THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC (31 page)

He actually looked alarmed. She hadn’t thought he had it in him.

“Richard, where’s the backup?” Jo-jo roared at a slim young man in glasses peering around him.

“Hey, Dick, good to meet you.” Ignoring the chill running through her at mention of backup, Nadine kept her brave face on and called to the puzzled geek. “You’d better hope you can access your backup if the triggers you set yesterday were automatic. You’re probably looking at a lot of dead bodies and life in prison otherwise.”

He shook his head slowly. “We just set up some military war exercises. Nothing is blowing up. Are you Nadine?”

This was where self-doubt and the craziness jumped in—had she only dreamed Jo-jo’s state of mind? Had she
imagined
he was planning on blowing up real targets and not playing war games?

But the school was real. Locking Magnus and the other scientists up had been real. Planting microchips in her head and storing her in a mental institution had been real. She was older and wiser now—and more confident, thanks to Magnus.

It was poor Dick who was delusional. She had to believe that.

Jo-jo roared at someone down the hall. His fury was real. She swallowed hard and started praying. The general didn’t know enough about computers to know if dismantling this one would discharge his fireworks. Details weren’t his strong point. She needed to pick the geek’s brains.

“Sorry I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Nadine,” she said. Dick the Geek looked uncertainly from her to Jo-jo shouting for security. “The general is my stepdad, and he’s paranoid. He told me pretty stories about war games and military security, too, but they were lies. He really does have explosives under those targets. I think one of them is a school full of special kids.”

The stunned guard on the floor was shaking off the surprise of her attack and climbing to his feet. He was a big man. It would be difficult to keep him down. Nadine kept a hand on her weapons belt.

“You can’t know that,” the Geek argued. He wasn’t running to look for backup as the general had ordered, poor delusional fool.

Turning swiftly, Nadine rammed the stun gun against the guard’s nuts and held the trigger. His scream wasn’t pretty. Maybe she was a little whacko.

As if she was continuing a pleasant conversation, she continued. “I know this sounds crazy, but I read minds.” She smiled sweetly at Jo-jo, who looked horrified. “I read
your
mind, anyway, Daddy. It’s not a nice place. Hold your hands out, and I’ll prove it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied with his usual scorn. “Richard, there’s a computer in the office off the lobby. Access the network, ASAP.”

“Probably best, Dick. It’s going to get ugly in here shortly. You don’t want any little kids blowing up while we fight this out.” Nadine continued smiling like a sociopath.

“Here’s a microchip.” She tossed it at the general, who was still athletic enough to catch it. “Put it in one hand behind your back, and then produce both hands. I’ll tell you which hand it’s in.”

“I don’t have time for this stupid tomfoolery. Richard!” he roared. “Do as I say!”

Nadine tossed Richard the thumb drive from Conan. The geek wasn’t as adept at playing catch. He fumbled and dropped it and got down on the floor to find it. “If you need help saving little kids, that will send the general’s war game to a professional gamer. You’d better hope Conan knows how to pull the plug.”

“Leave the time table as it is,” the general thundered over the cacophony of screams and shouts in the corridor behind him. “Just make certain we’re still in control of the program.”

Nadine didn’t know how much Magnus could hear. Just in case he decided to come roaring to the rescue before she had the situation in control, she got down from the desk and took the semi-automatic away from the twitching guard on the floor. With expertise learned from the furious man in the doorway, she removed the clip from the gun and the spare from the guard’s pocket.

Jo-jo glared at the geek, trying to intimidate the tool he needed most, but Dick just looked uncertain and didn’t move. Neither man tried to stop her as she rendered the gun useless.

The general still thought her harmless and easily contained. He was glancing over his shoulder, looking for more thugs to arrive and hustle her back to her room. She really hoped Nurse Wretched would show up while she still had juice in the stun gun.

Nadine dumped pistol bits in front of the moaning guard. “You’ve had a mind reader and an animal-talker under your nose for years, Jo-jo. But confining us to your narrow world destroyed our ability to use our gifts. Test me, Jo-jo. Hold out your hands.”

“Prove her wrong, General,” Dick said worriedly. “Otherwise, I’ll have to do as she says and dismantle the program. I can’t blow up little kids.”

“For chrissake, she’s a lunatic! You really think she reads minds?” Jo-jo stuck both rolled-up fists in front of him. “Fine. She has a 50-50 chance of getting it right. What does that prove?”

It proved he was so obsessed that he fell for her stupid delaying trick. He really did want her to be a mind reader.

Nadine removed her hand from under her hoodie, produced the handcuffs she’d taken from the Hummer, and snapped them on Jo-jo’s wrists. “You have nothing in either hand,” she said cheerfully. “You dropped the chip in your pocket. And I didn’t even have to invade your mind to figure that one out. I’m just not dumb.”

Jo-jo roared loud enough to bring down the roof. His face turned purple. And booted feet raced down the corridor in their direction.

“Better find that computer, Mr T,” she told the geek. “Ugly has arrived.”

The geek looked startled at the odd sobriquet, but he did as told and ran for the main office.

The guard and nurse arriving in the doorway carried automatics.

In his ear clip, Magnus could hear the general’s roars but not his words. Nadine still seemed calm. He wondered if he could nail his boots to the ground to keep from running up to the entrance and bullying his way inside. She’d told him to stay back. He trusted her knowledge of Adams, but he was struggling with his Zorro complex.

A black BMW and a battered Chevy pulled up to the broken gate. When the gate didn’t open, a neatly-suited tall Asian gentleman stepped out of the BMW. There was an exchange of words with the gate guard. A couple of uniformed security men stepped out of the Chevy. The exchange became heated.

The Oriental gentleman shook the gate, found the manual mechanism, and shoved it open. Magnus recognized his profile from his research—the general’s one almost normal son, the former marine. Here was a man he might relate to and chalk into Plan A and B.

Sirens screamed further down the road. All the newcomers looked startled, then rushed for their vehicles as the gate swung open.

In his ear clip, Magnus heard Nadine addressing the Dick-guy with their emergency code word of Mr. T, with no urgency at all. She was going to be the death of him. What in hell was happening in there?

“Going in,” was all he said to his mic. It was almost a relief to finally be in action. He hit send to Conan with the prepared text. He almost had Plan A ready—but it was damned hard planning without knowledge.

Straightening from his crouch, he sauntered around the corner of the building as if he belonged there. The day-shift guards went for their radios. Magnus ignored them and turned to the suit opening the door.

“Feng Chang Adams, I presume?” Magnus asked. At the former marine’s wary nod, he added, “I believe we have a situation.”

Fire trucks and police cars roared up the highway.

“A mild understatement from the report I received,” Chang said gravely. “And you are?”

“Excellent question. I’ll get back to you on that later.”

The rattle of automatic fire inside propelled Magnus through the open doorway at a full run, terror speeding his action. Chang and the guards followed on his heels.

He raced at quarterback speed smack into a lobby milling with night-shirted patients, nearly bowling over a frail elderly woman tugging at her thinning hair. How the devil was he supposed to
plan
madness?

Adjusting his speed and trajectory, Magnus dodged a gaunt man in a hospital gown ambling into his path. He leapt over magazines flung by a young female cowering in a corner. Bearing toward the west wing, Magnus nearly knocked over a very large woman in a sweat suit carrying a rolling pin and bedpan. For all he knew, she was the cook. She swung. He ducked and ran on. From a cry behind him, one of the guards didn’t duck fast enough.

The fire alarm continued screaming but no water sprinklers were in operation. Yet.

Reaching Nadine at the end of the corridor was at the top of Plan A—not easily accomplished in a hall packed with half-dressed, terrified mental patients. The shouting and gunfire on the far end had produced panic in the staff as well. The ones not having hysterics tried to round up the frightened patients and shoo them down side halls. It was difficult telling the difference between inmates and staff.

Considering his mental state at the moment, Magnus figured he fit right in. Where the devil was Nadine?

He skirted around a young boy curled in a ball and a wiry middle-aged woman shoving anyone who approached her. A uniformed nurse sent him a glare, but she had her hands full trying to persuade an elderly man not to punch another patient who simply stood there alternately wailing and cackling. Magnus sympathized with the old man. He wanted to cold cock the screamer too.

He was in an indefensible situation, surrounded by innocents. Plan A called for his canister of tear gas. If he could come in close, he could hold his breath long enough to grab Nadine and run.

The mob scene at the end of the corridor prevented that scenario.
Fuck.

Magnus halted abruptly and held out his arm to stop the men racing behind him. Chang resisted but Magnus didn’t budge. “Nadine’s in there with your father. I don’t know who has the guns. It could be the crazies.”

That warning forced the guards to a halt along with Chang.

“Situation?” Magnus asked into the mic.

“Nurse Wretched and her minion have the guns,” Nadine reported cheerfully, obviously working on her lunatic persona. “They’re not very adept. I think they’ve shot Jo-jo’s foot attempting to remove his handcuffs. The crazies aren’t as obvious as they appear.”

Despite his pounding pulse, Magnus rolled his eyes at her mocking repetition of his term
crazies
. She’d been listening to at least part of what he’d said.
Handcuffs
? He remembered that she’d asked for them. The woman had plotting down to a science.

She’d trapped and frustrated her stepfather, literally binding his hands and rendering him helpless—as he’d done to her for years. Magnus would cheer if he didn’t have to be terrified enough for both of them.

“Plan B, then,” he told her. “
You
gas ’em.”

“Protect Dick first. He’s in the main office, dismantling the war games, I hope. Oops, sorry,” she continued with forced jollity. “I just reminded the crazies about the computers. They’re heading your way.”

“Guard the main office,” Magnus ordered Chang. “Don’t let them mess with the guy at the computer. I’m going in down there.” Nodding at the end of the corridor, he didn’t wait for argument.

He went for Plan C, D, and E. He drew the can of Mace from his belt—a woman’s weapon but the safest one in his arsenal under current circumstances.

A hatchet-faced female rushed at him carrying a long-barreled automatic at her side as if it were a baseball bat. Nurse Wretched, he surmised. Magnus raised his arm and gassed her. She screamed, grabbed her eyes, and brought up the assault weapon one-handed.

The crazies weren’t obvious, indeed. She could spray bullets through half the hospital’s inhabitants.

Magnus kicked the gun from her grip while Macing the two non-uniformed suits rushing up to her side. Too blind to see his kick coming, the woman let the weapon fly.

It hit the wall and went off, tearing a hole in the acoustic ceiling tile.

Magnus grabbed one startled goon by the throat and held him in a headlock, forcing him to drop his hand-held semi-automatic. The other guard staggered from the effect of the gas. Magnus kneed him and grabbed his similar weapon. These guys were armed for war, not mental patients.

Behind him, Chang had already ripped the nurse’s abandoned weapon from a wily patient. The general’s son barked curt orders at the rightfully confused day-shift security that had come in with him.

Magnus didn’t have time to mind his back. He’d have to trust the ex-marine to restore what order he could.

Dropping the guard he held, leaving him to wipe his eyes and curse, Magnus shoved one automatic into his belt and broke down the other as he ran. Using his shoulders and elbows, he bullied his way past the milling staff and patients at the end of the corridor, and burst into the office.

He skidded to halt and his heart plunged to his feet.

The general held a knife at Nadine’s throat. The grizzled, half-dressed old guy didn’t seem fazed by his entrance. Apparently the earlier gunfire had succeeded in severing the handcuffs. The chain was broken but the shackles still hung from his wrists.

“Hi, hon,” Nadine said brightly, smiling at the dismantled semi that Magnus still held. “I take it Nurse Wretched has been disarmed?”

Swallowing hard, he froze. No amount of planning could fix this. Neither could action. But Nadine was wearing her crazy face and was capable of detonation at any instant. Well, so was the general.

How the hell did he handle an entire building full of unbalanced minds?

“Just stand back and let me get to the computers,” the general warned, shoving Nadine toward the door. “This is a family affair. We can resolve it peacefully.”

Mad as a hatter,
Nadine mouthed, rolling her eyes to get her point across.

Magnus got it. He didn’t like it.

The general was taller than Nadine. Magnus had a working weapon and good aim. Trained for action, his finger found the trigger. He could blow off the bastard’s head and end this right now.

Except the brain that Nadine had called formidable kicked in, and he didn’t raise the gun.