Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic (15 page)

His curiosity about his own ancestors had been aroused when Pippa’s mother had explained that the Oswins had Malcolms way back on their family tree, and that Malcolms had an unusual number of creative/eccentric/gifted members. As in—they had exceptional abilities like Pippa’s siren voice and her mother’s
empathic
talent. And Malcolms often died young or simply disappeared—as Pippa and her mother had done after painful crises brought on by their extraordinary abilities.

Like Dorrie’s brother? And
Magnus
?

He’d like to call his nose for trouble a psychic gift, but Conan figured it was more his natural instinct for anticipating problems and dodging obstacles. But Dorrie’s declaration that she felt energy patterns was weird. Could it be dangerous?

After locating all her family names, it didn’t take long to learn both Dorrie’s maternal grandparents had ancestors in Hong Kong. Decades of British occupation gave him access to English-language records that he might not have in another province, and someone had kept genealogy records updated. He had search engines running in four databases by the time his password program found the shortcut into the Adams Engineering computer.

With a limitless list of servers at his command, multitasking was his specialty. He had Dorrie’s family tree dated back a hundred years by the time his software located the engineering company’s personnel files. He began a password search to enter them as well, and returned to the family tree.

Digging further, he learned the murder of Mei Ling Franklin when Dorrie was twelve wasn’t the only early death or disappearance in the Ling family. Remembering the bones buried on her property, Conan scowled. He would have to stay with the currently missing family member and worry about the others later.

His password program dinged. Fighting his unease, he returned to hacking into the Adams computer, looking for personnel files on the people who’d worked on the helicopter.

An instant message popped up on his screen:
Mojave Dst, Chinese!

Cursing, Conan chased after the Librarian’s cyber bunny trail and came up empty-handed, again.

The damned Mojave Desert encompassed most of southeastern California and spilled over to Nevada. No way could he pinpoint a location in that vast wasteland without specifics if that was the direction the Librarian was trying to give him.

***

Ryan Franklin had taken an entire suite at the pricey residential care home he’d moved into after his stroke. Dorrie was amazed he hadn’t taken two suites, but she supposed there hadn’t been two available.

Sitting on his couch, back straight, ankles properly crossed, she went over the financial statements one line at a time while her father crankily rolled his wheelchair back and forth behind the Empire-style table he used as desk.

Her father was still a large man, with a barrel chest and a full head of curly iron-gray hair. He had fists that could—and had—hammered nails. The stroke had left one side of his face drooping, but his energy was returning. It was hard to imagine he wasn’t pacing as usual. Only the fact that he was limiting his speech instead of bellowing and orating gave real evidence of his disabilities.

“Revenue is dropping,” he growled huskily. “What do you intend to do about it?”

There it was—the great pitfall in the task he’d assigned her. Dorrie let the papers fall to her lap. Conan had said she needed to stand up to her father. He was right, damn him. This was the line over which she could not cross.

“I can hire a professional fundraiser,” she suggested, rather than flat out tell him she couldn’t do anything about it, that she was a clerk, not a charismatic personality capable of persuading money out of pockets.

“They take half of anything they raise,” her father protested, pronouncing his words slowly and carefully so they slurred only a little. The result wasn’t much better than his usual furious shouts. “You have to make calls, make contacts, see and be seen, attend other functions—”

Dorrie remembered almost dying on the bluffs, took a deep breath, and said, “No.”

Her father continued wheeling back and forth, tapping his energetic hands on the chair arms. If he heard her, he gave no indication. “I can make calls, get some invitations. We could do a matching grant—if Franklin Real Estate donates X number of dollars, will you match it? I’ll call around.”

She’d told him
no
and the world hadn’t ended. She hadn’t escaped the gerbil wheel either. One small step at a time. “That’s an excellent idea, Papa. You can organize the fundraisers. I’ll run the office. We’re a good team.” Since the stroke, her father was easily diverted. Dorrie rose and returned the reports to the table as if she’d answered his questions.

“Wait a minute.” He spun the chair to face her. “We’re not done. What’s Zimmer telling me…missing funds? He fired … bookkeeper.” He lost words when he became overexcited.

Dorrie maintained her neutral expression, trying not to drive her volatile father into higher blood pressure. “Zimmer overstepped his boundaries. I rehired Tillie. The funds have been disappearing since long before her arrival. In fact, she discovered them. We have an audit team coming in tomorrow, and Mr. Oswin is looking for any security breaches. If Mr. Zimmer continues going to you behind my back, I will have to fire
him
.”

Well, that wasn’t an announcement meant to placate Ryan’s temper, but if she was stuck running the foundation against her better instincts, she’d have to make the best of it. Her father’s energies overwhelmed the room and nearly shoved her against the wall, but she’d had years of practice at withstanding the push. Usually, she just ran. Staying was harder. Maybe in a few hundred years she might develop a spine.

“Zimmer…my eyes…ears over there!” he shouted. “…doing zactly what I pay…to do.”

“Then perhaps you should put Zimmer in charge,” she replied, outwardly nonchalant. “Or you should return to the office. But while I’m in charge, Tillie stays. I have to go now. Shall I take you out for dinner?” She kissed her father’s cheek as if they weren’t at their usual polar opposites. The doctors had said he was well enough to be out and about, but so far, he’d refused.

“Got date here,” her father admitted. “Don’t fire Zimmer.”

“Not without your permission,” she agreed. “When will you introduce me to your lady friend?”

Ryan snorted. “Bring home a husband to run the company.”

That was an old joke. She patted his big hand and walked away. Her father had set her up with any number of eligible bachelors capable of running Franklin Realty. The problem being that anyone capable of running the company was too much like her father and exactly what she didn’t want in a man.

Conan Oswin was probably capable of running anything he wanted, but Dorrie thought he was more interested in going his own way than following in her father’s footsteps. Either way, he was too strong for her.

Case in point—as she departed the home, she found Conan in the parking lot, leaning against his batmobile, arms crossed, waiting for her. How had he learned where her father was staying?

Stupid question. He probably rifled through the foundation’s files and found the address.

Better question—
why
was he here? Maybe she was learning a few pointers from his take-no-prisoners attitude.

“I thought I left you hacking the Air Force,” she said nonchalantly, heading for her Prius.

“What’s your thoughts on breaking and entering?” he inquired as she brushed past him.

“Illegal.” She stopped and offered him a look of exasperation. “Why?”

“I want a look around Adams Engineering. Sometimes computer files aren’t enough.”

The wind lifted the hank of hair falling over his shades, revealing a frown. He’d replaced his work shirt with a hoodie, but he didn’t look like a teenager. His casual clothes and sexy crossed-arm stance might have fooled her into relaxing, but now that she paid attention, she could tell his
chi
was unusually focused. He wasn’t posing for her benefit. He probably wasn’t even noticing her except as a means to whatever end he had in mind. He was terrifyingly single-minded.

Which raised her curiosity. She was as bad as he was.

“You found something and you don’t want to tell me,” she guessed. “Are they a front for terrorists and somehow Bo got mixed up with them?”

“That’s a distant possibility,” he agreed. “I prefer not to make judgments until I have the facts. I’m neither engineer or accountant. I can’t interpret their financial or their research files. I just don’t like the way they smell.”

He glared at her in a manner that she could almost label defiant, as if he was daring her to doubt him. Odd, but interesting. “So we’re going to sniff around and see if we can find the source of the stench?” she asked with curiosity.

“Something like that.” His uptight tension relaxed when she didn’t argue. “I cased the closest facility. It’s not one of their larger operations, probably not an important one since it’s surrounded by only chain link fencing and a single security guard. There aren’t any cars there on a Sunday, so I’m guessing if you tell the guard your kitty cat crawled through the fence, he might let you in.”

“Me? You want
me
to break and enter? By myself?” Dorrie debated whether she should be outraged or gratified that he thought her capable of such an insane stunt.

“No, I want you to distract the guard while I climb over the back fence. I want a good look at the building. If I need more, I’ll come back another time.” He didn’t fidget or in any other way indicate this was important to him.

“You want me to be a decoy.” She frowned, then remembered the reason he was doing this. “You don’t think Bo and Magnus are in there?” she asked in horror. “Do you really think it’s not a legitimate firm?”

“I told you, I don’t make judgments until I have facts. But Adams had the contract for the experimental helicopter, so Bo and Magnus were essentially working for them.”

“You know something you’re not telling me,” she accused, finally deciphering that underlying current of strain she felt but couldn’t see. “You wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.”

Of course,
she
knew things she wasn’t telling
him
, so she supposed that made them even. She didn’t even know why she was protesting. She wanted to find Bo.

Conan lingered, arms crossed, gaze hidden by his shades as if he waited for her to process his outrageous request.

Dorrie wished she had a smoothie to fling at him. “Okay, let’s do it.”

As he’d driven over to meet Dorrie at the retirement home, Conan had considered testing her odd instincts, but he wasn’t certain exactly what she reacted to. The night of the tire slashing, she’d said someone
hated
her. He couldn’t create a setup like that on his own for the sake of experimentation. And he definitely wasn’t letting her near any more crumbling cliffs to replay
that
heart-stopping episode. He couldn’t even tell if she knew the full extent of her other-than-normal abilities.

She didn’t seem to be reacting to his suggestion that they do a little B&E. Did that mean she didn’t sense a problem or that he was all off about her knowing when something bad was going down?

Judging from her family history, Conan expected psychic resources of some sort. Her maternal line was littered with weirdnesses—including her mother’s death at the hands of a demento who swore Mei Ling Franklin had put a hex on him. The killer had been Chinese and presumably superstitious. Instinct said something was wrong about the news report files, but Conan hadn’t had time to dig deeper. He’d been more interested in Dorrie’s family.

Forty years ago, her Chinese immigrant grandparents had been sued for breach of proprietary information—her grandmother had revealed that a Silicon Valley corporation for which her husband worked was developing a product that would endanger the environment.

Exposing a dangerous product before it was on the market had to be a first, especially since the suit disclosed that Grandpa Ling worked in accounting and had no knowledge of the technology or research, and Grandma Ling was a housewife. The jury didn’t believe Grandmother Ling’s claim that she was psychic, but neither could they prove she had access to the secret files that did, indeed, reveal questions about potential environmental consequences. She got off free, but Conan suspected it had been a close call. Weird, but nothing provable.

Like Pippa and her siren voice.

He hadn’t found a connection between Dorrie’s family and his sister-in-law’s, but he knew the California Malcolms on Pippa’s family tree were littered with similar incidents. People with weird gifts felt obligated to use them, and the rest of the world didn’t deal well with the result.

Just as witches had been hung and burned in past ages—people feared what they didn’t understand.

The descendants of Dorrie’s maternal grandparents had other, although not quite as dramatic, oddities similar to the lawsuit. Conan guessed that once the Ling family had established itself in positions of importance, it was easier to be subtle about what they knew.

Psychic abilities were not logical. But Conan wanted the facts before saying they were impossible. Except the damned woman wouldn’t talk to him or trust him, so he couldn’t even prove Dorrie had Malcolm connections. Maybe there was a Chinese version of the family.

Conan had Dorrie follow him in her own car to the engineering office. Their target was in a failed industrial park on a railroad spur in an ageing warehouse section of the city. Most of the deteriorating buildings were graffiti-covered and unused. Empty lots littered with trash surrounded the low Adams structure, but this one building was neat, guarded, and obviously occupied.

According to plan, Dorrie stopped at the gate while Conan cruised past. Her overstuffed bright blue Prius was sufficient distraction all on its own. In his rearview mirror, he could see the guard stepping up to talk to her. Conan hoped she was good at lying.

He drove around to a side street and hid his very visible car behind bushes overgrowing an abandoned parking lot. He could keep an eye on Dorrie from here and still observe the building. The chain link was no real obstacle as long as it wasn’t wired, and he’d already tested that. Adams Engineering apparently wasn’t paranoid enough to believe anyone would break in.