Skin Game

Sixteen

Harvey kept an office just off Logan Square, on the second floor of a brownstone he shared with a Chase bank. I drove us past the building and then around the square twice in Nicodemus’s black town car, using the time to think. It was a sunny morning, promising a mild spring day.

“You are literally driving in circles,” Grey noted, from the passenger seat.

“Harvey shares a building with a bank,” I pointed out.

Grey made an unhappy sound.

“What difference does that make?” Deirdre asked from the backseat.

“They’ll have at least one armed guard on-site,” Grey said, “and probably more than one. Additionally, everyone there will have rapid access to alarms that will summon the local constabulary.”

“Then we’ll take him quickly and go,” Deirdre said.

“A broad-daylight kidnapping,” I said. “In view of all this foot traffic, bank customers and. .” Even as I spoke, a white sedan with blue and white bubs and a sky blue horizontal stripe rolled through on the opposite side of the square’s roundabout. “And Chicago PD patrol cars, which regularly prowl through here.”

Grey sighed. “He’s right. We’re going to have to be patient.”

“Can’t keep circling the square,” I said, pulling off. “We’ll hit the next street over, try to find someplace we can park that gives us a view of the building.”

Deirdre scowled at me in the rearview mirror. “The simplest way is to walk in, kill him silently, and take what we need. No one will be the wiser until the body is discovered.”

“Point,” Grey said.

“Simple, all right,” I said. “I mean, we don’t know his schedule today, who is coming to his office, where he is expected to be, who might raise a cry if he goes missing, or anything like that, but why let inconvenient little things like facts slow us down?”

Deirdre’s scowl turned into a glower. Her hair whipped back and forth a few times, like an agitated cat thrashing its tail. I ignored her and drove slowly down the street on the other side of the bank building. It was early enough that I managed to find a parking space with a view of Harvey’s office door, and I wedged the town car inexpertly into it.

“There’s his car,” Grey noted, as I did. “Our man comes in to work early.”

“Maybe he loves his job.”

“How tiresome,” Grey said. He settled back in his seat with his odd eyes half-closed and unfocused.

“So?” Deirdre asked. “What are we going to do?”

“Await developments,” Grey said.

“Harvey will leave eventually,” I said, “to get lunch, if nothing else. We’ll follow him until he’s somewhere a little less likely to result in alarms and swarms of cops.”

Deirdre didn’t like that. “We are on a schedule.”

“I guess Daddy should have thought of that before he decided to proceed without telling anyone his plans,” I said. “We could have gotten started days ago.”

“Patience, Miss Archleone,” Grey advised, barely moving his lips as he spoke. He had the look of someone who was comfortable with the idea of spending a lot of time waiting. The man had worked stakeouts before. “We have a little time-and we can always do it the direct way should we need to change our minds.”

And we waited.

* * *

“Why?” Grey asked me abruptly, a couple of silent hours later.

“Why what?” I asked. I needed a bathroom break, but I didn’t want to wander off and take the chance that the two of them would roll up and kill Harvey the minute I wasn’t looking.

“This man is no one to you,” Grey said. “Why does it matter if he lives or dies?”

“Because killing people isn’t right,” I said.

Grey smiled slightly. “No,” he said. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I,” I said.

“A random hardpoint of irrational morality?” he asked. “I’ve heard your reputation, Dresden. You don’t mind killing.”

“If I’ve got to, I will,” I said. “If I don’t have to do it, I don’t. Besides. It’s smarter.”

Grey opened his eyes all the way and turned his head toward me. “Smarter?”

“You kill someone, there’s always someone close to them who is going to take it hard,” I said. “Maybe a lot of someones. You remove one enemy, but you make three more.”

“Do you honestly think Harvey has someone ready to avenge him should we take his life?” Grey asked.

“He’s got whoever he works for,” I pointed out. “And he’s got the cops and the FBI. If we make a corpse of him, we risk warning our target and setting large forces in motion that could skew this whole deal.”

“Kill them as well,” Deirdre said sullenly.

“I thought we were on a schedule,” I sniped back at her waspishly. I turned to Grey again. “The point is, killing someone is almost never the smart move, long term. Sometimes it’s got to be done if you want to survive-but the more you do it, the more you risk creating more enemies and buying yourself even more trouble.”

Grey seemed to consider that for a moment, and then shrugged. “The argument is not entirely without merit. Tell me, wizard, does it give you some sort of satisfaction to protect this man?”

“Yeah.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Hmm.”

“Good, you want to keep him alive now,” I said. It’s just possible that I might have sounded sarcastic. “That was easy.”

Grey resumed his waiting posture, eyes slipping out of focus again. “It doesn’t matter to me, either way. I’ve no objection to killing for professional reasons, and no need to do it when doing so would be stupid.”

“I thought you said it would be fun.”

That made Grey bare his teeth in a smile. “Always. But just because something is pleasurable doesn’t mean it is appropriate.”

“Look,” Deirdre said, her voice suddenly intent.

I did. Three people in overcoats were walking up to Harvey’s building. They skipped the entrance in front and headed for the staircase in back. Two of them were men, fairly bulky. The third was a petite woman.

All three moved with a clarity and intensity of purpose that marked them as predators.

“Poachers,” Grey noted. There was a low, growling tone to his voice.

I peered at the woman a little more closely, and shot Deirdre a look over my shoulder. “Is that-?”

Her eyes were wide. She nodded tightly. “My mother.”

Fantastic.

Polonius Lartessa was another Knight of the Blackened Denarius, the bearer of Imariel. She was also Nicodemus’s estranged wife, a sorceress, and an all-around piece of bad news.

“What’s she doing here?” I demanded.

Deirdre stared intently at the woman. “I’m not sure. She’s supposed to be in Iran. She wasn’t supposed to know that-” Deirdre cut herself off abruptly.

So. The wife was cutting in on Nicodemus’s action-assuming Deirdre was telling the truth, which I couldn’t.

“We can’t let her take the factor from us,” Grey said calmly. He unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the car. “Come on.”

Deirdre bit her lip. But then she got out, following Grey, and I went with them.