“You don’t.” She shrugged slender white shoulders and turned to watch Cisco whirling a rope near the ceiling. “They’re entertaining one another, and Lizzy’s income is getting a much-needed boost.”
“I like the old guy in the hat. And the biddies in red boots. Don’t suppose you’re thinking what I’m thinking,” he asked.
She tilted her shapely head, and Oz noticed for the first time that she wore small gold and diamond musical notes on her ear lobes. In an evening gown, she’d be a knockout.
And every damned man in L.A. would recognize her. Even with short red hair instead of long platinum little-girl locks. Ten years had taken her from cute to stunning. Not beautiful. Her mouth was too wide, her cheekbones too prominent, and her coloring too pale. But she was too striking not to turn every male head in the room.
So much for hoping he could use her on the show without everyone recognizing her.
“You’re thinking we can use real characters instead of costumed ones,” she decided, in answer to his question. “That could work. Kids would relate to grandmas and grandpas. And to singing aunts and annoying little brothers.”
He still wanted Pippa for the main character. She would light the show with magic. But he owed her for this intrusion into her world. He’d pay what he owed before working out how to make the show happen.
His hopes had been crushed before to the extent that he didn’t have them anymore. Working was what he did best in the vacuum that his life had become. Someday, if he was really lucky, maybe Donal would become a misty memory of his past.
Sometime after Oz was dead and buried, maybe.
***
Pippa laughed until she cried at the impromptu comedy routine that followed Pancho’s lariat roping two of the ranchers, followed by the Donner sisters singing louder and louder to cover the ensuing cursing. Maria had had to hustle the twins out of the bar. Realizing they were behaving badly, the ranchers fell to cracking jokes with Pancho. Lizzy turned on the music, and Pancho and the ranchers were now dancing with the red boot ladies.
Even Oz was smiling, although he radiated tension. She didn’t know what he’d made of her hacking theory, but he wasn’t happy. She couldn’t blame him. Some worm had raised his hopes about finding his son alive, and now it was eating him from the inside out. She almost felt relief when Oz’s brother finally showed up. He must have taken some hairpin turns at high speed if he lived in L.A.
Conan slid into the seat next to her, forcing Pippa to scoot over. Oz scowled but handed over his BlackBerry without argument.
Conan was about the same height as Oz, but he had a leaner build, with ropey muscles and a lanky swing of long arms as he scooped up the PDA. Apparently the sunglasses he’d worn the other day weren’t an affectation. He donned dark-framed reading glasses now. He had a long, sharp nose, and his hair didn’t possess his older brother’s golden salon sheen, but their tight-lipped smiles were identical. She knew Oz could apply charm when needed, but right now, they were both focused on business.
The excitement in the rest of the bar had about died down. Pancho and the red boot ladies were having a gabfest. The Donner sisters had gathered their scattered dignity after the lariat incident and called their husbands to join them for dinner. Lizzy was smiling as if she were in seventh heaven. She loved entertaining a crowd, even if the crowd didn’t pay much.
“You can trace Oz’s whereabouts from his BlackBerry?” Pippa asked in curiosity, when it became obvious the men didn’t intend to talk.
“Cross-checking cell towers. Can’t pinpoint exact location without better equipment, but it’s hard to miss the bright lights that follow Oz,” Conan said dryly, removing a new BlackBerry from his shirt pocket and then popping the back off the old phone.
“We call Conan the Bloodhound. He used to track us even without equipment. We’ve decided he has an overly developed sense of smell.” Oz leaned outside the booth and caught Lizzy’s eye, making a gesture that indicated he needed the tab.
Pippa wasn’t certain how to take that. Brotherly ribbing, she supposed, although she had little experience with it. “How can someone hack my computer without opening a file?” she asked, trying to keep the subject impartial and not the devastating invasion of privacy it was.
“If you’re connected to the Internet and someone cracks your passwords, they can dig around in your computer’s guts, but they can’t read a file unless they open it. So someone had to have copied your files and opened them elsewhere.” Conan talked as he apparently uploaded information to the Internet and then swiftly exchanged tiny parts from the backs of the phones. “Who has access to your computer?”
“No one. Ever. I had the place I bought it from transfer my data, and that’s it. I keep it password protected and behind locked doors. The files accessed are over nine years old, as far as I can tell, and they haven’t been opened since. They’re not even important files, just personal.”
“Where are your backup files? If you’ve had them for nine years, you’re not using the same machine, are you?”
“I pay for Internet storage, so if anything happens to my studio, the files are still out there in the cloud.” She kept up on her reading. She knew about cloud computing. She had no clue how it worked.
Both men sent her identical sharp looks. Pippa didn’t know whether to preen or hide. Nervously, she clasped her hands around her water glass.
Lizzy arrived with the bill. “I wish the two of you could stop by here every night. I haven’t had so much fun in forever. Hello, handsome, can I bring you anything?”
Conan looked up with a blank expression. “A beer, thanks.” He returned to putting the phones back together as if Lizzy’s dazzling smile was aimed at someone else.
“If your evenings are always this entertaining, I’ll have to stop by more often,” Oz said with a smile that made up for Conan’s cluelessness and melted Lizzy with its charm. “The pizzas were fantastic. Do you have a menu?”
“I’ve never needed one,” she admitted anxiously. “I could come up with one. The regulars just know what toppings are available.”
“Experiment,” he suggested. “Use fancy computer paper, and you can print up new menus whenever you want to change them. Open the curtains and let in some light, and you might get more families.”
“What about the film crews?” she asked, narrowing her eyes and studying the tatty curtains. “Won’t they want a dark tavern?”
“This isn’t Hollywood, and I’m not filming movie stars,” Oz explained. “My director is likely to bring his family up here whenever school’s out. The camera crew is a husband and wife team with a toddler. A kids’ show calls for people who like kids.”
Lizzy nodded. “I can do that. I’ve got kids of my own. Thanks.” She wandered back to the bar, her brow knit in thought.
“Thanks for that,” Pippa murmured. “She’s had a hard time of it since her ex quit paying support. I can’t say I approve of bars, but this is all she has.”
“She could turn it into a family restaurant that serves alcohol. No harm in that. But it would take money,” he admitted, glancing around at the battered decor.
Conan shoved the new phone across the table, apparently oblivious to their discussion. “Details. What am I looking for on here?”
Oz looked unhappy as he punched up his computer menu on the new phone. “Look for the messages from the Librarian. One refers to ‘The Silly Seal Song’ that doesn’t seem to exist anywhere except on Pippa’s computer. And the other is a reference to a book about Ronan that’s never been published.”
“But you’ve backed them up to the cloud?” Conan asked, turning his sharp glare on Pippa.
“They’re password protected,” she protested. “Someone would have to know the website address, the email address I use, and my password to break into my library.”
Oz’s head
jerked up from his keyboard. “Library?”
The Librarian had sent the messages. Pippa blanched and covered her mouth as she thought of all the files of anguish and sorrow she’d poured into her personal cyberspace library over the years. And a Librarian could access it?
“They can’t, can they?” she whispered. “No one can read my cyberspace files, can they?”
Both men looked grim enough for her to believe that someone not only could but had.
Chapter 13
Conan dropped the old BlackBerry into his shirt pocket and turned to Pippa. “I don’t suppose you’d let me play with your computer?”
Oz watched her freeze into the fragile icicle he’d first met. He reached over and clasped his hand around the ones crushing her water glass, instinctively reassuring her. That she didn’t immediately jerk away said she was retreating into her cave.
“Conan is hunting for your parents,” he explained. “He knows more about you than you do, is my bet, and he’d probably explode into molecules before revealing anything he didn’t want anyone to know. But you don’t owe him anything.”
She nodded as if she understood, but her brilliant eyes were wide and unseeing as she dived into that mysterious abyss inside herself. What the devil did she keep in that computer?
“I’ll need the address to the cyberspace library if we’re going to find this scumball,” Conan said as if he hadn’t noticed anything wrong. “So I probably don’t need your hard drive. I just wanted to see if he left cookies to scoop up anything in your personal files that aren’t in storage.”
Pippa looked as if she wanted to bolt in panic at that possibility. Releasing her hand, Oz reached over the table and hit the heel of his hand against his brother’s forehead. “You’re scaring her, doofus.”
Conan batted him away and turned back to Pippa. “If someone has access to your computer, they’ve kept it quiet so far. I’ll make certain they’re permanently shut down.”
That brought her back to life, Oz noticed with interest. She released the water glass and pulled her hands out of sight—and touch.
“How?” she demanded. “How can you shut down someone who has access to all my secrets?”
“We don’t know that they have that kind of access yet,” Conan reminded her. “For all we know, someone sneaked into your computer room one night, copied a few files, and never bothered looking at them until lately. Or we could be totally wrong, and there’s a simple explanation for the messages.”
“How?” she repeated. “If we’re right and someone has hacked my cyberspace library, how will you stop them?”
Conan sent Oz a look asking how far he could go. Oz nodded his permission. Pippa needed to know.
Conan flipped out his wallet and showed her his ID. “Call me Cyber Agent 007. No one knows this, so now you know my secrets, too, okay?”
She studied the ID, rubbing her thumb over the seal to verify its reality. “You’re the law? You can shut them down and lock them up?”
“I can find them, and the law will shut them down, if they’re doing anything illegal. I’m unofficial, off the books, behind the scenes, but legit, and I know the right people in the right places.”
Pippa glanced at Oz, and he could see her finally absorbing what he’d told her earlier about their family connections.
“Friends in high places?” she asked steadily.
“Cyberterrorism is high priority,” Oz confirmed when Conan said nothing. “If someone is using cyberspace to steal your information, then they can also have access to information vital to this country’s security. I still don’t think we’re dealing with any more than a mediocre blackmailer who stumbled across a few files, but it won’t hurt to let Conan do his thing.”
Pippa drew a long, slender finger through the moisture droplets on her water glass, meeting neither of their gazes. “If he couldn’t find your son…” She let the rest of the question dangle there.
Conan shoved from the booth. “I didn’t have federal clearance a year ago. I got official when I saw what a botch the cops were making of the trail. But you’re right, I’m not perfect.”
He stalked away. Oz let him go. Conan had his own problems. He was a big boy and could handle them on his own.
Pippa, on the other hand… Oz ran his fingers into his hair and tried to defuse the tension.
“Conan recommended the nanny I hired,” Oz explained. “He performed a routine search and found nothing dangerous in her background. Since then, he’s traced her all the way to her parents in Europe, but every trail is dead.”
“Which is why you’re both ready to believe these messages are part of a bigger crime than bringing you up here on a wild-goose chase?” She didn’t look any more certain, but she’d at least returned from the brink.
Oz left a stack of cash to cover their tab, slid out of the booth, and held out his hand to help her out. “I don’t want to believe anything. I just want to find my son, whatever it takes. In the meantime, I have to work, and this kid production has my interest. I’ve quit looking beyond the moment.”
Which wasn’t the total truth anymore. He was looking beyond the moment for an opportunity to take Pippa to bed, to lose himself in her luscious lips and slender curves and whispering need.
Even he knew that would be a mistake, but the production wasn’t enough to keep him occupied this time. He needed more than just work.
***
“You don’t have to walk me home,” Pippa objected when Oz steered her past the B&B. “I have a black belt and could break anyone who tried to touch me.”
She feared his company more than she feared walking in the dark at midnight. The big man’s tension was almost palpable, and she suspected it was because of the topics they’d been discussing more than her.
Except she couldn’t ignore the electricity that crackled when they touched. She wanted to tug his head down and kiss away his guilt and assuage her own needs at the same time.
She knew better. Oz didn’t. He foolishly thought she was normal. Or just a little unbalanced. He didn’t know the depth of her evil. She didn’t think he’d believe her if she told him. Oz was above all else a practical man.
“I need to walk,” was all he said, falling into step with her as she hurried toward home.
She nervously clutched her elbows, forcing him to keep his hands to himself. “You think I should give my computer to your brother?” she asked rather than let him bring up more personal subjects.
Oz shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. His white shirt gleamed against the dark silhouettes of buildings, emphasizing his straight posture and broad strength. He didn’t seem aware of the impression of assurance he gave off as he considered her question.
“I don’t know what you keep on your computer,” he said warily. “But if you give him the address of your cyberspace storage, then he will have access to everything anyway. All your hard drive will do is give him clues as to who else might have tapped into it, I think. I’m not the geek.”
“There are files on there too painful even for me to open,” she admitted, trying to make them sound as if they were merely emotional experiences and not the destructive tools they were. How could she possibly warn these eminently logical men that listening to her Voice could cripple and damage them for life? She hadn’t held back the anguish on those recordings.
“I don’t think he has to open the files. Admittedly, Conan can be pretty ruthless if he’s after a criminal, but he has no curiosity about what makes people tick, just computers. He works on the hidden files, and those aren’t likely to be your personal folders.”
“Could I take all my personal folders out before I give the hard drive to him?” she asked, knowing the answer but desperately looking for a way to avoid what he wanted.
“You could, but it wouldn’t matter. There are echoes of them
still on there, plus your online backup.” He glanced at her with curiosity as they crossed the day care parking lot. “Unless you have files on there admitting your guilt in some crime, you’re safe in his hands.”
Pippa sighed. “He’s not safe in mine. No one is. Unless I know he won’t listen to any of those files, I can’t turn it over. I just can’t.”
The flowers on the ice plants lining the walk had closed for the night. She hurried over the dirt and stones to the safety of her sanctuary, praying he wouldn’t question, that he’d just leave her alone at the door. Even she knew that was a stupid hope.
His big shadow followed hers. The moon was still nearly full. She had memories of a beautiful moonlit night on a Mexican beach, a night when she thought she’d finally learned what love was about. A night with a beautiful boy who had made her heart sing. How had it all gone wrong when it had felt so right?
She knew, and it was all her fault.
Oz caught the courtyard gate before she could open it. Holding the tall planks shut, he glared down at her, meeting her gaze with controlled fury. “It’s not all about you,” he reminded her. “Is your precious privacy worth my son’s life? Worth letting a kidnapper free to steal another child? Worth letting a freak invade our lives at will?”
Pippa wanted to hit him, to strike back, to shove his words down his throat, but he was right. For what little he knew, he was right. She just couldn’t tell him that what she held secret was worse than cyberterrorism.
“It’s not all about me,” she murmured in protest, facing the gate, hoping he’d release it so she could escape. He stood so close; she could almost hear his heartbeat. She could smell the heat of his skin. Feel the slight distance between his chest and her shoulder blades. “I’m protecting your brother and you and anyone else who might accidentally hear the files.” When he still didn’t budge, she defiantly gave him the rest. “I killed Robbie with my Voice. I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
She tried to say it unemotionally, but it was impossible to be nonchalant about tragedy. Her grief and anger raised her voice an octave, and the Beast roared. She winced when she felt his body respond with a jerk, waited for the bellow of pain or outrage or whatever her Voice instigated.
Lure of Song and Magic Page 10