Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic (8 page)

“What do food and perfume have to do with the Internet?” he asked in genuine puzzlement.

She knew he’d never believe her, so she told him the truth. “The Internet can only communicate words. My family can make you weep with broccoli, fall in love with scent, and drag the truth from you with a look. Trust me, you want to stay off their radar if you value your privacy.”

And then there was Cho, who could visualize a target. Or Francesca, who was a psychic pilot. Or her other cousins, Jack and Tom, who more or less communicated with objects and smells. Try explaining that to a man of logic. And then explain why she didn’t dare call on them until she was certain Bo was alive. Their family history was perilous. Her mother’s murder was just the tip of the iceberg.

Conan steepled his fingers under his chin, and his brown eyes lit with fascination. “Did your brother have any of these magical talents?”

That was
not
the reaction she expected. Dorrie eyed him with suspicion. “He’s an excellent navigator, which is why he was the pilot in that experimental helicopter test.”

“I don’t suppose you have any Malcolms on your family tree?” he asked.

“Malcolms?” Dorrie suddenly felt like an insect under a microscope, and she thoroughly disliked the feeling. “I’d ask who they were, but I really don’t think our family history factors into this.” That was a lie. Mostly, she was
praying
it had nothing to do with family history. “Hire Fred Liu, if you want, but don’t let my staff know he’s working on their files.”

Conan shrugged. “If by any chance you have a Malcolm in your family, don’t check the genealogy on the Internet. The site is dangerous, and I’m trying to shut it down.”

“If there were any Malcolms in my ancestry, it would more likely be on my father’s Irish side,” she scoffed.

“I’ve found Malcolms in Hong Kong and China, but so far, none in Ireland. I could look if your father exhibits any flaky tendencies. Right now, I’m siccing Fred on your personnel files.”

He walked off without further explanation. Talk about flaky! The damned man was freakier than she was. She needed a security expert, not her grandmother. She couldn’t tell if he was taking her concern about Bo seriously or just playing her for reasons beyond her understanding. That was her sagging confidence speaking.

Struggling with the grief that hit her when she least expected it, Dorrie pinched the bridge of her nose, let the pain wash over her, and dragged back to business.

She needed an outside accountant to determine if client checks were being diverted. Should the media discover the foundation was throwing away money, their donors would vanish like rats from a sinking ship.

She might as well brand FAIL on her forehead. She desperately needed Bo to come home. Maybe that was why she refused to believe he was dead. And another reason why she couldn’t drag family into this. She really might be delusional.

She’d already left the tow truck driver downstairs, replacing her tires for a sum she couldn’t afford. Her insurance agent had said that with her deductible, it wouldn’t even be worth filing a claim. If she couldn’t stay at her father’s, she’d have to find a place to rent in L.A.’s abominably high housing market. Her salary really couldn’t cover rent and car payments, and she didn’t have the nerve to give herself a raise under the circumstances.

While pounding her head on the desk might be cathartic, she couldn’t solve her problems that way. Fine, she was pathetic but practical.

She packed up her briefcase and Toto and prepared to leave as soon as the tow driver told her that her car was ready. By the time she’d reached the elevator, Conan had joined her. She shot him an irritated glance. “You’re supposed to be hunting hackers in the computers.”

“You’re supposed to be waiting for me to find them.” The door opened, and he appropriated her elbow, leading her in. Toto the Traitor yipped a friendly greeting.

She didn’t like admitting that she kind of enjoyed his high-handed decision to protect her. She wanted to stand on her own, had done so most of her life. But he’d caught her in a weak moment. “I can’t walk out on my life,” she argued. “I have responsibilities.”

“You won’t
have
a life if someone wants you dead,” he said tersely. “Where are you headed?”

Wanted her dead? That was taking vandalism to extremes. She wasn’t adding a ridiculous new worry to her long list of very valid concerns. “To my ex-sister-in-law’s. Bo shared custody of their kids. She’s overwhelmed trying to work and keep up the house and take care of the kids all by herself.”

“Your father is worth millions. She could hire nannies.” He punched the elevator button to the garage.

“My father believes in the work ethic. He kept enough money for his old age, established the realty corporation in which he’s primary stockowner, and poured everything else into his charitable foundation. Bo and I have to work for a living. That’s why he went into the military instead of straight into Dad’s business. He wanted to be his own man.”

Dorrie kept her voice neutral. She couldn’t argue with the choices of either man. Bo might have succeeded at business where she could not, had he been interested in working for their father. Which he hadn’t. All the wealth in the world couldn’t fix Fate.

Feeling no negativity when the doors opened, she marched into the garage to her newly restored Prius. She tucked Toto into his blankets on the backseat and scowled as Conan folded his lanky frame into her passenger seat.

“This is ridiculous. I don’t need a babysitter,” she huffed, settling into her seat and donning the seatbelt. Wow, Conan not only physically filled the small front seat, he filled the entire space with raw masculinity. She could barely think to find the ignition.

“Don’t know where we’re going, so I can’t follow you,” Conan said without inflection, sliding on dark shades as she pulled out of the garage.

“Am I paying you to irritate me?” She steered into a gloriously sunny day. After three days of rain and the destruction of her father’s yard, the sun had finally returned. Her life didn’t look noticeably brighter.

“I usually charge a daily consulting fee, whether I work two hours or twenty-four, but for this case, you’re off the hook. No worries.” He folded his arms. His eyes hidden behind wrap-around shades, he did his best imitation of a sphinx.

“Bird Island,” she muttered, maneuvering into the narrow suburban streets far from the glitter of Hollywood and Santa Monica. Back here, shabby palm trees collected McDonald’s trash, and the only paint on bus stop benches was the gang graffiti. Amy’s secretarial job and Bo’s benefits barely covered the high cost of L.A. living and three kids.

“Guano is a useful fertilizer,” Conan countered, “and without granite, the earth’s surface would collapse into a molten inferno. Everything has a purpose.”

She snorted at his pragmatic response to her insult. “You are a very strange man. Did you say you have brothers?”

He hesitated, responding reluctantly. “Before Magnus died, two, both older. And yes, they have threatened to throw me against a wall every time we got together. And no, they couldn’t. I’m not just another pretty face.”

He said that so solemnly that she couldn’t help laughing. The man was beyond irritating, but he was an original. “I’m betting your parents escaped to another country and left no forwarding address after the three of you moved out.”

He shrugged. “My mother died when I was six. We spent a lot of time moving around the country with my father’s business while we were growing up, until his plane crashed. Oz raised us after that.”

Hunting for a parking place amid the clutter of vans and trucks lining the street, Dorrie shot him a glance. “You’re sympathizing with Bo’s kids, aren’t you?”

“Maybe, a little. We were never poor though. There’s an empty house. Just park in their drive.” He nodded at a bungalow with a For Sale sign in the yard.

To Dorrie, that was trespassing, but she needed out of this tiny car brimming with too much attractive male and too many unanswered questions. They’d both suffered tragedies in their lives. Were they simply fighting the fact that they’d shared another?

She parked and checked to see that Toto was sleeping as she climbed out. The day was cool. If she left her windows open a bit, he’d be fine for a few minutes.

Conan unfolded his tall frame from her tiny car and strode beside her like a badly-dressed security guard.

If she had the time, she’d like to learn more about a man who lived in a luxury mansion but who seemed equally comfortable in suburbia, one who’d lost his mother young and his father too soon. But she didn’t have time. Her list of responsibilities was too daunting.

Before she could knock on the aluminum screen door, it flew open, and a colt-legged young girl raced out, followed by two shaggy-haired younger boys. Dorrie jumped backward to avoid collision. The kids didn’t appear to notice. They flew like a flock of panicked birds into a neighbor’s yard and behind the house, out of sight.

“I could catch them,” Conan said, taking off his sunglasses and following their flight, “but do I want to?”

Looking harried, Amy Franklin appeared in the doorway in time to catch his words. In exasperation, she swept a straying golden-brown curl from her face and shook her head. “No, they will go to ground like rabbits. Take them. They’re all yours.”

She slammed the door in their faces.

“
Foxes
go to ground,” Conan ruminated, following Dorrie around the house to the back. It was easier to ponder semantics than what the hell they were doing here. “Rabbits freeze like possums. That bunch strikes me as wilier than stupid rabbits.”

“Shut up, Oswin,” his companion muttered, peering over a battered wooden fence. “They think spies stole their father and you might be one of them.”

“Do I look like a spy?” he asked indignantly, glancing down at the designer jeans some girlfriend had persuaded him to pay a few hundred bucks for. Had to be the stupid blazer. Or maybe the shades.

“Yup. They’re kids. You’re an adult and a stranger. That’s all it takes. Don’t you remember what it was like to lose a parent and have your whole life turned upside down?”

Conan supposed he might, if he thought about it, but ancient history was irrelevant. He considered all kids little better than gerbils that belonged in a cage—cute to watch but useless. He’d accompanied dotty Dorothea because he didn’t want her tires slashed again, and he really needed to keep an eye on her until he figured her out. And probably because he was hoping to get into her pants. He had
not
hired on to talk to kids. He had no magic wand to produce them from hiding.

But he did speak their language. “McDonalds,” he shouted over the fence. “Big Macs all around.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and raised his eyebrows when Dorrie shot him a sharp look. What was there to say? Even Oz’s pipsqueak adored Big Macs, much to the dismay of his vegetarian stepmother. Conan knew how food worked.

While Dorrie reassured the kids that he wasn’t a big bad meanie, Conan moved on to the next problem—they wouldn’t easily fit three kids and a dog in the backseat of a Prius if he meant to keep his promise about Big Macs.

Heeding instinct, he left Dorrie persuading the kids out of hiding while he jogged back to the street, just in time to catch some junior car thief testing his limited skills. “Amscray!” Conan shouted, figuring that sounded assertive enough not to need translation.

He didn’t bother chasing the skinny kid, just sauntered toward him as if he might be concealing a big bat in his pocket. The kid scrammed. Who needed muscle? It was all in the attitude. Well, size might have influence as well.

The furry-faced dog licked at the window. Probably his lunchtime, too. Conan glanced over the low rooftops. He’d seen a golden arch back toward the highway. He had a vague recollection that Oz wouldn’t let his munchkin ride in a car without kid seats. Dorrie had no kid seats. He’d promised the brats Big Macs.

Problem solved. Whistling, he shoved his prescription shades up his nose, punched through the apps on his phone, found the one with the electronic signals, opened Dorrie’s electronic door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. 007 didn’t have tools like his.

As she emerged from the back yard with the kids, he waved and shouted, “Be back with the burgers!” and drove off.

***

Dorrie stared after him in astonishment. Her security expert had just stolen her car! How? She’d been ready to hit Conan upside the head for suggesting burgers, and now he was stealing her only means of providing them?

“Can we picnic at the park?” her six-year-old nephew Christopher asked, tugging her toward the playground on the corner. The youngest, he had Amy’s brown hair but Bo’s slanted green eyes.

“Is he coming back?” At ten, her niece, Alexis, was more suspicious of the actions of her elders. She had Bo’s shiny black hair—Bo hadn’t inherited their father’s kinky curls—and she wore it in a long, sleek braid that complemented her pale Irish skin. She was gorgeous.

“He’s gone to get your Big Macs,” Dorrie said with what she hoped sounded like truth. “We can sit at the picnic table and talk. How is school?” she asked.

“It stinks,” eight-year-old Brandon said gloomily, trudging along the fractured sidewalk holding Chris’s hand. With the more dominant brown eyes and black hair of the Ling side of the family, he also had their more exotic features. “When is Daddy coming home?”

Amy had tried explaining to them that their father wasn’t coming back, but like Dorrie, the children didn’t believe it. Bo had been their world up until the divorce last year, when Amy had grown tired of waiting for him to leave the Air Force. Even then, he’d been around most weekends.

Dorrie didn’t know what her brother’s exact job classification was, but it had involved aircraft at the base. He’d teased her that he was special forces and his duties were classified. She could tell he’d been enjoying what he was doing, so she hadn’t rocked the boat when he’d let his job take precedence over family.

Maybe it was time to rock boats and blow them up if she didn’t get answers. She needed Conan for that, dammit.