen, then sat on a sofa chair near the oracle. “We need to talk. It’s important.”
The oracle abandoned her perch on her sister’s shoulder. “You know who the mole is, don’t you?”
“One of them.”
