THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (11 page)

At his silence, she darted a look in his direction. He was frowning. “What? You still don’t believe in telepathy?”

“Anything is possible. Physics proves that. I just don’t believe it’s practical. Why didn’t you set up some kind of cloud communication where you could reach each other?”

“We do IMs when necessary, but not often. Interception is always possible. I wanted Vera to make a clean break in case I couldn’t. Even before I was locked up, I was constantly monitored. The temptation to check on Vera would have been too great. She needed to leave and start a new life without me holding her back.”

“What set you off back then? Why not let the general pay her way through college like he did for you?”

“You’re fishing again,” she said, leaning her head back against the seat and sorting through her memories, looking for the safe ones.

“Can you blame me?”

“No, I suppose not.” How could she think of having sex with a person she didn’t fully trust? Easy, she admitted. She was desperate. And he was more man than she’d ever dared to dream of—except for that rigid militaristic streak. Surely that wouldn’t apply to sex.

“Vera wasn’t under Jo-jo’s thumb the way I was. She had the opportunity to develop a suspicious mind,” she continued. “She snooped. She led on the general’s grandsons, got inside some of his facilities. Up until then, we’d only been allowed in offices with computers. She got inside the engineering labs.”

She could practically hear Max’s bushy eyebrows whiz up his face.

“Adams Engineering? The ones who supposedly would be building the experimental helicopter for the army?”

“Yep, that and others. The general’s connections are vast. He has all sorts of military contracts in many different fields. You can see why I thought I was working for the good of the country, even if his obsession with my father’s family was a little weird.”

“What did your sister discover?”

“That some of the people working for the general did so under duress. He kept them locked in the basement of the lab.”

He drove silently, apparently playing with that appalling notion. Finally, he spoke. “Conan and Dorrie tried to look into one of those labs near L.A., back when they were hunting for me and Bo. Dorrie didn’t like what she called
vibrations
, but security ran them off before they could investigate. I don’t suppose that would be the one your sister visited?”

“Probably not. I don’t really know how many labs he has, but I’m pretty sure he closed the one Vera found after we found a way to disable the computerized security system.”

“And let the victims out?”

There was that perceptive streak again. Nadine sighed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “And the general knew it had to be us. Things got pretty nasty after that.”

Fretting over how “nasty” the general could be to two young women after they let his captive scientists free, Magnus tried questioning Nadine as they drove up the coast. She clammed up, donned her black-framed glasses, and turned her formidable attention on his cell phone rather than answer.

He claimed no understanding of women, so he wasn’t about to hurt his brain attempting to figure out one who swung hot and cold, lucid and insane, bold and timid, all within the space of minutes. She’d had an unsettling childhood and possessed a dangerous brain. He’d stick with that.

Stymied in his interrogation, Magnus caught himself stupidly wondering if there would be any place to dance in their next stop. They’d been on the same page then. She’d actually smiled when they’d danced. She had a glorious smile that almost convinced him that she could be normal—under different circumstances.

But the Librarian wasn’t normal and never would be. She didn’t fool him with her nonchalance. Her sister had wanted the lab workers free, and Nadine had performed one of her magic acts.

She had undermined a paranoid general and let his pet engineers free. Didn’t she know that people had
died
for less?

Beside him, his pixie-haired companion exclaimed in shock. Or maybe disgust. Magnus waited to see what she’d discovered now. The landscape was bleak up in these hills. The general couldn’t very well sneak up behind them, so Magnus wasn’t inclined to panic. Yet.

“The ratfink claims we were living with him and working in his office when we disappeared! He’s describing your car as one his security guard saw cruising by his house before our
disappearance.
I can’t believe the bold-faced lies! How does he get away with it?” she exclaimed.

“People who lie for a living have no conscience,” Magnus said with a shrug. “The ability to form moral judgment is lodged in an actual part of the brain, and in some people it’s underdeveloped, possibly due to some chemistry imbalance. Lying doesn’t cause them a twinge of concern or even affect lie detector tests. The worst case scenarios are sociopaths.”

“I
know
that,” she grumbled. “But sociopaths are other people’s fathers. It’s hard to apply that label to someone you’ve known and respected. It requires separating a child’s emotions from an adult’s logic. Give me time to cope. In the meantime, the cops will impound your car now, if they’ve found it.”

“Conan reported it stolen, but we’ve always known it would draw the general’s fire. He’ll know we’re behind your escape. But he’ll have some difficulty proving it to the law with that story.”

Max hoped the cops didn’t mess with his Camaro project too much—or let the general near it. He didn’t want to be responsible for a paranoid terrorist getting his hands on the experimental components.

“Don’t speed,” she whispered unexpectedly. “What happens if the police pull us over?”

“I’d get a ticket, not you.” He slowed down, although he hadn’t been going faster than traffic. That she hadn’t objected to freeway driving spoke of her desperation to reach Vera. “Don’t blow anyone up or get drunk in public places and the cops will never notice you.”

“Humor, har-har,” she muttered, thumbing through his phone. “What if I sent the police an anonymous message essentially telling them that the general is a big fat liar?”

Magnus considered the implications. “They won’t believe an anonymous message without evidence. You’d either have to reveal Vera’s former whereabouts and her fake ID, or you’d have to reveal yourself.”

She grew quiet, and he glanced worriedly in her direction when her fingers stopped tapping the phone. He was still trying to get used to the short hair that revealed her vulnerable nape. He didn’t want her to be vulnerable.

He wanted her to be the mysterious, invincible Librarian who had saved him. He needed to straighten out his head. She was just another confused female—who really did need rescuing.

“I can give them information about me that only I would know,” she said, having given the problem some thought, “to prove the message comes from me. And then I can tell them about Woodstar. Would they look?”

“They might,” he agreed. “But it’s going to be tough convincing them that a retired general is an unmitigated liar. Are you ready to start revealing him for what he is?”

“I wish I knew for certain that he really isn’t protecting the country,” she murmured unhappily. “I believed in him for so long . . . .”

“Look at it this way—do the ends justify the means? Should he be allowed to plow over the rights of every person he comes across in order to achieve whatever nebulous power he thinks he can wield?”

“It’s not
nebulous
,” she said. “He wields
tremendous
power. And he really did love Po-po and wants her name to be commemorated by proving that psychic warfare is possible. And if there were enough of us, it might be possible. But there aren’t.”

“So he’s amassing other weapons besides Malcolms, experimental ones,” Magnus concluded.

“He’s building weapons, yes, but they’re military contracts and hardly a secret. It’s just he uses extraordinary means to develop them. He may never prove Po-po’s theory that psychics can be weapons, but we do have uses. He’d love to get his hands on you. He’s convinced your engineering brilliance is abnormal.”

Magnus itched just thinking about it. Adams had made him an offer when he’d hijacked the helicopter. That proved the general was off level by a full bubble. Magnus realized now that he’d come pretty close to being one of the engineers held under duress. His gut burned in a fervent need for retaliation.

“I’m not psychic,” Magnus corrected. “What happens to the people who refuse to be coerced into working for him?” he asked, knowing he probably would have killed the general— if the general hadn’t killed him first.

She clasped her hands around the phone and didn’t look at him. “I don’t know.”

That’s what he’d figured. “As far as I know, no one has come forward to file a complaint.” He left her to consider the implications. He couldn’t force her to turn in the general. She had to do it willingly.

That didn’t prevent him from going after the bastard with any tidbit that she fed him.

“I have to get Vera to safety before I can start digging him out of his mole hole,” she asserted.

Magnus hid his wince. So, he could bait the general now or pray they’d find Vera soon.

“Jo-jo would use Vera against me if he could,” she continued, reinforcing his thoughts. “I surrendered any chance at independence when I gave Vera her freedom. I’m not reneging on that choice now.”

That level of responsibility for another human being prevented him from doing what he knew needed to be done, dammit.

They grabbed lunch at a drive-through, ate it on a pull-out on a bluff along the coast where Nadine could bask in the view. She replaced the geek glasses with the big sunglasses and really did look like a film star. There was no telephone reception out here, so Magnus watched in reluctant appreciation as she paced up and down, exploring every nook and cranny of the overlook. She was wearing the blue capris she’d bought yesterday, with a loose, gauzy orange blouse over a tank top, taunting him with glimpses of curves. She had great legs despite her claim that she never got any exercise.

She’d used some of his cash at one of their gas stops to buy a map. Finding a place out of the wind, she spread it open. “Where is the town where we think Vera might be?”

Magnus pointed at Victorville, on the eastern side of the mountains, near the Mojave. “Odd that she’d end up near the desert where the general hides.”

“Not odd, and the general doesn’t hide there, so quit trying to sneak information. He hid you in one of his bunkers, but it’s not even a main one.” She glared at the map. “California is an impossible state to get around. This is where we’re going, isn’t it?” She pointed to a dot along the coast.

“Yep. Oz is here.” He pointed to another dot up the road from the coast but in mountainous area. “No direct route to the desert from there. We have mud slides on this side of the mountain, snow in winter on the peaks, and fires on the desert side, so finding safe places to build highways is a challenge.”

She sighed and folded the map. “I hope Francesca is waiting for us. I don’t know what we’ll do if telepathy doesn’t work.”

Magnus gritted his teeth and tried not to remind her that telepathy wasn’t real communication and that the general was the key.

***

Nadine held her breath as they navigated the steep descent from the scrubby bluffs to the coastal highway. She wanted to leap out and examine every wildflower they sped by, all the interesting boulders and rock formations, and take pictures to preserve the ocean view in hopes she could access them later, whatever the future had in store.

Instead, she sat on her hands, bit her tongue, and let Magnus fly past all the fascinations she’d never seen or explored. He was obviously familiar with the terrain and took it for granted. She didn’t mind appearing an idiot and demanding they stop, but she didn’t want to miss any chance to meet Francesca.

She knew she was placing far too much hope on an experiment that had failed numerous times. Vera simply wasn’t a good receptor. They’d come to accept that. But now, it was vital.

She kept her anonymous sunglasses on as they drove through a small town consisting of pricey boutiques and restaurants. Nadine hoped there were grocery stores nearby. She was hungry and tired of fast food.

Magnus had no difficulty in finding the gated community. He handed over his information to the security guards, and they passed him through without question. She breathed a sigh of relief as the gate closed behind them, but the relief was short lived.

She stared in dismay at the mansions they crawled past. Someone had mentioned
palaces.
That’s exactly what these were. Money temples, the general had called them—conspicuous consumption run amuck. She supposed screen stars hid in here. Oz worked in TV, she remembered.

The nondescript Ford they were in must look like a servant’s vehicle. They circled around until they figured out where the house numbers were hidden. Nadine concealed her gasp as they turned up a drive to a glass and steel castle. If the ground floor garage counted, it towered four stories above the coast. Down here on the street, the view was blocked by other mansions. Up there on the top . . .

“I don’t like this,” Magnus grumbled as they stopped to pick up keys and remotes from a security box to which he’d been given the code. “It’s too conspicuous.”

Nadine agreed, but probably on different levels than he meant. “Hide in plain sight?” she suggested. “Do I have to wear jewels to walk past all those windows?”

He sent her one of those heavy-lidded looks that shot her hormones to all the right places.

“Wear clothing, at least. Wonder how many of the neighbors are voyeurs who scope each other out?” he asked, following her thought and teasing her cluelessness.

“Oh, thanks for that image. Now I’ll have to wear a burka.” She sank deeper in her seat and glared at a second sprawling structure at the end of the drive with a house sitting on top of a second garage. A carriage house?

Magnus keyed the remote and the garage opened on an army of classic cars. “No room at the inn,” he concluded.

“We’ll just pretend we’re the new butler and maid and park at the kitchen door.” She eyed a red Ferrari in awe.