THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (28 page)

She could suffocate under there. Carefully, he crouched down and pulled the blanket back. She was on her knees with her head buried against her arms and shaking violently. Cool mountain air rushed through the open doorway. He hoped that would wake her because her moans had entered every cell of his body and were destroying him from the inside out.

The cold air seemed to work. She shuddered once or twice and quit moaning. An instant later, she collapsed. Relieved, Magnus lifted her up, slid into the back seat, and hauled her onto his lap. She hugged his neck, buried her face in his shoulder, and wept.

That couldn’t be good.

“I hate him, hate him,
hate
him,” she sobbed wildly, as she’d never done before. “Why? Why does he do this? He ruins everything.”

The cool, calm, collected Librarian was having a meltdown.

Remembering the last woman who had gone to pieces on him and the result, Magnus nearly panicked. Except there was no 911 out here, probably no cell reception at all, and this was beautiful, complicated Nadine. No medic would know how to handle her. It was up to
him,
the useless mechanic.

Amazingly, he didn’t want to run. He wanted to make her feel better. He hugged her closer but he had no reassurances to offer. If nothing else, he’d like to add his tears to hers.

“What did you see?” he asked, hoping she could talk it out, praying he didn’t drive her over the edge by asking. So far, with Nadine, talking had worked—as it hadn’t with Diane.

“I saw him hiding in Woodstar.” Her voice cracked, and she hiccuped and wiped furiously at her eyes. “
Woodstar
! With all those poor confused people.”

Magnus practiced a mental litany of curses while rocking her and keeping his voice low. “Why Woodstar?” She seemed to be receptive to questions. At least her bout of hysteria had eased to hiccupping sobs.

“The computer I was using.” Her reply was muffled against his shoulder. She didn’t immediately continue but clung harder.

Nadine usually hid behind blithe intellectual confidence and an autistic-level focus. Her fear now made him frantic.

“He realized you sent me messages from there,” he concluded on his own.

“Yes,” she whispered sadly. “His new technician is probably tracing them.”

“No big deal,” Magnus said with assurance. “I want him to find me. I
don’t
want him to find you. You’re supposed to be on the way to Oz.”

“I’m not the yellow brick road sort,” she said with a sad half laugh. “Pessimism comes more naturally. He wants both of us, Mikala, and the car, but he’ll take whatever he can get.”

“He can have me and the car. You can’t fight him, Nadine. For all intents and purposes, he’s your father. I’ll have to take you back where it’s safe.”

“There’s no time. And he’ll still come after me. I think he’s cracking. Or maybe senility has set in. I don’t know. His mind is this terrible ball of rage. He’s not thinking strategically, and that’s not like him.”

She hesitated, holding her temples and shaking. Magnus waited, letting her process impossible information while he tried to determine how much he wanted to believe.

“If I’m understanding his internal uproar, he has his tech setting up automatic detonators,” she murmured in horror. “I’m not sure of the triggers or the placement of the explosives. There’s too much fear and fury and nothing remotely . . . rational . . . about what I saw. I have to go in and shut him down.”

Magnus thought his lungs froze. He couldn’t breathe just thinking of letting Nadine return to that snake pit.
He
was the one who had to face the general. He was bigger, tougher, more experienced.

He knew diddley-squat about computer programming.

“You can’t be certain you understood what you saw,” he objected. “I can’t let you go back there.”

“No choice. No time.” Wiping her eyes on a corner of the blanket, she slid off his lap and out the door. “He’s where he belongs, but there’s no way to make him stay. Got handcuffs?”

Magnus followed her out of the back seat. The cold air didn’t unwind his tangled thoughts. “I can’t do this. It just isn’t in me to let you go back there.”

“Even if he blows up the school and everywhere else he has his gifted victims stored?” she asked. “Can you live with that?”

No.

“Is that what you saw?” he demanded, hand frozen to the door latch.

“Yes.” She went around the car to the passenger side. “It’s us or them.”

***

Magnus had
listened
. He didn’t call her clinically insane, which she very well could be. Or would be soon if she suffered another episode like that one. Being inside the general’s head was worse than descending into a schizophrenic hell.

She had to trust in what she’d seen—and felt. Magnus had seen nothing, so he had to extend an extraordinary amount of trust to believe her. Where had people like that been all her life? If more people had trusted her visions instead of fearing she was a psycho hearing voices, she wouldn’t have felt so isolated or relied so heavily on Jo-jo.

She could just weep over finding the perfect man when she had to die, but weeping would be a waste of time she didn’t have. Giving into emotion had weakened her determination. She’d been tough when she’d been hiding behind computers. Now, she needed to be physically tough—like Magnus.

Nadine finally understood why he preferred to
do
instead of
think
—thinking undermined her resolve. So did feeling. No doubts, no fears. She just had to do it—confront the general on her own.

Magnus turned on the ignition but didn’t hit the gas. She had a feeling that once his great brain became fully engaged, he was a ticking time bomb. She clenched her hands in dread.

“The general has no way of knowing that you’ve located him?” he asked calmly enough, easing back onto the road and continuing in the same direction he’d been taking—which probably wasn’t toward Woodstar.

“No, he never knows when I’m inside his head.” She looked for a compass on his dash but didn’t see one. “Where were you headed?”

“Palm Springs. If he’s tracing the transmitter he’s planted, and I turn around, he’ll realize we know where he really is, and we lose the element of surprise.”

“He’ll have people waiting for us in Palm Springs,” she warned. “All you’ll do is get us and the car captured.”

“We won’t be going there,” Magnus said. “We’re trading cars.”

She tried to puzzle out his logic. “How? And how dangerous would this car be in the general’s hands?”

Magnus, the warrior, didn’t answer the first question. The mechanic in his head responded to the second. “I haven’t enabled all the security systems yet. If I did, the engine would ignite if anyone monkeyed with it.”

“How difficult is it to enable the system?” Was he planning on blowing up Jo-jo or the guards?

“Not hard, but an engine fire is pretty tricky. It could set a forest on fire. I don’t recommend it as a deterrent. I was just experimenting, looking for a means of keeping my designs out of enemy hands.”

She nodded, trying to find his logic. “If you’re thinking of trading the car for something Jo-jo has, what other fun toys will fall into his hands?”

She couldn’t believe she’d told Magnus the general’s direction—
and he wasn’t going after him
. She could almost hear the tick-tick of the bomb in his brain. Or maybe that was just her struggle to keep from exploding.

Magnus shrugged. “Nothing particularly dangerous. The car has internet access and blue tooth on everything, which is how you made it talk to me. If I tell you more, I’d have to kill you,” he said jokingly, but he didn’t laugh.

“The car talked to you?” She loved that idea. “You
heard
me?”

“Not you. It read your text aloud. Hands-free messaging. Most of the things I’m experimenting with are consumer-oriented. I’ve improved the automated steering they’re using in German cars, made it easier to parallel park, and removed the blind spots for safer lane changing. The original engine was one of the most powerful on the road, but not environmentally friendly, which was why it got scaled down in later models. It’s a classic car and not expected to pass inspection, so I’ve souped up the engine rather than downsize it—that part’s not consumer friendly.”

He was a brilliant man who could make the world a better place. So could those kids in that school if they were brought up right, and maybe even the scientists the general had making war machines could find better uses for their talents. Building bigger and better weapons of destruction improved nothing. One more of the general’s misguided notions bit the dust.

“His people will see us coming and have time to prepare,” she said in discouragement, trying to plan the unplannable.

“Keep looking for reception on my phone. When we have it, call Conan. We need reinforcements.”

“You can’t drag anyone else into this!” she said in alarm. “He’ll hold your family hostage as well as the school. I can’t return their kindness that way. It would be better if you simply let me drive to Woodstar alone,” she insisted.

“Not happening, babe,” he said with regret. “If you’re going down, I’m going down with you.”

Not exactly words of love, but under the circumstances, Nadine took what she could get. She hugged her elbows to keep from disintegrating.

“Listen, Oz, we’ve got a problem.” Conan stretched out on the bench seat in the RV while the driver steered it toward El Padre—in accompaniment with a sheriff’s car, a motorcycle, and the school’s Jeep crammed with the general’s armed guards.

“Yeah, what else is new?” Oz asked. “I’m about to tie Pippa to a chair to keep her from coming out to meet you and the kid.” His usually charming brother sounded as if he was about to bite cigars in two.

“Nadine’s gone AWOL. She’s slipped out the exit window while I was playing circus master, and while Magnus was running away in his SWATmobile.”

“Swatmobile, nice,” Oz mocked. “What are the chances that Nadine’s with him?”

Conan stared up at the RV’s sagging ceiling. “If she reads minds, probably pretty high. People don’t broadcast any more clearly than Magnus. The alternative will be that she’s raiding the school as we speak, but that’s probably too safe for our intrepid vagabonds. Social services has people all over the place. Look, I’m going to have the RV pull off at a gas station. The sheriff with the kid will stay on course, so if you want to keep an eye out for them, go ahead. I’m pulling my team in and going after Magnus.”

“Just a minute,” was all his big brother said. Obviously, Oz didn’t like this idea any better than Conan did and was consulting the experts in madness.

Conan scowled and checked his phone’s screen, watching a blip on the map crawling further away.

Oz finally returned. “Okay, Pippa says she can call some friends, get some tractors between the sheriff and the school guards so we can slip him and the kid through the gates without interference. Dorrie’s people are arriving. We’ll sort everything out on this end. Do you know where they’re headed?”

“Judging from what I’m seeing here, he’s headed for Palm Springs, but he seems to have stopped. I’m not able to reach his cell. The car was in top condition, so I don’t think it’s a flat.”

“He’s found Nadine then, poor bastard. He really doesn’t know what’s hit him, does he?”

“I think Nadine may be even scarier than Pippa and Dorrie put together. She just doesn’t know it yet. So, no, he hasn’t got a clue. Gonna be fun watching the mighty oak fall, should he survive the battle ahead.”

“Go see that they survive,” Oz ordered. “We’ll hold the fort here and send what reinforcements we can. And remember, you’ve got a wedding in two days. Make it fast.”

Conan chuckled. “Tell Dorrie I’m properly terrified and we’ll be home soon.”

Conan clicked off and hoped he hadn’t just lied to his bride-to-be.

He watched the sheriff’s car speed on past the exit where the RV was rumbling off. The Jeep and motorcycle stayed with the sheriff. Conan didn’t know how long it would be before he had unwelcome company. He had to work fast.

“Call me, big brother,” he muttered, while he punched into his network.

***

“Keep trying to reach Conan,” Magnus ordered. “He’ll have hounds scouring the desert in search of you otherwise.”

“Yes, O Great One,” Nadine said, finally seeing two bars on the screen. “I hear and I obey.”

“I am not the general,” he growled. “I just don’t want you wandering off until we have all our people lined up.”

“So, if I fling your phone out the window, you’ll not freak out?” she asked innocently.

For answer, he hit a dial on the steering wheel. A mechanical voice asked who he would like to call.

“Conan.” Magnus shot her a sizzling look. “I don’t
need
you to obey. I’m just hoping for a little help here.”

“Fun! Jo-jo never let me play with the cars.” She turned on the interior light and studied the dash.

Conan’s voice came through the speaker. “Tell me Nadine’s with you.”

“I’m here, sweetcakes,” she crooned in delight. “I adore this car. If it only came with handcuffs, it would be perfect.”

“Black box, under the passenger front seat,” Conan responded. “Tell me Magnus is still alive.”

“I’m here,” Magnus growled. “I may push the lady out so I can go where I need to go. Got anyone in the vicinity to pick her up?”

“You do that, and I’ll personally blow up your sweet car. Or maybe just steal it,” she added thoughtfully. “I think that’s the best idea. You get out and let me drive this mechanical marvel to the general. And then you can set him on fire. It’s an automatic detonator like his, isn’t it? The one on your engine?”

“No, I can’t explode the car from long distance. It explodes itself. And the detonator isn’t turned on.” Magnus gave her a swift glare, but the road was too narrow and dark for him to take his eyes off it for long.

“Look, I know you don’t like planning, bro,” Conan said soothingly, “but you can’t go off half-cocked this time. Pull over and let’s sort this out. What’s this about detonators?”

Ignoring the pertinent question, Magnus complained, “What, and have the general’s thugs find us while we’re out in the middle of nowhere? I can take on a couple of shitheads at once, but not half the army. I can’t even get surprise on my side. I’m pretty sure he’s tracking us just like you are.”