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A window flashed red upon her screen.
She turned quickly to Dixon, snapping her fingers in the quiet for his notepad. Someone was in here, she wrote. Someone tried to break into my files.
Successfully?
Lila shook her head. She took her new palm, freshly downloaded with her snoop programs, and walked around the room, searching for bugs. She found one in her room, one in Dixon’s, and two in the living room.
Lila left them in place and snapped again for Dixon’s notepad. I should have checked for bugs every time we entered. I got sloppy at the cottage.
The mole hit our cabin twice?
Lila nodded. Nico wasn’t with us at training.
Half the compound wasn’t with us during training. Do you really think he’s a mole, or do you just suspect him because he has a thing for you?
Fuck you, she mouthed.
Dixon held up hands in surrender. Shouldn’t we do something about the bugs?
No, we can use them. Let me think about how.
Lila returned to her laptop and opened the oracle’s list. Everyone who had visited or lived on the compound had been included, even the mole. Or moles. All she had to do was connect one of the people on the list to the sender of the kitten pictures.
Unfortunately, the mole had used a fake ID.
Even worse, it was a good one.
She’d have to dig deeper.
After ensuring that the mole had not installed any snoop software on her computer, Lila wrote a few lines of code. The short program would filter Connell’s list for everyone who had first accessed the compound between two and three years ago, instructing the computer to pull biographical data for each hit from state databases. While it worked, she finished reviewing the logs she’d worked on the night before, skimming through the last suspicious files she’d found in the system and tagging a few for further study.
After that, she combined her flagged data with everyone else’s from the night before, filtering for the last three years. Then she transferred a copy to Dixon’s tablet. He could review them. Perhaps he’d find something useful.
In the meantime, she opened Kenna’s list next and filtered it for those who’d arrived at the compound two to three years ago. The final list totaled twenty names.
Lila snapped for Dixon’s attention, then led him outside the cabin and onto the porch. The pair sat on the bench, heads bowed over her laptop. “Look at who Kenna’s been suspicious about,” she said quietly, the sound not traveling to the oracle children who wandered nearby.
Dixon skimmed the list. He pointed at Kara’s name.
/> “Gambling addict. I saw it in her messages. Kenna’s perceptive.”
Kara could be more than a gambler. If she owes enough, she might have been bought.
Lila leaned back against the cabin wall. “I suppose I can dig into her financials,” she grumbled.
What’s wrong? You’ve done it before.
“Yeah, but I knew where and how those people banked.”
Ask the oracle. Maybe they have their own banking system?
“Wouldn’t that be hilarious? A whole banking system that the matrons know nothing about.”
But the more she thought about it, the less strange it sounded. The oracle children dressed differently, lived differently, sentenced their criminals differently. It made sense they wouldn’t trust their money to the highborn families.
Dixon pointed at her screen. Camille.
“Yeah. She put down her daughter’s best friend.”
