Cardinal Machines

Graduation is closing in fast for Zoey Collins and she's facing tough choices when it comes to supporting herself. Being the great niece of mother of A.I., Katherine Cardinal, doesn't mean she's rolling in green. But the Collins family is rife with penetration-testers and Private Eyes, a gene Zoey's inherited in spades.Zoey's trying to make it on her own when her great aunt dies, leaving her a prototype Cardinal Machine called Ocean. Both beautiful and buttoned-down, this machine ends up installed in Zoey's now-empty front room. What does a girl do with a sweet custom android like Ocean? Why, what any girl would do. She takes him out to pick up bail jumpers that'd otherwise be a problem to apprehend. And he's a natural! Because the Ocean models were designed for federal investigations and general law-enforcement.However, when she takes on the case of a bail jumper who would be her biggest bank, a man who would have bagged Zoey 5000$, she finds out her skip is dead in a seaside park. The Sheriff's Department rules it an accident, but her Ocean's assessment of the scene calls it murder….If you liked 'Cinder -- The Lunar Chronicles', this is a series for you!

Zoey Collins, born into the preeminent Cardinal family as Katherine Cardinal, is settled and happy with her life private investigating and bagging bail-jumpers. Recent edition to that routine, Cardinal Machines law enforcement android model C001-Oisín -- Ocean -- blends as well into the mix as she does into his occasional S.W.A.T. team and F.B.I. assists. For the first time, she's starting to feel like she has a partner in crime. And it's hard to resist making her beautiful prototype a passion project in her personal life... if that's even possible, which she's pretty sure from the anti-android sentiment on the rise in the U.S.A, it isn't. Still, it's not easy to stop a runaway train. Throwing herself into her work is her answer, right up till the point where she runs afoul of an ignored missing person's case that Zoey Collins could never afford to take, but Katherine Cardinal, Missy Moneybags, sure could. With all this going on, what she doesn't need is a dangerous new wrinkle in Ocean's growing fame.

During a stolen night out with Ocean, calamity strikes, and the shooter is inexorable, as only a robot could be. He's gunned down by Zoey's C001-Oisín prototype law enforcement android, Ocean. But the damage is done to humans and androids alike. People lie crumpled and extinguished all around her, and there's never been an android shooter in the history of artificial intelligence. This kind of violence? It flies in the face of programming. It's not supposed to happen. And... it's suspicious.Katherine Zoey Cardinal -- Zoey Collins to her friends -- had done difficult and even death-defying Private Eye work in her young career, but this time, she and her android are ground-zero at the scene of the crime. This case? It's top of Zoey's docket, pro-bono, with a bullet.

Zoey has avoided the powerful magnates in the Cardinal family for decades. Her life as a Private Investigator has no contact with theirs, and the formidable Cardinals turned their backs on her long ago. But you don't walk away from a legacy that easily. Zoey's late Great Aunt Katherine, the woman responsible for giving Zoey her beloved C001-Oisín, Ocean, and influential C.E.O. of Cardinal Machines, also decided that Zoey would attend Cardinal Summit. And Zoey knows she has to go, too. The changes ushered in by Zoey's powerful uncle aren't all good, not for Zoey, and not for androids.Zoey soon finds herself on Cardinal turf at Soliel moon-base, where everything is foreign, and her late mother's family is ruled by secrets. Half-truths and intrigues lurk behind every gesture. Pulled into the orbit of her celebrated family, but isolated and starved for information, Zoey must punch above her weight, and not just for Ocean's fate either. For the safety of Cardinal Machines, everywhere.

The torch has been passed at lofty Cardinal Machines. Rene and Clary Cardinal's attempted theft of C001-Oisin unit, foiled. And Zoey Collins is back from Soleil Moon Base. Finally, she can reunite with her android again. Last time she saw him, he was badly injured. Now? Ocean's fully restored, and as bright and beautiful as ever. He's a sight for sore eyes, which presents its own problems.Easing back into her life is impossible with Noah feeling the heat of his impending court date, and case work piling up. Zoey's readjusting when a new case falls in her lap. And it's a walk in a park! The illegal clearance of a roadside grove from in front of an obnoxiously wealthy business-woman's home. The first suspect? The prodigal husband, fun-loving, wander-lusty, and... missing in action?Setting out to track the runaway-husband exposes some unexpected angles about Ocean, too, and one development that calls into question the idea all android injuries are skin deep. Plus, things in the case aren't adding up. What should have been 1-and-done work churns up sketchy employees, oddities, and uncooperative assistants. It doesn't take Zoey Collins long to figure out this whole case is going sideways....