heavy locked gun safe that was warded with a dozen dangerous defensive spells. Hopefully, anyone looking to take it would open the safe first and get a face full of boom. My lab was behind a screen of defensive magic, which was in turn behind an outer shell of defensive magic that protected my apartment. Plus there was my dog, Mouse, two hundred pounds of fur and muscle, who didn’t take kindly to hostile visitors.
“It’s safe,” I told him. “After breakfast, I’ll track buzz-cut guy down, have a little chat with him, and we’ll put this whole thing to bed.”
“Sounds simple,” Michael said.
“It could happen.”
Michael smiled, his eyes twinkling.
BUZZ, AS IT turned out, wasn’t a dummy. He’d ditched the decoy sword in a Dumpster behind a fast-food joint less than four blocks from Michael’s place. Michael sat behind the wheel of his truck, watching as I stood hip-deep in trash and dug for the sword.
“You sure you don’t want to do this part?” I asked him sourly.
“I would, Harry,” he replied, smiling, “but my leg. You know.”
The bitch of it was, he was being sincere. Michael had never been afraid of work. “Why dump it here, do you think?”
I gestured at a nearby streetlight. “Dark last night, no moon. This is probably the first place he got a good look at it. Parked his car here, too, maybe.” I found the handle of the cheap replica broadsword I’d picked up at what had amounted to a martial arts trinkets shop. “Aha,” I said, and pulled it out.
There was another manila envelope duct-taped to the blade. I took the sword and the envelope back to the truck. Michael wrinkled up his nose at the smell coming up from my garbage-spattered jeans, but that expression faded when he looked at the envelope taped to the sword. He exhaled slowly.
“Well,” he said, “no use just staring at it.”
I nodded and peeled the envelope from around the blade. I opened it and looked in.
There were two more photos.
The first was of Michael, in the uniform shirt he wore when he coached his daughter’s softball team. He was leaning back on the bleachers, as he had been when I’d first walked up to speak to him.
The second picture was of a weapon—a long-barreled rifle with a massive steel snout on the end of it, and what looked like a telescope for a sight. It lay on what looked like a bed with cheap motel sheets.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “What is that?”
Michael glanced at the picture. “It’s a Barrett,” he said quietly. “Fifty-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Snipers in the Middle East who use them are claiming kills at two kilometers, sometimes more. It’s one of the deadliest long-range weapons in the world.” He looked up and around him at all the buildings. “Overkill for Chicago, really,” he said with mild disapproval.
“You know what I’m thinking?” I said. “I’m thinking we shouldn’t be sitting here in your truck right next to a spot Buzz expected us to go while he and his super-rifle are out there somewhere.”
Michael looked unperturbed. “If he wanted to simply kill me here, he’s had plenty of time to make the shot.”
“Humor me,” I said.
He smiled and then nodded. “I can take you to your place. You can get some clean clothes, perhaps.”
“That hurts, man,” I said, brushing uselessly at my jeans as the truck moved out. “You know what bugs me about this situation?”
Michael glanced aside at me for a second. “I think I do. But it might be different from what you were thinking.”
I ignored him. “Why? I mean sure, we need to know who this guy is, but why is he doing this?”
“It’s a good question.”
“He sends the pictures to me, not you,” I said. I held up the new photo of the sniper rifle. “I mean, this is obviously an escalation. But if what he wanted was to kill you, why . . . ? Why document it for me?”
“It looks to me,” Michael said, “as if he wants you to be afraid.”
“So he threatens you?” I demanded. “That’s stupid.”
He smiled. “Do people threaten you very often?”
“Sure. All the time.”
“What happens when they do?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I say something mouthy,” I said. “Then I clean their clocks for them at the first opportunity.”
“Which is probably why our photographer here—”
“Call him Buzz,” I said. “It will make things simpler.”
“Why Buzz hasn’t bothered threatening you.”
I frowned. “So you’re saying Buzz knows me.”
“It stands to reason. It seems clear he’s trying to