THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (20 page)

Nadine dug a little deeper, hacked a few news bureaus just to see how far they might go in trying to locate Jo-jo to get a story out of him. Would he hurt reporters? Stupid question. He didn’t differentiate between intruders.

One industrious journalist had matched a license plate number to the general’s Escalade from the time he’d been at the police station. Someone had spotted the SUV at the Palm Springs estate just yesterday. The reporters hadn’t verified the general was in it, but Nadine knew the possibility was good. He liked his chauffeured limo. He was arrogant enough not to feel particularly threatened yet. He’d want to keep in touch with the police if he hoped to find her.

Excellent! She could work with that.

She called up the Palm Springs address on Google Earth so she could focus on the image of the house that paranoia had built. Jo-jo had places all around the country, but Palm Springs was his favorite because of the underground passages. She hadn’t let Magnus know that. He’d get himself blown up trying to get in.

Even with telescopic lenses, reporters couldn’t see beyond the security walls or trees to catch a good photo. Neither could Google. But satellite photos gave her rooflines.

Sitting cross-legged in front of the computer screen showing images of the house, Nadine opened her mind to the universe. The news quotes she’d just read filtered through the space she emptied inside her head. Her gaze rested on the computer image of the roof, but her inner eyes sought beneath the tiles.

Was Jo-jo there? She called up a mental vision of the tall, iron-gray-haired man who had dominated her life. He seemed diminished somehow, compared to the vibrant strength of Magnus. Her fear of him had lessened over the years. So had her admiration. Now, with distance, she could better see beyond his military strictness to the confused man inside—the vulnerable man he hid with his shouts and blusters.

The man whose mind she could read.

She pushed past the frightening image Francesca had given her of the uniformed general in full rage. She ignored the long-ago ones of a father taking his children for ice cream. She concentrated on the obsessive workhorse she’d seen in the office—signing papers, on the phone, ordering men about. That man with the closed heart distrusted everyone. That was the center of his paranoia.

She no longer saw the computer screen but the basement library where Jo-jo locked himself. He was an insomniac. Even at this hour, he worked through reports, making notes, the kind of notes she had to transcribe the next morning.

She could see his hand tremble as he scrawled it across the page.
He was there
! She was inside his head!

Don’t think. Don’t blink. Just listen.

Fury washed over her. Frustration. Weariness and a hint of the grief that always clung to him. And under it, deep down, the confusion and fear, the muddled senses that she’d never understood but could always read.

He was lost without anyone to trust, without Po-po, and now, without Nadine. She’d been his right hand since her mother’s death, the filter between him and the modern world. Here was the pathetic soul of the real man buried beneath the façade of authority.

As she’d tried before, Nadine attempted to steer his inner vision to Chang, the son who craved his respect. Fearing competition and loss of power, the general resisted. He turned away from the photo of Chang standing proudly in his Marine uniform to scribble notes on paper. Paper, when he had a keyboard right beside him.

Could she see what he was writing? Would it be worth the effort?

She narrowed her focus more, following his hand. She might be the only person alive who could read his execrable shorthand. The link between his hand and mind strengthened, drawing her in deeper.

Fury drove his hand but it was fear driving the fury.

Tap vet. Survey house—stlt? Need inside. Find Oswin.

A phone rang. The pen dropped. Authority replaced fear.

Nadine woke with a pounding headache. The fire still artificially flickered. A screensaver played over the laptop. She wanted paper to write on. Wait . . .

She picked up the computer and hastily typed everything she recalled from her “dream.” When she typed
Find Oswin
, she gulped. Which one?

Troubled, she padded into the kitchen and located a cocoa mix.

Wearing shorts, Magnus sleepily joined her as she poured the mix into a mug of boiling water.

“Want some?” she asked, holding up the box.

He grimaced. And waited. Unlike Jo-jo’s blustery menace, Maximus Grandus was very good at intimidating with silence.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said defensively. “I can’t just do nothing and live in limbo.”

He snorted. “You’ve been living in limbo your entire life. Now you have some control and you want to wield it.”

“Quit psychoanalyzing me. You’re bad at it.” She set the steaming mug on the table and sat down. “Go back to bed.”

He opened the refrigerator, found a milk carton, lifted it to his mouth, then caught himself and hunted for a glass. “So, how did you decide to solve your restlessness?”

“Better question.” She rubbed her forehead. “By giving myself a headache, mostly.”

He sat down across from her. And waited.

“I’ve been bullied by the best, Oswin,” she told him, glaring. “You can’t do it with silence.”

“That’s the first time you’ve used my last name, so you remember it. Were you looking us up?”

He looked deliciously rumpled with a pillow crease through the dark bristles of his unshaven jaw. He had just the hint of a curl on his forehead where the barber hadn’t trimmed off everything. He must usually get it cut every week to keep it straight, and he hadn’t had time lately.

“I know your name,” she told him. “I looked you up long ago. The general has entire files on you because of the experimental helicopter. Your brothers, not so much. When he writes
Find Oswin
, I’m betting he means you. I know how his mind works.”

“And he wrote this when?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow but offering no judgmental tone.

“Tonight. He doesn’t sleep much. I found him the untraditional way.” Nadine blew on her cocoa and closed her eyes, trying to shovel all of Jo-jo’s paranoia and rage out of her head.

Max’s silence was a bit more explosive this time. Interesting. She couldn’t get inside his head, but maybe she had some of Dorrie’s energy perceptiveness. Her mother hadn’t taught her about chi
energies as Dorrie’s mother had.

“If I were the kind of person to push buttons, I’d start pushing yours now just to break the silence and see if you chime,” she said, sipping her hot drink. “Talking would be easier.”

She could almost hear him rearranging words inside his head. Act and not react, nice.

“You saw your stepfather tonight?” he asked with that beautifully deceptive calm.

“I got inside his head, yup. Wanta make something of it?”

“I don’t think I even know how. What else did you think you saw?”

“Nice, Max.
Think I saw.
Way to work around it.”

He rubbed his weary eyes, and Nadine took pity on him. She was, for all he knew, a nut case.

“I
saw
him writing notes to himself. I wrote them down on my computer.” She pushed the laptop toward him. “In the morning, he’ll tell his new assistant to follow through. I hope his assistant is as good at translating as I am. STLT probably means satellite surveillance.”

She waited as Magnus scrolled through her very brief notes, including the ominous
Find Oswin
memo.

“We expected him to follow the microchip to the vet,” he said. “That memo could have come from your subconscious. I’m on your mind, so my name showed up.”

Nadine shrugged. “Anything is possible. It’s not as if we can prove God or the Universe exists or that we’re not a microcosm on a piece of dandelion fluff. You just take what you see and go for it. I saw Jo-jo write those notes.”

“He didn’t mention sending drones to check us out,” Max said, pushing the laptop back at her.

“Humor, har har.” Nadine shut the screen. “Don’t laugh. He has satellite access. If he sees what looks like me or you or a telescope or anything else of interest in the back yard, he can send in drones. Do not underestimate his insanity.”

“It’s not as if he’ll see suspicious activity. There’s no blazing sign on the roof saying
trap.
He gets our fake names and address from the website. His minions can’t match name to address, so he has to send someone to check us out, but they can’t get in, so they spy from a distance. They see us go in and out. Maybe we wear hats so they can’t catch our faces. If we’re to pretend we have a kid, we may have to stay inside so he doesn’t know we’re here—because I’m not dragging a kid into this.”

She nodded agreement to all his assumptions. Military men thought in logical orders, she got that.

Encouraged, he continued, “Since as far as the general knows, Magnus Oswin is out in the Sierras or under the sea, how will he expect his assistant to find me?”

“He’ll start with the usual: credit cards, phone calls. He’ll check your regular contacts. Then they’ll start following everyone you know. I’m sure he’s done a lot of that already and the note is just frustration. He’s not happy. If you really think we’re safe, shall we start creating a kid?”

When Magnus jerked back, disconcerted, Nadine grinned. “Gotcha. I mean inventing our fictional kid to post as bait on the website. If you want Jo-jo and not his minions, we have to invent a target juicy enough to draw him out personally. He’s not likely to bother looking for
you
himself.”

“Where is he?” Mean Max asked in a growly voice, ignoring her snub to his importance.

“What difference does it make?” She shrugged and sipped her cocoa. “By tomorrow, he could be hundreds of miles away. Even if he stays where he is, you can’t go in without blowing up half the neighborhood and yourself. As you told me, our only hope of getting our hands on him is to draw him out, preferably, draw him here. Think in terms of the leader of a third world country, and you’re coming close to the level of difficulty of reaching the general. And third world countries don’t have the money and technology that Jo-jo does.”

Magnus rubbed his bristly jaw. “If I knew where he was, I could have Bo take out the helicopter . . .”

“No,” Nadine said firmly, looking him square in the eyes. “No, no, and no. You do not go after him on his own ground. Bad tactics and dangerous to too many people.”

“And you really think he’s stupid enough to fall for bait like a kid that doesn’t exist?” Magnus asked with anger flaring.

“Not stupid, obsessed. He’s looking for the impossible. We just need to give it to him.”

Magnus closed his eyes against the relentless ball of energy who held his goal in her hands, hands that had tormented him with pleasure just hours ago. Nadine’s hair had dried in a halo of brown curls. She was still wearing her geek glasses and ridiculous clothes, but he saw the brilliant flame of the woman beneath. The Librarian—unplugged.

He wasn’t certain that she saw herself as he did—an intelligent woman with immense potential to save the world. She still clung to the fantasy of the father she’d never known—not the deadly danger the general represented, the danger Magnus intended to apprehend.

Normally, he’d admire her fierce loyalty.

Normally, he wouldn’t roll across a mattress with the object of his interrogation. She was seriously messing with his head.

“All right, let’s create a child,” he growled, still wobbly from her little joke. Creating children was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do, but there for a moment . . . He shut out that weakness. “A nine-year old whose mother is too controlling.”

She laughed, and he opened his eyes again. Cocoa froth coated her upper lip. Magnus resisted the urge to lick it. Fortunately or not, she did it herself, and he had new fantasies about that talented tongue.

“A little girl with orange curls and a penchant for finding lost objects,” she added. “Jo-jo has been hunting for a finder for years.”

“Yeah, every cop under the sun would like one of those. Does she find people, too?”
Orange curls
—he was already imagining an impish kid with curls and green eyes.

He could never be a family man. He didn’t have what it took.

“Sure, why not?” she said with a verbal shrug, typing their description into the laptop. “I haven’t seen my mother’s or Po-po’s journals, but I’m betting there was some reference to an ancestor who could find valuable objects, at least. People are valuable, so why not find people? I think the kid’s bad at math, though. Maybe she likes looking more than studying.”

“Do you know if the general still has those journals?” Magnus asked, hoping to distract himself with ulterior motives.

“He’ll have Po-po’s. They were filled with her scientific findings and experiments. I’m pretty sure he kept my mother’s recent ones and may have even hid the ones from before the house burned. I have no proof though.” She sipped her cocoa with her forehead screwed up in thought.

“If we can get inside the general’s homes, we could look for the journals,” he suggested. “Does he have cleaning services?”

“Cut it out, Oswin,” she retorted. “We’re drawing him out, not going in, or I’ll just head for Australia now and let you blow yourself up. That won’t help those kids any.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that this megalomaniac will personally show up to interview a nine-year-old kid? Why can’t we try this both ways?”

“One, because I have no good reason to trust your men. Two, because the instant I give you any info, you’ll lock me up for safety and take off on your own, and I’ll have to kill you. Three, because I don’t want anyone to get hurt. We either do it my way or not at all.”

“Diminutive dictator.”

“Trained by the best,” she agreed without rancor.

Magnus ran his hand over his head. She was probably right on all three counts. That didn’t mean it shouldn’t be done his way. He simply wasn’t accustomed to someone who stayed three steps ahead of him. “So we’re supposed to just sit here, making up tall tales, while kids could be in danger?”