Mystical Love (81 page)

Sonny swung back to the computer, tapping two keys. “It's a cinch Daddy used his subroutines in the least obvious place. Hopefully, I can trigger the main program with a password and slip in behind it.”

“I'm all eyes,” Logan teased. He hooked his feet around the stool legs, finally giving both her and the TV screen his full attention.

The steady clicking of Sonny's fingers became the only audible sound in the room for the next two minutes, and it took all of Sonny's concentration to keep her mind from floating into a dreamless mind fugue. Soon, however, a crackling thump echoed from inside the machine, and the huge screen flashed seven letters.

 “Good girl,” Logan said. “We're in the front door.”

“We're in the front door,” Sonny agreed, an idiotic euphoria sweeping over her at his praise.
Come on, brain,
she nudged,
find the trap door
. To her surprise, it complied, sending her fingers into a steady conversation with the keyboard and supplying a new sequence of numbers. The disc drive thrummed, erasing the word “Pandora” from the screen; however, it substituted no new word in its place. It just remained a bright blue background with a white, blinking cursor.

Shifting thoughts again, Sonny added a new sequence of numbers, but to no avail. She tried again with the same result. She tried a third tack, using her social security number as the trigger.

PANDORA
cropped up again.

“Damn!”

Hearing her annoyed hiss, Logan shifted on the stool. “It doesn't refer to a piece of jewelry, does it?” he asked sarcastically.

Sonny swiveled on her chair, giving him an amused smirk. “Daddy abhors jewelry—used to, I mean.” She felt her throat start to constrict and forced her mind back to the computer screen. She let her fingers hover inches from the monitor, casting off any smudged energy. “I sense Daddy
does
mean for us to look at the mythical Pandora and her chest of ills; although, if we use Tarot-speak, Pandora would come from the mythic Tarot deck. The Star card, in fact.”

“And its meaning?” Logan asked.

“Hope. You see, after Pandora opened the chest, the Spites, who had somehow gotten trapped in the box, flew out and infected all of humankind, except for Hope. When the chest was opened, he didn't fly away. It was a sign that if one never loses hope, salvation is possible.”

“Well, we won't lose hope. Your father obviously didn't.”

“But I don't feel the word resonating with my skills, outside of the thought that whatever it is, it should be left in the box, unleashed.” She added a new set of numbers, hoping for an immediate response. The screen shimmered and then illuminated a new sentence:

Sonny smiled, tapping the keys. Keep it simple, Daddy. A plus B equals C. She typed in the word “Sonny.” The screen darkened momentarily and then radiated light again.

Sonny plucked at a strand of her hair. “Using that word would have been
too
easy,” she declared. She erased the sentence and fed in a new set of numbers. The screen produced PANDORA
again. She erased it and tried twice more. No success.

Annoyed, Sonny lifted her fingers from the keys. You couldn't sift through sawdust without a shovel, could you?

Free-float,
her inner voice advised.
Think about the character, Pandora.
She opened something she shouldn't have, like Eve taking the apple from the snake in the Garden of Eden. Could it be that simple?

Her gaze drifted to Logan Reed. If the Lovers card represented the two of them, how did Logan Reed fit in? Her father had no knowledge of his existence. So how could he fit her father's elaborate chest of ills? And who in the mythical story did he represent? Prometheus or Theseus?

“Pride goeth before a fall,” Logan murmured

Sonny caught his meaning at once. “You can say it. I'm not as smart as I thought. I can't make the password work.”

“It's simply not the password then,” he replied. He tucked his thumbs into his belt loops and studied her face.

Damn, why did he have to be so laid-back and patient now, just when she had finally gotten used to his overbearing sarcasm? It was unsettling for her concentration for him to give her time to sort it out. Idly, she began drumming her fingers along the side of the console, replaying the sequence of numbers in her head.

“Let's go about this with a procedural eye,” Logan said. He scanned the screen above them. “Let's assume your father is here in the room with us, typing the word. What would he be saying to you as he typed?”

Nibbling on her lower lip, Sonny digested the thought.

“He'd be reminding me that everything has its place in the universe. Nothing is random. One plus one equals two; two plus two equals four … ” She broke off, giving the cards on the coffee table a quick look. “Of course, that's it.” She flew to the sofa, bending over the cards. She studied the engraved numbers at the top of each card. “The Fool equals zero; The High Priestess two.” She studied the remaining numbers as Logan stopped beside her. “Judgment equals twenty, which equals two plus zero equals two. Death equals … ”

“Thirteen,” Logan supplied.

“No, it's one plus three equals four,” she said quickly. Her gaze found the Tower card. “One plus six equals seven.” Her contemplation stretched back across the cards. “0-2-2-4-7.” Her gaze shot to the TV screen, and she bolted from the sofa. “Pandora's card is seventeen; one plus seven equals eight.” She sank back onto the computer chair, inputting the sequence of numbers. 0-2-2-4-7-8.

The computer suddenly flickered blue and white and then produced a new sentence:

Sonny smiled at the compliment.
I'm better than good, Daddy. Even though you never knew these cards existed, your spirit guides did and they routed them into your mind as messages for me.
In seconds, sentences began to ripple rapidly across the screen, halting her rambling mind and forcing her to focus on the words. She left the console, joining Logan at the bar stool again. Together, they read the missive rolling across the screen.

The computer paused, awaiting new instructions, and Sonny's mind reeled under the words. A sadistic predator? She felt warm hands descend on her shoulders.

“Now we know for certain Pandora exists. Next, we need to learn what it is.”

Sonny's stomach turned nauseous. “The hand of Spirit is moving things into place,” she said, clutching her stomach. “I can feel the shift.”

“When the student's ready, the teacher always comes,” Logan stated.

“But who's the student, and who's the teacher?”

“For the time being, your father is doing the teaching,” Logan said.

“What do you suppose he meant by ‘Pandora must never see the light of day'?”

“We won't know that until we see the clues he left.”

Sonny suppressed a shiver. She'd rather not see any clues ever. Just hearing that someone hated her enough to kill her was enough to shake her confidence. She didn't need every detail spelled out.

“Snap out of it, Sonny. We're wasting precious time.”

Sonny jerked to attention. “Sorry.” Leaning over, she typed a new command into the program and stood back. The drive whirred and finally fed up a new set of items: two Tarot cards and a photograph.

The photo was adorable—a young, petite face wreathed in an animated, carefree smile. Under the picture, a caption read:

 “Amanda who?” Logan asked.

Studying the pigtails and heart-shaped face, Sonny felt a surge of inexplicable connection to the girl in the photo. She clutched her stomach again.

“I don't recognize her, but I can almost see her aura connecting with mine,” she stated. “I wish Daddy wasn't being so mysterious.”

“Perhaps the truth would've gotten him killed sooner. The predator may have discovered his secret was out. Besides, not all mysteries start out that way. Most times they are truths turned upside down by the passage of dark minds,” Logan advised. “At any rate, we have our first clue. And once we match it with the others, we'll be one step closer to solving the mystery.”

“And where on the predator's hit list I am,” Sonny muttered. “First, second?”

“One step at a time,” Logan cautioned. His fingers gave her shoulders a final squeeze. He studied the card on the screen. “Another damn Tarot card,” he chided. “I wish your father had added some variety to this game.” He sighed. “Alright, I give up. Who's The Hermit?”

His question had Sonny moving to the screen with a subtle lift of her fingers. She closed her eyes, drinking in the card's energy. Her eyes popped open a moment later.

“It's Foster Sykes,” she said in surprise. She dropped her hands.

“And who is Sykes?”

“He's a hypnotherapist. He ran my dream laboratory until a car accident left him paralyzed a year ago. He's wheelchair-bound now and very rarely comes out of his house. Hence, The Hermit.”

A long pause descended, and Sonny sensed Logan was trying to figure out how this information fit a logical solution to their dilemma. And then, as quickly as he fell silent, he rallied.

“Perhaps he became an invalid because of what he knows about Pandora,” Logan said. “If you sense a connection with the photo, then my first thought was right. This mystery revolves around something secretive from your past. Your father obviously learned the secret, and it scared him enough to resort to hiding clues in a computer.”

“But murder!” Sonny stressed. “What secret could be so important that people would kill to keep it safe?” She broke off, covering her trembling lips. She saw Logan's arms snake out to her in sympathy, and she shook her head, warding him off with a raised hand. “I'm not having a meltdown,” she said.

“Good girl. We can't get the right answer until we ask the right question. Right now, the connections are vague, but I admit they are connected.” He gave her one of his arrogant grins. “I promise you, as good as you are with interpreting Tarot cards and initiating visions, I am just as good at solving my cases.”

Sonny attempted a smile, but she knew it lacked force. “That's the spirit,” he chirped, seeing the tilt of her chin. “Now, what does The Ten of Swords mean?” He ran his fingers along the image depicting ten swords embedded in a slain figure's back. “Not a happy card, by the looks of things.”

Sonny suppressed a shiver. “My least favorite card in the deck,” she remarked. “It represents being s-s-stabbed in the back.”

“Tell me something I can't see for myself.”

“It's a card of despair; however, it also represents the ending of unimaginable mental pain. See the sun coming over the horizon in the background? All is not lost.”

“That's encouraging,” Logan said, throwing her an admirable look over his shoulder. “Why are you frowning? We're getting better at connecting the dots.”

Sonny shrugged off the compliment. “I'm confused by its appearance. So far, all the cards I've been sent have been part of the Major Arcana … No, don't hiss. I know you don't know major from minor in Tarot-speak, but believe me when I tell you, this last card is far removed from the others.”

He studied her stymied expression. “Though these all appear to be separate clues, each one is really part of the whole,” he told her. He began rocking on the balls of his feet. “Which one do we need to know first, I wonder?”

Sonny wondered, too, but not out loud. Her thoughts centered on what the final outcome would be once all their questions were answered. Would The Ten of Swords signal her being stabbed in the back like her father?

The smell of smoke interrupted her sour thoughts, and Sonny looked up at the red warning light flashing across the monitor. On the giant screen, a visual and vocal countdown began.

“Thirty, twenty-nine ... ” Sonny issued a halt command; however, the countdown continued. “Twenty-seven ... twenty-six ... ”

“What's it doing?” she asked, issuing a second termination command. She felt Logan at her side. “I've never seen a program do this before.”

“You should be asking what it's counting down to,” Logan supplied quickly.

“I don't want to know,” Sonny said, hitting the reset button and then exhaling loudly when the computer squealed like fingernails down a chalkboard. The screen flicked off, and relieved, Sonny tumbled back into her chair, her legs buckling. “I don't ever want to know how close that was.”

“You can say that ... What the hell?”

The glass of the monitor in front of Sonny cracked, spewing smoke and emitting an acrid smell of fried wires. Rolling her chair out of the way, she saw small puffs of smoke curling up from the back of the monitor, heading for her chair. The heat bouncing off was an omen that a larger fire was about to erupt. She recognized the danger at the same time Logan did.

“Fire extinguisher,” they said simultaneously.

Logan whirled around first, his glance surveying the walls. When it lit on the red canister, he dashed towards it and ripped it from its holder. He was back in a flash, spraying the back of the monitor with its foam contents and ordering Sonny to get out of the way.

She complied, but not before snatching up her gloves from the console and donning them. Mesmerized, she watched the foam saturate her keyboard and the sides of the console.
So much for priding yourself on knowing things before they happen,
her inner voice mused. Sonny immediately dammed her ego for pointing out the obvious, and then she nearly jumped out of her skin when a fail-safe shutdown set off every electronic gadget in the room. One by one, each fizzled out and went dark.