Malcolm and Ives 02 - Trouble With Air and Magic by Patricia Rice

shape, but you have a serious internal problem. I’m on the case. I’ll give you a full report as soon as I’m sure we’ve covered all the territory. Your daughter is right on top of the situation, but I may ask that she stay incommunicado for a while. There could be a tap on this line. Will you be all right with that?”
    Dorrie’s eyes widened to circles, not easily done given their natural shape. She didn’t even try to take the phone back from him, given that he was bullshitting nonsense from top to bottom.
    “I want a full report, Oswin,” the old man threatened. “If someone is stealing from me, I want their heads on a platter.”
    “Consider it done, sir,” Conan said before hitting END. He would happily behead anyone stealing from orphans. He handed the phone back to Dorrie, boy scout duty done.
    “I think maybe I’ll take you up on your offer,” she said in what almost sounded like awe. “Anyone who can make my father take orders has a hide of steel. Or asbestos. Want to tell him to get his rear out of his room and back to the office?”
    Conan took her admiration with a grain of salt. “Giving orders is the only way to survive in a family that knows no other way of speaking. I prefer going my own way and not listening to my brothers. Sometimes that doesn’t work, so I’ve learned to fight back.”
    “Perhaps it’s easier with brothers,” she said thoughtfully. “I was taught to respect my elders, so I can’t fight back. Do we need to go into the office for anything or shall I follow you back to your place?”
    “Follow me back and I’ll give you a door opener so you can come and go as you need, and I’ll start digging. Just don’t go anywhere near the office without me.”
    He was taking temptation in a power suit home with him. He was officially out of his friggin’ mind.
    ***
    Conan made Dorrie’s head spin. First, he tells her that FF’s money was being stolen by one of her employees, and their clients might have been murdered or maybe deported to keep them quiet. And maybe Bo somehow got caught up in it. She could barely wrap her head around that.
    And then he effectively tells her father to go jump in a lake. No one ever talked like that to Ryan Franklin. Worse—or better yet—her father had listened to his blatant lies. Conan had told him that there was a tap on her cell phone line, and her father hadn’t called him an idiot. He’d believed him. What on earth did Ryan Franklin know about Conan that made him believe anything he said?
    Conan was scary enough all on his own without knowing his background. And his house…
    Dorrie took a deep breath as she entered from the garage.
    The energy flow—or lack thereof—in Conan’s home would suffocate her if she stayed there long. The suppressed chi would wrap around her and literally squeeze the air from her lungs. How could she possibly be turned on by a man who lived in total stagnation?
    Prepared for the onslaught of bad air, she refrained from gasping until her host retreated upstairs. She didn’t mean to be high maintenance like her mother, but she could hardly explain her sensitivity to bad chi . She was no more than a canary in a badly ventilated mine.
    Unless she wanted to live in her car, she’d have to temporarily set aside her fears about Bo and the foundation and concentrate on her new living space for a few hours. As usual, her father hadn’t taken her up on her offer of dinner. Partial paralysis shouldn’t stop a force of nature like Ryan Franklin, but he’d made up his mind to retire and be an invalid, and she couldn’t change it.
    Of course, if her father was as smart as he thought he was, he should have realized Dorrie not only sensed chi energy like her mother but could manipulate it. And then he might have understood that she’d been flinging furious energy arrows at him the day she’d told him she didn’t want to work in the office any longer—right before he’d keeled over. She hadn’t intentionally