“From there, I just need one of you to find a way to give me a signal that I can use,” The Captain continued, “An explosion. A body falling out a window. Screaming. Something that one of my officers could find, react to, and then call me.”
“I’ll station Singer and Solis on the marina. Solis has sharp eyes and will notice any disturbance and Singer has a habit of stumbling into trouble, so if there’s something to notice, she’ll find it,” Rachel said, her tone clipped.
Miranda suspected that, as much as Graves had wronged Rachel too, she didn’t agree that it was worth the risk.
“I just need to work out a way to get a battalion of Watchmen ready without making it obvious. Maybe I’ll start a training exercise, so they’re all armed up? Or I can…I’ll figure it out. You two okay with your side?”
“Get in. Make it obvious. There’s not much to work out,” Devin answered.
“Perfect, I’ll—”
“Sir?” An officer came to the door.
Gideon huffed. “What? What is it?”
“Oh. Uh, your sister’s, um. Here.”
Captain Blair froze. As literally as Miranda had ever seen someone go from motion to statuesque. He wasn’t even blinking.
“Is he okay?” Miranda asked, resisting the urge to wave her hand in front of his face.
“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Rachel dismissed with a wave. “Thank you, Miller, he’ll be down in a minute. You two should get startedif we’re short on time. If I help, I should be able to get everything in order by tomorrow, is that too soon?”’
“No, I’ll be ready,” Miranda said, knowing that she would have to return home and dreading it. Her parents might tie her to a chair after all the sneaking around she’d been doing lately. But she had been wrong when she thought they wouldn’t believe her, maybe she could convince them that she needed to do this, for herself.
Captain Blair resumed breathing, the pencil in his hand snapping in two. He spoke loudly enough to be heard even as she and Devin left the office.
“Where is she?”
“A holding cell,” Miller supplied, his wince audible.
“Fuck, not again.”
Miranda turned to whisper to Devin, “Why is his sister in a holding cell?”
“Let’s just say they took very different paths processing their trauma,” he whispered and Miranda liked how he stayed close to her, how he hadn’t let go of her hand, how their whispered confidence felt intimate, shared. It was the same sort of comradery she’d felt with Lydia, only she had never wanted to pull Lydia into a dark corner to act on indecent impulses where no one could see.
As they threaded their way through the now bustling main floor, a familiar face stopped Miranda, and eye contact forced a different set of instincts to take over.
She bowed in greeting. “Alderman North,” she said.
What was Alderman Kieran North doing at Watchmen Headquarters at this hour?
North returned the greeting, all precise motions and rigid manners. North had never been known for his warmth and, while she had never found him cruel, his callous disposition wasoften mistaken as such. “Miss Wilde, what a surprise to find you here.”
“I could say the same thing,” she retorted, then bit her cheek. She had spent much too long in the company of rogues and scoundrels. Evenshewould not have dared speak to Alderman North that way a week ago. His piercing, frosty stare was unforgiving of indiscretion.
He didn’t seem overly concerned with her slip just now, however, his attention seemed to be drifting elsewhere. His icy grey eyes remained bored as they moved over her shoulder to Devin.
“A friend of yours?” He drawled, voice sending chills down her skin and not the good kind.
“Oh!” She nodded, quickly pulling Devin to her side and then regretting the intimacy of the gesture and pushing him away. Heavens, she was flustered. Two worlds were warring for control and she didn’t know which to fight. “This is Lord Devin Drake. A friend. We were just leaving.”
“Very well. Please give my congratulations to your sister on her happy nuptials or whatever the phrase.”
Miranda nodded and then froze. “What?”
“We’re expected to wish others well in marital endeavors, no? I’ve assumed wrong before.” He sounded as if he cared very little if he assumed wrong or not.
