the actual threat, I can vanish the girl, get her to a safe house.”
“You have one of those?” Murphy asked.
Grey winked at her. “Let’s just say I can borrow one.”
I nodded, frowning. “Can you do email?”
“Who doesn’t do email …” Grey began, but then he looked at me. “Oh. Yes.”
“Murph, can you give him Paranoid Gary’s email?” I asked.
“My last fresh one was before I got hurt,” she said. “He may have moved on by now.” She took a notepad out of her jacket pocket and flipped through pages. She found the one she wanted, turned to a fresh page, and started writing. Murphy hadn’t been on the force for a while, but her habits had not changed much. She tore off the page and gave it to Grey. The email address was a string of gibberish letters and numbers. “Here. Make sure you tell him who gave you the address or he’ll assume you’re one of Them.”
He accepted the note, glanced at it once, and handed it back to her. “And why are you trusting this guy again?”
“It’s possible that Lara is playing games with me,” I said. “So her people might be behind it. The local cops are probably in Marcone’s pocket, and I don’t trust him any further than I can kick him. I don’t know why the Feds are involved or who is pushing them, but even though I like Tilly, he’s a square and this seems like a damned odd play for him. And I’ve never really been comfortable dealing with government agents.”
“Ah,” Grey said. “And the Internet guy is safe?”
“Paranoid Gary is a creep and a weirdo, but he’s our creepy weirdo,” I said. “If he’s the one doing the hacking thing, he can probably assist you. If it isn’t him doing it, he can probably find out who it is.”
“If he will,” Murphy said.
“Sure,” Grey said, almost jovially. “Because paranoid.” He shook his head. “Well. You don’t ever bore me, Dresden.”
“I’m good like that,” I said.
“At least you pay well,” he said, and nodded to Murphy. “Ma’am.”
“You’re going to need someone to relieve you eventually,” Murphy said.
“Only if we do this for a couple of weeks,” he said. He nodded to her; then he got out of the Munstermobile and walked back to his old Jeep.
“Useful guy,” she noted as Grey cranked up the vehicle and left, turning back toward Chicago.
“Very.”
“You trust him?”
“Well. I hired him. I trust him to live up to that.”
“So did Nicodemus,” Murphy noted. “But someone else had hired him first. So what if someone else hired him first, again?”
I grimaced. “Thanks for bringing that up.”
“You’re a good person, Harry. You trust people too easily.” She shifted in her seat, wincing.
“The leg?” I asked.
“Hip,” she said shortly. “Don’t forget your cold medicine.”
Murphy had given me something that promised to remove mucus and sneezing and coughing and aching for eight hours at a time, about seven hours ago. I opened the little bottle and took more of it.
“Are we getting old?” I asked her. “Is this what that’s like?”
She smiled slightly and shook her head. “It is what it is.” She eyed me. “Do you think Lara is behind this?”
“My instinct says no. But she’s tricky enough to try it, and it’s called treachery because you don’t see it coming,” I said. “Wow, though. She’s standing really close to Mab’s toes on this one, no matter how you look at it.”
“How she reacts to the proposal is going to tell us a lot,” Murphy said.
“You ever get involved in one of my cases and find yourself drowning in an overabundance of information?” I asked.
She snorted. “Point.”
“It might tell us something,” I said. “Best we can hope for.”
“We’re moving ahead blind,” she noted.
“Maybe.” I pulled the car back onto the road and toward the highway. “But there’s no use in wasting time.”
24
Freydis met us at the door of Château Raith and said, “Seriously? You just drive here and walk up to the front door? Obvious much?”
“Aw,” I said. “It’s so cute when you guys try to employ the vernacular. It’s just never quite on point. You know?”
The ginger Valkyrie gave me a narrow-eyed look and said, “Don’t make me stop this car.”
“Somehow worse and better at the same time,” I said approvingly.
Freydis snorted. “Who is the mortal?”
“Please,” Murphy said. “You know who I am, and you know what I do.”
Freydis showed her teeth. “The Einherjaren like you, Ms. Murphy. But that doesn’t give you a pass. This is an internal matter.