She shrugged her narrow shoulders and strode toward the door as if eager to escape. “You've not seen how I can destroy. Don't push me, Oswin.”
“That's what I do best, push.” Hand at the small of her back, he shoved her across the threshold into the condo corridor. “Nothing would ever get done unless some of us take the reins and lead. So, do you want to be pushed or led?”
She elbowed him with her sharp elbow and strode down to the elevator, avoiding his pushing hand. She stood straight and proud as any goddess. Guess that told him where he stood in the scheme of things.
Chapter 18
Pippa understood Oz's Hawaiian shirt penchant when he introduced her to Nick and Mary Townsend and their beach house. They were native Hawaiians, and elements of their history adorned every shelf and wall. A hand-carved canoe served as a mantel over a polished stone vent-free fireplace. Stone statues guarded the lush plants visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows off the terrace. Coral and turtle shell artwork blended with the casual but expensive wicker furniture and tropical pillows.
In the middle of the lovely oasis, bright red and blue plastic toys covered the bamboo floors, and Pippa relaxed a fraction.
While the adults talked, Pippa retreated to the children. Children were simple. They liked attention. All she had to do was admire their artwork, push their toys, and read to them. She'd even learned to allow her pleasure to seep through in her voice, so they tended to behave better when she was aroundâthe reason the day care loved having her.
She didn't know how Oz was surviving with the devastation of losing that gorgeous little boy she'd seen in the photo. No wonder he was pushing her, even if thinking she could help him wasn't rational. Losing his son must be eating him alive.
As she played with the children, Pippa knew the director was studying her and his wife was taking her measure, but she no longer cared. It was liberating to know that she didn't have to perform for anyone anymoreâeven if they figured out who she was. She no longer needed anyone's love or approval. And that went for the damned man analyzing her as if she were a Picasso he didn't understand.
By the time they left an hour later, she was in control again, or as much as she could be surrounded by city traffic, with a sexy but silent man at her side, while contemplating what they would find on her computer.
So, she wasn't exactly serene.
“Does your brother know we're coming over?” she asked when the silence had stretched too long.
“I warned him earlier. He'll be there. He's dying to figure out the puzzle. You ought to try singing for him and see if a human exists inside his robot mind anywhere.”
Pippa tilted him a reluctant half-grin. “A Syrene song maybe? Want to see if he'll follow me anywhere?”
Oz grunted and cast her a look of displeasure. “You think you enthralled your audience with your voice? That they didn't buy your music because it was good but because you magicked them into it?”
“I'm not that crazy. I'm good, and they got their money's worth when they bought my songs.” She sat back and folded her arms, staring at the eclectic array of houses in the neighborhood they'd entered. “But it does leave open the question of whether or not I'd be popular if it hadn't been for⦔ She hesitated, unwilling to name the evil. “This is a ridiculous topic. I can't talk about it. It is what it is.”
“Do you have any songs that aren't about sex?” he asked with interest. “Something that will make Conan clap and sing like you did with the woman and her kid?”
“Still don't believe me, do you?” she taunted. “And the truth is, I don't know. Different people react differently. I sing a love song, and one man hands me flowers, another tries to rape me. You don't seem to react at all. Lullabies are usually safe. You want to put him to sleep?”
Oz chuckled. “He could use some sleep. I'm inclined to try.”
“Well, I'm not. He could fall so deeply asleep that he won't hear a smoke alarm go off, and it would be my fault if he died of smoke inhalation. I don't want the responsibility of any more lives. Period. The end.”
Oz's phone buzzed as he pulled into the narrow drive of what would be called a faded blue fishing shack anywhere else but in California. Pippa figured the Realtors called it an adorable, authentic bungalow, and given the location not far from Redondo Beach, it probably cost five times more than her place in the mountains. There was no yard to speak of. A towering, modern blocks-of-glass townhome occupied the entire lot on one side. A shack more bedraggled than Conan's adorned a scruffy lot on the left. A bright red and blue parrot squawked from the tropical greenery on the scruffy shack's collapsing porch. Conan had interesting neighbors.
Truck safely parked, Oz pulled the vibrating phone off his belt, read the screen, and cursed. “Let's get inside and see if Conan can trace this.”
Rudely leaving her sitting, he jumped from the cab and took three big strides to the blue house's peeling maroon front door. Not bothering to knock, he shoved past the door, leaving it open so Pippa could follow.
“Well, Pippa, my dear, you know your place in his life,” she mocked herself, climbing out and pushing the seat up so she could retrieve the computer behind it.
Carrying the heavy equipment up to the porch, she decided she preferred a man who had his own priorities. She didn't want any more needy men clinging to her skirts. She enjoyed her independence and liked that he put his son first.
But she wouldn't be female if she didn't enjoy the looks of appreciation both men gave her when she walked in carrying a stupid box of metal. Pippa wasn't at all certain if it was her or the computer they were admiring.
“What?” she demanded, setting the box down on a crate after Conan knocked the books off it to clear space. “Am I wearing feathers in my hair?”
“You've got muscles,” Conan saidâidiotically, in her opinion.
“I have bare arms. I know how to use them. Get over it. This isn't the beach, and I'm not a bunny.” She glared at Oz, who was fighting a grin. He dropped his BlackBerry on the table in front of his brother, distracting him.
“He's not groveling yet,” Oz said. “Try harder.”
She'd spoken with irritation.
And neither man had fallen on the floor and writhed. She'd once sent a stagehand into epileptic spasms when she'd yelled at him. Huffing, she sought a place to sit.
And gave up. Conan's entire front room was devoted to equipment, books, files, and an incomprehensible clutter of mechanical and electrical parts. With his back to the front door, he occupied the only chair, the one in front of a bank of computers on the interior wall. Really bad feng shui, she observed.
Leaning against a wall as Oz was doing, Pippa met his gaze. She was learning to challenge the man. She was also learning he liked it. “What sent you dashing in here? Who is he tracing?” She tilted her head in Conan's direction.
Conan had already dived into the BlackBerry and was doing something mysterious with a piece of equipment hooked to his computer, no longer aware of her or her muscles
.
“Librarian,” Oz replied, losing his smirk. “New message. It only says, âSanta Domenica.'”
“Never heard of it.” Pippa glanced around, locating what appeared to be a dusty laptop on one of the shelves. She unburied the case from a pair of earphones, a diver's mask, and a broken pen.
Conan paid her no attention, but Oz was instantly at her side, carrying a chair from another room so she could sit and open the machine.
“Is this how his guests usually entertain themselves, or are we special?” she asked, opening the shell and turning it on to see if there was any battery.
“You think he entertains in here? If he's even got a girlfriend, I don't know about it. We're not the closest of families.” Placing his hands on the back of her chair, Oz peered over her shoulder as she called up an Internet browser.
He smelled of a spicy aftershave that had her mouth watering. The hands that had brought her to ecstasy the night before were propped right behind her shoulders. Heightened awareness wasn't good for concentration. She missed a key, and he leaned over to correct her spelling, hitting the right combination on the keyboard for her.
Would he want another night with her, or had she scared him off?
She couldn't care. She wouldn't allow herself to care.
“Santa Domenica, Italy. Santa Domenica, California. Want to take bets?” Still leaning over Pippa's shoulder, Oz hit Enter on the California link.
“Population 1500. Looks like desert. Not far from Barstow.” Pippa rattled off the important facts as she scrolled down. “I'm betting two gas stations, a church, and a trailer park filled with scrawny dogs.”
***
Fighting the need to yell at his brother to hurry up, to track the damned message, do
something
, Oz settled for tugging Pippa's hair. “Thou shalt not judge. If the Librarian lives there, one of those trailers contains some damned sophisticated equipment. It's not easy to remain anonymous. Do they even have Internet in the desert?”
It was easier to believe the messages were crank calls meant to manipulate either him or Pippa into something. If Oz let himself believe that the Librarian knew his son, he'd have to find a means of reaching through the phone and shaking him.
So he concentrated on the bright spot in Conan's dingy hutâPippa.
Nick and Mary had approved of her instantly. Oz had known they would, especially when Pippa kept the boys wildly entertained. Mary was satisfied that her husband wouldn't be flirting with one of Oz's usual morally handicapped dates. Neither of them had recognized the former teenage idol, but then, she hadn't been singing.
“No idea what deserts have,” Pippa muttered, attempting to call up Google Earth. But the laptop battery died, blacking the screen.
“I'll check it out,” Conan said, breaking into the conversation as if he'd been listening all along. He tossed the new BlackBerry back to Oz. “Not a trace. Your caller is wilier than a coyote.”
“We don't even know if it means Santa Domenica, California,” Pippa said quietly.
Oz looked her over to make certain she was okay. Passive had not been her natural state all day. She was twiddling with the lock of hair he'd tugged, wrapping it around her finger.
“Santa Domenica can wait.” Conan began pushing aside the collection of books and papers in front of his monitor. “I can't believe this Librarian is going to all this trouble out of meanness. He's either psychotic or providing clues.” He produced a screwdriver from the depth of a drawer spilling with cables. “Give me your computer.”
“I told Pippa she can stand over you and make certain you don't open any files, so let's make this fast.” Oz carried the computer over and set it down. “You're not planning on dismantling the whole thing, are you?”
“Wanted to check for bugs.” Conan glanced over his shoulder at Pippa. “What do you have in here, terrorist plots or something? I swear I won't touch 'em.”
Pippa rubbed her forehead as if it ached. “Now that you mention it⦠If terrorists broadcast what I have in there, they might cause mass chaos and anarchy.”
Oz smirked as Conan sent him a questioning look. “Don't ask, okay? Just leave the files alone. You've been officially warned of their destructive nature. If anything happens to them or you, it's on your head. We are no longer responsible.”
Pippa sent him a disgruntled look at the cop-out, but Oz didn't really want to stand in his brother's hovel for the rest of the evening while Conan poked around inside the hard drive. He feared Pippa might just explode from nervous exertion or sensory overload.
“I'm more interested in the byte-size files hidden in temporary folders, so you have no need to worry. Did you stand over the guy who moved all your files from the old computer to the new?” Conan asked.
Good question. Oz looked at Pippa, who had dived into her cave again. She'd perfected the expressionless mask. No wonder she'd had to paint tears on her cheeks.
“I didn't know anyone was interested in my old stuff at the time,” she murmured. “I just had Lizzy carry the old drive down and leave it at the computer store. She picked the new one up the next day.”
Conan didn't bother hiding his opinion of that, Oz noticed. His brother sent her a black look of disapproval. “How did you dispose of the old computer?”
She shrugged. “The guy at the store promised to wipe the disks, update the hardware, and give it to charitable causes. That sounded better than a landfill.”
“Three years ago, you said?” Conan asked sharply.
“Almost four,” she said warily.
“What's the name of the store? Where was it?”
Even Oz understood the direction this was taking. Almost four years ago, a stranger had access to Pippa's songs. Four years ago, Alys had run off with Donal, but that seemed an impossible connection. It was equally impossible that the Librarian had led him to Pippa with information garnered from an abandoned hard drive. He was out of his territory here.
Pippa gave Conan the name and street of the shop, and he jotted a note. Oz was tempted to head straight over to the store, but those places came and went with regularity. Far more efficient to let Conan do the legwork.
“I'm on it. Why don't the two of you go get pizza or something?” Conan dived back into the computer innards.
“We could do that, or⦔ Oz turned to Pippa. “We could go to my place and call carryout from a restaurant with a little more class than pizza and research Santa Domenica.”
He was skilled at negotiation for good reasonâhe knew what people really wanted, and he knew the right bait to lure them. Pippa wanted isolation, but she would cling to that damned computer unless he offered her something more important to protectâlike his son.
She hesitated, glancing nervously to the box Conan had unscrewed, then locking her fingers together when he started hooking it up to his cables.
“How long will this take?” she murmured in that dispassionate voice she used on the world.
“Depends on how much crap you've got in here. If you've had the machine for four years, that could be a lot of cookies to trek through.” Impervious to Pippa's reaction, Conan didn't even look up.
Oz felt her jolt of fear and exhaustion as if it were his own. He rubbed her tense shoulders and then offered his hand. “C'mon. If you can't trust a secret agent, who can you trust?”