THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC Read online

  “Negative, good buddy,” she parroted. “It will only get someone killed. Once I find my sister, I’ll find a computer and take down his network. We’ll be good then.” Sort of. Maybe. With a lot of luck—which she seldom had. She was speaking through her non-existent hat, but bravado was all she had.

  He sent her a dubious look as if he could read her brain waves.

  “Taking down the general’s network won’t stop a maniac,” he warned. “You planning on finding new identities for yourself and your sister?”

  She shrugged. “Already have.” She tried not to admire the two-day-old scruff on his very large, very square jaw. She might be a geeky, inexperienced nerd, but she was still female and not immune to masculine pheromones. She needed to get away before she fell under his spell. She was apparently too receptive to suggestion.

  He pulled off at a gas station with a mini-mart. “You need first aid, and the car needs gas. Do I need to tie you up to keep you from running?”

  She stared at him. “Tie me up? Are you serious?”

  “You’re a danger to yourself and your sister and probably a lot of other people. As far as the cops know, you’re an escaped lunatic. I don’t think anyone would stop me,” he said with a shrug.

  “Where do you get off calling me a danger to anyone?” she cried in protest as he pulled up to the pump. “I’d need a semi-automatic and a machete before I could even look threatening.”

  She thought the corner of his mouth quirked upward until he straightened it and glared down at her. If she’d known he was coming today, she’d have worn the Hulk shirt that said Don’t Make Me Angry instead of a stupid Tweety Bird.

  “I don’t understand what you can do or how,” he told her as if she really were stupid, “but I’m well aware that you’re not harmless. I want the general. You’re my key to getting him. You want your sister. I’m your key to finding her. Truce?”

  She kept her arms crossed and glared at him from beneath an orange curl she didn’t bother brushing out of her eyes. “Fine then. Have it your way.”

  He climbed out to fill the tank. He took his electronic key with him. She hated electronic ignitions. Why on earth would a car this old have a fancy new . . . Duh. Maximus Magnifico was some kind of mechanical genius, which was why the general had wanted him.

  She didn’t have time for playing games. She wanted to find Vera, and it would be far faster from here than heading into the desert. Besides, she didn’t need any more intimidating alpha males telling her what to do. She surveyed the lot, looking for a friendly trucker. They all looked surly. The price of gas must have gone up again.

  She spotted a preppy-looking teen climbing out of a Kia with Orange County plates. It was Sunday. What were the chances that he was returning to school after a weekend at home?

  She wished she really could read minds, but unless someone was screaming inside their head, the best she could do was read body language and physical clues. Even if someone sent thoughts in her direction, she generally picked up vibrations more than words—unless they were psychic. That seldom happened.

  She’d actually felt Mad Max at the gate, probably because he’d been thinking about her messages and steaming with suppressed frustration. A mind as powerful as his could explode under pressure. Probably best to get out of his way.

  “I’m getting ice cream,” she said, climbing out of the front seat.

  “You don’t have money,” Maxico reminded her. “I’ll be there in a minute. Find some Band-aides and Neosporin.”

  “I’ll use the restroom while I’m waiting.” She strode off before he could argue with that, too. She’d rather admired the determined way the Oswin brothers had tried to track her down and had followed the few clues she’d sent them. Now that she was out, she really didn’t need to risk all that potent focus on her. Vera came first, over anything and everyone, including herself.

  When they were safely in Guatemala or somewhere, then she’d have time to regret not having a chance to know the family she’d never see again.

  ***

  Magnus didn’t possess Conan’s nose for trouble, but gut instinct told him Nadine couldn’t be trusted. Once she disappeared inside the mini-mart, he kept a close eye on the vehicles in the lot, particularly the truckers. But he had to feed a card into the meter and remove the pump and screw up the gas tank, and he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.

  By the time he walked inside the shop, she was gone.

  Knowing his size intimidated, he tried not to scowl and curse aloud as he approached the young Latino boy at the register. Nadine was hard to miss, and the boy offered a brief description of the college kid she’d conned into giving her a ride. Magnus passed on a twenty and stalked outside, mentally castigating himself.

  That’s what he got for dealing with lunatics. The damned woman’s head would probably rot off from that screwdriver trick.

  He’d lost the damned Librarian, the key to everything. He kicked the concrete gas tank pad with his boot.

  He couldn’t take the chance of having the Camaro traced. He still had to go on to Morongo Valley to trade it off. And he damned well knew he was going the opposite direction from Nadine. He called Conan as he raced down the highway and passed on a description of the kid and his car.

  “Almost no chance in hell in finding a Kia in freeway traffic,” Conan informed him. “And the mountains prevent a good look from a helicopter. I’ll see what I can do, but our best bet is to figure out where Vera . . . Malcolm? . . . was staying. I don’t think either of them are on my genealogy charts. Where in hell did the general find them?”

  Magnus didn’t possess Conan’s fascination with the family tree that connected the Oswins with the Malcolm family and their weird abilities. He just wanted to stop the general, and he’d let his one and only clue escape. “Apparently, General Adams married their mother. I assume their father was the Malcolm, and one assumes he’s dead or otherwise not in the picture. She said she’d already established fake ID, so I’m betting Vera didn’t use her name at school. Needle in a haystack time.”

  “I’ll get the student lists, check for missing person reports, see what I can find and send a ’copter up for the Kia, just in case. Pity we can’t send out an APB for Tweety Bird. How long do you think she’ll last with the kid driver before he flings her out of the vehicle?”

  Magnus thought about the way the aluminum-foiled lunatic grabbed opportunity and played it as hard as she could. He shook his head. “She may be crazy, but she’s smart crazy. As long as the kid does what she wants, she’ll lay low. I think.”

  She’d been a pale ball of nervous energy. Magnus fretted all the way into town. He made the trade-off, sacrificing his intelligent power car for a beat-up Taurus, then fretted all the way back up the mountain again.

  He’d had the key to the general in his hand. Why the devil had he let her escape?

  The pain in the big green eyes behind those hideous glasses haunted him all the way into Irvine. The way she’d driven a screwdriver into her head twisted his gut.

  He was a damned sucker for victims. After they found this one, he’d better write off women forever.

  ***

  Nadine knew she wasn’t exactly invisible. She had clown-orange hair, wore a bright yellow sweatshirt, and sported a shoplifted bandage on her temple. She couldn’t go directly to the campus.

  She told her driver to let her out at the Metro stop in Anaheim. She’d only had a few years of relative freedom when she’d gone to UCLA as a kid—back when she’d been drinking the Kool-Aid and thought she was helping her country. But she’d learned the route to Disney even if she’d never had time or money to go.

  Since those days, she’d siphoned the price of a decent house into a bank account that the general didn’t know about, but she had no good way to access it without a computer. She was still stone cold broke.

  Nadine filed onto the next westbound train with the rest of the passengers and stayed one step ahead of the conductor until th
e next stop. The OC stations were still operating mostly on the honor system. Maybe she could send them a check from Guatemala to cover all her stolen fares.

  She’d never had anyone to rely on but herself, so she didn’t exactly miss having Maximus at her side. But she assumed he would have had better means of transportation than waiting for trains. She itched to fly to the campus.

  And Maximus had been a lovely distraction when she’d needed one. She might be the only twenty-three-year-old virgin on the planet, but it wasn’t from lack of interest on her part, just lack of opportunity. Magnus Oswin had walked straight out of every woman’s romantic fantasy. Except for the short hair, of course.

  Just thinking about what he might be hiding under that rumpled flannel shirt provided a level of distraction as she appropriated a ratty army jacket left behind on a seat. She wished she’d had more opportunity to see Magnus in motion so she could fantasize better while train jumping.

  In Irvine, she stole an ancient bicycle that was more wreck than transportation and pedaled onward. It had to be mid-afternoon by now.

  By the time she reached the campus, she was gasping for breath and glad she didn’t need her glasses for biking or they’d slide off her sweaty nose. Mental institutions didn’t offer good exercise facilities, and she’d gained weight doing nothing.

  She’d get angry and lose her focus if she thought about those months of enforced incarceration, so she let Fantasy Magnus play in her head as she biked to the center of campus. She didn’t think a bike was traceable, but she would take no chances. She wiped off her prints and left it for the next desperate person to steal. Slipping into crowds, she jogged off down a side street. The day was growing warmer and the jacket was out of place, but it hid Tweety Bird.

  She hid in an alley, nervously fingered the glasses in her pocket, and surveyed the boarding house where Vera had been living. She saw nothing suspicious. Curtains blew in the windows. A tabby cat slept on the porch. One of the students climbed into a car and drove off.

  The general’s demented sons and grandsons didn’t appear to be sitting on any roofs with telescopic rifles. She’d taken psychology along with her computer classes. She thought the general’s sons must have inherited some combination of sociopathic genes from both parents. She’d like to crack open their heads and lay their brains out on a microscope slide to see.

  She had to take the risk. As if she belonged here, she trotted up the back steps, opened the door that Vera had said never stayed locked, and took a dark interior stairway up to the room where she’d seen her sister last.

  The door was unlocked. Vera would never have left it that way. Entering the sunny spacious room, Nadine felt all her senses close up and shudder.

  The room still contained material traces of her sister, but not her essence—except the waves of fear.

  Tears running down her cheeks, Nadine clutched a pink stuffed bunny Vera had kept since childhood, emptied her head, and called on the universe.

  The universe, as usual, didn’t answer.

  Four

  “I surrender,” a weary voice whispered from the cell phone.

  Magnus slumped in the front seat of the rusted Taurus and tried to force his gut to unclench. “I’m near the campus park. How do you want me to find you?”

  “Are you planning on throttling me? If so, I want to be fed first, in a public place. Bring a hoodie to Gina’s on Campus Drive.”

  “Damn, you’re a bossy tyrant. You want me to steal a hoodie or find it under a bush behind a bench next to the bus stop?” he growled. He was starving. He could eat a hoodie.

  She hung up on him. Not a people person was the Librarian.

  That gave him food for ugly thought while he looked around for clothing stores or people wearing hoodies. It was seventy degrees and sunny. Hoodies did not proliferate around here until evening.

  He saw a couple of female students walking past in sunhats and had a duh moment. She wanted to hide her hair and bandage! He yanked a fifty out of his wallet and tried not to look like a pervert when he walked up to the women holding the bill stretched in both hands. “Look, I’m desperate. I promised my girlfriend a sunhat. I forgot to get it. Can one of you sell me yours?”

  They held a whispered consultation, snatched his bill, and handed him both hats, then ran off giggling. Obviously, sunhats weren’t worth fifty bucks.

  Fifty was cheap if it led him to the Librarian and her stepfather. Using his phone as GPS, he located the pizza place, studying it from the outside before walking in.

  No frizzy orange hair or bright yellow Tweety-bird greeted him. Hoping he hadn’t been set up, Magnus found a table in back. Not knowing if Nadine was a health nut or just a plain nut, he ordered the house special and a vegetarian whole wheat pizza, plus beer. She could drink water if she didn’t like beer.

  His gut didn’t unclench until he saw her enter wearing a bulky green army jacket. Damn, she’d wanted the hoodie not just to hide her bandage but the bright yellow shirt.

  She scowled at the flirty sunhats he’d placed on the table. Magnus held up a finger indicating that she wait, walked up to the cashier where they kept a stack of school t-shirts, and bought a black one. He returned and wordlessly handed it to her.

  Apparently she understood gestures better than words. Her unexpected grin drew his gaze to her lush lips. Before he could admire more, she grabbed the shirt and darted back to the restroom. When she returned, she had her springy hair and bandage hidden under the smaller sunhat, her glasses tucked into her collar, and she sported the too-large black shirt over the Tweety-bird sweatshirt. She carried the army jacket under her arm. Her clothing still looked insane, but her smile had Magnus shifting in his seat.

  At least she’d managed to disguise her breasts so he wasn’t too distracted. He’d been without sex for a little too long if he was noticing lunatics in Tweety-bird shirts.

  “Prepared for anything,” she announced.

  “Creative,” he acknowledged dryly, waiting as the server dropped the pizzas on the table.

  Nadine helped herself to both pizzas and the beer. “Thank you. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”

  “What happened?” Magnus asked the minute the waiter left. “Did you find your sister?”

  Her eyes closed in what looked like bliss as she finished chewing, but he was already realizing that nothing she did reflected the chaos boiling inside of her. So he waited expectantly.

  When she opened her eyes, she’d switched gears again and glared at him. “Do you really think I’d be here if I’d found her?”

  “No, but I’d hoped you’d be so appreciative of my breaking you out of hell that you’d actually offer to help me.” He tore off a hunk of pizza and chewed with anger as much as hunger.

  “I am appreciative. That’s why I won’t help you find the general. No good can come of trying to physically capture a man with his connections. Once I disable his network and shut down all his systems, he’ll be harmless.”

  “If your sister really has gone missing, we can’t disable anything if his network will lead us to her,” Max pointed out. “I’m assuming that’s what you want. How do you expect us to find Vera if you won’t give us access to the general?”

  She seemed to grow pale before his eyes—paler, since she had a redhead’s porcelain skin. She clutched something wrapped in the army jacket that he hoped wasn’t a gun while she gathered herself together.

  “We don’t know that the general found her,” she replied stubbornly. “I could feel her fear, but it wasn’t specific. Vera left a lot of her stuff in the room, as if she planned on returning. She could have been spooked and ran for other reasons.”

  Magnus let the “feel her fear” line pass. Pippa and Dorrie said weird things like that often enough that he believed they felt things he couldn’t. Not surprising given his lack of people skills. He’d been called emotionally dense. “So what do you expect to do now?” he asked with caution, not wanting to set her off again.

 
“I need access to computer equipment. I could probably get it on my own, but I know my limits. I need food and shelter as well as computers. Give me those, and I’ll be out of your hair in twenty-four hours.”

  “You have as much as admitted that you’re a walking target, even without the microchip. The general is bound to know you’ve escaped by now. If he’s hunting for you, I can’t take you anywhere near my family without marking them as a target for a madman.” Max sipped his beer and pondered the problem.

  “Your family is already on his shit list, but you’re right. There’s no reason to involve anyone else. If you have credit cards, we can buy a new computer and hole up in a motel. Once I have a computer, I’ll have money, and I can pay you back.”

  She looked at him so hopefully that he almost agreed. She actually sounded sane. Except a man who planted microchips in his kids’ heads wasn’t sane, and anyone thinking she could outrun a wily varmint like the general wasn’t working with a full deck.

  “I’m doing no such thing unless you agree to tell me everything you know,” he insisted. “I have to protect my family, too. Knowledge is power.”

  She ate her pizza and let her gaze wander the room. Magnus got itchy just watching her plot. He waited until they’d nearly consumed the pizzas, then slapped a hand over her wrist.

  “Let’s pretend I can read minds, too. I’m not letting you out of my sight. You’re a danger to yourself, your sister, my family, and anyone else with whom you come in contact— if the general really is what you say he is. I have the experience and the contacts you need. You have to trust someone, sometime. Make it me.”

  “You’re an obsessive, just like he is,” she said. “You’re intense, you’re military, you’re focused on the goal without any knowledge or concern for the means to that goal. Give me one good reason why I should trust you?” she asked defiantly.

  Wearing that hat and shirt, she should have looked like a pouting teenager. But without the geeky glasses, her eyes held wells of painful wisdom, and her mouth—was full, curved, and all stubborn woman. Magnus had to respect the mind and courage that had helped Oz find his kid.