Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic (26 page)

“Did an autopsy prove he died of
dim mak
?” he asked, forcing humor, because he knew what she would tell him next and still wouldn’t believe it.

“It might have been interesting to find out,” she agreed with a sigh. “But no, there was no autopsy. I was an hysterical basket case. The gardener was an illegal alien and didn’t want to call the police. We—the gardener and I—rolled him into the hole for the pepper tree the gardener was planting. And that was the end of that.”

Conan tried to process her story with the woman he knew. Drama queen hysterics, yes. Twelve-year-old imagination, sure. Illegal alien? Stranger things had happened.
Dim mak
? Not computing.
Nobody
had that kind of power except in movies.

“A man died in front of you,” he said in acceptance of that much, hugging her tighter. “You’d just suffered a traumatic event. You were hysterical, rightfully so if you recognized the bastard. But at the very worst, whatever you did was self defense. He’d come to kill
you
, the witness. He deserved to die, but if he’s dead, then he’s not your problem now.”

She punched his shoulder, but it was a weak punch. “It doesn’t matter what you believe. My mother’s family is paranoid enough to believe there are more killers where those came from. The Lings will come down and surround Amy and the kids with their special abilities, and they will help us find Bo. I hope.”

“I still don’t see how a couple of crazies have anything to do with your brother.” Conan didn’t know what to believe, but he knew, even if
he
didn’t believe, she did. And what a person believed made a difference.

Right now, he was so desperate that he wanted to believe his witchy woman could call up superpowers and return their brothers from the dead.

He trusted logical action more. “As you said, one’s dead and the other is under surveillance, if not bars. Let’s go after the clown in your office first. He’s an easy target.”

“I may have used
dim mak
on the shooter in the office,” she protested. “He could be dying right now. He was just a kid!”

“And he shot you, so he deserves whatever happens to him. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Consequences
. Quit playing the blame game. Not your fault!”

Apparently irritated with his reaction, she struggled to escape his arms, but he was tired of restraining himself. Her sexy bottom was rubbing right where he needed her, and the lovely breasts pressed into his side stimulated much more pleasant ideas than trapping thieves. He ran his hand under her sweater and stroked her nipple and decided she needed a little recreational sex, too.

“Let’s test that
cunning
bed,” he murmured, standing and carrying her through the damned narrow aisle, mocking her earlier admiration for Oz’s tin can.

She kissed his jaw as if she approved of this diversion. Or needed it as much as he did.

His phone rang. He wanted to ignore it, but Dorrie instantly stiffened. She’d be worried about the kids. This thinking about others business had its disadvantages.

With a sigh, Conan snapped open his cell. “This had better be good.”

“Pippa and her mother have been expanding your genealogy research,” Oz said without preamble. “Did you know that our Oswin ancestor took one of their California Malcolms to China before World War I and raised his kids there?”

Dorrie tried to untangle herself from Conan’s arms when he clipped his phone closed, but he held her even more tightly.

“You’re probably a Malcolm,” he said, in a tone that sounded as if she might have a fatal disease, before dropping with her to the wide bed tucked into a niche at the rear of the RV.

Dorrie didn’t want to hear about Malcolms. She wanted oblivion. She’d recited her worst nightmare, and Conan hadn’t run screaming in the opposite direction. So maybe she was crazy, and he didn’t care. The fantasy of an attractive, brilliant man wanting her as much as she wanted him miraculously wiped out painful memories, for the moment.

She’d never particularly had body issues because she’d always lived inside her head. Her body had always been more or less irrelevant—until now.

Conan made her mind go away and her body sing. Every cell hummed by the time he’d kissed his way from the top of her head to her breasts and shimmied off her sweater. His talented fingers plucked her strings with the same assurance as they stroked his keyboard.

She had to drive her hand into his hair to hold him steady so she could return the favor. He moaned and greedily sank into the kiss, forgetting all his practiced moves while she rubbed her breasts against him.

Once she had their
chi
synchronized, their actions were effortless and purposeful. Even her shoulder stopped aching. Clothes melted to the narrow strip of floor. Dorrie entwined her limbs around Conan’s longer, more muscular ones, deriving pleasure simply from his strength.

The yin and yang of male and female made perfect sense in this context. She could fit inside his energy instead of being put off by it. Conan welcomed her, enveloped her, until she absorbed him and he became a part of her. As one, they burned brighter and more fiercely. All the fireworks she’d ever known exploded in a brilliant fireball behind her eyes when they came together.

Even after they’d taken everything from each other, their energies weren’t depleted, but peaceful and braided together to make a stronger whole. Conan rolled over to take his weight off her, and Dorrie clung to his shoulders, turning with him. They fell asleep like that, wrapped in each other’s arms.

The intimacy was so easy, Dorrie rolled naked out of bed during the night for a glass of water, and returned to find Conan aroused and waiting for her. With a freedom she couldn’t ever remember experiencing, she climbed across his hips and took full advantage of his offer.

He filled her completely, satiated her, then held her in comfort as they drifted back to sleep. Now that she no longer harbored her guilty secret, mindlessness worked beautifully. Even Conan’s zigzag energy calmed, and he slept soundly.

The shrill shriek of a phone drew them blurry-eyed from their cozy cocoon in the gray hours of dawn. Dorrie blinked awake and wiggled her bare bottom into Conan’s erection. Ignoring the phone, he obligingly caressed her breasts, mumbling about voice mail.

But the ring was no sooner cut off than it began again. Cursing beneath his breath, Conan rolled over and grappled on the floor for the phone. Dorrie explored his broad, bronzed torso in retaliation.

She wanted to shut out the world and hide in here. If she allowed herself to wake, a dozen problems would raise their ugly heads, and she didn’t want to confront them.

Conan found the phone, flipped it open, and swung his long legs out of bed, cursing at caller ID.

Dorrie sighed and watched his bare buttocks retreat down the hall to the tiny bathroom. The Terminator was back.

Borrowing a long white robe she found in the closet, she was in the kitchen by the time Conan returned, fully dressed. She tingled with pleasure when he lifted her hair and kissed her nape, but she realized that his formidable mind had moved on to the day ahead. She could expect no morning-after sentiment from this man, although she appreciated the kiss.

“Oz received a text message from the Librarian,” he said, as if that made sense to her. “It’s just a number.”

“Like forty-two? The answer to everything?” she asked, humoring him. “Who is the Librarian?”

“Don’t know.” He gulped the glass of juice she handed him and then examined the coffee maker. “She’s helped us before. We think she’s trying to help Malcolms. Ergo, if you’re a Malcolm, she’s your friend, too.”

“Sending numbers without explanation doesn’t sound helpful.”

“The Librarian is so far beyond weird that it’s like playing charades with a chimp to deal with her messages. We have no idea who she is, but you’ll have to trust me on this. She’s been very helpful. And irritating.”

She ground the coffee beans and handed them over. “I don’t suppose it could be several numbers and they’re GPS coordinates?”

“We should be so lucky. I need to see the actual message and try to trace it, but Oz says it just reads thirty-five, numerical, not spelled out. I need you and your family to stay safe up here. I understand if you want to call your grandmother, especially if they are Malcolm descendants. But I’ll need to warn Oz and Pippa. They have reason to avoid strangers.”

“TMI,” Dorrie protested, not ready to process his brother’s problems without caffeine. “Let me have some coffee first.”

He added water and hit the coffee machine’s power button. “I need my equipment. Legal or not, I’m going into that offshore account. Once I find where the money is going, I’m setting a trap. I want that son of a bitch taken down. Once the freak in your office is nailed, we’ll figure out if he’s related to the shooter.”

He stuck a mug under the coffee stream before it could hit the pot.

“I want to go with you,” she said mulishly. “The kids have Amy. I can call Grandmother Ling and ask for just one or two discreet guards. FF is
my
business, and I need to know what’s happening.”

He narrowed his eyes and glared at her while sipping the coffee piping hot. “If you’re the target, you’re not safe.”

“If I’m the target, maybe they won’t come up here hunting Amy,” she retorted.

“No one knows we’re up here. If I need you at the office, I’ll let you know. For now, I’m just on the computers. Stay here. Keep Amy company. Entertain your grandmother. Decorate the town. Whatever. I brought you a cell phone. I’ll stay in touch.”

“My purse is still at the office,” she reminded him. “If that’s where the trouble is, they have access to my entire life.”

“I’ll ask the cops to pick up your purse. Fair enough?”

She pouted. Conan liked the way she pouted. It made her
cunningly
kissable. Her inky curls spilled over the white robe like some Tahitian goddess’s. She packed a lot of explosive gunpowder in that petite package, and he figured he was about to get burned. And he was ready to enjoy the fireworks.

Instead, she grabbed her mug and stalked back to the bedroom and presumably, her clothes.

Back to enigmatic probably wasn’t a good reaction. Passive-aggressive Dorrie would return, and he preferred the firecracker.

Generally, he didn’t stick his neck out and interfere with others. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Dorrie. And if he couldn’t stop thinking about her, he’d never accomplish anything while watching over his shoulder, waiting for her to show up. He needed someone to run interference, to keep her occupied.

He could do that. Conan sipped his coffee and called Oz to tell him about Dorrie’s family legends.

Before he could pour a second cup, the tin can door rattled with pounding knocks. That didn’t take long.

Dorrie peered out of the bedroom. Conan finished his coffee and shrugged. “It’s for you.”

Amy apparently hadn’t packed any of Dorrie’s power suits, so Dorrie couldn’t hide behind the CEO disguise. Instead, she’d dragged her riotous curls into a ponytail and tucked a polo shirt into a pair of designer jeans as if she were going to the country club. Polite gold earrings glimmered in her seashell ears. She cast him a disgruntled look and dragged open the door.

Pippa practically bounced on what passed for a doorstep.

“Really?” she cried. “You really think you might be a Malcolm? Your eyes are green!” she said excitedly, waiting to be invited in.

Pippa in excited mode was a force to be reckoned with, even if her audience was resistant to her siren voice, which Conan was. Apparently, Dorrie wasn’t. Not entirely. She simply looked stunned and fell back before Pippa’s onslaught.

“Long lost cousins,” he told Dorrie with a shrug when she looked to him for an explanation. “You two will have a lot to catch up on. Give my love to Granny Ling.”

He tried to shoulder his way past the women, but Pippa whacked the heel of her hand against his forehead and blocked his way.

“He’s being a turd, isn’t he? Do we need to fling him in the pool?”

“A slushie would have been nice,” Dorrie agreed, “but hot coffee seems inappropriate. He’s going into the city and wants to leave me here. Do you have a car I can borrow?”

Ah, well, at least the firecracker was back. Conan slammed his mug down and glared at her. “If Pippa says it’s okay, call your nosy family. Circle the wagons. You can’t do a damned thing about the viper in that office until I’ve traced the money. And I can’t do a thing about the money if you’re being shot at. Once we get that straight, we’ll move on.”

“I need my life back!” Dorrie shouted at him. “I don’t even have a home for my dog! I want to go down there and shoot someone myself.”

“You already have, if I’m supposed to believe you. So which way do you want it? You shot the shooter or you didn’t?” Conan waited with interest to see how that went over. Dorrie was many things, but boring wasn’t one of them.

She shut up and cast a glance at Pippa, who merely crossed her long arms, leaned her hip against the table, and smirked.

“Wait until you hear Pippa’s story. The two of you have a lot of catching up to do,” he told her, figuring he’d better clear the room in about ten seconds flat if he wanted to survive. “I’ll call you when the sting is ready. Have fun.” He kissed Dorrie’s wrinkled brow, shoved past Pippa, and jumped down to the parking lot.

A coffee mug flew out the door after him, smacking him in the back and crashing against the aging pavement. Fortunately, it was plastic. Dorrie’s aim was pretty damned good, a fact he’d do well to remember.

***

“Malcolms,” Pippa prompted as soon as Conan departed.

“I thought you already knew about Malcolms.” Dorrie poured another cup of coffee and steamed, watching from the window as Conan drove off, abandoning her. “I don’t know anything about Malcolms. So you tell me.”

“We’re an endangered species,” Pippa said wryly, helping herself to a cup. “If Conan thinks you’re one of us, then it must be for a reason. I can sing most men into a pool without having to push them. Conan and Oz are immune though. Their heads are too thick.”