Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic

by Patricia Rice

  “Oyster sauce?” he asked appreciatively, helping himself to the second plate and the broccoli.

  She arched her eyebrows, and it finally sunk in that her eyes were not only almond-shaped, but green. He’d been too busy checking out her ass to register details. But then, he was here because of her ancestry. Except, like her brother, she wasn’t full-blooded Chinese.

  “You know Cantonese cuisine?” She pointed at one of the boxes. “I ordered beef in black bean sauce for you, but we can share the shrimp, if you prefer.”

  “Beans and beef are fine.” Usually when he was working on a problem, he didn’t take time to eat, but he was suddenly starving. If she was part of the problem, he ought to study her. He filled his plate and rolled a desk chair over to the table. Yeah, he was pretty sure there were breasts under that jacket. Nice high ones, too. Some parts of his job were more interesting than others. He tried to catch a glimpse of the pendant on her necklace, but the chain disappeared beneath her white collar.

  “I haven’t found anything useful yet in your brother’s email account,” he told her between bites. “You want to tell me what you know about the crash?”

  “What, you can’t wave a magic wand and learn what you want without me?” she asked dryly.

  All right, she didn’t like being ignored. He got that. “I know computers,” he informed her, stabbing at the tender beef—not shredded leather but moist beef. “Generally, I can open a system and find the problem without wasting time listening to paranoid explanations. Helicopters are different territory.”

  She swiped his box of beef before he was done with it, dumping it onto a plate and looking under the table for her dog.

  He was hungry, dammit, and the food was too good for a dog. Conan grabbed the plate back. “Drama is preferable to passive aggression. So go ahead, yell at me, then tell me why you’re questioning government officials over a crash they have no reason to lie about.”

  She did the inscrutable thing while she studied him, but she let him keep his food. He preferred being the observer, not the observed. Itchy under that green-eyed scrutiny, he concentrated on his beef.

  “I didn’t feel Bo die,” she replied. Then waited.

  He worked that through his head, failing to find the logic. “I didn’t feel Magnus die either,” he offered. “But then, I’ve never felt anyone die. Should I?”

  Her lovely arched eyebrows rose a fraction. “No, I don’t expect you should. But I do.”

  “How? A thousand people probably die every second.” He wasn’t scoffing. He was just curious. She didn’t look crazy.

  Well, she had looked crazy a bit earlier with her hair in a nimbus around her head and water dripping off her nose.

  He liked to keep an open mind.

  For a moment, she looked as if she’d retaliate by taking his food away again. He surrounded the plate with his arm.

  “I don’t feel everyone die,” she said with disdain. “Just people I know. I recognize their energy patterns, their harmony with the earth, and if one goes missing, I know it. I don’t feel that Bo is missing. And I didn’t feel the helicopter crash.”

  Conan stifled a sigh. Okay, she was crazy. He was a man of logic. He worked for the government. He had no reason to believe the feds would lie about something as ordinary as a helicopter crash on a test engine.

  Except he’d just uncovered evidence that Bo’s email had been accessed by someone other than Bo.

  Sensing and finding hidden code was Conan’s little quirk, and one he didn’t mention to anyone. How he noticed tampered computer files would be just as difficult for him to explain as for Dragon Lady to clarify energy patterns and earth harmony.

  If he could believe in woo-woo logic… Circle the wagons. Beware Chinese predators. His stomach clenched and the Cantonese beef felt like a hard rock. His gut didn’t like warnings or coincidences. “I’m a computer expert, not a military one. I can’t find clues without information.”

  “You have government clearance I don’t and know what files to look in,” she said quickly, as if she’d been prepared to argue. “Bo is my father’s heir. He should be here instead of me. He could run this office with one hand tied behind his back, and still keep up with the corporate realty operations. Without him or my father in charge, everything has gone wrong that could go wrong. And I just know Bo’s alive out there somewhere!”

  Conan decided the starchy CEO was behaving more like an hysterical sister than a Chinese predator.

  He hadn’t been able to protect Oz and his kid. He didn’t want to fail Magnus, if his brother really wasn’t dead. Conan knew he didn’t play well with others, and he didn’t want this difficult female in his life. But he really wanted her to be right. His skin felt too tight to contain all his conflicting responses.

  “If everything has gone wrong, what else are you talking about?” he asked, because that was easier than questioning energy patterns or debating her usefulness.

  “Someone is stealing money from the foundation,” she said in frustration. “I just hired a friend of mine, Tillie. You saw her earlier. She discovered the theft instantly. There could be a whole pattern of sabotage for all I know. Bo should be here. He’s the MBA, not me.”

  “Thieves, I can find,” he said cautiously. “Is that what you want?”

  “What I want right now is to find Bo,” she said, throwing down her napkin in frustration. “Then I want to go after the thieves with sharp knives.”

  He understood her frustration, but drama wasn’t his style. “Unless you can throw knives through cyber walls, weapons won’t help much. Theft is by way of computers these days.” He’d installed the firewalls here. He didn’t think a thief could break in from outside the firm, but he wouldn’t hit her with that observation just yet.

  Conan dumped more food on his plate and continued eating until he realized dotty Dorothea sat still, with a faraway look in her eyes. Generally, he only paid attention to women when it looked like they were ready to jump his bones, but hers wasn’t that kind of look. His nose twitched. He knew she was up to something. He cast his thoughts back to the last part of their discussion—throwing knives through cyber walls. Nope, not seeing how that could be done. She must have drifted further into la-la land.

  He resolved to research her family as soon as he got home to see if she might be another of Pippa’s Wyrd Malcolms. For now, he fed the patient dog a piece of beef under the table and kept a wary eye on her.

  Finally, she returned to this time zone, and her green eyes were eerily opaque as she spoke. “I’m not as concerned about the theft as I am that there’s some possibility my mother’s murderer has kidnapped Bo.”

  Kidnapped? By a murderer. Well, hell, why couldn’t she just drop an insanity bomb on him?

  ***

  Conan of Oz Technology’s chi spiked when Dorrie mentioned kidnapping, but he’d not opened up to her in any other way. At least she’d learned that he wasn’t a lying charmer. He knew his way around computers, and he listened well, without laughing.

  She’d hoped to find out more about him before revealing any of her secrets, but other than learning he appreciated good Cantonese cuisine, she’d gained little for her effort. For Bo’s sake, she needed to know how much she could trust Conan.

  Oswin didn’t strike her as the sort of man who would buy into destructive energy. How could she explain her fear that someone in this office might be trying to destroy everything she did? Just as someone had destroyed her mother…and possibly her brother.

  Conan would ask who, and then she’d have to explain that almost everyone hated her, so she couldn’t pinpoint the really bad vibes. Then he’d laugh himself into hysteria.

  She watched him empty the cartons and waited to see what magic he could perform.

  Disappointingly, now that he was fed, her computer guru merely downloaded something from his thumb drive into the PC, ejected the drive, and returned it to his pocket. “I can take a look at your theft problem from home as long as you leave the sy
stem up and running. I need my machines to work on your brother’s files. There’s no need for you to sit here babysitting me.”

  Babysitting? She wanted to smack him with a greasy carton. “My house is falling into the ocean, and you had me sitting here doing nothing, why?” she asked in incredulity.

  “Someone had to let me into the computer.” He held up the suit jacket she’d discarded before supper. “And I’d recommend finding another port in this storm and not returning to your personal Armageddon.”

  She was not a violent or physical person but she wished she could be. Trying not to inhale the male scent of him when he stood this close, she jammed her arms into the coat and swirled around to glare. “You have the sensitivity of Bird Island,” she retorted, grabbing Toto and stalking through the now-empty office toward the elevator. Her heels click-clacked in the eerie silence.

  He followed her, and she could swear she felt thought energy pouring off him. She didn’t think she’d ever felt anyone’s thoughts before, but he was so obviously puzzling over her insult that she was probably just picking up on his expression. That was the trouble with her gift—it was too easily influenced.

  She’d told him she felt earth energy and he hadn’t laughed. Maybe he didn’t know how.

  “Bird Island…are you referring to the composition of granite boulders or seabird guano?” he finally asked, apparently summoning knowledge of the island from some internal encyclopedia.

  “The sensitivity of bird shit and granite,” she agreed tersely.

  He shrugged. “My sister-in-law just throws things at me. Metaphors are more intriguing than slushies in the face.”

  Dorrie slammed her head back against the elevator wall to keep from screaming. Standing next to Conan Oswin in a confined space was akin to being trapped in a testosterone whirlwind. His energy was everywhere, and she was too sensitive to all his arrogant chemistry not to realize it was focused on her.

  Toto squirmed in her arms and licked her face, and she calmed down, enjoying the image of slushie-heaving. Ice might turn him off. “Your sister-in-law is a smart lady. If I had a slushie, I might try her method.”

  No, she probably wouldn’t. Mei had raised her to be a quiet, proper lady. Her father had taught her that revealing emotion was bad for negotiating. She wasn’t allowed to scream, argue, or throw things. Just speaking her thoughts earlier had accomplished no more than a ridiculous argument with Bird Island. It had been a waste of time.

  The elevator door opened on the parking garage. Negative energy spewed into the enclosed elevator cubicle from the concrete cavern beyond. Dorrie stumbled backward, terrified at the degree of hate. Even Toto yipped in surprise.

  With the heel of her pump, she slammed the CLOSE DOOR button. Birdshithead looked at her as if she’d popped a cork.

  The door couldn’t close fast enough. The negativity didn’t push closer, but she felt its fury swelling.

  Pressed against the back wall, she didn’t breathe until the door sealed.

  “Forget something?” her companion asked dryly as the elevator returned upward.

  “Someone hates me,” she muttered, setting Toto down and scrambling in her purse for her phone.

  She noted Oswin’s thick, short lashes blinking in disbelief, but one of the advantages of keeping people at a distance was that she didn’t care if she sounded insane. Safety first.

  As soon as the door opened on her office level, she pushed 911. “Intruder,” she said curtly, giving the address as soon as the dispatcher responded. “In the parking garage.”

  Chapter 3

  Conan stared at the crazy dragon lady as she paced up and down the hall waiting for the police. He wasn’t stupid. He understood her house was falling off a cliff, and she had some crackbrained notion about her brother not being dead, on top of fearing a possible thief in her office. He realized that she was under severe pressure.

  That didn’t mean she had to go batshit nutso over an empty garage. That had been one powerful foot kick. He didn’t know many women who could have closed an elevator with her heel. Kind of a turn-on, if he thought about it, but right now, he was wondering if her chandelier was missing more than one light bulb.

  That part about someone hating her would have him backing off rapidly—except he knew a lot of batshit nutsos, most of them part of his family. And when they said something was wrong, it was best to believe them unless proven otherwise. With the spooky Librarian involved, he had good reason to be wary.

  The combs holding back Dorrie’s thick hair had worked loose, and squiggly curls escaped around her ears, making her look more sexy than restrained. She wore a light gardenia perfume that had permeated his senses in the elevator and he couldn’t drive out of his mind now. Her pacing provided a better view of the compact curves she hid behind the suit coat she’d discarded again. And why he was looking instead of doing was beyond him.

  Her reaction must have momentarily stunned him, but now that he was back to his senses, he didn’t know what the problem was.

  “I can go down and check things out for you,” he said guardedly, attempting to verify that she wasn’t totally around the bend. “What should I be looking for?” He hadn’t seen anything, but he was ready to admit that he had been looking at her more than the garage.

  “Nothing,” she said, tilting her head at the sound of sirens.

  “If there’s scum down there, they’ll be gone before the police arrive. I’m going back down.” He hit the elevator button to open the doors.

  She caught his arm and stayed him. “No. Violence will not improve the situation. Let the police chase them away, and then we can leave unharmed.”

  He acted. She reacted. He got that. He didn’t approve. “I won’t kill anyone.” He stepped in and hit the garage floor button.

  She caught the closing door and glared at him. “You’ll leave me here alone? What if the guy found his way up here?”

  “I don’t know how you know anyone is even there, but if there is, he hasn’t had time to take the stairs up twelve floors, and now he knows I’m here, he won’t bother. I left an expensive machine down there, and I’m not letting anyone take a bat to it.”

  Carrying her dog, she joined him in the enclosed space, wrapping him in flowers again. Surreal. And now that she was carrying the jacket instead of wearing it, he could really look down her blouse. Not since high school had he been so fascinated with a glimpse of lace.

  “You believe me?” she asked in suspicion, narrowing her intriguingly slanted eyes.

  “I think you’re under a lot of pressure and prone to hysteria, but I’ve no reason not to believe you.” He tried to stick with rational, but she’d said she sensed energy patterns. Was she trying to prove herself? Only one way to find out.

  “I am not prone to hysteria.” She practically huffed in disdain as the elevator swept downward. “I am prone to avoiding conflict.”

  He snorted. “Passive-aggressive, knew it.”

  “Oprah psychology,” she scoffed. “And she’s better at it than you are. Avoiding violence is common sense.”

  “Stay here,” he said as the door opened.

  Conan stalked into the garage, following his nose for trouble. He found the trouble, all right, and thanked the good Lord above that the police car chose that moment to roar through the entrance. The Dragon Lady was gonna go up in flames when she saw this, but he had no good way of protecting her from the sight, short of sending her back upstairs and telling her to spend the night there.

  The odds that she might actually sense energy patterns had increased.

  At the arrival of the squad car, Dorrie rushed out to join him. Conan threw up his arm so she couldn’t get any closer to the victim.

  “My car,” she wailed, digging her fingers into his arm. “My beautiful car!”

  A young officer swung from his vehicle to admire the sad slump of the shiny Prius on its slashed tires. “Looks like you had yourself a vandal, ma’am.”

  Miss Inscrutable looked like
she would cry. Conan hated it when women cried. He held up a finger to the policeman to tell him to wait one minute. Then he led his shell-shocked companion toward his Mercedes roadster. The more obvious target, it appeared to be in one piece. He’d ponder that anomaly later.

  He deposited Dorothea in the leather passenger seat. She clung to her toy dog, burying her face in its fur. Studying a curl framing a vulnerable ear, Conan suffered another pang, wishing he could comfort her. He ignored the sentimentality. In his experience, comforting hysterical women only led to more weeping and screaming.

  “Let me handle this. I’ll be right back.”

  When she didn’t go after anyone with a carving knife, he made the report to the cop, leaving out the part about someone hating her. The cop wanted to talk to Dorrie, but she just shook her head.

  The garage was pretty obviously empty of all but their cars. Whoever had been here had simply taken out his frustration on the tires and fled. The policeman wrote up his report and recommended stepped up security.

  Feeling guilty that the vandal hadn’t attacked his pricey machine instead of her ecologically sound one, Conan slid into the Mercedes driver’s seat after the cop left. “I’m thinking it’s not safe for you to be alone. Where can I take you?”

  She looked up in heartbroken dismay. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m homeless. I was planning on bringing up my suitcase and staying here.”

  ***

  Giving prayers of thanks that the vandal hadn’t tried to steal her last few precious possessions, Dorrie insisted on moving them into the monstermobile that Oswin called a car. No doubt jerks who slashed tires thought books were worthless and hadn’t seen her laptop beneath them. Or maybe she and Conan had scared off the bastards before they could break in her windows.

  She knew she couldn’t stay at the office if someone hated her enough to slash her tires. She wouldn’t get an instant’s sleep. And her father’s house—her current home—would be cordoned off because of the rockslide by now.

  In hopes of paying off some credit cards while reassuring her father about taking care of his house, she’d given up her apartment after he had the stroke. It wasn’t as if working for a charity paid well. And even though her blog on feng shui was collecting readers, one couldn’t live on Internet donations. She didn’t have a lot of options.