THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (32 page)

That was Nadine’s dad, a man she had admired, a man who may once have been a valuable military mind. Even though Magnus had spent these past weeks bent on taking out the general, he had to resist the urge to act first and think later. He couldn’t cold-bloodedly spill her father’s life onto Nadine’s shoulders. He wrapped both hands around the semi and held his fire.

“Don’t listen to Daddy, hon,” Nadine said in that unnatural voice she’d used when he’d entered. “I’m prepared to die. Just do what you must to save those little kids.”

Horror swept through him at the image of Nadine valiantly and insanely dying in front of him. No way. Not again. He wasn’t losing another woman through his own incompetence. Instinctively, he raised his gun— and then his head kicked in again.

Little kids?

This was Nadine. She was crazy like a fox. She’d promised she wouldn’t die in front of him, not even for little kids.

Think
first
. What was she telling him? Was she trying to sound harmless? Was the general ass enough to believe that? Even after she’d
handcuffed
him?

Warily, Magnus backed out of the room. He raised the working gun to the ceiling as if in surrender and placed his back to the wall, clearing a path for the general and Nadine to pass by.

“Drop the weapon,” the general barked. So he wasn’t totally crazed.

Magnus obediently removed the clip and stuck it in his pocket to prevent anyone else from using it. He lowered the gun to the floor and slid it into the office. He crossed his arms over the hoodie concealing his canister of Mace and itched to use it. Unfortunately, he feared the general would be trained to take his prisoner down with him if attacked.

On the other end of the hall the day-shift guards stood over the still-wailing nurse. With no weapons to wield, the general’s personal security goons stayed down, ineffectively wiping their eyes and cursing.

Chang waited outside the office door, arms crossed, weapon in hand, looking more like a thug than the ones on the floor.

“Oh, look, Chang’s here to help you, Daddy Dearest,” Nadine crooned in her best lunatic mode as the general pushed her past. Her comment distracted the general from Magnus to the activity at the end of the hall.

“Chang, stop that fool at the computer from sending our co-ordinates to the enemy!” the old man shouted.

“The enemy, as in those crazy Oswins?” Nadine asked cheerfully. “Or Po-po’s favorite family?”

Why the devil was she baiting a madman? Magnus bunched his fingers into fists, bit his tongue, and applied his brain to the problem. She was distracting the old guy, and it was working.

Plan Z, then. As Adams dragged Nadine past him and down the corridor, Magnus slid down the wall, sat on the floor, and yanked off his boots.

“They’re unnatural demons, a danger to the fabric of society,” the general shouted.

Who was an unnatural demon? Him? His family? Fascinating insight into dementia but not helpful. Climbing to his stocking feet, Magnus fingered the truncheon on his belt. For Nadine’s safety, he really needed to remove the knife from the general’s hand before taking him down.

With the general focused on the confrontation at the end of the hall, Magnus silently stalked behind him, watching for his opportunity.

The general had slow-going down the crowded hall. The dementos didn’t understand their danger and kept blocking the way with muttered pleas and grasping hands.

“The menaces must be stopped,” Adams shouted at his son over the head of the wailing banshee. “They killed a good woman. I should have learned my lesson then instead of playing with fire.” He pushed Nadine through the mob of weeping, dancing, yelling inmates. “Her mother’s family is too dangerous to live.”

Magnus began to sweat. Nadine’s mother was a Malcolm, as were Pippa and Dorrie, their families, and all the people on the general’s genealogy website. The general meant to eliminate
all
Malcolms? That’s what the detonators were for?

Rubber-suited firemen arrived at the far end of the corridor, axes and hose in hand, looking for a fire. Chang held up a hand and gestured for them to halt. The growing crowd in the lobby might prevent the general from leaving the corridor, but the computer office was on the general’s side of the blockage.

“The Oswins are demons? Or people like me?” Nadine asked, sounding almost sorrowful.

Magnus began to see her purpose, but it wasn’t helping any. She wanted others to realize that her stepfather had lost it, force them to stop him—even if she died in the process. Nope, not happening on his watch.

“All of you are anarchists!” the madman ranted at her. “I have to restore the natural order that you and your kind have disturbed, that in my arrogance, I allowed you to disturb. It’s all my fault for thinking I could control demons. But once the radicals like you are gone, obedience and respect for authority will be restored, and we can have a country to be proud of again.”

Magnus winced. Adams might as well have pulled Nadine’s trigger.

“You’re planning on eliminating everyone who doesn’t think like you?” Nadine asked in the same pleasantly dangerous tone.

Uh oh. The bomb was ticking.

“Just the unnatural ones,” the general repeated, sufficiently caught up in his own world not to comprehend his danger. “You and your kind are monitoring their minds. With you gone, the rest of the country will see that we’re right.”

“Chang, are you hearing this?” Nadine called. “Do you understand what I’ve been telling you now?

At the end of the hall, Chang narrowed his eyes and didn’t move. Like Magnus, he waited.

The general jerked Nadine’s head up with the knife. “Don’t turn my own son against me. My boys know what’s right. They know how to obey. They and my grandsons will follow in my footsteps.”

“Jo-jo, you’ve already killed one son and grandson with your obsession,” Nadine argued, not showing a hint of fear. “Another is in prison. A third is heading that way. I don’t think you want Chang following your murky path.”

Disagreeing with a madman wouldn’t end this farce, but Nadine was providing a nice distraction. The general grew red-faced with fury.

Nadine’s calm control gave Magnus permission to do what he had to do. She was letting him be the bomb.

Magnus opened one of the doors to the secure ward and pushed the wailing banshee inside, then lifted the young woman curled in a ball inside with her. When the wiry middle-aged woman came after him, he shoved her past the door, too. A fast-thinking staff member on the other side grabbed her arm and slammed the door. Half the obstacles had been removed from his path.

Detaching the cord from the weapons belt Conan had provided, Magnus grabbed two more confused patients, tied them together, and gestured for the nurse at the next security door to take them.

The general glanced suspiciously over his shoulder at the commotion, but Magnus stuck to the alcove with the patients and nurse, doing his best to look harmless. The general’s madness blinded him as badly as those of the inmates.

“Richard, do you have those computers up and running?” the general shouted, fixated on his targets and not the real world.

Obsessions narrowed the mind, Magnus concluded. Survival required eyes wide open.

“Fall left,” Magnus said into his mic, not caring if Adams heard. He was already close enough to reach the elbow of the general’s knife-wielding arm.

Bless Nadine’s intelligence, she actually followed orders, even if it sounded like certain decapitation. Nadine stumbled to the left. Simultaneously, Magnus gripped the general’s knife-wielding right arm at the elbow. He pressed front and back, applying pressure to the tendon and nerves, paralyzing the arm. The knife clattered to the floor.

“Handcuffs, anyone?” Magnus shouted at their frozen audience as the enraged general fought him with the strength of two men.

Nadine hastily scooted backward against the wall to safety, blessedly taking the knife with her. Damn, but he loved a woman who could think for herself.

No one immediately came to his assistance. Magnus had to paralyze the old man’s arm again to wrestle him to his knees on the floor. Subdued, the once mighty military man merely looked pathetic, like a homeless, drunken derelict instead of the proud officer he’d been.

A cop emerged from behind the fire brigade, cuffs out. Finally, the knife-wielding episode had convinced the law that the general was dangerous. After a brief struggle, the policeman shackled the old man’s arms behind his back.

Magnus swung to Nadine, hauling her into his arms and squeezing her tight against him until he was certain both their hearts beat in tandem again. “Ten years off my life, woman,” he muttered.

And with a wrench of pain, he knew, once they were done here, he’d have to let her go. The general was no longer a boogey man to haunt her life. She was free now, to be whoever she needed to be. She didn’t need him.

She curled into him, sobbing. For now, he stroked her back, treasuring these last few moments. But this was no time for either of them to melt down if the general really had planted explosives.

“Computers?” he asked.

“Damn!” She shoved away and wiping her eyes, rushed off to the office.

Magnus wanted to breathe easier, but now he had to turn his brain to protecting the school and his family. Physical strength had limitations.

“We’ll need you and the lady to press charges,” the cop was saying as Magnus tried—unsuccessfully— to figure out how to save the world as he knew it.

“Start with assault and kidnapping, terroristic threatening. We have some bombs to find and then we can make statements.” Magnus left Chang to look after his cursing, struggling father. A nurse arrived with a needle. That might do the trick.

In the office, Nadine was already frantically talking into a phone and pointing at the map on one of the monitors.

“Conan’s downloading the files,” she told Magnus as he walked in. “I’m talking to Oz. We have to clear out the town, the school, and half Dorrie’s family in San Francisco. Jo-jo knows where they all are.”

“No one could plant explosives in all those places,” Dick, the IT guy protested as Nadine shoved him aside to take the keyboard. “It’s just a war game. The general is developing new software for the army.”

“That’s the kind of misinformation he fed me,” Nadine told him. “And then he captured an army helicopter with Magnus in it, and we found the scientists he’s hiding in underground labs. Take my word, the general is dangerous. You can’t trust anything he says.”

It hurt to say that. It hurt to realize how badly she’d been betrayed by a man she’d once hoped had cared for her just a little. But the time for castigation wasn’t now. Magnus waited, steadfast as a rock, hoping she could point him in the right direction. She was afraid that after all his valiant efforts, they might be too late.

“Can you find out what’s happening at the school?” she asked Magnus.

He’d brought Jo-jo down without hurting him. He hadn’t barged in like the Hulk and ripped off his enemy’s head but had paid attention to
her
, even when she was babbling insanity. No man had ever trusted her so implicitly.

And now she could feel him pulling away.

His job here was basically done—he’d caught the general, which is all he’d wanted. She and Vera were safe. She really couldn’t expect more from him.

At her request, Magnus called Conan and didn’t attempt to include her in the conversation.

“Anyone at the school yet?” she heard him say into the phone.

She couldn’t hear Conan’s reply. She could only set aside her own selfish concerns and pray they would get the kids out. For now, she had to figure out just what the general had done.

Using the program Dick had opened for her, Nadine located the target nearest the school and zeroed in. “Give me the phone and I’ll give Conan the coordinates.”

Magnus handed over the phone. “Conan can’t be in three places at once. I need to head back to the school while he deals with whatever’s planted in El Padre.”

“Go with him, kid,” Conan said to Nadine, evidently hearing. “I have the program downloaded and can figure out what’s what and can call you if I need anything. You need to convince Zorro on your end that he needs to cooperate, or he’s likely to go off half-cocked again. I’ll start sending coordinates to the cops in each of these towns.”

“How’s Mikala?” Nadine asked while she tried to decide if she wanted to deal with Magnus in Terminator mode. He filled the tiny office with his presence and his unfocused need to act.

“The kid’s a little spooked and wary, but she’s doing okay for now. You want to come here instead of dealing with bonehead?” Conan asked.

“No, I’ll stay with bonehead,” she said. She had to smile at Conan’s accurate assessment of his brother. If Magnus was just being stubborn . . . She threw a glance over her shoulder and caught the Maximator’s scowl. That cinched it. She was going to do what she wanted to do. Let him suck it up. “Tell Mikala I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Sounds like you’re able to tell her yourself,” Conan said with his perpetual curiosity.

“Not unless I can picture where you and Mikala are. I’ve never been to El Padre. It’s incredibly hard to focus over a distance without grounding the target. Send a drone image to my phone.”

Conan laughed and she hung up and handed the phone back to Magnus, not leaving him room to argue. “I need to talk to Vera. Can we get someone to drop us off at the Hummer or do we need to hike down?”

He looked as if he wanted to say no.

She wasn’t waiting for permission anymore. And she wouldn’t be shoved aside.

Nadine got up and let Dick back into the desk chair. She leaned over his shoulder to point out the school on the screen. “Those are the little kids the general wanted to turn into weapons. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. Believe me. I’ve been one of them for years. Adams Engineering is going to need you once the dust settles, and right now, Chang and I are the company. I’m relying on you to dismantle any detonating switches in this program. Got it?”

Actually, she was relying on Conan, but it didn’t hurt to have two drivers at the wheel.