THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (7 page)

“Jo-jo?” Magnus turned his laptop around so she could show him where to search.

“General Joseph Adams. We used to call him Jo-jo when we were kids. My mother could never remember names and was always making up nonsense names that stuck in her head better. She may have grown tired of hearing of the saintly Po-po and called him Jo-jo just to irritate him.”

“Like you call me Magnus Maximus?”

“Yeah, to irritate you.” She shot him a beaming smile then darted back under her towel again.

“Because that’s how you remember names,” he corrected. He poked through her computer while she worked on his, but she’d erased her history already. He should introduce her to Homeland Security. They could use a few geniuses, although they probably already had enough paranoids.

“I’m giving Conan this credit card info,” Magnus warned her. “He has trained detectives who can trace it and question the businesses where it’s used.”

“I won’t close the card account yet,” she agreed. “I can get into the Malcolm genealogy website, but it looks like Jo-jo has found another computer guru this past year. The files haven’t been touched since I left. They’re sending new ones to a different server. I can access the archives if you want to read them, but there’s no hint of what’s happening now. So far, I haven’t been able to locate any of his new network servers.”

She shoved his laptop across the table and retrieved her own. Magnus was aware of her gaze falling on him as he plugged away at the keyboard. He didn’t know what she expected him to do or say.

He managed a “thanks,” before returning to typing.

“You’re sending those links and passwords to Conan and not reading the material yourself, aren’t you?” she asked.

“He has software that processes keywords,” Magnus said, unoffended by her inference that he was a stupid slacker. “I’ll scan your index for relevance, but you’ve just said the files won’t tell me anything. I respect your intelligence, so why should I duplicate your effort? Conan will send me addresses, habits, any connections he can find in these documents. If we need power and influence to smoke out the general, we call Oz. That’s how our family works.”

“You’d rather grab an assault rifle and go after him, wouldn’t you?” she asked, returning to typing. “Good thing your brothers can keep you out of trouble.”

Magnus snorted but didn’t bother contradicting her. He’d tried to flatten the general’s guard hut with a helicopter, then held one of his grandsons like a punching bag so Bo could beat the crap out of him. Both his brothers and their significant others had stood back and watched.

Not wanting to pull the geeky towel trick, he took his phone inside where he could read the screen. Moments later, a noise from the balcony jerked his head around.

Nadine was squeezing the pink toy and shaking violently, giving every appearance of a woman having an epileptic seizure.

He almost had a heart attack watching her spasm uncontrollably. Magnus dropped the phone, dashed out, and lifted her from the chair before she could topple. Holding her against his chest, he headed for the bed.

She stopped trembling. In seconds, he had a struggling, panicked female in his arms, swatting him as hard as she could.

Even in his struggle to hold her, he noticed she hid real breasts under her loose clothing. And no armored bra.

“Don’t
do
that,” she said, whacking his biceps with a little more control now that she’d returned to coherency.

Assuming she wasn’t reading his mind and telling him to stop noticing her breasts—he lowered her feet to the floor. Apparently he found insanity attractive, because he didn’t mind checking her out. She was a nice armful.

He continued to steady her while she found her balance. “You’re really white,” he informed her with concern.

“As if I’d seen a ghost, right. I get that a lot.” She stepped from his hold and placed a hand on the table to steady herself. “Just don’t startle me like that again.”

“Can’t promise that,” he told her flatly. “Someone has a seizure, I’m trained to follow procedures.”

“Not a seizure, not the kind you’re thinking anyway.” She sank back in a chair, closed her eyes, and rubbed her temples. “I was seeing a schoolroom. Kids of different ages working in groups. I
felt
Vera. I didn’t see her.”

Magnus clenched his fingers into fists and tried to keep his voice below a bellow. “You were having a psychic episode?” He tried to disguise his disbelief.

She shot him a scathing look. “I’ve transferred some of my funds to the identity I created for myself when we set up Vera’s alias. A credit card will be overnighted here. I’ll be out of your hair then. I appreciate that you came looking for me, even if it was the puzzle that interested you, not me.”

She walked out of their shared suite, slamming the door behind her.

Torn between collapsing on the bed and crying, and slamming out of the room, Nadine chose the latter. One fit a day was sufficient. She would not let the oaf know how his cold disbelief hurt, not when she was in this fragile state. Real visions left her physically weak and emotionally vulnerable, and she just wasn’t going there.

She wiped away an angry tear and stomped down the stairs.

She could walk to the beach and dip her toes in the surf. That might be the only thing the general couldn’t track her doing. Unless, of course, the beach had security cameras aimed at satellites, and Jo-jo’s new guru was as good as she was.

Counting on a lack of surveillance equipment, she donned her new sunglasses and hid her hair under her hat.

Not acknowledging the landlady’s greeting, Nadine stomped down a path of feathery greenery and brilliant bougainvillea. She was almost running by the time she reached the street. She turned in the direction of the surf and hunted for a way down to the water. The rocky bluff didn’t look promising.

While she walked, she tried to recall every detail of her vision, but it was like recalling a dream. Bits stayed with her—like Vera’s fear. But the rest . . . Cursing, she walked faster.

Magnus caught up with her before she found a way down to the water. He grabbed her arm and steered her toward an alley.

“Beach access,” he told her before she could shake him off.

He was bigger than the general and far more muscular to have swept her off her feet so easily. At five-five and with too many extra pounds, she wasn’t exactly a lightweight. He ought to be physically intimidating, but in Mad Max’s presence, she only felt safe, as if she had a giant jock bodyguard.

She didn’t want to feel safe with the big oaf.

She shook off his grip but followed him down the gravel path. Aging timbers led the way down to a rocky shore.

Surf crashed against rocks, boulders, and patches of sand. In near delirium at finally reaching this one dream, Nadine raced toward the rolling waves. Cold water slapped over her new flip-flops, and she squealed, hopping up and down like a kid until she got used to it. A wave hit high, splashing her legs and wetting her jean shorts.

For just this one moment, she was real. She didn’t have to think, to plot, to do anything more than absorb the sun on her hair and the surf on her toes. The salt water erased all thought of the general and his minions.

Flinging her arms in the air, she danced in circles, startling a gull. She laughed until she cried, finally finding a release for all the jumbled emotion she usually had to conceal. She didn’t stop until she stubbed a toe against a rock and stumbled in pain.

“Impressive,” Magnus said from above the tide line. “Do you do encores or do I need to splint your toe?”

“Killjoy.” Nadine climbed out of the water to sit on a rock and examine her toe. There was something weirdly satisfying about sitting beside the big lug while sopping wet. “I think I remember playing in the surf when I was really little. All those memories disappeared with our family albums.”

He crouched down and moved her toe back and forth. She wanted to snatch her foot back, but at the same time, she wanted more of his hand on her ankle. The man was dangerous to her peace of mind in more ways than one.

She had to remember they had different goals. Hers was to find Vera and run for safety. His was . . . She wasn’t entirely certain but it seemed to involve finding the general and probably throttling him. That was a stupidly dangerous goal when shutting down his networks would safely paralyze everything he owned and destroy his spider web.

“What happened to the family albums?” he asked.

“They burned in a house fire when I was about nine.” She froze at an unwelcome thought. “Mom agreed to marry Jo-jo not long after that.
That’s
how he did it.”

“Hysterical, paranoid, or a useful insight?” Max inquired gravely, helping her to stand.

“All three.” Grumpily, she let him hold her arm if it made him feel better to do so. She wasn’t used to anyone looking after her. “I was a kid then and just delighted to have a dad. It’s all kind of fuzzy, but Mom was out of work, and things were really tight. She cried a lot.”

Anger shook her as those feelings of long-ago anxiety came tumbling back and matched the fear she’d learned since. “I recognize his tactics now! He burned us out so we had nowhere else to go—no memories to keep us going. The bastard. He probably got her fired, too, so she was helpless.”

She tramped toward the stairs, steaming. “What precisely is it you want to do with the general if you find him?” she demanded.

“He stole military secrets. I’ll bring him to justice,” he replied without hesitation.

“You can’t and you won’t and it’s dangerous to even try,” she warned. “He and his sons are venomous spiders hiding in dark places. Best just to spray their web.”

“Sorry, not enough. I want him and his thugs behind bars before they kill anyone else. I understand that if they’re your family, you’re reluctant to help.”

“I thought they were family,” she said gloomily. “Jo-jo really was the only dad I knew, and he provided all the material things a kid could ever want. I’ve tried to find excuses for him.” That felt right. Her mother hadn’t loved the bastard. Jo-jo had
forced
her to marry him, even if she hadn’t realized it at the time. “But I just spent months in a loony bin because of him and his miserable sons. I’m not his tool anymore. If I can access his network, I’ll take it down. Once I find Vera and we’re somewhere safe, I’ll help you find him.”

“Thank you,” Maximus Grandus said. “Some sanity has returned. I feared you might be suffering from Stockholm syndrome.” He caught her waist and carried her the rest of the way up the stairs.

Nadine swatted him again, although she was aware his muscled biceps suffered no more harm than if it had been bit by a fly. “Quit hauling me around. I’m standing on my own two feet for the first time in my life. Let me get used to it.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He set her down on the street at the top of the stairs. She felt inexplicably cold where he’d been pressed against her side—and slightly off balance. She tilted her head and tried knocking water out of her ears.

“We need more clothes,” he told her while striding down the alley. “There’s a thrift shop a few blocks inland. Are you planning any more fits or do you want to see what they have?”

“I don’t
plan
fits.” She hurried to keep up with him. “I’ve pretty much regimented all the rest of my life, because I can’t control the part that I don’t understand. Visions are freaky and unsettling. If what I saw was real, Vera might have been highly emotional and trying to reach me mentally. She doesn’t usually do that because she’s bad at it.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because the general made us practice until our heads hurt and we quit telling him anything. We pretended his experiments didn’t work.”

“So he gave up on mental telepathy but you kept practicing?”

Nadine sent him a suspicious look at his apparent complacence. “Not that you believe me, but yes. That’s how I learned it was easier to receive numbers and images than words. Sometimes touching something personal like a toy bunny forges a connection. Vera was sending me an image. Something is desperately wrong. I just don’t know what.”

She tucked away his reference to Stockholm syndrome to look up later. She ought to know how it worked, but she seemed to have blocked it—the way she’d blocked a lot of her childhood. The mind could only take so much—particularly one like hers crowded with so many other issues.

“You saw a schoolroom,” he prompted her.

“I don’t know where. There were tables and desks and whiteboards and kids working. No address. Nothing visible out the high windows. No identifiers. Vera was taking education classes at school. Maybe she was substitute teaching. I don’t know her regular routine anymore. I couldn’t communicate well from a mental institution.”

Nadine stalked into the thrift store. Racks of clothing and shelves of junk emitted a musty odor, but she’d never seen a store like this. Fascinated, she skimmed through the clothing, locating a size larger than she used to wear and hoping for the best. Delighted at discovering a bright orange tank top for a few dollars, she kept hunting until she’d located a large gauzy blue shirt and loose jeans. And a pair of white shorts and a green hoodie! It wouldn’t matter if the jeans didn’t fit right if the loose tops covered them.

Arms full, she cruised the perimeter. Scissors. Round brush still in the packaging. Purple beads.

“Why did no one tell me places like this exist?” she asked deliriously, piling up treasures on the counter. “I detest malls, but this is perfect! I’ll just do without underwear.”

She practically felt Magnus Max’s gaze dip to her breasts. She definitely felt her nipples tighten.

He dropped jeans and various shirts on the counter. “There are other stores around,” he said in that gravelly deep voice that had the ability to pierce her innards. “Socks and shoes might be useful. Toothbrushes and razors because a B&B won’t provide them. I’m starting to feel like a porcupine.”

She studied his studly villain appearance: stubborn square jaw, strong cheekbones, planed jaw bristling with manly beard, and the damned crew-cut. “You could grow a beard as a disguise and I’d call you Black Bart,” she offered. “But if you have to be practical . . .” She tried to give him a disapproving look, hoping he’d back off.