Evil Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  “Your client sent you down here?” the good sergeant asked.

  That could be a problem. He’d be asking for the name of my client to see if he had any relation to the explosion. I shook my head and turned an innocent stare up to the cop’s disbelieving expression. “I’m very methodical when doing a random sampling. I printed out all the textbook firms in the country, cut the names into individual strips, and dropped them into a hat. I chose five to investigate personally, and this was one of them.” I had actually used this method in a random sample for a legitimate client, so I figured it would sound convincing.

  “Miss Devlin, are you all right?”

  The voice was warm, concerned, and familiar. Surprised, I glanced past Nicholas. A lean-hipped, blue-jeaned hunk wearing a construction foreman’s hard hat is difficult to miss. Even in this unusual environment, I recognized him instantly. The surprise and concern on Sean’s handsome face warmed the cockles of my heart. For a gaze like that, I might even figure out what cockles were and if I had a heart.

  “Mr. O’Herlihy,” I said, carrying out my current role of modest little sister and research nerd. “What are you doing here?” I turned to the two men with me. “Sean O’Herlihy, an acquaintance of mine. My brother, Nicholas, and Sergeant Jones.”

  I could sense all three men sizing each other up. I wanted to kick Nick because he had no business looking at Sean as if he were both dessert and enemy, but my knees were still shaking.

  “I’m working on a parking lot job behind here.” Sean removed his hat and his blue eyes twinkled. “I thought the blast had made me crazy as well as deaf when I heard your voice.”

  He lied. He’d grabbed that hat from a work crew, I’d bet bottom dollar on it. I could see it in the curve of his lips. My money was on Black Suit arranging for O’Herlihy’s arrival. Suspicion was always my first reaction, but I had too many things happening to keep tabs on a glib Irish liar. “That could very well be, Mr. O’Herlihy.” I’d just agreed he could be crazy, and his lips twitched upward. He caught on quick. “I appreciate your concern.”

  “This is a police investigation. Unless you’re her lawyer, I’ll have to ask you to leave,” the sergeant said gruffly.

  “My crew works a street over, Sergeant. We didn’t see anything except the blast, but if we can be of help, you let us know.” Sean tipped his hat to his forehead and sauntered off.

  “My, my,” Nicholas murmured admiringly, watching him go. “I had no idea you’d been so busy, Ana girl.”

  I didn’t elbow him as he deserved. Everything was in the focus, and getting out of here was my objective. I’d already wasted enough time being honest and upright and waiting for the police instead of running like hell as I should have.

  I tucked my hand around Nick’s elbow and blinked like a doofus at the poor policeman.

  I had already told him about the arsonists, but I could only describe one of them. I really had no further reason to linger except my shaking knees, and Nick’s arrival had solved that. “May I go now, sir?”

  “We may have a few more questions for you later. Do you have a work number?”

  “Just Nick’s cell phone. Our landlord’s number is unlisted,” I said listlessly, trying to look suitably pale and limp. Since my natural color is vampire white, that wasn’t difficult.

  Nick got the message. Patting my hand, he straightened into his officious best. “The heat and shock are kicking in, I fear. I need to take her home. I’ll see that she gets any message.”

  Another cop was shouting something indecipherable, and distracted, the sergeant nodded and let us escape. It was fairly obvious we weren’t viable suspects, and we had the potential to become real flakes. Letting us out of his hair was a sensible decision for a cop without enough time or manpower.

  “Who was that movie star hardbody?” Nick demanded as he practically dragged me up the street to a busier corner where taxis might be managed. Nick had his dignity and wasn’t much taken with subways or buses.

  “You don’t ask me what I was doing here or any of those sensible things that a normal brother would ask?” I was being rhetorical. I wanted an answer to his question, too. Who the hell was Sean O’Herlihy and what was he doing there?

  “Nothing you do is ever accidental,” Nick grumbled, “and I figured I’d have to shake you if you actually told me the truth. You could have been killed.”

  Nick sounded abnormally stiff as he thumbed down a taxi. I think I may have scared him. I wanted to reassure him that the risk had been worth it.

  I took a deep breath of exhaust-fumed air and rolled my shoulders to relax. It was hard to feel triumphant when my only source of evidence had gone to that great book burning in the sky. “I have Pao’s address.”

  I’d won. I’d completed my assignment. I wanted lights to flash and bells to ring.

  A bus belched diesel instead.

  Pao’s address had been in the Edu-Pub computer as one of their commissioned textbook salesmen. I had evidence to connect the Islamic fundraiser with a very suspicious company with large amounts of cash and a board of directors made up of politicians.

  I could now confront Graham in triumph, but I was too drained to celebrate.

  A taxi rolled up, and Nick knew better than to question me in front of strangers. Damned good thing, too. The back of my neck prickled, and I had the uneasy feeling Black Suit was just around the corner. I entered the air-conditioned taxi with more than one reason to sigh in relief.

  I looked over my shoulder as we drove away, and caught a glimpse of black slipping into a doorway. Nary a street crew of hard hats was to be seen.

  After Nick was reassured I hadn’t knocked any brains out and that I really had the address Graham wanted, we rode back to the house in hopeful silence.

  I prayed my snooping hadn’t set off this dangerous turn of events. Given how ineffectual I’d been so far, I didn’t let my conscience blame me for long. I had the confrontation ahead to terrify me more.

  I had learned that Amadeus Graham was a man with the power to eradicate his very public identity, or with an enemy powerful enough to eradicate it for him. This was not the kind of man I wanted around. Magda was the power magnet, not me. I’d seen enough over the years to know that power ultimately corrupts. It’s impossible to play God without tempting the Devil.

  Play God. Exactly what Graham was doing, if my suspicions were confirmed.

  I shivered. Maybe I shouldn’t give Graham the information he wanted.

  I am not a coward. I am perfectly willing to fight if threatened. Admittedly, I’m more willing to walk away than face conflict, but I had no excuse for not meeting Graham face to face. I wished I was built like an Amazon. The world would be a simpler place if I could just intimidate people into listening.

  “I’m not letting you go up there alone.” Nick intruded on my reverie as the taxi halted outside grandfather’s mansion, and I stared up at the turrets.

  For reasons I couldn’t explain, I didn’t want Nick with me when I faced our nemesis. “He’s more likely to talk to me than to a posse. You’re woman enough to know what I mean.”

  Nick groaned at that adage and steered me toward the front door. “And you’re mental enough not to need back-up,” he growled.

  “What’s he going to do, shoot me? It would bloody the historic carpets,” I scoffed. “The best he can do is throw us out of the house, and that’s going to happen by morning regardless.” It wasn’t as if Graham had promised we could stay if I proved myself. That was just my dearest hope. “Go interrogate Mallard as to the best housing alternatives in the area. And one of us needs to pick EG up by four.”

  Leaving Nick to hunt down Mallard, I ran upstairs to my room, and took a quick shower. I plaited my wet hair in neat braids that I wound around my head. Then I rummaged in the file drawers for my business-like blazer to go over a clean, ankle-length jumper. A noncombative Quaker stared back at me from the bathroom mirror. This was the person I was striving to become: quiet, unassuming, grac
ious, secure with herself. Princess Leia in civvies.

  In reality, I was a raging inferno with lava for blood. People did not blow up warehouses to disguise money-laundering. Politicians did not own textbook companies run by terrorists. Graham was investigating something far more complex than a religious fanatic.

  One side of me hated violence, despised politics, and wanted no part of whatever he was up to. On the other hand, my Irish temper wanted to blow up something to make myself heard.

  Kickboxing, karate, and dirty fighting wouldn’t get me through this next scene. I had to face Graham and communicate rationally.

  By now, Graham ought to be waiting for me. He had to have figured out that the encrypted message was about him. He knew I’d left the house and returned primed for bear. He probably even knew about the explosion. I didn’t know if he knew I’d been down there, but if he was half the spook I thought he was, he knew I wasn’t at my computer.

  He probably had motion sensors on the stairs to tell him when I headed up. The minute I put my foot on the first step, I couldn’t turn back or I’d be a coward in his eyes and my own.

  I climbed the stairs slowly, trying to think through the pounding of my anxiety. I was about to meet the monster who had stolen our house. That was enough to up my blood pressure.

  I heard the low hum of machines when I reached the top of the stairs. I hadn’t heard them the last time I was up here. Gazing down the corridor of doors on either side of the stairway, I realized one had been left open. He was expecting me, all right. He didn’t want me flinging open all the other doors to see what was behind them. That made me feel a little better. He knew what I was capable of.

  My denim hem brushed the thick carpet as I approached the opening. I folded my hands and politely stopped in the doorway, nervously pretending I was the civilized businesswoman I’d seen in the mirror.

  The room was dark, lit only by the light of the computer screens circling the walls. In a quick survey, I recognized monitors focused on the various entrances and halls of the house as well as ones playing all the major news websites. Some screens had indecipherable words flowing across them. There were too many to take in all at once. Just the confirmation that the house was riddled with video cameras should steam me. Instead, guilt drew my eyes to the screen with Shana’s message on it—decoded.

  He knew I knew who he was. He was going to kill me.

  If this was really Amadeus Graham, he was a man whose life had been shattered. That didn’t make him a good man or a bad one. I suspected it had made him a dangerous one, and I’d been messing around where he didn’t want me.

  My eyes were adapting to the dimness. I could see Graham’s silhouette facing a large flat-screen monitor in the back of the room. He hadn’t even turned around. He was sitting in a chair with a high back, and all I could see was the breadth of his shoulders extending beyond the narrow chair, his head held straight as he examined a document on an upper screen. It’s difficult to judge height from a distance and more so when the object isn’t standing. But from here, his silhouette looked like Christopher Reeve, Superman, and my idiot libido went into overdrive.

  I had the inexplicable, insane urge to saunter closer, to tease his hair or tickle his chin, to jar him as much as he did me. I wanted a real personal exchange instead of a mechanical one. This was a man with intelligence to match mine, and he was looking damned attractive from here. Or maybe I just had a wounded hero complex.

  But my innate defense system screamed warnings, and I played cool. I remained in the doorway.

  “That modest pose doesn’t fool me in the least.”

  He had a deep voice that rumbled my lower parts like heavy bass. Devoid of human emotion, it still struck me in my soft places. I didn’t know how he could see me with his back turned. For all I knew, he had a camera on the door and watched me on a monitor.

  “I wear it to fool myself,” I said in the same clipped, professional tones he used, strolling closer and surreptitiously examining the monitors. The eerie gray light created only shadows.

  “You took unnecessary, dangerous risks this morning,” he intoned, rolling his chair from one monitor to another, still not looking at me. “I warned you not to go out on your own.”

  So, he knew. Either Sean or Black Suit was a spy.

  He rolled about in a desk chair, not a wheelchair, but I suspected he didn’t rise and confront me because he couldn’t. The Christopher Reeve image took on new meaning—what if he was paralyzed?

  The new monitor flicked on with the addresses I’d e-mailed from Edu-Pub. It was more than annoying that he knew everything as soon as I did, but at least he hadn’t bellyached about my wasting time researching him. Yet.

  “Did you take unnecessary risks to end up in that chair?” I retaliated. I could have smacked myself after I said it. What the hell did I care whether or not he was crippled or how he’d got there? All I wanted was to show I’d accomplished my task and ask to keep my home.

  “My job is about risk. Yours isn’t.” He scrolled through the list on the monitor without giving me any indication how I should take this. Did I assume he worried about my safety? When was the last time anyone had cared about my wellbeing?

  So much for my bad attempt to get personal. I was operating in a total vaccuum and losing touch with reality if I thought Graham had any interest in me. “Textbooks are a risk?” I asked, keeping up the sarcastic front that served me well.

  “They weren’t until now,” he muttered, sounding a little less like himself. “Edu-Pub was just a loose string I needed yanked. I didn’t expect you to unravel a hornet’s nest.”

  “You had me investigating loose strings?” I resisted the urge to swat him over the head.

  “How was I supposed to know you had such a talent for trouble?”

  I didn’t bother with an obviously rhetorical question. “That list you’re looking at contains Pao’s address,” I pointed out with pride. “I’ve accomplished my task. What will you do with the information?” I was trusting that he wouldn’t use it to murder Pao. That would certainly cure my crush on the pleasant fantasy who called himself Oracle.

  He didn’t look up as he scrolled through the list of Edu-Pub contractors to Pao’s name. “I can neutralize people without need of violence,” he replied, as if reading my mind.

  I believed him. Maybe I just wanted to believe him, but instinct told me he could have me disappear and no one would question. Not totally reassuring, but enough to make me feel easier about dead bodies.

  “This address is not viable. Neither is the social security number,” he continued without an ounce of inflection either way.

  The little bit of confidence I’d built up evaporated like helium from a leaky balloon. I didn’t need this mechanical ass. I could live anywhere.

  EG couldn’t.

  “I’m close,” I argued. “I could probably find him today, but it’s difficult to concentrate with homelessness looming. If we have to to leave, I need to hunt for a place to stay. It’s pointless to continue searching for Pao without the promise of reward.”

  “It irritates you to fail,” he said with certainty.

  “I’m not accustomed to it,” I agreed.

  “I set you up for failure.”

  Well, duh. I stalked for the door, wrapping my fingers in a fist to keep from bashing him with a heavy object. Defeat tasted bitter. “Thank you so much for that,” I threw over my shoulder. “I’m sure the humility will do me good. Pao doesn’t exist then?”

  “Of course he exists. He’s attending a fundraiser for Senator Rose on Friday. If you’d read all your mail instead of running off like a wild hare, you’d know that.”

  Professional. I must remain implacable like a good virtual assistant. I must not kick him into next week. I halted in the doorway and looked back. “You aren’t suggesting that I attend?”

  “No. I’m suggesting that you find out how he’s traveling so I can have him followed.”

  I opened my mouth to tell h
im that was impossible, then promptly shut it again. There were a thousand and one things I could have asked, but there was only one I must have answered now. “Does this mean we’re staying?”

  “You’ve earned a chance to stay until Brashton lands in St. Kitts and your brother nabs him, but only if I can trust you to keep anything you think you know about me quiet.” His voice remained perfunctory, but I heard the implied threat. I’d wondered when he’d mention the encrypted message.

  He turned, and just for a moment, our eyes met. My fingers locked around the door jamb, preventing my knees from collapsing under me. His face was in shadow, but his eyes were dark and glittering and shot arrows straight through my heart.

  “I know nothing about you,” I felt called upon to mention.

  “Exactly,” he intoned with what almost passed for warmth. “And let’s keep it that way. You may go now.”

  I stumbled from the room, reeling from the myriad questions I didn’t have the courage to ask. We still had a home—with a man who put new meaning to the term evil genius.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ana goes to private school.

  We had a home.

  I must be doing something right spun dizzyingly through my head. I knew I was good at my work, but no one with credentials as impressive as Graham’s had ever approved of me, in however remote a fashion. He’d called me a wild hare, but I knew the difference between being called camel spit and a hare. I’d been called the former by some of Magda’s acquaintances who hadn’t respected my talents any more than they’d valued EG’s. Graham trusted my work, and I liked being trusted. By a sexy spook.

  I staggered a little under the release of the heavy burden I’d been carrying.

  Maybe I needed to find a new therapist.

  That I didn’t know what the hell Amadeus Graham was up to ought to have been my biggest concern, but I was a selfish beast. I appreciated being appreciated. Let Pao worry about Graham. At the moment, the man who owned this house was my best pal.