business my entire adult life. It didn’t need to start poking it there. My heart started beating faster.
“Who was it?” Ramirez asked me, voice hard.
“The nerve,” I snarled.
“Was it Lara?” he pressed. His jaw set like stone. “Harry, has she gotten to you?”
My fingers tightened on my staff until the wood creaked. “You’re crossing a goddamned line, Carlos.”
“Harry,” Chandler began, his tone soothing. He reached out to put a companionable hand on my shoulder.
I struck it away.
Chandler hissed and withdrew his arm, holding it close to his body.
“We have to know, Dresden,” Ramirez said. “Who did you sleep with tonight?”
“Because your sex life is a disaster, you pull this crap on me,” I growled.
Carlos’s face drained of color, but his expression never changed. “Believe it. Who?”
“Suddenly I remember why I have authority issues,” I said. “Go fuck yourself, Ramirez. And tell whoever ordered you to do this to me to pound sand while you’re at it.”
“Captain Luccio ordered me to do this,” Ramirez said quietly. “She’s still your friend. She wants to help you, too.”
“I don’t need this kind of help,” I said. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
“We are,” Chandler said emphatically. Then his face fell. “ Unless … we aren’t, I suppose.”
“Every word I’ve said to you is true,” I snapped. Or at least not a lie. “I’ve had enough bullshit from the White Council for one night.”
“Harry, let’s sort this out with the captain,” Chandler said. “Come back to Edinburgh with us. Let’s talk this out, yes?”
It was a rational suggestion, and it was completely unacceptable—because Thomas did not have time for me to spend a full day in a hostile debriefing back in Edinburgh. Those things were thorough and exhausting. It was possible that I’d gone through them maybe once or twice.
That gave me little choice.
“I’ve been talking,” I said. “You aren’t listening. The problem is on your end.” I glared at Ramirez. “I’ve got a lot of work to do. Get out of the road. Or arrest me.” I grounded my staff and shook my shield bracelet clear of my sleeve. “If you can.”
Things got real quiet. No one took their eyes off me, but everyone’s attention was on Ramirez.
He exhaled slowly. Then he said, “My God, Harry, you don’t make it easy, do you?”
“Of the two of us here,” I said, “which of us has definitely wronged the other? You suspect that I might have done something wrong. You’ve definitely wronged me, trying to find out. And you did it first.”
“We’ve both done things we’d rather not have, as Wardens,” he answered. “That’s the job.” He shook his head and, leaning heavily on the cane, limped out of the road. “Six o’clock tomorrow, security meeting at the Four Seasons before the mixer. We’re registered under McCoy.”
I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes. “I’m still on the team, eh?”
“Keep your friends close,” Ramirez said.
I huffed out a breath in a parody of a laugh and turned back toward the Munstermobile.
“Harry,” Ramirez said.
I paused without looking back at him.
“I hope I’m wrong,” he said. “I hope I need to apologize to you later. God, I would love to do that. Please believe that much is true.”
For a second, I felt nothing but tired.
Secrets are heavy, heavy things. Carry around too many of them for too long and the weight will crush the life out of you.
I wanted to tell everyone to take a walk, talk to Ramirez alone, and tell him everything. Carlos was a good man. He’d do the right thing. But the professional paranoia of the White Council made that impossible. Hell, if they thought I’d been subverted, they would regard the fact that I wanted to talk to him alone as proof that I was, myself, trying to isolate Ramirez so that he could be subverted as well. The other Wardens might not even let me have the conversation. And even if I did, if Carlos really thought I’d been made into someone’s sock puppet, he might talk with me and report everything I’d said back to the Council in an effort to discover what disinformation I’d been trying to give them. If he knew I meant to free Thomas, he’d have excellent reason to have me detained, to prevent an incident that could rapidly spiral out of control.
Fear is a prison. But when you combine it with secrets, it becomes especially toxic, vicious. It puts us all into solitary, unable to hear one another clearly.
“You are,” I said tonelessly.