To her utter shock, he led the way to a cat rescue society.
She hadn’t expected him to care about the poor cat much less know of a safe place to take it. The man had more facets than a rock crystal. She probably ought to take a hammer to him, but she blessed his compassion now.
She cuddled the kitty as Conan opened the car door for her. The poor thing was trembling as hard as she was. “I don’t have a home to take you to,” she whispered in a furry ear. “You’re much better off with someone who can stay home and tame you. You’ll be warm and well fed.”
To Conan, she said nothing. He placed a hand at the small of her back and steered her into the building, where she reluctantly handed over the protesting kitty. The worker who promised to find him a good home looked earnest and trustworthy, so Dorrie was persuaded the tabby was in better hands than hers. She’d arrowed him, after all. He would never really trust her again.
She petted the kitty’s head and murmured her farewells. She really needed a house of her own so she could keep pets.
Not until they were out in the parking lot again did Conan grip her arm and force her to look at him.
“How did you know there really was a cat in there?” he asked with curiosity.
“I didn’t.” Drawn from her black mood at leaving the cat, she gazed at him incredulously. “That’s ridiculous. I was as shocked as anyone when Casper darted out.”
“You shouted at it before the cat appeared,” he pointed out.
Oh, well, she might have known he’d notice that anomaly. Now she supposed he’d nag her for explanations that he wouldn’t believe. She really needed to lie better. Or faster. “You were supposed to be studying the building, not me,” she retorted, pulling away and evading the subject. The man was just too damned observant.
“Most people would stand there calling kitty, kitty, not shout a warning before there was anything to warn about.” Conan didn’t stop her from climbing into her car, but he didn’t go away either.
He was a big man. Leaning one hand against the roof of her car, he could be intimidating. But she didn’t feel threatened. She knew it was his curiosity driving him, not anything fearful.
“I see no need to explain what you don’t believe. Did you find anything?” she asked. She could have been wrong about the camera and car and the energy, after all.
He scowled through the window at her. “I didn’t see anything labeled toxic waste or dangerous chemicals. I’ll go through their personnel list and see what I can find out from them.”
“There’s an underground level,” she reluctantly told him, bracing for a wave of questions.
Instead, he shut up and stared. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he took a deep breath. “Okay, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. They could keep labs below ground. Want to go get something to eat? I’m starved.”
Dorrie would rather rest her head against the steering wheel and fall apart, but Conan made spying seem a byproduct of daily life. Just because he wasn’t questioning her now didn’t mean he wouldn’t later. She clutched the wheel and tried to organize her spinning thoughts, but he was giving off that curious zigzag energy and messing with her head.
“Groceries. I need to buy food and empty the car. I don’t have time for restaurants. I’ll buy sandwich food. What kind do you like?” She hoped he would back off when she mentioned boring errands.
“I’ll stop and pick up some subs and meet you back at the house. That should give you time to put your story together.” He whacked the roof of her car, pushed off, and arrogantly sauntered back to his Mercedes.
Dorrie narrowed her eyes, ready to hit him with mental arrows, too, but it wasn’t worth the effort. He was too damned insensitive to even notice being struck unless she knocked him over.
Sucking at a cat scratch, reaching for her purse to drag out the antibiotic wipes, she decided she was better off looking for an apartment than following Conan Oswin anywhere.
Chapter 16
While shopping, Dorrie mentally tallied her bank accounts and the limits of her credit cards, but the effort of apartment hunting on slim funds overwhelmed her. Until she was certain Conan could do no more, she was stuck with him. She wasn’t certain if his curiosity or her attraction to him would do her in first.
She returned to the house, where she found the sandwich he’d left on her cardboard table. It was rather like having a benevolent genie watching over her. She nibbled the sub while walking Toto and unloading the car. She was aware of Conan’s presence every second. He was like a humming low frequency radio wave—unavoidable.
She’d purchased a money tree for Tillie and an easy-to-care-for snake plant while she was out. She added the plant to her table. She wasn’t certain that improving her career sector would help find Bo or even help her at the office, but she replaced the wet suit at the entrance with a black-and-white Oriental motif rug from home. Maybe it would keep her from being fired. Or thrown in jail. If nothing else, the familiar rug helped ground her and soothe the room’s flow.
When she heard Conan’s shoes on the stairs, she wanted to hide from the inevitable confrontation, but she had nowhere to run.
He had his curious face on again as he studied the changes she’d made to his basement. He’d removed his hoodie, exposing stone-hard, bronzed biceps in a t-shirt from some surf shop. The physicality of the man was enough to render her speechless without adding the impact of all those brains.
She poured boiling water from her electric teakettle over a cup of jasmine tea leaves and faced him over the soothing scent. “Have you found anything?” she asked, taking the offensive.
She didn’t want to like Conan, but she couldn’t help being intrigued by his hidden depths. So she did her best to slip beneath his radar. If he had any inkling of how dangerous she could really be, he’d never leave her alone. She kept her pleasant face on.
“No. I have no reason to believe Adams is any more than they seem. But I found on-line access to their security cameras.” He glanced at her teacup and looked around for the source of the hot water. The electric kettle was functional plastic, but she’d added her hand-painted porcelain tea set to the cardboard table.
“Do the cameras show anything interesting?” she inquired. She had a feeling that his fascination was with her and not her tea. There wasn’t a woman alive who could resist the intensity of his interest. “And is it legal for you to be hacking their security?”
“No, it’s not legal, but unless I act on my knowledge, no one will know. And if they’re doing anything illegal, I’ll tip off the feds, who’ll give me a warrant. I told you, I have federal security clearance to snoop.”
Dorrie raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to answer her first question.
He examined the grinning Buddha she’d set in her knowledge corner. She settled into a chair, sipped her tea, and waited.
Conan fumbled in the ball bag and located a basketball. Spinning it on his finger, he faced her again. “The film shows men coming and going at odd hours, dropped off by company cars but not inherently suspicious. It just explains why there were no cars to reveal anyone was working today. It also shows that you shouted before the Lincoln was even in sight. The kitten appeared after that. And it quit fighting you as if you’d used a tranquilizer gun.”
Dorrie debated shooting him with energy arrows. But Conan was so damned compelling…. Even with the unmowed hair, he looked commanding. She shot a chi arrow at the ball and knocked it out of his hand. Sometimes, she could focus.
He looked startled but with excellent coordination and quick reflexes, caught the ball before it could crash into the makeshift table and her teacups.
One more good reason she shouldn’t use her abilities—she lacked restraint.
“Energy patterns, I told you.” She didn’t expect belief, but he’d asked. “The place exudes negativity. I was nervous. I saw the security camera and was afraid we were being watched. Why does this bother you?”
“Because vandals slashed
your tires, you think someone at the office hates you, your clients are disappearing, your brother is missing, and your mother was murdered. I follow patterns, and this one is making me nervous.” He sat on the sheet-covered metal table near the door and spun his ball again.
Dorrie nearly sputtered in her tea. “My mother? What in heaven’s name has Adams Engineering to do with my mother? She had a jealous competitor who went off his medication. They locked him up. I don’t see the connection.”
Not to Bo, please. She had mentioned her mother’s death to capture Conan’s interest, but she really didn’t want to believe her family was being hunted by madmen.
The anguish of her mother’s death was a living, breathing part of her, the reason she was who she was now. Conan talking about Mei weakened her defenses.
He began tossing the ball from hand to hand. “It’s part of the pattern. Computer programming is about sequential patterns the computer recognizes. Life isn’t precisely like that, but there’s order in every seemingly random snowflake. You want to tell me about your ability to calm cats and predict goons or wait for me to figure it out?”
She shrugged, took a sip of her tea, and sought a way to explain the impossible. Her father would have another stroke if Conan carried tales back to him, but she needed Conan’s help. It was obvious he’d spend more time examining her than looking for Bo if she didn’t divert him.
With resignation, she tried for a scientific explanation he might accept, one that wouldn’t have him telling her father she was insane. “As I said before, the universe is made up of energy. Everything in it possesses some life force. The sun’s heat is a form of energy. Gravity, your heart beating, the rise of the waves—they’re all energy forces. You sense patterns in random actions, perhaps. I sense patterns in the energy field around me. It’s like having a sixth sense.”
She waited to see if he would laugh, but she knew he wouldn’t. Conan would have a thousand questions. And she couldn’t answer ninety-nine percent of them—which was why everyone thought she was crazy if she tried to explain her abilities.
He tossed the ball from hand to hand and considered her explanation. He looked intrigued, of course. “You sensed the cat’s energy and somehow manipulated it?” he finally asked.
Dorrie wanted to laugh. Of all the angles he could have taken, the cat was what held his interest? “Something like that,” she admitted. She had no intention of telling him she compressed energy with her mind and shot it at her target. She wasn’t good at it and didn’t know how it worked. She just focused and things happened. Like a man dying. He didn’t need to know any of that. “Could we find another subject now, like what we have to do next to find our brothers?”
“One more question—how did you know there was a lower level to the Adams building?”
“Displaced earth energy. I’m not always right, you know. It’s all a matter of interpretation. I sensed there were people inside, too, even though it looked empty. Can you always tell from which way a wind blows?”
“Crosswinds.” He nodded as if he understood. “Ocean currents, sensing when the wave will rise and when it won’t. Experience as well as instinct is needed to differentiate. Got it. You need to practice identifying energies instead of moving gewgaws around.”
She shot another mental dart at his ball, bouncing it toward the door. How could anyone be so close to right and so wrong at the same time? “Go away, Oswin. I have work to do.”
He frowned at the ball as it rolled back to him. “I think you’re in danger. Maybe you know more than you think you do. Can you take a vacation from the office?”
“I’ve already told you, I’m a glorified flunky, a daddy’s girl who got stuck with a job she can’t do. People dislike me because of that, but there’s no inherent danger in being disliked,” she argued.
“Your clients and their money are missing. So is your brother. Unless you’re Jekyll and Hyde, someone else has to be responsible. And your mother’s killer is out on parole. That sounds damned dangerous to me.” He stood and began to pace again.
“On parole?” she squeaked, truly shocked. “He killed my mother and they let him go?”
“They called it manslaughter. He used insanity as a defense. My team is checking out the case now. I’m no legal expert. But I think you need to stay away from places where people expect to find you.”
Although she was appalled that a murderer had been set free, she didn’t see how that had anything to do with slashed tires or bad accounting. “I have to go in and sign off on time sheets or no one gets paid. I have to approve new clients and review old ones so they can receive checks. I’m not CEO of Ford by any means, but I do earn my salary. I can’t afford to quit. Only people with key cards to the elevator can reach the office. I’ll arrive when everyone else does and leave at the same time. No one can hurt me in a crowd.”
Conan frowned. He slammed the ball against a far wall. He stalked back, growled an expletive, and ran his hand through his hair. He looked like an infuriated lion. “I can’t be in two places at once. If you want me to find your brother, I need to be at my desk. I can’t follow you to work.”
“I didn’t ask you to follow me to work,” she said in surprise at his suggestion. “I have my life. You have yours. Go live it.” She just breathed easier knowing that he understood she wasn’t insane. Setting her teacup on the table, she rose. “Goodnight, Conan. I’ll see you in the morning if you’re up and functional before I leave.”
She returned to her bedroom and shut the door between them.
Toto glanced at her inquiringly but happy to see her, he didn’t question.
She liked that in a dog.
Chapter 17
The next morning, Dorrie worried about leaving Toto alone in Conan’s basement while she went to the office. Her father had always had a live-in servant, but Delores had retired after Ryan had his stroke. A neighbor had been tending Toto since then.
She went upstairs to ask Conan, but he wasn’t up yet. He’d covered his desk in files again, with a small landslide of papers skittering across the wood floor in every breeze. She scooped them up, returned them to the correct boxes, and hurried to the kitchen. She didn’t have time to fix coffee but composed a note while eating cereal at the counter. She hoped Conan didn’t mind dog walking along with his computer security duties.
She was anticipating an ugly day with auditors and Zimmer and a weepy Tillie. In preparation, she was wearing her most officious suit—a tailored St. John knock-off in black with white piping. She’d laid on the mascara and eyeliner so she could glare without looking narrow-eyed. She was even wearing heels so she could look Zimmer in the face if he got cranky. She knew how to do the executive thing. She simply despised it with all her heart and soul.
She wore her hair slicked back and pinned down with ebony butterflies that should hold it for a few hours. At the office, she cautiously climbed out of the Prius in the parking garage, testing the chi, noting the cars around her and recognizing most. The unfamiliar white Lexus was probably the accountant. The garage was used by all the other offices in the building, so she really didn’t know most of the owners, only the cars parked here at eight.
She didn’t sense danger, just the usual disharmony. She’d hoped to arrive before the accountant, but Tillie’s motorcycle was here. Tillie would be showing the accountant around.
The receptionist wasn’t in yet. A few of the social workers were drinking coffee and warily watching the glass hallway Dorrie strode down. They knew something was wrong. Dorrie didn’t even bother acknowledging them. Blank face on, she listened to her heels clacking against the tile as she approached her office.
Tillie was waiting for her, expression grim. Tillie used to laugh through break-ups with her boyfriends. A grim Tillie was unnatural, particularly beneath the spiked red hair and accompanied by cheery clown earrings.
“They’re in the board room,” Tillie murmured as Dorrie handed her the wire money tree sculpture with shiny copper pennies on it. �
��Zimmer had them come in at seven. He won’t let me show them anything. He says I’m still fired.”
Dorrie could feel the hostile vibrations emanating from the boardroom. She not only had to struggle with antagonistic strangers and a disapproving board treasurer, but she had to fight the churning energy they created. She’d never wanted this job. She could quit.
Tillie’s nervous stance reminded Dorrie it wasn’t all about her. And then there were the other clients…and the missing money. She couldn’t walk away from problems.
She’d kowtowed to her father’s wishes for years. She drew the line at doing the same for his flunkies. Stiffening her newly-functioning spine, she set her mouth in a grim line to match Tillie’s.
“I won’t let them fire you,” Dorrie promised, struck by a sudden wild idea.
She waited for Tillie to leave, then punched Conan’s number in on her cell phone. When he answered sleepily but obviously awake, she almost smiled. “I don’t know how much he knows, but Zimmer is pre-empting the proceedings,” she announced curtly. “Got any fireworks you can throw at him from your end?”
She could almost see Conan’s eyebrows raise as he crossed to his desk, probably with coffee in hand, and tuned into the foundation’s computers through his secret gizmo. She knew she was either asking for trouble or to be laughed at, but she hoped and prayed she was right about Conan and his zigzag energy. It was hard being self-assured when she was so often wrong.
“I’ve got it covered,” he said confidently a moment later.
Dorrie let herself breathe again. She heard his keyboard clicking and the hint of amusement in his voice. She prayed that meant he wouldn’t actually blow up the computers.
As usual as she strode down the sunlit corridor, she pictured the floor-to-ceiling windows with gauzy drapery and bamboo shades. A little feng shui would counteract the depressing energy of poverty. Her father didn’t believe Dorrie could make the workplace more productive with what he called gimcrackery. If she won this battle, she would reward herself with gauzy window covers.
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