He spoke dispassionately, but there was a fire somewhere deep down behind the words—the first I’d ever heard in him. “I’ve seen children die, too, Dresden, slaughtered like animals by a threat no one in the wise and mighty Council seemed to give a good goddamn about—because the victims are poor, and far away, and isn’t that a fine reason to let them die. Yes. If putting a bullet in you would have meant that the Council brought its forces to bear against the Red Court, I would have done it twice and paid for the privilege.” He paused at a stop sign, gave me a direct look, and said, “It is good that we cleared the air. Is there anything else you want to say?”
I eyed the man and said, “You went blond. It makes you look sort of gay.”
Martin shrugged, completely unperturbed. “My last assignment was on a cruise ship catering to that particular lifestyle.”
I scowled and glanced at Susan.
She nodded. “It was.”
I folded my arms, glowered out at the night, and said, “I have literally killed people I liked better than you, Martin.” After another few moments, I asked, “Are we there yet?”
Martin stopped the car in front of a building and said, “It’s in here.”
I eyed the building. Nothing special, for Chicago. Twelve stories, a little run-down, all rented commercial space. “The Reds can’t—Look, it can’t be here,” I said. “This building is where my office is.”
“A known factor, for Red Court business holdings purchased it almost eight years ago,” Martin said, putting the car in park and setting the emergency brake. “I should imagine that was when you saw that sudden rise in the rent.”
I blinked a couple of times. “I’ve . . . been paying rent to the Red Court?”
“Increased rent,” Martin said, with the faintest emphasis. “Duchess Arianna apparently has an odd sense of humor. If it’s any consolation, the people working there have no idea who they’re really working for. They think they’re a firm that provides secure data backups to a multinational import-export corporation.”
“But this is . . . my building.” I frowned and shook my head. “And we’re going to do what, exactly?”
Martin got out of the car and opened the trunk. Susan joined him. I got out of the car on general principles.
“We,” said Martin, definitely not including me, “are going to burgle the office and retrieve files that we hope will contain information that might point the way toward Arianna’s locations and intentions. You are going to remain with the car.”
“The hell I will,” I said.
“Harry,” Susan said, her tone brisk and reasonable, “it’s computers.”
I grunted as if Susan had nudged me with her elbow. Wizards and computers get along about as well as flamethrowers and libraries. All technology tends to behave unreliably in the presence of a mortal wizard, and the newer it is, the wonkier it seems to become. If I went along with them, well . . . you don’t take your cat with you when you go bird shopping. Not because the cat isn’t polite, but because he’s a cat. “Oh,” I said. “Then . . . I guess I’ll stay with the car.”
“Even odds we’ve been spotted or followed,” Martin said to Susan. “We had to leave Guatemala in a hurry. It wasn’t as smooth an exit as it could have been.”
“We didn’t have days to spare,” Susan said, her voice carrying a tone of wearily familiar annoyance. It was like listening to a husband and wife having an often-repeated quarrel. She opened a case in the trunk and slipped several objects into her pockets. “Allowances have to be made.”
Martin watched her for a moment, selected a single tool from the case, and then slid the straps of a backpack with a hard-sided frame over his shoulders. Presumably it had computer things in it. I stayed on the far side of the car from it and tried to think nonhostile thoughts.
“Just watch for trouble, Harry,” Susan said. “We’ll be back out in twenty minutes or less.”
“Or we won’t,” Martin said. “In which case we’ll know our sloppy exit technique caught up to us.”
Susan made a quiet, disgusted sound, and the pair of them strode toward the building, got to the locked front doors, paused for maybe three seconds, and then vanished inside.
“And I’m just standing here,” I muttered. “Like I’m Clifford the Big Red Dog. Too big and dumb to go inside with Emily Elizabeth. And it’s my building.”