THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (27 page)

“We can try, Mikala,” the social worker said. “Can you tell us your name and where you live?”

The child happily spelled out her street address, her name, her parents’ names, and gave them her phone number. Magnus leaned against the RV and kept an eye on the surly guards. Nursing their injuries, they were angrily talking into their radios— blocked cell reception must be frequent out here.

The social worker couldn’t make her phone work. The officer used his radio. As they conferred, the RV’s driver pulled up with a tow truck and a tire. Conan must have alerted them when the 911 went out.

An RV wasn’t exactly the kind of vehicle Magnus had in mind for chasing down the general, but if that was all he had . . . He hoped Adams had been alerted and was monitoring this situation involving one of the school’s most valuable assets.

“Want to sit here?” Mikala asked from her balcony seat. “I can make room.”

“Nah, I like standing,” Magnus assured her, standing to one side now that the law had arrived. “I’ll take one of those cookies now, if you don’t mind.”

She solemnly handed him a cookie, and they munched while they watched the guards yelling, officials consulting, and the tow truck lifting the backside of the RV. The special ed teacher wandered over and took a cookie too.

“If they can’t reach your parents, Mikala, will you be okay going with Mrs. Ramirez? I know her. She’s real nice. She’ll take you to a home to spend the night, until they reach your parents.”

Magnus hid his grimace. The foster system didn’t seem like the best choice for a sensitive, possibly abused child. He didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what Nadine thought about that. He could practically feel her tension.

“I want to stay with the lady,” the child said, as if that was a given.

Damn.
Magnus wasn’t a creative genius like Oz. He needed a story and didn’t have one.

“The lady?” Alista asked in puzzlement.

“Yes, the lady who talks with me in my head and can see me when I’m not there.”

Magnus choked on a cookie crumb and caused enough disturbance to cause the girl and Alista both to turn to him. Not that it was likely they could have performed a Heimlich on him if needed.

The officer and the social worker strolled past the angry guards in the direction of the RV, further distracting from Mikala’s demands.

Magnus quit choking and waited to hear what came next. The rotund guard rushed up to raise another protest. The officer lifted a hand to hush him.

“The parents have requested that Mikala be taken to friends over in El Padre,” the sheriff’s deputy announced.

“What about the little kids?” Mikala demanded before anyone else could react. “They’re crying. The lady said she would help them.”

Magnus decided it was easier to nail a thug with a hammer than sort through all the talk, but he recognized
El Padre
. Oz and Pippa lived in El Padre. Conan and Dorrie were staying there before the wedding.

He figured there was no chance in hell that Mikala actually came from El Padre, where Pippa knew everyone. Somehow, Conan had interfered with phone communication to get the kid sent to them.

But what the devil did he do about “the lady” and the school? Damn Nadine and her sweeping promises.

“We talked to the boss,” the guard shouted, interrupting. “He says we can’t let a kid go to strangers. The school is responsible for her and we can get sued.”

The social worker, sheriff, and special ed teacher ignored the guard and focused on the kid.

“Why are the little kids crying, Mikala?” the social worker asked. “Are they hurt?”

“Sometimes,” she said defensively. “They want their mamas, too.”

That wasn’t a line that was going to take her far. Magnus prodded the process. “Mikala told me earlier that they went hungry, and I heard the guard threatening to beat her. That’s the reason I insisted on calling the police. You might want to check on the other kids.” He gave the Jeep of armed guards a narrow-eyed look that the sheriff picked up on pretty fast.

Magnus figured everyone in town was dying to get inside that school. He’d just given them reason to do so. If that didn’t bring the general down on his head, the guy must be dead.

Nadine held her breath, bit her tongue, sat on her hands, did everything she could think of while the fate of a bunch of special children hung in the balance—and she could do nothing.

Now she understood why Magnus preferred action to waiting. She was about to come unplugged. Or explode.

She dearly wanted to hug Mikala, go with her in the sheriff’s car, reassure her that all was well . . . But the general stood in her way. She got that now, too.

If she wanted to help these kids instead of using them for experiments, she had to stop Jo-jo. And the only way to stop Jo-jo was to get him arrested.

She might as well construct a nuclear bomb. She couldn’t. But Magnus could. So she had to wait and listen until he told her otherwise.

She pinched her nose as the guards raised holy hell and the sheriff called in reinforcements. This was turning into a long night.

She heard a heavy engine that reminded her of the souped-up Camaro. Escape had arrived?

I know the ladies in El Padre,
she told the child in her head.

In all her practice with Vera and others, she’d never really been able to send verbal thoughts. Francesca had been as close as she’d come to mind-speaking, and those had been numbers and images. But Mikala’s child-like mind was wonderfully receptive when she left it open, which she was doing now.

Nadine couldn’t be certain the child understood the words or how they sounded in her head, but she had no images to project except the one of Pippa and Dorrie. She conjured an image of Mad Max’s Camaro and sent that, along with the message,
We’ll follow you.

She could sense the child’s sulk, but the argument was too distracting for more.

“You can’t take the kid anywhere until our lawyers get here!” one of the guards shouted.

“Then let us in the school to prove her accusations aren’t true,” the social worker countered.

Nadine pounded her head with her fist and wanted to strangle everyone.

She heard more cars stopping. She wished she could see outside. New lights flashed through the windows, so she assumed another police car had arrived.

Mikala sent her an image of the Camaro—not the same one that Nadine had sent her but a more glamorous one, with black paint and red flames down the side. So, that really had been a muscle car she’d heard.

She could practically hear Mikala’s question. But it was Magnus who answered, just outside the door so she could hear.

“Hey, bro, you’re a little late. The tire’s almost fixed.” Mad Max spoke in a lazy baritone, as if all hell wasn’t in the process of breaking loose.

“Yeah, well, I figured I’d wait to see if the good sheriff would haul your ass to jail before I bothered wasting my time coming out here. Hey, Alista, Ellen. How’s it going?”
Conan.
Conan had arrived in the flashy Camaro.

Nadine hadn’t realized she was feeling Max’s tension until he relaxed. It was like a balloon deflating. Which probably meant that was
his
car out there and he had a plan and it probably didn’t include her.

Crap on that. She’d had enough uselessness for a lifetime.

Nadine eyed the big window she’d decided was an emergency exit. No one would notice if the van bounced up and down with all the commotion happening out there. She eased from the floor and studied the window. It popped out just like a bus exit. Easy.

Go with the good people,
she tried to tell Mikala in her head.
I have to leave now, but I’ll find you tomorrow. The little ones will be fine now. You did good.

She thought Mikala’s sulk lessened a little.

She carefully placed the exit window on the bed and studied the scattered grove of trees following the creek bed. Vera had said there was a grave by the creek bed, but that was probably on the other side of the road, by the school. She wasn’t stupid enough to trespass on the general’s territory. Even the sheriff would require a search warrant for that.

It was dark, but headlights and police flashers crisscrossed the road and the land. If anyone lurked out there, she couldn’t see them. She was an experienced window climber now. She knew to throw her legs out first.

***

“The general will be ordering all cars followed,” Magnus told Conan. They eased further from the doorway so Nadine couldn’t hear them.

The cops were currently threatening to cuff the school guards, which ought to be keeping Nadine entertained. If not, the women talking Mikala into getting into the sheriff’s car should keep her busy until he worked out his strategy.

“If we separate, we’re in more danger than if we stand together,” Magnus continued. “Let’s send the sheriff with the kid, the RV, and everyone to Oz’s compound, including you and Nadine.”

“And you’ll be doing what?” Conan asked, perspicacious as always.

“Taking the Camaro to Palm Springs,” Magnus said in satisfaction. “This mess has to stop. Adams knows I’m behind this situation and that I’m the one who can press charges against him. He’s probably watching us right now. He knows my car, even if you have gunked it up with that paint job. He probably has a transmitter in it. He’ll come after me first, because a single car is easier to pick off than a caravan.”

“And then he’ll offer to trade you for Nadine,” Conan concluded. “Ugly. Better if you just join the caravan.”

“No, if he has men follow the caravan, then he’ll know exactly where Nadine is, and he’ll go after Oz’s compound. I don’t like giving away Oz’s location, but if Pippa is offering to take in Mikala, then it looks like war anyway I see it. We need to stop it immediately by cutting off the general before he figures it out.”

Conan uttered a few foul curses and studied the madness around them. “I don’t like it, but we couldn’t find the kid’s parents. They’re apparently out gallivanting in the Galapagos or somewhere. Pippa and Dorrie had fits when they heard the kid would have to go to foster care. We didn’t have time to do a lot of research, so the team just intervened and acted in place of the parents—illegal as hell if anyone finds out. I assume Nadine had the same reaction?” He glanced up at the RV.

“She’s keeping her head down, but yeah, she would have run over me with the RV if I’d agreed to foster care. These kids don’t fit into their own homes much less into strange ones. At least Dorrie and Pippa know what to expect.” Magnus didn’t attempt to explain how Nadine and the kid were communicating. “The only other safe place would be the house on the beach, and since the general knows the location, it’s not much better.”

“Oz has a whole town willing to stand between him and the general. We’ll call in Dorrie’s family, plant them all around. Circle the wagons, just as the Librarian told us earlier. Nadine was right about that. We’ll be good.” Conan tried to sound unconcerned.

Conan wasn’t an idiot. He was as concerned as Magnus.

Magnus took the Camaro keys and left the RV and Nadine to Conan and the RV driver. If he tried to explain, she’d throw a tantrum, and he’d waste time better spent in doing what had to be done. Act now, think later.

He eased toward the rear corner of the RV, sticking to the shadows. As Nadine had said, he was fairly conspicuous, but everyone was caught up in their own drama and had lost interest in him. One of the school guards might be radioing for reinforcements and watching him, but that was just fine. He’d lure away as many bad guys as he could.

Except for the damned silly flames, the black two-door coupe blended nicely into the darkness. The sleek hatchback in this particular model had no rear side windows, providing lots of privacy. He slid into the driver’s seat like coming home. He didn’t have time to inspect it for tampering. Tampering didn’t matter. He
wanted
the general to know where he was.

The engine purred like a kitten. Thunderous roars were for attention getters. Magnus preferred stealth bombers. He eased the car down the road, and no one followed. Not immediately.

He ran all his systems through his checklist. The car’s computer identified a tracking device, as expected. He’d decide how to work that information once he was further down the road. He switched on his GPS and directed it toward Palm Springs.

Taking back roads through the parks, heading south, his mp3 playing salsa softly through the stereo speakers, Magnus tried not to think too hard about how furious Nadine would be. She was better off without him, he acknowledged, and she might as well discover that now. He was a natural loner who had to act on his own. He couldn’t take responsibility for anyone else. It was the only way he could do what needed to be done, when it needed doing. Like now.

That didn’t ease the pain around his heart. He switched the salsa to hip-hop.

A groan from the back seat nearly slammed his aching heart to a stop. The car hit the narrow edge of the road and bounced. He yanked it back and luckily found a pull-off as the moans escalated. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, but he wasn’t afraid of ghosts.

Nadine, however, had the power to terrify him.

Pocketing the keys, he stepped out, pushed back the driver’s seat, and in the faint illumination from the overhead light easily picked out what he should have noticed earlier—a dark blanket covering his floor board. Of course, earlier, the blanket hadn’t been twitching and moaning.

He didn’t know how she’d wedged herself into the tiny space left after he’d shoved his seat back. Maybe she’d been on the seat earlier, although the bucket cushions couldn’t have been much more comfortable.

Contemplating logistics didn’t help. Nadine was having another seizure, and he could do nothing but stand by helplessly until it was over. Helplessness gave him too much room for worry. What could she be seeing now? The possibilities were endless. All the reasons causing her to hide back there could stall his head and wrap it around a lamppost.

The one big take away was that Nadine had known he’d leave without her. The woman knew him too damned well.