Jim Butcher - Dresden files:Side jobs

"Hey," I said.

"She's right, Ms. Murphy," Will said. "You've been seen with Dresden a lot. And, no offense, but not many people look like you do."

"Meaning?" I asked him. I smiled.

Will's eyes might have checked the distance between himself and the door. "Meaning you're outside the norm for adult height and weight," he said. "Exceptionally so. We should do what we can to make it harder to identify you."

Will had a point, I supposed. Annoying as it might be, his logic was sound. And I was almost certainly a little sensitive where my height was concerned. I sighed. "All right. But if I hear montage music starting to play, I'm cutting it short."

Will, seeming to relax, nodded. "Cool."

Marcy nodded with him. "So what about Will and me? I mean, what do the two of us do?"

I looked at the pair of young werewolves and pursed my lips. "How do you feel about duct tape?" WHEN I ANSWERED the pay phone outside a small grocery store on Belmont, I felt like an idiot. In the windows of a darkened shop across the street, I could see my reflection.

Halloween had come early this year. I wore boots not unlike Herman Munster's, with elevator soles about three inches thick, making me look taller. My hair was dyed matte black and was slicked down to my skull. There was so much product in it, I was fairly sure it would deflect bullets. I wore some black dance tights Marcy had donated to the cause, a black T-shirt, and a black leather jacket in a youth size.

My face was the worst part of the disguise. I was all but smothered beneath the makeup. Dark tones of silver that faded to black made a mess of my eyes, altering their shape by means of suggestion, through clever application of liner. In the evening light, I might have looked Asian. My lips were darkened, too, a shade of wine red that somehow managed to complement the eye shadow. The lipstick changed the shape of my mouth slightly and made my lips look fuller.

I glowered at the reflection. This costume had exactly one thing going for it: I didn't look a thing like me.

The phone rang and I picked it up, jerking it off the base unit as if impatient. I glared around me, my eyes tracking across every spot I thought could contain an observer, and said, "Yeah?"

"The merchandise," murmured a soft, sibilant voice with an odd accent. "Describe."

There was something intrinsically unsettling about the voice. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. "One male and one female, mid- to late-twenties. Shapeshifters."

There was a rustle of static over the line, unless the speaker could make an extremely odd hissing sound. All things considered, I gave it even odds.

"Ten thousand," said the voice.

I could have played it a couple of different ways. The kinds of people who get into this sort of deal come in about three general types: greedy, low-life sons of bitches; cold professionals engaged in a business transaction; and desperate amateurs who are in over their heads. I'd already decided to try to come across as the first on the list.

"Forty thousand," I shot back instantly. "Each."

There was a furious sound on the other end of the phone. It wasn't a human sound, either.

"I could pluck out your eyes and cut your tongue into slivers," hissed the voice. Something about it scared the hell out of me, touching on some instinctual level that Ray, in all his repulsive mass, had not. I felt myself shudder, despite my effort not to do so.

"Whatever," I said, trying to sound bored. "Even if you could do it, it gets you nothing. But hey, no skin off my ass either way."

There was a long silence on the other end of my phone. I thought I felt some kind of pressure building behind my eyelids. I told myself it was my imagination.

"Yo, anyone there?" I complained. "Listen. Are you up for doing some business, or did I just waste my time?"

After another pause, the voice hissed something in a bubbling, serpentine tongue. The phone rustled, as if changing hands, and a very deep male voice said, "Twenty thousand. Each."

"I'm not selling the female for less than thirty."

"Fifty total, then," rumbled the new voice. It sounded entirely human.

"Cash," I demanded.

"Done."

I kept tracking the street with my eyes, looking for their spotter, but saw no one. "How do you handle delivery?"

"There's a warehouse."

"Fat chance. I pull in there, you'll just pop me and make the body disappear along with the freaks."

"What do you suggest?" rumbled the voice.

"Buttercup Park. Thirty minutes. One carrier. Carrier hands me half the cash. Then carrier verifies the merchandise in the back of my truck. Carrier hands me the rest of the money. I hand him the keys to the vehicle carrying the merchandise. We all walk away happy."

The deep-voiced man thought about it for a moment and then grunted. Translation: Agreed. "How will you identify me?"

I snorted and said, "Park isn't huge, tough guy. And it ain't my first rodeo."

I hung up on him, then went back to my motorcycle and left, heading for Buttercup Park. A lighted sign hanging outside a bank told me it was a quarter after nine. The metro traffic grid was dying down for the night. I got there in a little more than fifteen minutes, parked my Harley in a garage, and made my way to where Georgia's high-dollar SUV was waiting in the same structure. I went around to the back and opened the hatch. Will was just finishing wrapping Marcy in what appeared to be several layers of duct tape, covering her in a swath from her hips to her deltoids, trapping her arms against her sides. She was wearing a simple sundress with, I assumed, nothing underneath. I guess when you change into a wolf, you don't take your ensemble with you-being trapped in undies made for a different species could prove awkward in a fight.

Will looked up and gave me a quick nod of greeting. "All set?"

"So far. You're sure you won't have a problem getting out?" I asked.

Will snorted. "Claws, fangs. It'll sting a bit, when it tears out the hair. Nothing serious."

"Spoken like someone who's never had his legs waxed," Marcy said in a nervous, forcedly jovial tone. She might have looked like a skinny little thing, but the muscles showing on her legs were lean and ropy.

Will tore off the end of the duct tape and passed the roll to me. He sat down on the open floor in the back of the SUV, the seats of which had been folded away to make room for the "prisoners." He stripped out of his shirt, leaving only a pair of loose sweats. I started wrapping him.

"Tighten your muscles," I said. "When I'm done, relax them. It should leave you enough room to maintain blood flow."

"Right," Will said. "Houdini." He contracted the muscles in his upper body and the duct tape creaked. Damn, the kid was built. Given that I was more or less leaning against his naked back to reach around him with the roll of tape, it was impossible not to notice.

Dresden hadn't been muscled as heavily as Will. Harry'd had a runner's build, all lean, tight, dense muscle that…

I clenched my jaw and kept wrapping tape.

"One more time," I said. "I meet the contact, then bring him here." I held up the SUV's remote control fob. "I'll disarm the security system so you know we're coming. If you hear me say the word red, it means things aren't going well. Get loose and help me jump the contact. We'll question him, find out where the other specials are being kept. Otherwise, sit tight, and make like you got hit with tranquilizer darts. I'll shadow you back to their HQ."

"What then?" Marcy asked.

"We'll have to play that by ear," I said. "If there aren't many of them, we'll hit them and get your people out. If they've got a lot of muscle, I'll make a call. If I can get a large force here, they'll run rather than fight."

"Can you be sure of that?" Will asked.