Skin Game (The Dresden Files 15)

“Whoa, whoa, hold on there, Annie Oakley. You did not just say that,” I said. “Not right to my face.”

A slow smile spread over her mouth and reached her eyes. “Harry.”

“I . . .” I exhaled. The talk with Michael had made me feel about twenty tons lighter, at least on the inside. “Yeah. I guess maybe it is.” I felt my own smile fade. “Harvey’s dead.”

Her face sobered and her eyes raked over me, stopping on my arm. “What happened?”

“Polonius Lartessa showed up with a squad of soldier-ghouls and whacked him,” I said. “Unless maybe it was Deirdre who did it. Or Grey. I had ghouls all over my face when it happened.”

“Who took care of your arm for you?”

“A good man,” I said.

She stared at me for a moment and then her eyebrows lifted. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes glittered. “Oh. That explains some things, then.”

“Yeah,” I said, bouncing my weight lightly on my toes. “The point being, someone’s trying to screw with the job before we even get going.”

“What a crime,” Karrin said.

I grunted. “If Tessa’s trying to stop Nicodemus, I’ve got to wonder why.”

“She’s married to him?” she suggested drily.

“That’s vengeance-worthy, all right,” I said. “But . . . I don’t know. I hate working in the dark.”

“So what’s the move?”

I chewed my lip and said, “Nothing’s changed for us. Except . . .”

“Except what?” she asked.

“Except someone’s going down for Harvey before this is done,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I can get behind that.”

I took a long look at the table. “Uzis,” I noted.

“They’re a classic,” Karrin said. “Simple, reliable, durable, and not assault rifles.”

That was good for the innocent bystanders of Chicago. Pistol ammunition wasn’t nearly as good at flying through an extraneous wall or ten and killing some poor sap sitting in his apartment two blocks away. Which wasn’t to say that they weren’t insanely dangerous—just less so than a bunch of AK-47s would have been. Nicodemus wasn’t doing that to be thoughtful. Either he’d bought what was available, or else he had a reason to cause only limited collateral damage.

“Can Binder’s goons handle them?” she asked.

“I assume so,” I said. “They seemed to take to guns pretty easily the last time. Check with Binder on it.”

“Check with Binder on what?” asked Binder, appearing from farther down the factory floor. He was carrying a sandwich in one hand, a cup of what might have been tea in the other.

“Speak of the devil and he appears,” I said.

Binder sketched me a courtly little bow, rolling his sandwich as he did.

“Your . . . people,” Karrin said. “Do they know how to handle an Uzi or do they need some kind of orientation?”

“They’ll be fine,” he said, his tone confident, even cocky. “Don’t ask them to fieldstrip and repair one, or for witty banter before they shoot, but for trigger work or reloading they’re golden.” His sharp, beady little eyes landed on my arm in its splint. “Does someone not know how to play well with others?”

His eyes went from me to start flicking around the slaughterhouse. I could all but see the calculation going on in his head. One Harry, no Deirdre, no Grey.

“They’re fine,” I said. “We ran into some opposition around the accountant.”

“Bookmark,” Binder said, holding up two fingers. He turned and retreated, wolfing down his sandwich, and returned a moment later with Hannah Ascher in tow. Ascher had ditched her sweater in favor of a tank top, and she looked as if she’d just come off a treadmill. She was breathing lightly and her skin was sheened with sweat. There were bits of ash stuck in the fine hairs of her forearms and smudging one cheek. Like every other look I’d seen on her, it was an awfully intriguing one—easily translated to let a fellow imagine what she might look like during . . .

“Right, then,” Binder said. “Resume.”

“We staked out the accountant,” I said. “Nicodemus’s wife showed up with a crew of ghouls and went after him. The accountant was killed.”

“The wife did it?” Ascher asked.

“Women,” Binder said scornfully.

Karrin and Ascher both eyed him.

He folded his arms. “I’m a century older than any of you sprats,” he said. “I’ll stand by that.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill Harvey,” I said. “My gut says it wasn’t Grey. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Eh?” Binder said, nodding toward me conspiratorially. “Women.”

Karrin gave me a very level look.

I coughed. “The female of the species is deadlier than the male?”

She snorted, and picked up the next Uzi in the row.

“I don’t understand. Why would Nicodemus’s wife be trying to sabotage him?” Ascher asked.

“Maybe she wants to cop the job,” Binder said wistfully. “Lot of money.”

“Nah,” I said. “Money isn’t her thing.”

“’Fraid you’d say that,” he said. “Personal?”

“Let’s just say that ‘dysfunctional’ doesn’t even come close to that family.”

“Bloody hell,” Binder said. “Why does everyone have to get bloody personal? No bloody professional pride anymore.” He glowered at me. “Present bloody company included.”

“Language,” Ascher said, wincing.

“Sod off,” he said. “Where’re Deirdre and Grey?”

“Grey’s doubling the accountant,” I said. “No clue about Deird

re.”

Binder made a growling sound.

“Hey,” Ascher said. “Has anyone else been keeping track of how many goats are in the pen?”

“Eight,” said Karrin and Binder together.

I did a rough calculation. “It’s eating one goat at every meal.”

That got me a round of looks.

I shrugged. “Something’s here. It stands to reason.”

Ascher and Binder both looked around the factory floor. Ascher folded her arms as if she’d suddenly become cold.

“Big,” Karrin noted calmly. “If it eats that much.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“And quiet.”

“Yeah.”

“And really, really fast.”

Binder shook his head. “Bloody hell.”

“What is it?” Ascher said.

“Could be a lot of things,” Binder said. “None of them good.” He squinted at me. “Muscle, you think?”

“Maybe where we’re going, we need something with that kind of physical power,” I said.

Ascher scowled. “Or maybe it’s there to clean us up after the job.”

“We wouldn’t have been given a chance to become aware of it if that was the case,” Karrin said.

“Unless that’s what Nicodemus wants us to think,” Binder said.

Us. I liked the sound of that. The more people I could incline against pitching in on Nicodemus’s side when it all hit the fan, the better. “Let’s not go down that rabbit hole,” I said. “We’ve got problems enough without adding in paranoia.”

“Too right,” Binder said. “Job worth twenty million each, with an invisible monster nipping about the place and a psychotic ex trying to bugger us out of tweaking the nose of a bloody Greek god. What have we got to be paranoid about?”

“Look,” I said, “at the best, it means Nicodemus isn’t telling us everything.”

“We knew that already,” Ascher said.

I shrugged a shoulder in acknowledgment of that. “At worst, it means someone on the inside is giving information to some kind of opposition.”

Ascher narrowed her eyes. “That’s rich, coming from the opposition.”

I waved a hand. “At this point, I’m playing the game. I’ll get in and out again, because if I don’t, Mab is going to have my head.” Well, technically, she’d have the splattered pieces, but they didn’t need the details. “I’m not looking to derail the train before then.”