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in the way.”
    Susan shuddered and her eyes overflowed. She bowed her head and made a small sound. Then she leaned over and gently touched my left hand, the one still covered in slowly fading burn scars. She looked at my hand and winced, beginning to draw away.
    I caught her fingers and squeezed hard. She settled her fingers against mine and did the same. We held hands for a silent moment.
    “Thank you,” she whispered. Her hand was shaking in mine. “Thank you, Harry.”
    I nodded. I was going to say something to stiff-arm her and keep the distance, but the warmth of her hand in mine was suddenly something I couldn’t ignore. I was furious with Susan, furious with an intensity you can feel only when someone you care deeply about hurts you. But the corollary of that was unavoidable—I still cared, or I wouldn’t be angry.
    “We’ll find her,” I said. “And I will do everything in my power to bring her back safe.”
    Susan looked up at me, tears streaking her face, and nodded. Then she lifted a hand and traced her fingers lightly over the scar on my cheek. It was a newer one, still angry and colorful. I thought it made me look like some old-school German character from Golden Age Hollywood with a dueling scar on his cheek. Her fingertips were gentle and warm.
    “I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “There was no one willing to stand up to them. There was no one.”
    Our eyes met, and suddenly the old heat was there between us, quivering out from our joined hands, from her fingertips against my face. Her eyes widened a little, and my heart started pounding along rapidly. I was furious with Susan. But apparently my body just read that as “excited” and didn’t bother examining the fine print. I met her eyes for a long moment and then said, through a dry throat, “Isn’t this how we got into this mess?”
    She let out a shaking sound that was meant to be a laugh, but was filled with awareness of the inherent irony, and drew her hands away. “I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” Her voice turned wry. “It’s been a while for me.”
    I knew what she meant. I took several slow, deep breaths, separating mind from body. Then I said quietly, “Susan. Whatever happens from here . . . we’re done.” I looked up at her. “You know that. You knew it when you chose not to tell me.”
    She looked brittle. She nodded slowly, as if something might break off if she moved any more quickly than that. She folded her hands in her lap. “I . . . know that. I knew it when I did it.”
    Silence stretched.
    “Right,” I said finally. “Now . . .” I took another deep breath, and told myself it would help. “The way I see it, you didn’t fly into Chicago just for a chat with me. You wouldn’t need Martin for that.”
    She lifted an eyebrow at me and nodded. “True.”
    “Then why?”
    She seemed to gather herself, her voice more businesslike. “There’s a Red outpost here. It’s a place to start.”
    “Okay,” I said, rising. “Let’s start.”

3
    “I hope there are no hard feelings,” Martin told me as he pulled out of the little gravel lot next to the house I board in.
    Susan had yielded the passenger seat of the rental car to me, in deference to my storklike legs. “Hard feelings?” I asked.
    “About our first meeting,” Martin said. He drove the same way he did everything—blandly. Complete stops. Five miles an hour under the limit. Wherever we were headed, it was going to take forever to get there.
    “You mean the way you used me to attempt to assassinate old Ortega?” I asked. “Thereby ensuring that the Code Duello was broken, the duel invalidated, and the vamps’ war with the White Council continued?”
    Martin glanced at me, and then into the rearview mirror at Susan.
    “I told you,” she said to Martin. “He’s only dense in the short term. He sees everything eventually.”
    I gave Susan a slight, wry tilt of my head in acknowledgment. “Wasn’t hard to