Broken by Shiloh Walker Read Free Book Online

recording while she continued talking, catching him up on her present purposes: minding Mihas, and searching throughout London for Claudia and those troublemakers from Queenshill.
    “So, as you see, I’ve got my work ahead of me,” she finished, leaning back in the chair, propping her ankle just above her knee. “There’s much to do besides sitting here and watching these screens.”
    “For instance . . . ?”
    “I’d like to take up where my patrol in Southwark left off the other night. After I encountered that woman in the flat . . .”
    Nigel keenly observed her.
    She met his curiosity with her own head-on gaze.
    “This woman,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I would think she’s taken precedence over all else, Lilly.”
    “Rubbish.” As she faced the screens again, she felt a flush come over her skin. But the monitors’ glare would hide it. “That woman was in the flat for a reason. I’d like to investigate who lives there, discover a link. Perhaps it would lead us to where we might find the entire group.”
    “Haven’t we been over this before?” He sounded more confused than argumentative.
    Clearly, the tuner mind wipe hadn’t erased his stance on the troublemakers, who had aroused enough suspicion with their appearance on the Queenshill campus to keep Lilly very interested. Nigel hadn’t believed them to be such a problem, whereas she felt they could very well be.
    “I had a thought,” she said. “What if Charles was killed while he was on the path of this group? What if he went to Billiter Street after realizing the burial ground had drawn their attention? Then, what if he tried to lure one of them for questioning?”
    “He was headed for Billiter during his patrol . . .”
    Plus, she mentally added, the cameras were clouded in that area on that night. It was a stunning detail, one that Lilly thought to be a signature of the attackers.
    Neither of them said anything more until a bit later, when something on the recorded Highgate Cemetery footage indeed caught Lilly’s attention.
    One of the panels . . . clouding.
    Just as so many other views had been clouded, from Billiter Street, where Charles may have died, to the Queenshill campus, where that group had confronted the girl vampires, to Southwark, where Lilly had tangled with the mind-powered woman. . . .
    “They were at the cemetery,” Lilly said, rising from the chair. Her heart was pounding now. Hours and hours of observing old tape, and it had finally paid off. “Look. They’ve been to Highgate, and that’s too near the Underground for my comfort.”
    Nigel punched a command into the keyboard, bringing up a larger view of the clouded panel. Then he pushed away from the console.
    She didn’t know if he was angry because she had been correct in her assumptions about the group and he had been wrong, or if he was adrenalized because these interlopers had wandered too close to where the main Underground waited, accessible through tunnels branching out from the village of Highgate.
    Then Nigel sat down in the seat she had vacated, tacitly conveying that he was giving her control.
    Bless that mind wipe.
    “Go to Southwark,” he said. “I’ll keep watch here.”
    “Try to access information about whoever lets that flat above the Bull and Cock Pub, as well, Nigel. Contact me when you have something.”
    Without even taking the time to gloat, she snatched her mask and goggles from their hanging spot near the door, then accessed the button to open it. As it swooshed aside, Lilly walked, then ran, toward one of the Underground’s exits, her wrong-sided heart pounding.
    She was going to find them.
    What she didn’t acknowledge, however, was that she was even more excited about finding that woman again.

FIVE
    LONDON BABYLON, “THE PIRATE SUITE”
    DELLA stood by the wall, half hiding behind a sheer lilac curtain draped from the rock ceiling. Next to her, Noreen and Polly hung back, as well, all of them dressed in a uniform that