THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC

by Patricia Rice

  Jack arrived with the dog and dropped the wriggling creature into Vera’s arms. She cuddled it for a second, then let the animal down again. It aimed straight for Magnus’s toe. Magnus let it sniff while Nadine provided brief introductions.

  Nadine introduced him as “the stubborn problem-solver who figured out my code.” He hadn’t expected to be called lover or friend, but he was stupidly resentful anyway. He wanted to wrap a possessive arm around her shoulders, keep her from nervously vibrating and bouncing, but he apparently didn’t have that right. So he picked up the damned dog instead. He growled at it to keep it from licking his face.

  He wanted explanations.

  The women made noises about food and gravitated toward the kitchen.

  Frustrated, ready to leap into his car and take out a general, Magnus had no choice but to bite his tongue and follow—and hope he’d hear the story if he listened close enough.

  “You made good time getting here,” Magnus said, falling in step with Jack. Dorrie’s cousin was heavily muscled but short. Entering the kitchen with the women, Magnus dropped the wriggly creature back into his arms.

  “Once we let Jessica off, we made good time. The general is playing havoc with the media, so we tried to avoid cops,” Jack said, accepting the burden, only to put the dog down again. “I wanted to make certain no one was following and took a few shortcuts.”

  “At what point do we inform officialdom that neither of the women lived or worked with their stepfather?” Magnus followed Nadine with his eyes as she settled her sister in with food and drink. They weren’t talking important things—yet.

  “We can’t reveal where they’re hiding until we take out the general, but the cops have been given a few anonymous reports about their circumstances to check out. Might take them a while. Beer?” Jack set the dog free again and indicated the refrigerator.

  “Help yourself.” Magnus leaned against the counter behind Nadine while the furry brown dog sniffed toes under the table. Nadine obviously didn’t want him interrogating Vera the instant she arrived, but they didn’t have time to waste.

  “I knew you didn’t think we should communicate,” Vera was saying, “but when I sent code to all your usual places and you didn’t answer, I was frantic. I had no idea that he’d locked you up!”

  “I was just waiting until you graduated before I took off,” Nadine replied with confidence. “It wasn’t any different from working in his office.”

  Magnus figured she was lying through her pretty white teeth just to reassure her sister. Interesting. Maybe he was learning to read minds.

  “I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to have a degree, but I just couldn’t let the poor parents of those students keep on thinking the general was helping them! When I couldn’t reach you, I had to do something.”

  “What students?” Magnus asked. He settled in to hear the rest of the story.

  “Do we need to record this?” Conan asked, interrupting the damned story.

  Magnus wanted to smack him, but grudgingly, he could see the point.

  “Let the poor kid eat her lunch,” Jack insisted. “We flew down here without stopping, and she needs to catch her breath.”

  Interesting that Jack took the girl’s side instead of insisting that she be debriefed.

  Nadine looked to Magnus, apparently catching this anomaly as well.

  He shrugged. He didn’t know Jack well. He looked like a mean pit bull. But Jack was feeding the dog before himself—probably on caviar, given the refrigerator’s contents.

  “Let’s take our lunch and sit out in the sunroom and enjoy the day a bit,” Dorrie suggested, picking up the platter of sandwiches.

  Vera helpfully carried the tea pitcher, Jack lugged the dog, and Nadine fell back beside Magnus.

  “Is recording Vera’s story a good idea?” she asked. “Worrying about a recording falling into the wrong hands . . . makes it difficult to be open and honest.”

  “If we need evidence for lawyers, a recording might be good,” he said, but he understood her concern. Score one for him. “But I guess lawyers wouldn’t much like where you start talking about the weird bits.”

  “Exactly.” She looked relieved. “Should it ever come to testifying, we’ll do our part, but let’s not go that far yet.”

  Magnus held out a chair for her near her sister, then strolled over to talk with Conan who was examining the music cabinet. “No recording,” he announced without preliminary.

  Conan didn’t look concerned. “That’s what Dorrie said. That means they want to talk weird.”

  “How do you deal with that?” Magnus asked, watching the women chatter excitedly. Jack had filled a plate and wandered off with the furry creature under his arm, apparently to find a TV if the sound of a game coming on in the other room meant anything.

  “They do things that aren’t scientifically explainable. That doesn’t mean they aren’t doing them,” Conan replied. “I’ve never figured out how moving my desk and files around can help me, but funds have been rolling in ever since Dorrie did her feng shui shtick.”

  “That’s because you’re good at what you do,” Magnus argued. “But that thing with Francesca and Nadine where they sat there sending numbers into space, that was just freaky.”

  “Let me know when she starts reading your mind and I’ll stay away,” Conan suggested.

  “Big help, bro,” Magnus said, punching his brother’s shoulder.

  Magnus drew a chair up near Nadine and waited. He was good at waiting. And listening—until he got what he wanted.

  It didn’t take long for Vera’s story to start spilling out. Nadine might call herself an introverted nerd, but she wasn’t shy, just painfully blunt.

  Once she was out from behind her computer, she was a little too perspicacious. That gave Magnus food for thought about the painful reality of mind-reading and how it equated with the need to bury her head in the sand—or computer.

  But she had a deft way of steering her sister in the right direction, and he preferred to concentrate on the now.

  “I was student teaching in Irvine,” Vera said to Nadine’s inquiry. “One of our best, more intuitive students suddenly transferred to some obscure private school in the valley. We were all concerned because Raul was extremely sensitive and had just started coming out of his shell.”

  “Sensitive?” Nadine asked. “When you use sensitive and intuitive, are you saying he was alternatively gifted?”

  Magnus wanted to snort at that euphemism for just plain weird, but he had to admit there weren’t too many words for what the women did.

  “I think so,” Vera said uncertainly, “but it wasn’t as if I could test him or explain to the other teachers. So I just went along with everyone else, learned what I could about his transfer, then started exploring independently.”

  “Good girl,” Nadine said with approval. “What did you find out?”

  “I found he’d been entered in the Joseph Academy for the Extraordinarily Gifted.”

  All other chatter stopped and all eyes focused on Vera—everyone in this room could be classified as extraordinarily gifted in some manner. In this past year, they’d learned that meant they were targets of the general. Tension escalated. Even Magnus, as dense as he knew himself to be, squirmed for the kid. But Nadine took her sister’s hand and seemed to hypnotize her into not noticing their audience.

  “Jo-jo?” Nadine asked encouragingly.

  “I’m pretty sure,” Vera agreed. “I’m not as good at research as you are, but the Academy filed the appropriate documents with the state, and I dug those out. Feng Po-po was listed as an administrator. So are all four of her sons.”

  “Feng Po-po is dead,” Dorrie cried. “And so is her first son Feng Won. And second son Li should be back in jail!”

  Nadine lifted a cautionary finger to silence her, then returned to stroking Vera’s hand. “Only Jo-jo would know their names and their social security numbers and be able to forge the papers. I doubt the state checks death ce
rtificates or prison populations. So we know Jo-jo founded a school. The one where you sent the supplies?” she asked in sudden alarm.

  “No, that was just a poor charter school I was working with. That came after I traced Raul to the Academy and moved into the Valley to investigate. I volunteered at the charter to see if I could make connections.”

  “Is that when you sent me an image of a classroom packed with students?”

  Vera nodded. “I was shocked by how little they had. I didn’t do it deliberately. I was running on scared by then, thinking about Raul and what could be happening to him, and I just kind of focused like you tried to teach me and . . . blanked out.”

  “You did it just right. I got the message and knew you were alive. Until then, I’d been really worried. I was afraid the general had found you.”

  Vera shook her head. “As far as I know, he has no idea where I am or what I’m doing. But once I found out about the Academy, I had to look into it. I’m sorry, Nadine, I had to.” She looked grave and focused on her sister. “After what we’ve seen . . . I’m afraid of what the general might be doing to those students.”

  Nadine held up her palm to slow her down. “Give us the facts first. We all understand the fear.”

  Vera nodded, then visibly sorted back to where she’d left off. “I used a little of our credit to buy the charter school some basic supplies,” she said apologetically. “And then I realized I shouldn’t be using the card if I was hiding. So I gave it to a friend to charge something far away in hopes that would muddy the trail.”

  “You did everything right,” Nadine said soothingly. “The purchases let us hope you were alive and well and led us to you. Jo-jo doesn’t know about the card, so he couldn’t have tracked you easily. What else did you find out?”

  “After I found the papers with the Feng names on them, I got a little panicky and tried reaching you. That was before I left school. I knew the papers had to have been filed by Jo-jo, but I had no way of knowing what he was doing with that school.”

  Magnus finally noticed that the girl had dark circles under her eyes and looked frail and stressed. He really was dense about people, but somehow, he was seeing Vera through Nadine’s eyes, feeling her compassion for the sister who’d risked herself for her students. No woo-woo was involved in this connection, he assured himself. There was no one in his brain except himself. But he was starting to understand Nadine, read her body language, and she was worried. Which meant, so was he.

  “When I couldn’t reach you . . .” Vera closed her eyes and steadied herself while Nadine kept patting her hand. “I was terrified I really was on my own. And I remembered what he did to Mama and how he’d turned you into little more than a slave to his obsession, and I knew I had to do something. I simply couldn’t keep playing safe.”

  Magnus ignored the questions in Conan and Dorrie’s eyes, shook his head, and kept his attention on the sisters. He’d interrogated men before and hadn’t cared one way or another if he’d caused them pain. This was different. This was very personal. And he hurt just listening. For the sisters, it had to be excruciating.

  “I persuaded a friend to take me to Topaz for a weekend so I could just ask around a bit,” Vera continued. “That’s where the Academy is, way out in the Valley.”

  Topaz. Magnus made a mental note to look it up, but he assumed it was just another little desert town, population 500.

  “And?” Nadine asked with a hint of impatience.

  The unresponsive robot the general had created was starting to crack, Magnus realized with interest.

  “And nothing,” Vera said with a shrug. “The Academy is off the beaten track. The townspeople know nothing except that it occupies an old ranch. There’s a bit of resentment that they apparently buy supplies elsewhere, but it’s not as if the Topaz grocery keeps anything except dusty tin cans.”

  “So you decided to quit school, run off to a nowhere town, and what?” Nadine asked, definitely losing some of her cool.

  Magnus started stroking Nadine’s hand the way she’d stroked Vera’s. “And scare Nadine out of hiding, right?” he asked the kid.

  Vera shrugged her skinny shoulders. “I thought if Nadine was still alive, my leaving school would catch her attention, but mostly, I wanted to find some way of talking to those kids. I couldn’t do it from the city. I tried. I went out there a few times on weekends, but I couldn’t get close, and I was afraid someone in Topaz might notice me.”

  Magnus could practically feel Nadine forcing herself to relax. The woman practically vibrated with emotions.

  How the devil had she kept all that steam pent up for so long?

  “I need a map,” Nadine announced. “How far were you staying from the Academy?”

  “Victorville is about half an hour down the road.” Vera tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and nibbled her sandwich worriedly. “When I was visiting Topaz on the weekends, I started feeling like someone was watching me. And then I was sure someone followed me from Topaz back to Irvine. I got nervous. I didn’t have much money, but a friend had an empty house in Victorville. As long as I had to run anyway, it might as well be to do something useful.”

  Magnus squeezed Nadine’s fingers and stepped in very carefully. “How did you hide in Victorville?”

  “I was afraid to use my student name if someone really was tracking me. I made up a new name, only I couldn’t get a job without ID. That’s when I volunteered at the charter. I couldn’t let Jo-jo torture sensitive little kids,” she said anxiously, pleading for understanding with her eyes. “So I kept biking the trails around Topaz, hoping I’d learn something.”

  “And?” Nadine asked.

  Vera rubbed her knuckles across her brow, then lifted her gaze to Nadine and Magnus. “I found a new grave in a creek bed near the Academy. It wasn’t adult size.”

  Sixteen

  Nadine couldn’t believe teachers would kill kids, but she winced as the room exploded in outrage, both silent and vocal. She hadn’t realized how sensitive she was to emotional assaults. She’d been insulated against them most of her life.

  She’d been a sensitive kid. She’d blocked a lot of it—because her mother had shielded her from psychic trauma. Not until her mother was gone had she needed to hide behind computers. So many things would have made more sense had her mother lived!

  Nadine squeezed her eyes shut and realized she was also squeezing Magnus’s hand. In some manner, he shielded her, too. She wanted to lean into his big shoulder and make the world go away.

  Her conscience wouldn’t let her ignore children in trouble if she had the ability to save them. The world wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  “You reported the grave?” Magnus asked in that deep voice that resounded through Nadine’s insides.

  “To the police, anonymously,” Vera said, voice wavering. “I’ve been living in terror ever since, not certain what to do. I’ve been afraid to go back to classes. I’ve not seen a word in the media about anyone discovering a grave. It was awfully near the school.”

  “He’ll have tapped the local sheriff’s office,” Nadine said into the silence. “That’s what Jo-jo does—surrounds his facilities with a network of phone tapping and computer hacking. If one of the teachers tweets a concern, he’ll know about it—if his new IT person is as good as I am, anyway.”

  “Having that kind of information builds a stronger wall around the school than a fence,” Conan said with a frown. “Of course, if the teachers discovered the surveillance, they could just drive away.”

  “He’ll have security cameras near the school to see that happening,” Nadine pointed out. “And if anyone knocks out the camera, he’ll instantly have people blocking the road. The location was not chosen lightly.”

  “Yeah, once when Dorrie and I tried getting into Adams Engineering, security was all over us in seconds,” Conan said with a degree of rue.

  Nadine winced at the thought of either Dorrie or Conan being trapped in the general’s sticky web. She
hadn’t meant for anyone else to get involved.

  But she couldn’t abandon these people who had helped her so much. They had no idea of the danger they were facing. Worse, she was starting to realize that—even though she couldn’t shut down the general’s network as she’d hoped— she might actually have insights that could help. And that she couldn’t run forever.

  She hated the idea. Just as she was starting to enjoy a taste of freedom, she felt trapped again. When would she ever escape to have her own life?

  She shoved Mad Max’s hand aside and stood up to pace the room.

  Magnus rose with her. He opened the sunroom door, and she gravitated outside into the chilly sun. He threw the blanket still lying on the lounge chair over her shoulders.

  “Stop hovering,” she said crossly.

  He leaned against the cabana and crossed his arms.

  “The others won’t follow me out here if you’re here,” she said aloud, grasping his purpose in hovering.

  “No guarantees,” he agreed. “But if I tell them to back off, they will. You’ve got to understand Dorrie’s position. As far as she’s concerned, the general and his sons have hunted her family, killed her mother, and nearly killed her. She wants the general strung up on a hot wire. And what Dorrie wants, Conan will provide. Adding that bit about the kid just gave them more reason to escalate the search.”

  “We don’t know anything,” Nadine asserted, just because she could.

  “Totally agree,” he said with annoying pragmatism. And then he waited.

  Nadine wanted to bash him over the head with a lawn chair. “You’re waiting for me to tell you what we need to do, aren’t you?”

  “Reading my mind,” he said laconically.

  She flung a pool noodle at him.

  “There are probably balls and floats in the cabana. Want me to blow them up for you?” He flung the noodle into the heated pool.

  She paced the fenced-in area, dodging chairs and umbrellas, staying on the opposite side from Mad Max. The man made her crazy. Crazier. If he wasn’t around, she’d grab Vera and run, she knew she would.