Changes (The Dresden Files #12) - Jim Butcher Page 0,14
the remainder of her coffee. “Rawlins called. Told me that your office building had exploded. I thought someone had gotten to you, finally.”
“We on the record?” I asked. Murphy was a detective sergeant with Chicago PD’s Special Investigations division. It was the dead-end department of CPD and the only one with any clue whatsoever about the supernatural world. Even so, Murphy was a cop to the bone. She could stretch the line when it came to legality, but she had limits. I’d crossed them before.
She shook her head. “No. Not yet.”
“Red Court,” I said. “They bought the building a few years back. They wired it to blow if they wanted to do it.”
Murphy frowned. “Why do it now? Why not blow you up years ago?”
I grunted. “Personal grudge, I guess,” I said. “Duchess Arianna is upset about what happened to her husband when he tangled with me. She thinks it’s my fault.”
“Is it?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
She swirled the coffee around the bottom of the cup. “So why not just kill you? Click, boom.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She figured it wasn’t enough, maybe. Click-boom is business. What I have going with her is personal.”
My jaws creaked a little as I clenched them.
Murphy’s blue eyes missed little. “Personal?” She looked around again. “Your place looks too nice. Who was it?”
“Susan.”
Her back straightened a little. It was the only sign of surprise she showed. Murphy knew all about Susan. “You want to talk about it?”
I didn’t, but Murphy needed to know. I laid it out for her in sentences of three and four words. By the time I’d finished, she had set her mug on the coffee table and was listening to me intently.
“Jesus and Mary, Mother of God,” she breathed. “Harry.”
“Yeah.”
“That . . . that bitch.”
I shook my head. “Pointing fingers does nothing for Maggie. We’ll do that later.”
She grimaced, as if swallowing something bitter. Then she nodded. “You’re right.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Martin and Susan are seeing what they can get off the disk,” I said. “They’ll contact me as soon as they know something. Meantime, I’ll get a couple hours horizontal, then start hitting my contacts. Go to the Council and ask them for help.”
“That bunch of heartless, gutless, spineless old pricks,” she said.
I found myself smiling, a little, at my coffee.
“Are they going to give it to you?” Murphy asked.
“Maybe. It’s complicated,” I said. “Are you going to get CPD to help me?”
Her eyes darkened. “Maybe. It’s complicated.”
I spread my hands in a “there you are” gesture, and she nodded. She rose and paced over to the sink to put her cup down. “What can I do to help?”
“Be nice if the police didn’t lock me up for a while. They’ll realize that the explosives were around my office eventually.”
She shook her head. “No promises. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you.”
“I want in,” she said. “You’re both too involved in this. You’ll need someone with perspective.”
I started to snap back something nasty, but shut my stupid mouth because she was probably right. I put my own coffee cup in the sink to give me an excuse not to talk while I tried to cool down. Then I said, “I would have asked you anyway, Murph. I need a good gun hand.”
Tiny Murphy might be, but she’d survived more scrapes with the supernatural than any other vanilla mortal I’d ever met. She’d keep her head in a crisis, even if the crisis included winged demons, howling ghouls, slavering vampires, and human sacrifice. She’d keep anyone—by which I meant Martin—from stabbing me in the back. She’d keep her gun up and firing, too. I’d seen her do it.
“Harry . . .” she began.
I waved a hand. “Won’t ask you to break any of Chicago’s laws. Or U.S. laws. But I doubt we’re going to be in town for this one.”
She absorbed that for a moment, folded her arms, and looked at the fire. Mouse watched her silently from where he sat near the couch.
She said, “I’m your friend, Harry.”
“Never had a doubt.”
“You’re going to take Maggie back.”
My jaw ached. “Damn right I am.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’m in.”
I bowed my head, my eyes abruptly burning, the emotion clashing with the storm in my belly.
“Th—” I began. My voice broke. I tried again. “Thank you, Karrin.”
I felt her hand take mine for a moment, warm and steady.
“We will get her back,” she said, very quietly. “We will, Harry. I’m in.”