Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic (3 page)

Sun would help. Rain in Santa Monica just wasn’t normal, and everyone was on edge. Her heels clacked along the polished black-and-white tile. She despised heels. If office spies wouldn’t report everything she did to her father, she’d kick them off and go barefoot. The cold tile ought to be converted to carpet in a fiery orange-red to welcome good energy.

Square tiles in this sector of the bagua were totally repellant feng shui. Perhaps if she redecorated, the vibrations would improve. She could replace the dreadful metal blinds with translucent gold fabric shades over the floor-to-ceiling windows. Filtering sunlight made more sense than blocking it with room-darkening blinds. Of course, once the rains came, the fabulous view of blue Pacific was obliterated anyway.

Oswin stepped up to walk beside her, and the bad vibrations vanished. She glanced up at him in astonishment, and Toto licked her chin.

***

Walking past gray cubicles of employees on gray phones, typing away at gray keyboards, Conan watched the wild-haired gypsy of earlier straighten into a steel-spined automaton, clicking down the hallway like a soldier off to war. The uptight hair-do was atrocious, the boxy black suit belonged on a man, and her grim expression would have frightened the Terminator.

He’d almost sympathized with her earlier, with rain dripping off her coat and her garden sliding into the ocean. But in the fluorescent lighting and ugly black suit, her ivory skin sallowed, her thick-lashed, exotically-slanted eyes narrowed, and she looked more witch than gypsy. He’d heard the employees whisper behind their backs as they walked in.

Dorothea Franklin looked capable of eating small children alive—a
Chinese predator
. After the Librarian’s warning, he was looking for suspects everywhere. But how could this weird female possibly be connected to the helicopter’s disappearance? He was out of his friggin’ mind to have sought her out. But once he’d realized they had more than one connection, he hadn’t been able to resist.

He could have investigated Dorothea Franklin without ever introducing himself, but he’d needed to meet her. Unlike his brother Oz, Conan lacked imagination. He couldn’t envision how this Chinese piece of porcelain could be the danger to his family.

Except his nose for trouble was twitching, and he knew the Dragon Lady hid secrets. He was pretty damned certain those had been bones sliding into the ocean, and she hadn’t blinked an eyelash. He didn’t generally buy into stereotypes, but she was doing a damned good impression of inscrutability.

Although he was interested, Conan tried not to get caught figuring out what she hid under her boxy jacket. Checking out what went on under her hood should only involve her computers and would vastly complicate his life otherwise.

She stopped when a blond, plump cheerful female waved a stack of files, actually making the dragon smile. Okay, maybe she wasn’t a dragon. Dragons required heat. Dorothea Franklin was as cold as Mount Whitney in winter.

“You asked for these reports,” the cheerful blonde said. “And Jacko called to say he had a flat and could he take a rain check. A
rain
check. Honestly, Dorrie, you gotta get a man with a life.” She cast Conan a look of interest, but he wasn’t interested.

He preferred his women stacked, gorgeous, and indifferent to commitment. He’d bored the last one into leaving. All work and no play, she’d said, but his work was his play.

“I have no life, so John and I are well matched,” Miss Frosty retorted. “I’ll take a look at these this evening.”

His interest perked up at her indifference to her date. Damn, the woman wouldn’t stay categorized. Now she was about to add the stack of files to the dog she was already hauling around, as if accustomed to carrying everything herself.

Conan relieved her of the folders.

She glanced at him with surprise, as if she’d forgotten he was there.
Ouch
. She frosted up immediately and returned to marching down the corridor to her corner office. Her phone was ringing as they walked in.

“Yes, I understand, I’ll look up the file myself,” she told the caller while Conan wandered the room, examining photos of her father with Hollywood stars, Los Angeles politicians, and local sports heroes. If she’d taken over for her father, she’d not changed his bland walls.

He watched over her shoulder as she typed in her password and opened her desktop. Shit, she hadn’t even changed her father’s password. He’d looked it up in case he had an opportunity to log in. Security conscious the lady was not.

She sent whatever file had been requested, then opened another folder.

“Here are the files I’ve compiled on the crash.” She rolled her desk chair back so he could peruse the screen. “News stories, replies to my inquiries, nothing substantial. No one who worked with Bo wants to tell me anything. Do you have anything more concrete about your brother?”

Not bothering to find a chair, Conan took over the keyboard before she gave permission. He’d set up the firm’s security. He knew how the system worked. He plugged in his thumb drive and began backing up her file on her brother, while adding his remote access.

“You could be downloading
all
the company’s documents right now,” she cried in outrage, watching over his shoulder—or around his arm, since her Medusa hair barely reached his chin and she couldn’t see over him. “I just wanted your opinion, not an invasion of privacy!”

“I have the highest government security clearance available to a civilian,” he retorted, typing the keyboard with the speed of familiarity. “Your father did his research when he hired me.”

“I’m supposed to trust you, just like that?” she asked.

Every once in a while, she had a voice filled with flowers, and then she pulled this Miss Frost bit. Conan rubbed his nose and wondered if his headaches meant his brain was cracking.

“Why not be a little more blunt?” Disregarding etiquette, he appropriated the desk chair she’d abandoned and began digging through the computer server’s guts. “If you can’t trust the government, who can you trust?”

“Since I’m not believing their report that my brother died in a helicopter crash, that might be a clue,” she retorted sarcastically.

“Point taken. Is there something in these files that tells me your reason for not believing an official report?”

“Instinct,” she replied. “Their bodies were never recovered. They were on a top-secret project. Do you even know what you’re looking for?” she said, diverting the topic. She was damned good at diversion, he’d noticed.

“If it’s got anything to do with computer security, I can tell you the problem without asking. But helicopters are out of my bailiwick. I need to follow up your notes. Until now, I haven’t been looking into the crash. We need to talk more about why
you
are, but right now, you need dinner. I could be here a while and your stomach growling is a distraction.”

Conan knew he ruffled feathers. But he’d never quite learned how to play social games. If Daddy’s girl could accuse him of theft, he saw no reason to be polite in return—unless there was a possibility of sex. As much as he admired her black curls and exotic eyes, he didn’t have time or patience for women with split personalities.

When she didn’t smack him upside the head or rip out his hair, Conan glanced sideways in suspicion. She was punching numbers into her cell phone, probably calling police. He admired the determined set of her rounded jaw. Most of all, he admired her silence. He returned to work.

He was deeply immersed in tracking her brother’s last emails when she murmured into the phone. He was completely lost to his surroundings by the time the pungent scent of black beans and garlic roused him from his search. The dog trotted obediently at the lady’s heels, not even barking at the delivery person—another breach in security if she allowed unsecured personnel access to the floor. She should have met the delivery guy downstairs in the secured foyer.

To his surprise, looking through her glass office wall, he realized the place had emptied while he was absorbed in the computer. Nice. Less distraction.

Continuing to work, he tried not to watch as she unpacked cartons of scrumptious-smelling Chinese food on a desk outside her cubicle. His nose could detect fresh garlic and tell the difference from cheap soy. Surely she didn’t intend to eat all that herself? Women ate like birds, and she wasn’t much bigger than a sparrow. His own stomach was reminding him that he probably had forgotten to eat since breakfast…or maybe since last night’s pizza.

He could scarcely concentrate on the reports scrolling before his eyes. She had produced heavy cardboard plates while he wasn’t looking and was now loading one with Chinese broccoli and noodles.
One
of them. There was a second plate sitting there. But she didn’t invite him to share.

Was this his punishment for mentioning her stomach? Passive-aggressive, much?

She unpackaged chopsticks and calmly began picking at broccoli leaves while he attempted to dig through files of computer history. He could swear he smelled Lychee tea. No one had the ability to distract him as this woman did. Why the devil was he doing this to himself?

Because she had bones in her garden and thought it odd that the bodies of their brothers hadn’t washed up on shore. And because the Librarian had warned him about Chinese predators, and Dorothea Franklin was the only live Chinese clue he could find. Gypsy woman hadn’t looked like a predator, but Dragon Lady did.

When she opened a box of boiled shrimp in garlic sauce, he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “Cantonese?” he asked without looking up.

“Good nose,” she replied with just a hint of humor. He could be mistaken about that. She still didn’t invite him to share.

She was tormenting him with food instead of smacking him. He understood the reaction. He wasn’t exactly an agreeable, polite sort. With a sigh, Conan shoved back his chair and crossed the room to examine the packages without being asked. He’d grown up in a household of men. Aggression, not politeness, was second nature to him.

“Oyster sauce?” he asked appreciatively, helping himself to the second plate and the broccoli.

She arched her eyebrows, and it finally sunk in that her eyes were not only almond-shaped, but green. He’d been too busy checking out her ass to register details. But then, he was here because of her ancestry. Except, like her brother, she wasn’t full-blooded Chinese.

“You know Cantonese cuisine?” She pointed at one of the boxes. “I ordered beef in black bean sauce for you, but we can share the shrimp, if you prefer.”

“Beans and beef are fine.” Usually when he was working on a problem, he didn’t take time to eat, but he was suddenly starving. If she was part of the problem, he ought to study her. He filled his plate and rolled a desk chair over to the table. Yeah, he was pretty sure there were breasts under that jacket. Nice high ones, too. Some parts of his job were more interesting than others. He tried to catch a glimpse of the pendant on her necklace, but the chain disappeared beneath her white collar.

“I haven’t found anything useful yet in your brother’s email account,” he told her between bites. “You want to tell me what you know about the crash?”

“What, you can’t wave a magic wand and learn what you want without me?” she asked dryly.

All right, she didn’t like being ignored. He got that. “I know computers,” he informed her, stabbing at the tender beef—not shredded leather but moist beef. “Generally, I can open a system and find the problem without wasting time listening to paranoid explanations. Helicopters are different territory.”

She swiped his box of beef before he was done with it, dumping it onto a plate and looking under the table for her dog.

He was hungry, dammit, and the food was too good for a dog. Conan grabbed the plate back. “Drama is preferable to passive aggression. So go ahead, yell at me, then tell me why you’re questioning government officials over a crash they have no reason to lie about.”

She did the inscrutable thing while she studied him, but she let him keep his food. He preferred being the observer, not the observed. Itchy under that green-eyed scrutiny, he concentrated on his beef.

“I didn’t feel Bo die,” she replied. Then waited.

He worked that through his head, failing to find the logic. “I didn’t feel Magnus die either,” he offered. “But then, I’ve never felt anyone die. Should I?”

Her lovely arched eyebrows rose a fraction. “No, I don’t expect you should. But I do.”

“How? A thousand people probably die every second.” He wasn’t scoffing. He was just curious. She didn’t look crazy.

Well, she had looked crazy a bit earlier with her hair in a nimbus around her head and water dripping off her nose.

He liked to keep an open mind.

For a moment, she looked as if she’d retaliate by taking his food away again. He surrounded the plate with his arm.

“I don’t feel
everyone
die,” she said with disdain. “Just people I know. I recognize their energy patterns, their harmony with the earth, and if one goes missing, I know it. I don’t feel that Bo is missing. And I didn’t feel the helicopter crash.”

Conan stifled a sigh. Okay, she was crazy. He was a man of logic. He worked for the government. He had no reason to believe the feds would lie about something as ordinary as a helicopter crash on a test engine.

Except he’d just uncovered evidence that Bo’s email had been accessed by someone other than Bo.

Sensing and finding hidden code was Conan’s little quirk, and one he didn’t mention to anyone. How he noticed tampered computer files would be just as difficult for him to explain as for Dragon Lady to clarify energy patterns and earth harmony.

If he could believe in woo-woo logic…
Circle the wagons. Beware Chinese predators.
His stomach clenched and the Cantonese beef felt like a hard rock. His gut didn’t like warnings or coincidences. “I’m a computer expert, not a military one. I can’t find clues without information.”

“You have government clearance I don’t and know what files to look in,” she said quickly, as if she’d been prepared to argue. “Bo is my father’s heir. He should be here instead of me. He could run this office with one hand tied behind his back, and still keep up with the corporate realty operations. Without him or my father in charge, everything has gone wrong that could go wrong. And I just know Bo’s alive out there somewhere!”