Damsel Under Stress (6 page)

Just before ten, I gathered my supplies and headed for Merlin’s office. As I went through the doorway, I almost missed a step even though I was walking on an even surface. Owen was already in there, sitting at the conference table and twirling a pen between his fingers. I wondered if there would ever come a time when seeing him didn’t take my breath away. I should have known he’d be at any executive meeting since he usually represented the research and development department, but I still wasn’t prepared to see him again. He looked very nice dressed for work, as he always did, but he appeared even more tired than he had been the night before.

“Oh, good, Katie, you’re here,” Merlin said, waving a hand to shut the door behind me. Owen looked up, saw me, gave a half smile, then turned bright red and looked down at the notebook that lay in front of him on the table. It seemed I wasn’t the only one feeling a little taken aback by seeing each other here.

I took my usual seat at Merlin’s right hand, ready to take notes on the meeting so I could write up a report and note the items for follow-up. A moment later, the office door flew open and Sam the gargoyle soared inside to land on the back of the chair across from Owen. Merlin waved the door shut again. I wrote the date and time of the meeting on the top of my notepad while I waited for the rest of the department heads to arrive, but before I could start listing names of the attendees, Merlin spoke.

“Katie, I’m sure by now you’re aware that the prisoner we apprehended Friday night has escaped.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, wondering if this meant the meeting had already begun. Apparently, this wasn’t the meeting of department heads I’d expected.

“And I’m sure you realize how important it is to find her again.”

“She might make Idris even more dangerous. He’s not necessarily evil, and even if he was, he’s not focused enough to really do anything about it. But she’s vindictive, and though I used to think she was flighty, she does seem to be capable of following through on something.”

“Exactly. And that’s why I want you and Mr. Palmer to work together to either find her or learn what Ari and Mr. Idris are doing. You’ll be working closely with Sam on this, since a security breach was involved.”

There went my idea of being relatively stress-free for the holidays. “You want me investigating?” I asked.

“You were the one who figured out she was the spy,” Owen said. I wondered if he’d been the one to suggest working together. If he had, we’d have words about that later.

“You’re also the perfect investigative combination, with your magical immunity and Mr. Palmer’s abilities. I believe you also have an excellent personal rapport.” I detected a definite twinkle in Merlin’s eyes. Great, now even the boss was getting involved in our relationship. “Of course, I don’t expect you to work during the holidays, but I would like you to be thinking about it. Sam, you’ll have security personnel at their disposal.”

“But what about my other work? I got pretty far behind when I was working on the last investigation.” Not that I was trying to weasel out of this assignment, but it really wasn’t in my job description, and I wasn’t getting most of the stuff that was in my job description done.

“I’ll have someone else take on your more administrative and clerical duties. Anyone can take notes in a meeting, but you’ve proved you have the special skills for this task.” There was an edge of finality to his voice, like what he’d said had been carved into stone tablets on top of a mountain.

“That’ll be a big help, sir,” I said.

The meeting adjourned, and Owen caught my elbow as we left Merlin’s office. “Maybe we should strategize for a while. Are you free now?” He said it with a totally straight face and no hint of a blush, so I got the impression that he wasn’t finding a convenient cover for other kinds of activities. I suspected that while we were in the office, it would be strictly business between us, and that was fine with me, even though my elbow was already tingling from his touch. I’d never dated someone I worked that closely with, and had never worked this closely with someone I was dating. It seemed that the boss didn’t mind our personal relationship, but I wished there was a handy rule book for how to make this sort of thing work.

“Your office or mine?” I asked.

“Would you mind going to mine? I have more whiteboard space for thinking.”

“No problem,” I replied. As we passed Trix’s desk, I said, “I’m going to be down in R and D for a while.”

She gave us a sidelong look that said she thought she knew what we’d be doing down in R&D. “Okay. Want me to forward calls or send them to voice mail?”

“You can forward them, if I even get any calls. Thanks.” I didn’t bother correcting her assumption about us because I had a feeling that would only fluster Owen, and the more I protested, the more convinced she’d be.

Owen ran the theoretical magic lab in R&D. His job was finding old magic texts, translating the spells, figuring out what they did, testing them to see if they actually worked, and then finding a way to apply those spells to modern situations. His lab was full of old books, most of them shelved around the perimeters of the room, but a good number of them scattered around on tables, chairs, and even the floor. A couple of whiteboards on wheels were covered in textbook-perfect handwriting that was still unreadable because almost none of it was in English. Owen’s office, which opened off the lab, looked like it belonged in an English manor house. Being in his office always gave me an overwhelming craving for hot tea.

When we reached the lab, he erased one of the whiteboards and picked up a marker. I boosted myself up to sit on the big wooden table that filled the center of the room. “I guess we should start with what we already know,” he said. “I know Idris well enough to know some of his habits and patterns. You know something of Ari, and you know her friends. Let’s each see what we can come up with to analyze places where they might go or be found.” He wrote “Ari” on the top of one side of the board and turned to me.

“Well, let’s see,” I said, thinking out loud. “She’s kind of boy crazy and will chase just about anyone, but I think she’s in it more for the conquest than for any real romantic leanings. In fact, she seems to lose interest as soon as she catches one, but she manages to spin it so she’s the wounded party and she has an excuse for revenge. She has a lot of stamina when it comes to fun, knows all the hot spots and stays out all night. She never seems to go home alone after an evening out.”

He stared at me, his mouth hanging open. “What?” I asked. “That’s what women talk about. We tend not to get into our world domination plans on your typical girls’ night out or office lunch. Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

“No, I was actually surprised you knew that much. I’ve known Rod since I was little, and I don’t think I know quite that much about him.”

“That’s because you’re guys. You talk about things, not how you feel about things. I take it, then, you don’t have a lot of scoop on Idris.”

“Not like you’ve got on Ari. I usually tried to avoid talking to him about anything, if I could help it. I know he likes testing the limits to see what he can get away with. He never liked taking the accepted path. If he’d been willing to stay away from darker magic, he could have been a real asset here, but he got bored easily by the usual things and wanted to try something as different as possible.”

“Sounds like Ari and men,” I quipped. “They’re a match made in heaven.”

“Why do you think she’s with him?” From the expression on his face, I couldn’t tell if he was baffled by Ari being with Idris, or by Idris being with Ari.

“It’s hard to say. I can’t be sure how much of what she told me was real and how much was part of her act all along. I suspect he gives her an outlet for her less admirable qualities. She can take revenge and use people, and he considers it a good thing. I doubt she set out to find him and join the side of evil. He probably recruited her gradually, and then she got in too deep.”

“Which might mean we could recruit her back. She’s sure to have a falling-out with him, if what you’ve observed about her dating patterns is accurate.”

“If we could find her. Which brings us back to the initial problem. Idris was worried about her and didn’t know she was free. I think he might actually like her, when he isn’t being distracted by something else. He took off pretty quickly when he found out she was free, so he might have had an idea where she’d be. Meanwhile, who’s that other person who may or may not be working with Idris? Think about who he was close to when he worked here. I know he and Gregor were tight. Anyone else?”

He looked intensely uncomfortable, and when he spoke, he dropped his voice to little above a whisper. “He got along really well with my boss.”

“You mean the frog guy?” I asked, barely remembering to keep my own voice low. The head of R&D had been turned into a frog in an “industrial accident” years ago and seldom left his office. “You know, there are a lot of industrial accidents in this department, what with the frog thing and Gregor’s ogre problem.” Gregor, now head of Verification, wasn’t always an ogre, but he tended to turn green and sprout horns and fangs when he was angry. That actually made him easier to deal with than my boss at my old job, who didn’t have such obvious physical clues when she was in evil mode.

“They used to take a lot of risks in experimentation under the former management.”

“Do you mean former as in before Merlin?”

He nodded. “But I never got the sense of anything dark from it, just pushing the envelope.”

“What happened to the former boss?”

“He retired. I don’t recall any hint of scandal associated with him.” I took that statement with a large grain of salt. Owen was so clueless about the company rumor mill, they could have tarred and feathered the former CEO and chased him out of the building with the staff brandishing pitchforks and torches, and he might not have noticed. Until he found himself the point man in the fight against Idris, he’d apparently stayed hidden away in his lab, happily translating ancient spells and oblivious to anything happening elsewhere in the company.

On the other hand, I’d been picking up a lot of the corporate grapevine, thanks to my last task of finding a mole, so I was sure I’d have heard about it if there had been any breath of scandal associated with the former boss. It was yet another dead end.

“You didn’t recognize the magical fingerprints, did you?”

He shook his head wearily. “Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work. You can only figure out who did a spell if you have a basis for comparison. I guess it works like real fingerprints—just finding one doesn’t solve the crime unless you have a copy of the criminal’s prints and can put the two together. All I can say is it wasn’t someone whose magic style I’ve worked with before.”

“Can people change their style, kind of like wearing gloves hides fingerprints?”

“It would take some effort, almost like learning magic all over again, and even so, there would still be hints if you knew where to look.”

“I guess if you didn’t recognize the style, it can’t be someone who works here.”

“I don’t work closely enough with everyone in the company to recognize each person on sight. But I am working on a process to compare the style against what we have on record. It’ll just take time.”

“It sounds like we’ve got the makings of a plan,” I said with a mock salute. “Now I’d better get back to my office and get things as settled as possible before the boss sends someone to fill in.”

But I realized as soon as I got upstairs that my temporary replacement was already there. Kim, the overly ambitious verifier I’d met when I first joined the company, the one who had made no effort to hide the fact that she wanted the job I’d been given, was sitting at my desk like she owned it.

It looked like I’d better solve this case quickly or I might find myself backstabbed out of a job.

Four

K
im gave me a smug smile. “I thought it would be easier for me to pick up your tasks if I worked from your office. You don’t mind, do you? I assumed you’d be officing with your little task force, or whatever it is that you’ll be doing.”

“We hadn’t really talked about moving my office,” I said, trying to catch up with the situation. There was some sense to her working in this general office suite, since she would be handling my clerical tasks and would need easy access to Merlin and Trix. But did she have to sit at my desk to do it?

“Well, it wouldn’t be moved permanently, but I have to work somewhere, don’t I?” This was more chipper than I’d ever seen Kim in the short time we’d worked together. She didn’t really do cheerful. She was aggressive, focused, and determined, but never chipper. That made me nervous and suspicious, but there wasn’t much I could say, given that all of her arguments made total sense, in a way.

“I guess I could take my computer and some of my things down to R and D,” I said.

“I probably need your computer. I don’t have one of my own, and don’t a lot of the appointment requests come through your e-mail?”

That was one step too far. My desk I could take or leave, but I didn’t want her having access to my e-mail. If she took my computer and e-mail account, she’d be one step away from becoming the office version of
Single White Female
and stealing my entire life. “I’m sure we can set you up with a computer, and I’ll forward you any e-mails that are pertinent to your duties.” I mentally scored a point for myself. I thought I’d handled that situation rather professionally.

She glared at me, but it would have been unreasonable for her to insist on taking my computer, so there wasn’t much she could say. “I put all of your other things together here, so I wouldn’t get them mixed up with my stuff,” she said. My desk calendar, planner, and coffee mug had all been shoved to one corner of my desk. She already had a potted plant and a few photos set up on the bookcase. I got the feeling that the paint color would be different the next time I dropped by.

“Oh, thanks,” I said halfheartedly. “Let me get those out of your way.” I disconnected my laptop from the network and closed it, then put the rest of my things in my tote bag, grabbed my coat, and hauled everything out of the office. “I’ll probably be working out of Owen’s lab for the time being,” I told Trix as I passed her desk.