Chapter 27
Lila and Dixon both rushed toward the front of the admin building, boots thumping against the shingles, their arms spread wide to keep their balance. They planted their feet near the roof’s lip and scanned the ground in the last shot’s direction.
One of the purplecoats on the ground aimed at Lila.
Lila pulled back, breathing wildly, wheeling her arms as she caught her balance. “Hold your fire,” she yelled down below.
“Not a chance,” said the purplecoat below. “Someone just climbed the edge of the admin building. We think it might be the shooter.”
Lila and Dixon retreated to their respective corners, careful not to trip and fall and roll. They lay down, peering over the eave, leaning as far as they dared.
Another flurry of shots rang out.
A purplecoat slipped from a second-floor window and prowled across the side, like a spider. He’d stowed his gun away while he descended, and a burst of frigid wind caught his coat. Even from two floors away, Lila could see that his gun didn’t quite match a purplecoat’s standard issue. The grip was far too wide.
Lila whistled, catching Dixon’s attention. As soon as he turned toward her, she gripped one of the beams along the eave and flipped herself down, hanging by the strength in her fingers.
Walking her hands toward the edge of the building, she planted her boots on the outcropping of timbers then let go to catch the first crisscrossed joint. More splinters dug into her skin and scars, pinpricks of pain she refused to give voice too. Skittering down the edge of the building, she quickly descended until she reached the last log.
The purplecoat figure landed in the dirt just below her and sprinted away.
Lila didn’t bother climbing down the stone. She planted her feet, walked her hands down as far as she dared, then hung. A split second later, she let herself go, falling several meters to the ground, crouching as she landed.
Dixon hit the dirt beside her.
She didn’t have to tell him what he already knew. Olivier had fulfilled his mission. He’d stolen a purplecoat’s uniform and slipped inside the admin building, murdering Camille, perhaps shooting others in the process. If Olivier wasn’t captured alive, then Mòr would never learn the extent of what the Italians knew about the oracles. Mercs might come again and steal their children, perhaps successfully this time.
All it would take was one hotheaded militia member to shoot, and they’d get nothing.
“Stay close,” she said before sprinting after Olivier. Dixon labored beside her, both struggling to close the distance.
The faux-purplecoat darted between a row of cabins, the same place they’d lost him days before.
When they turned two seconds later, they found Olivier bent between two hedges, lifting a grate. He might have been Max with darker hair. A forgettable face with forgettable brows and brown eyes the color of tree bark. He’d been gifted a slender body, as well, one he might use to wriggle into the tightest of places.
Seeing them, he dropped the metal door with a loud whack and turned, bringing up his pistol to fire wildly.
The log behind Lila’s head exploded, raining down splinters.
Olivier’s mouth widened. He spun and ran, the gun still wound in his fingers.
Lila didn’t stop or pause in her pursuit. The asshole hadn’t even aimed. Wild shots were bad shots, desperate shots. Hers would be just as bad if she tried to draw during their chase. A tranq couldn’t penetrate a thick purplecoat, and hitting the back of his head was a roll of the die. She’d need to target his face or neck to bring him down.
Olivier had no such limitations. His wild shots might injure a bystander if he panicked and fired again. He might not have cared, but he obviously understood that the purplecoats did. Keeping between the log cabins would keep him safe.
He ran on, purplecoats throughout the area confused by their chase. Some ignored it, thinking it might be a distraction. Others followed, guessing the intruder might have stolen a coat, their pace too slow to keep up. Luckily, none of them fired. Connell must have ordered them to take him alive.
Olivier shot over his shoulder.
Lila ignored him and ran on, a wooden porch railing catching the blast.
Olivier cut right and ran between two cabins, but he didn’t dash around them this time. Instead, he finally made a break toward the compound wall, rushing toward a section that had no guards along the top. Two hundred meters away, several purplecoats leapt off the wall and jumped outside the compound. They screamed into their radios, shouting plans to trap him.
Olivier’s hand disappeared into his purplecoat. An ocean of static burst from Lila’s shoulder, the radio struggling against the audio muck and grit.
Then it fell silent. No more static. No more snarling.
Nothing but dead air.
The purplecoat’s plan, their coordination, would all go unheeded.
Olivier holstered his gun and rushed up the wall, using his momentum to grab the top. He swung his leg and heaved a foot over it, gaining purchase on his third attempt. After a brief struggle for balance, he levered himself over the wall.
Lila followed. She’d trained the move so often that she succeeded on her first try. She dropped down to the other side, crouching in the dirt, drawing her tranq as she searched for the mole’s stolen purplecoat and his dark brown hair. But the few purplecoats rushing toward her position were all blondes or redheads.
“The trees! The trees!” they yelled from a hundred meters away, pointing.
Lila started off as Dixon landed beside her. His ankle rolled, and he breathed out with a hiss and a groan. Hobbling forward, he cried out, struggling to follow.
“Stay here,” Lila said over her shoulder, rushing off again to follow Olivier, leaving her friend behind. She sprinted into the tree line, hopping over brambles and brush.
Another shot rang out.
Lila ran toward the gunfire, ignoring the little twist in her stomach that told her to turn back. Leaves crunched under her boots. Branches slapped at her face. Still she dashed on, not even trying to walk quietly. If he’d been watching, he already knew where she was.
Purple flashed ten meters ahead, a blur of color tossed into the wind, replaced by a black hoodie. He ran toward the dusty road, toward a gray Cruz sedan, a car very much like her own except in color. The only saving grace was that this car had been parked half on the road, half off. The driver’s seat was empty, and the engine was dead.
He’d need to start it before rushing off. That would buy her some time.
Olivier turned again in the center of a clearing and lifted his gun, facing in a different direction. Several purplecoats had noticed his car. Their faces tight, guns locked in white-knuckled grips, they sprinted toward it. The undergrowth tore at the trains of their coats.
Olivier shot in their direction, and they scattered, diving into a ditch.
Lila hadn’t stopped running. In that moment, she didn’t think. Just as on the mat with Dixon, she charged. She didn’t charge with the composure of a highborn, though. She didn’t charge with thoughts of completing a waltz or preying as a panther. No, Elizabeth Victoria Lemaire-Randolph charged like a bear, filled with every ounce of anger and scorn withheld over the last six weeks. Not as a noble mother bear, either, lunging to protect its cub, but as a bear stung in the ass by a thousand bees, angry and frustrated to find her honey stolen.
Stolen by the man before her.
This was the man who had pointed the mercs at Oskar and Maria Kruger and the oracles. This was the man who had marked three young girls for capture. This was the man who had caused her to enter that warehouse, forcing her to kill to save her friends. This was man who’d caused her to paint the cement with blood.
He was the reason Shaw would stand on a stage in the auction house.
He was the reason she hadn’t had the time to save her father’s career.
Olivier saw her just before she leapt, managing to get off another wild shot before she blundered into him. As they fell, the gun skittered a meter away on the leaf-strewn earth.
Lila grabbed his belt and tugged herself onto his chest, gripping his collar. She punched his face, pummeling his cheek and his nose and his eyes. Her hand smashed against sharp bone rather than upon a rounded, heavy bag of sand. The crunching only drove her onward, goading her to land blow upon blow.
Gods, she enjoyed the pain. Not the pain she inflicted upon Olivier, but the pain in her knuckles, the pain in her hands, the way it reverberated into her shoulder, the way she felt it in her neck and chest and knees, rolling, like a wave throughout her body.
Lila didn’t stop, not until Olivier punched the side of her belly. She cried out, letting loose a torrent of air that stopped and congealed in her throat. Her eyes reddened, watered, and her bloody fingers opened, letting loose the hold she’d taken of his collar.
Olivier shimmied out from under her and raised his fist.
Lila didn’t wait for the blow. She didn’t rack her brain for the perfect counter. Instead, she just got the fuck out of the way, rolling awkwardly as her heart pumped in her chest.
Olivier abandoned his attack, crawling toward his gun, clawing at the earth and leaves and underbrush to retrieve it.
All at once, he lurched to the side, drunkenly, hands grasping his gun and a fistful of leaves. He turned, swinging his weapon toward Lila, but his arm didn’t rise high enough. He shot twice into the ground and toppled into the dirt, his fingers still wound in the trigger.
Leaves rustled at the edge of the clearing. Dixon huffed and puffed, tranq gun in his hand, mouthing something Lila couldn’t understand as he hobbled to her side.
“I’ve never been happier that someone didn’t listen to me.” She laughed, her side aching.
Dixon did not join her.
Dropping his weapon, he knelt at her side, his hands flying to her belly. He pushed into her side so hard that she thought he might wring her in two.
It wasn’t until then that she spied the blood spreading down her torso, seeping into her coat.
“When did that happen?” she murmured stupidly.
Dixon shook his head, mouthing more words she couldn’t follow.
Two purplecoats stumbled into the clearing. “Two down. I’ll get stretchers,” one said, running back toward the wall.
“Check his pockets,” Lila told the other one, the same chubby-checked militiaman she’d met a few hours before. She might have been bleeding, the wound might have begun to sting, but she still had work to do. “He’ll have something inside that’s jamming the radios. Give it to me.”
Jackson did as she commanded, withdrawing a device the same size as a palm. Lila took it from him, turned it on, and found a menu in English. Breezing through the screens, she tapped a few buttons with bloody fingers.
She had to fix their radios. Too many people were injured.
She tapped one last button, and Jackson’s radio screeched on his shoulder. He crouched like a bee had stung him, and batted at it until Lila found the correct sequence. The noise had startled her as well, the pain in her side dialed up to a new level.
Dixon ripped hers off her shoulder and tossed it away.
“Testing, testing, testing,” they heard over the radio, static still oozing below the words. “Monitoring to anyone, anyone at all. Testing, testing, testing.”
“Shut up and let someone get a word in,” Jackson grumbled into the radio. “Intruder is tranqed outside the compound. One of the outsiders has been hit. We need Dr. McCrae now. It looks bad. Real bad.”
Lila dropped her head back to the dirt, the leaves tickling her ears while the chief cursed and shouted orders over the radio, specifically calling for Olivier not to be harmed.
All at once, Lila’s adrenaline petered out. The pain rushed over her like fire spreading throughout her body, centered near her belly.
She’d lose the baby, just a few hours after the temptation to keep it had begun snaking through her mind.
Jackson reached for Olivier, shoving him onto his back. The intruder’s face had been torn and bloodied and smashed by Lila’s attack, leaves glued to the sticky red.
She’d done that.
“Don’t you touch him,” Lila cried out, panting through the waves of pain, the temperature dropping all around her as though she’d fallen into cold bath. “We need to know what he knows, got it? I didn’t get shot for nothing. If that man dies, I’ll be coming for you first, and I won’t be coming with tranqs.”
Jackson held up his hands and moved away from Olivier’s sleeping form.
On the ground, she shivered and dug her head into Dixon’s thigh for warmth, his woolen trousers scratching her skin. Lila didn’t think about losing the baby any longer, not after glancing at Dixon’s expression, not after she’d finally recognized the words flying past his lips.
Dixon had begun praying to the gods.