THE RISK OF LOVE AND MAGIC

by Patricia Rice

  But like a mammoth boulder, he was there, and he wasn’t going anywhere. And he was telling her he would stay by her side and support her in whatever she wanted to do.

  He was putting her in charge, not telling her what to do.

  That much freedom was damned scary. Oh crap. How did people do this?

  She hugged her elbows, but the universe wasn’t providing answers. Vera was frightened. Nadine knew that much. She had to protect Vera.

  But her sister was a nurturer who needed a real life, one that involved finishing school, getting married, having pets and children, being happy. Could she do that in Costa Rica under an assumed identity? Provided Jo-jo hadn’t learned the name they’d forged, because inventing a new passport wouldn’t be easy without his network.

  Damn, damn, and double damn.

  “With your genius and Conan’s team, you have the general trumped,” Magnus reminded her.

  “That depends on the quality of my replacement. Vera first,” Nadine insisted. “We don’t know if he’s discovered her new identity or if she’s just scared for nothing.”

  “All right, we’ll start there. Dorrie’s cousins are security experts. Conan has a detective team. If you have any suggestions of how to infiltrate the general’s security, we can search his databases as well as doing whatever it is they need to do to check from Vera’s end.”

  That’s what he really wanted—access to the general. But now that she had Vera safe, Nadine no longer cared what they did to the menace. Her childhood hero had died long ago in her head. She was still wrestling with the shadow of the respectable military man left behind, but she was getting stronger. Ideas that her brain had suppressed had started surfacing.

  She was afraid, but that didn’t mean she should run and hide any longer, she realized, drawing a deep breath. Backbone—she needed to straighten her backbone and face reality.

  “I’ve given Conan all the ISPs and passwords I can remember,” she said, thinking her way through this new task, “If nothing has come of them, I doubt anything else I recall will help. Even the networks I accessed at Woodstar will have been changed by now. It’s SOP. I hadn’t counted on Jo-jo finding someone as good as I am.”

  They both digested that thought. Jo-jo had the names of every extraordinarily gifted person related to Nadine and every other California Malcolm. One of the names on that list could easily have her talents.

  “One step at a time,” Magnus reminded her. “We’re safe here for a while. Let the others go to work. You and Vera catch up. You no longer have to do it all.”

  Nadine sagged. The burden she’d carried had been heavy, but without it, she had no purpose. Magnus crossed the tiles to wrap an arm around her waist, and she finally leaned into him.

  “I’m afraid I’ll become an empty, purposeless shell,” she whispered.

  He made an inelegant noise. “That’s not possible. Your battery simply needs recharging. Let’s fix margaritas and throw a remember-this-ISP party. I bet Vera can help.”

  The tension in the room was nearly visible when they returned. Even the dog leaped into Vera’s arms to wait expectantly.

  Nadine didn’t have the necessary words to say she’d stay and help.

  Magnus crossed the room, pulled down a large bottle of alcohol from a shelf behind a bar, and said, “Margaritaville.”

  For reasons beyond Nadine’s comprehension, that broke the tension.

  ***

  Magnus mixed drinks and watched as pens flew across paper and fingers across keyboards while Vera and Nadine attempted to summon all the names, databases, and server locations that they remembered in connection with Adams. Magnus figured he was no help in this. That was okay. He had been a bartender in college. Once they came up with places to look, he could knock down doors. Until then, he could mix drinks.

  “Mr T needs to go outside. I’ll be back in a minute.” Vera stood and the dog leapt into her arms. She carried her pet toward the kitchen. Jack fell in step with her.

  “Did you have pets when you were kids?” Magnus asked Nadine, watching the pair depart.

  “No, the general was allergic. We found a kitten once and hid it in the back yard, but it grew up and ran away.” Looking for all the world like a stereotypical geek in her black-framed glasses, Nadine didn’t look up from the flashing screens on her computer.

  “Then maybe she’s had a dog at college,” Magnus decided, watching Vera through the window as she talked to the dog and set it free on a patch of lawn.

  Dorrie looked at him oddly, then watched the window, too. “Didn’t she say it was a stray she found in town? She certainly has a way with animals if she can make it obey after just a few days in her care. Yorkies are usually kind of hyper.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking, but I don’t know much about dogs.” Magnus chopped another lime and dropped the slices into the pitcher.

  The Yorkie was gleefully leaping over Vera’s outstretched arms, while normally dour Jack actually grinned at the performance.

  Finally realizing the conversation had taken a strange turn, Nadine glanced up to see what they were talking about. She shrugged. “She told me earlier that her dog doesn’t like fish but misses her fluffy toy. I guess she’s just entertaining it like one would a kid.”

  Dorrie frowned.

  Magnus opened the door and whistled. The dog didn’t even glance his way. Jack did.

  “Ask Vera what other tricks the dog knows,” Magnus called.

  Conan came to stand beside him while Vera lifted the fluffy animal and talked to it, nose-to-nose. “The dog had a tracer in its collar,” Conan said quietly. “I didn’t want to scare Nadine into running. Jack didn’t have time to dispose of the collar properly, so he left it under some bushes. If we’re lucky, some poor jerk will pick it up and put it on their animal.”

  Outside, Vera set the dog down, twirled her hand, and the Yorkie tumbled over, played dead, then leaped up to dance on its hind legs.

  Magnus swore under his breath. “Remember what I told you about the chips the fucker planted in their heads?”

  Conan cursed. He reached for the glass door, but Magnus steadied him, throwing a glance back to Nadine who was dividing her time between watching them and dumping data into the computer.

  “Nadine’s a hair’s breadth from a meltdown. We can’t drown the dog.” Magnus turned to Dorrie. “How much do you know about dogs? Can they really do tricks like that for a new owner?”

  “I have friends with Yorkies. They’re high-strung. I’ve never seen them do anything they didn’t want to do. That’s about all I can tell you. Why? What’s wrong?”

  “I think she’s talking to the dog,” Magnus said, keeping his voice composed.

  “Vera talks to chairs when she hasn’t anything better to do.” Nadine finally got up to see what they were watching. “Smart animal. I don’t think we can get it through customs if we have to leave,” she said with regret.

  “No leaving,” Magnus ordered, ruffling her hair but not holding her back. He was finally realizing he had to tread carefully with someone who had been held prisoner most of her life. “Jack,” he shouted out the door, “we need to talk. Bring the circus back inside.”

  The Yorkie leaped on Jack at some command of Vera’s. He caught the animal and tried to dodge licks as they returned to the house.

  Conan took Mr T the instant they crossed the threshold. He checked behind the Yorkie’s ears and sighed. “Microchip. Get Mr T to a vet. Have it scanned. Doubt it records the previous owner though.”

  “Microchip?” Nadine asked.

  Magnus could almost feel her hysteria escalate.

  Seventeen

  “Microchip?” Nadine asked again, her voice an octave higher.

  Magnus pressed his hand against her shoulder. That always seemed to steady her.

  Jack cursed and slammed the heel of his hand against his head. “I should have looked, but I thought the collar was our tracer. Two on one animal? Overkill, much?”

&nbs
p; “A microchip?” Vera asked timidly. “I didn’t even think about those. I should have taken Mr T to a vet to find his owner?”

  “There was a tracer in the collar,” Magnus said as carefully as he could, hoping Vera wouldn’t shut down, too. “We have no reason to think the general planted them. But if he did, it just means we can’t use this place much longer. We’ll have the microchip checked, and if it’s a tracer, we’ll plant it on a moving train, and proceed onward.”

  “I thought he was just a stray.” Vera hugged the dog and started to sob into its coat.

  Jack was about to launch into a diatribe, but Magnus held up his hand to stop him. Holding both Nadine’s shoulders now so she didn’t fly off the floor, he asked, “Why did you think Mr T was a stray?”

  Vera looked a little embarrassed. “That’s how he felt, lost and scared and lonely.”

  Magnus had to cover Nadine’s mouth before she interrupted. She licked his palm but shut up. She seemed to be coming back down to earth if she had the poise to retaliate. He almost grinned, except these new developments had his brain spinning inside his skull.

  “You were talking to Mr T out there, weren’t you?” he asked. “Telling him what to do? Wouldn’t that take a well-trained dog?”

  Vera shrugged. “He’s smart. I just told him what I wanted, and he did it.”

  Dorrie uttered a muffled cry and fell back on a plump leather sofa. “She talks to animals. Grandmother said she knew some of us could, but they were entertainers and beneath her notice.”

  Vera’s eyes widened. Magnus released Nadine, figuring she now had a new discovery to distract her from the more dangerous one. He didn’t expect complete calm, but he hoped he’d averted hysterics.

  “Fine. We’ll look for zoos in Australia where you can work,” were the first words to pass Nadine’s lips.

  Well, so much for averting hysterics. Interestingly, Vera’s mouth developed a stubborn slant. And Jack finally intervened, taking the dog away.

  “I’ll get him to the vet. Once the chip is removed, you can have him back again. But we all need to get moving.”

  “It will take time for an intruder to find a way around the security here,” Conan said, “but yeah, if anyone is following that microchip, we can’t count on this as home base any longer. Vera, how do you feel about returning to school?”

  Magnus retreated to the role of observer, waiting for the call to action. Nadine stiffened beneath his hand, but Vera wrinkled up her forehead in thought.

  “I’d rather not leave Nadine,” she said. “But I’d like to finish school.”

  Nadine practically deflated. Magnus rubbed the back of her neck. “We can do this,” he told her. “Just think like the general and his minions. Make it work for us.”

  Nadine shook her head and wiped her eyes. “I want to believe you can keep her safe. I just can’t. I can’t lose her again.”

  “Even if the general’s minions were suspicious of a teacher hanging out in Topaz, even if they followed her back to Irvine, they still don’t know who she is or where she came from,” Jack said.

  Vera looked happier at that thought. “No one at school knows my real name,” she pointed out.

  Looking as if he had a plan, Conan joined in. “Even if the general’s security got suspicious and planted a tracking device on the dog, that doesn’t mean they know it’s Vera who’s been snooping around. That’s just normal paranoia. Once we separate her from the dog, they’ll relax and go away.”

  “I’ll ask the vet to implant the chip in another stray,” Jack suggested. “Then I’ll take Vera back to campus. I know people there. We can find a new place, just in case she might have been followed to the old one.

  Nadine kept shaking her head.

  “I’ll be fine, Nad.” Vera squeezed the dog and pleaded with her big eyes as well as her words. “I’m a big girl now, and you don’t have to watch over me. Find the old goat, get him locked up, and make certain those kids are okay, so I can finish school, and you can have a real life.”

  “Bait,” Magnus suggested, needing to be useful.

  Nadine scowled up at him. “I will not let Vera be bait.”

  “Nope, us.”

  “Not easy, bro,” Conan objected. “Not too many places as secure as this.”

  Nadine rallied. “We’ll be bait to draw attention away from Vera? That’s easy. Jo-jo is obsessed with Malcolm abilities. All we have to do is pretend we’re the proud Malcolm parents of a gifted child. He’ll be all over us like bees on honeysuckle.” She glared at Jack. “But you damned well better keep Vera under watch every second.”

  “I’ll hide in plain sight, in class, under my assumed name,” Vera insisted. “Even if Jo-jo cares about finding non-gifted me, which I bet he doesn’t, my presence will divert some of his resources from you, right?”

  “If he knows you—in any disguise—talk to animals, he’d have you training dogs to carry missiles into battle,” Nadine argued. “You’d better find a new home for Mr T.”

  “She’s probably right about that, babe,” Jack said with regret. “I’ll leave the dog with one of my nieces until this is over.”

  ***

  Nadine blinked at Jack’s familiar tone, wanting to smack the man for talking to her baby sister like that. But Vera lit up like an approving woman, not a child, and Nadine sighed. Her baby sister wasn’t a baby any longer. “Life is hell,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Magnus massaged her neck again.

  He was getting too damned good at pushing her buttons. She slanted him an angry look. “I thought you didn’t know anything about people, that all you want is a direction so you can pound someone like a post?”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t think life is hell. Conan, you better get your bride back to Oz’s fortress. We don’t want anyone following you. You should have enough info to keep you busy for a while, right?”

  “Not that I’ll get anything done inside the fortress while the women run around with flowers and lace,” Conan grumbled. “I was really hoping we could stay here.”

  “Then stay here and confuse anyone who comes looking,” Magnus suggested.

  “No way,” Dorrie countered. “I’m needed back at the house until the wedding is over. Get rid of the general and let us have the place afterward.”

  “Nadine and I will head out . . .” Magnus quit massaging her neck and gave her a look that said his inventive brain had just kicked into gear. “Proud Malcolm parents? How do we do that?”

  “We start with the Malcolm genealogy website, of course,” she said, stepping away from his proprietary hold. She was shaken and confused, and right now, he wasn’t helping. “That website stays in place, even if they’ve changed servers, and I can no longer hack the back door. I don’t need to hack it. All we have to do is go in the front door like any clueless parent and enter our names as related to the Malcolm family. It’s pretty straight forward. We start chatting about our gifted child on the site’s sticky chat room, and the general’s minion will have bugs in our computers and our address monitored before nightfall. It’s how we found all of you, even if indirectly.”

  Fighting fear and a need to weep or rage, Nadine dropped back to her seat, put her glasses on, and began punching her keyboard.

  The men all hit their phones, arranging safe transportation and new accommodations. Vera subsided quietly into a corner with her dog.

  Vera talked to animals? Her sister had a Malcolm talent, just as the general had hoped. He just hadn’t offered Vera the opportunity to explore the world and discover it. There was a lesson in that, should Nadine live to think about it.

  “The chi in here is very positive,” Dorrie whispered as she picked up glasses on the table beside Nadine. “If you can, send me a diagram of the next place you stay. I will tell you the wards you need for protection.”

  Feng shui sounded like supernatural silliness like astrology to Nadine, but she’d freaked out the general enough times to know that what others considered i
mpossible was possible.

  “You said you could read the general’s mind?” Magnus asked a little later. He was frowning and studying the security on the family room window.

  Nadine shrugged. “Mostly, I just knew what he wanted before he said it. We worked together pretty closely.”

  “Like Radar on MASH knowing what the officers needed before they did?” he asked. At her quizzically raised eyebrow, he sighed. “I’ll buy you the DVD for Christmas, call it cultural history. But you can’t really know what he’s thinking right now?”

  “Not easily. It would help if I knew where he was so I could focus in that direction. It helps even more if he’s in the same room. He radiates intense brain waves. If I can see what he’s doing—even if I’m just following his car on a GPS, I’d come closer to getting inside his head.”

  “We need to work on that, then. I was thinking . . . if he’s tracked the dog here, we may lure him out better if we stay.” Magnus continued his inspection of the windows and doors while everyone else in the room stared at him.

  “Here?” Nadine inquired when no one else did.

  “If we’re to be bait, what better place?” Magnus headed for the next room. “Security is damned tight. Who owns this place, a drug mogul?”

  “Film star,” Conan answered, following him. “Same difference. You aren’t really thinking of setting yourselves up as a target, are you?”

  Nadine and Dorrie trailed in their wake. Vera and Jack kept at their on-line search for student housing.

  “Think about it—Nadine and I could stay here and pretend to be wealthy parents with an exceptional child. We register the fictional kid on the general’s genealogy site, looking for more gifted family members. We chat and ask about the Academy. The bug from the website will see us researching the school.”

  “That’s how he found Oz’s kid,” Nadine pointed out. “Jo-jo’s obsession with the Malcolms is his Achilles heel. He has someone check out every new entry on the family tree. He has researchers trace their ancestry when a new person enters their name. He has people who do nothing but study your families and calculate what extraordinary abilities they might have. They follow the discussions in the website chat rooms, looking for people who talk about their gifted children.”