JIM BUTCHER - SMALL FAVOR

I wondered if Michael had ever felt the same way about me.

“My last remark,” I muttered, “was out of line.”

“Yes,” Michael said. “It was.”

“You want to duke it out or arm wrestle or something?”

“There are better ways for us to spend our time. Nicodemus and Tessa should be our focus.”

I turned back to him. “Agreed.”

“This isn’t over,” he said, a harsh edge in his voice. “We’ll discuss it after.”

I grunted and nodded. Some of the tension left the air between us. Back to business. That was easier. “You know what I don’t get?” I said. “How do you step from Nicodemus’s end of recruiting Marcone all the way to Tessa’s end of a society steeped in chaos and despair?”

“I don’t know,” Michael said. He moved his hand to the hilt of the sword he now wore belted to his side, an unconscious gesture. “But Nicodemus thinks he does. And whatever he’s doing, I’ve got a bad feeling that we’d better figure it out before he gets it done.”

“I f I knew of any trusted lieutenants preparing to betray my employer,” Miss Gard said with exaggerated patience, “they wouldn’t be trusted , now, would they? If you ask politely, I’m sure you can get someone to read the definition of treachery to you, Dresden.”

Michael smiled quietly. He sat at the workbench with one of his heavy daggers and a metal file, evidently taking some burrs out of the blade. Hendricks sat on a stool at the other end of the workbench. The huge enforcer had disassembled a handgun and was cleaning the pieces fastidiously.

“Okay, then,” I said to Gard. “Why don’t we start with everyone who knew the location of Marcone’s panic room.”

Gard narrowed her eyes, studying me. She looked better. Granted, it’s difficult to look much worse than disemboweled, but even so, she’d been reduced from ten miles of bad road to maybe two or three. She was sitting up in her cot, her back resting against the wall of the workshop, and though she looked pale and incredibly tired, her blue eyes were clear and sharp.

“I don’t think so,” she said quietly.

“There’s not going to be much need to keep Marcone’s secrets once he’s dead, or under the control of one of the Fallen.”

“I can’t,” she said.

“Oh, come on,” I said, throwing up my hands. “Hell’s bells, I’m not asking you for the launch codes to nuclear missiles.”

She took a deep breath and enunciated each word. “I. Can’t.”

From the workbench Hendricks rumbled, “S’okay. Tell him.”

Gard frowned at his broad back but nodded once and turned to me. “Comparatively few people in the organization were directly aware of the panic room, but I’m not sure that’s our biggest concern.”

The change in gears, from stonewall to narration, made me blink a little. Even Michael glanced up, frowning at Gard.

“No?” I asked. “If that’s not our biggest concern, what is?”

“The number of people who could have pieced it together from disparate facts,” Gard replied. “Contractors had to be paid. Materials had to be purchased. Architects had to be hired. Any of a dozen different things could have indicated that Marcone was building something, and piqued someone’s curiosity enough to dig deeper.”

I grunted. “At which point he could probably find out a lot by talking to the architects or builders.”

“Exactly. In this instance he was unusually lax in his standard caution when it came to matters of security. I urged him to take conventional measures, but he refused.”

“Conventional measures,” I said. “You’re talking about killing everyone who worked on it.”

“Secret passages and secret sanctums are quite useless if they aren’t secret ,” Gard replied.

“Maybe he didn’t feel like killing a bunch of his employees to cover his own ass.”

Gard shrugged. “I’m not here to make moral judgments, Dresden. I’m an adviser. That was my advice.”

I grunted. “So who would know? The builders. People handling books and paychecks.”

“And anyone they talked to,” Gard said.

“That makes the suspect pool a little larger than is useful,” I said.

“Indeed it does.”

“Stop,” I said. “Occam time.”

Gard gave me a blank stare. Maybe she’d never heard of MC Hammer.

“Occam?” she asked.

“Occam’s razor,” I said. “The simplest explanation is most often correct.”

Her lips quivered. “How charming.”

“If we define a circle of suspects that includes everyone who might possibly have heard anything, we get nowhere. If we limit the pool to the most likely choices, we have something we can work with, and we’re much more likely to find the traitor.”

“We?” Gard asked.

“Whatever,” I said. “Who would have had a lot of access? Let’s leave the contractors out of it. They generally aren’t out for blood, and Marcone owns half the developers in town anyway.”

Gard nodded her head in acceptance. “Very well. One of three or four accountants, any of the inner circle, and one of two or three troubleshooters.”

“Troubleshooters?” Michael asked.

“When there’s trouble,” I told him, “they shoot it.”

Gard let out a quick snort of laughter-then winced, clutching at her stomach with both hands.

“Easy there,” I said. “You all right?”

“Eventually,” Gard murmured. “Please continue.”

“What about Torelli?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“Could he be our guy?”

Gard rolled her eyes. “Please. The man has the intellect of a lobotomized turtle. Marcone’s been aware of his ambition for some time now.”

“If he’s been aware of it,” I asked, “how come Torelli is still paying taxes?”

“Because we were using him to draw any other would-be usurpers into the open, where they could be dealt with.”

“Hungh,” I said, frowning. “Could he have put pressure on any of the people in the know?”

“The bookkeepers, perhaps, but I think it highly unlikely. Marcone has made it clear that they enjoy his most enthusiastic protection.”

“Yeah, but Yurtle the Lobotomized isn’t all that bright.”

Gard blinked. “Excuse me?”

“My God, woman!” I protested. “You’ve never read Dr. Seuss?”

She frowned. “Who is Dr.-”

I held up a hand. “Never mind, forget it. Torelli isn’t all that bright. Maybe he figured he could strong-arm a bookkeeper and knock off Marcone before Marcone got a chance to demonstrate his enthusiasm.”

Gard pursed her lips. “Torelli has stupidity enough and to spare. But he’s also a sniveling, cowardly little splatter of rat dung.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you so focused on him?”

“Oh,” I said, “I can’t put my finger on any one thing. But my finely tuned instincts tell me that he’s hostile.”

Gard smiled. “Tried to kill you, did he?”

“He started trying to put the muscle on Demeter while I was there this morning. I objected.”

“Ah,” she said. “I had wondered how you found us.”

“Torelli’s goons tried shooting me up right before I came here.”

“I see,” Gard said, narrowing her eyes in thought. “The timing of his uprising is rather too precise to be mere coincidence.”

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought of that.”

She tapped a finger against her chin. “Torelli is no genius, but he is competent at his job. He wouldn’t be operating that high in the organization if he weren’t. I suppose it’s possible that Torelli might have secured the information if he applied enough mean cunning to the task.” She glanced up at me. “You think the Denarians recruited him to be their man on the inside?”