She looked up into his eyes.

“I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

The honest admission undid him. Dax followed her inside.

The moment the door was closed and she turned to him, the tempo was set.

He framed her face with his hands and kissed her. Slowly at first, savoring the contact, while still leaving her an opening to back away at the last minute if she came to her senses. Because it was apparent to him that he wasn’t going to come to his. Not with this feeling she’d generated within him. This need to have her.

But instead of resisting, Brenda leaned into the kiss. Twining her arms around his neck, she silently surrendered herself to him.

It was all he needed.

In Broad Daylight
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This RITA® Award-winning author has written over 120 books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To

Patience, who has a great deal.

With thanks,

Marie

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Chapter 1

There was nothing he hated worse than a kidnapping case.

The thought of someone who was part of your life suddenly vanishing without a trace—leaving you powerless to find them—had always seemed like the most heinous of crimes to Detective Dax Cavanaugh.

Maybe it was because he was acquainted firsthand with the situation. His Uncle Andrew and the family had gone through all sorts of personal hell when his Aunt Rose had vanished. It was fifteen years before they’d any answers.

The torture was in not knowing.

The torture was in the various awful, haunting scenarios that your mind could drag up despite your best efforts to block them.

In his personal opinion, Dax thought as he took a street that led him to a prestigious address, every kidnapper should be left for ten minutes with the families of the victims. That’s all, just ten minutes. And then justice would be served. But he was sworn to uphold a more traditional justice and that was what was bringing him and his partner to Harwood Academy.

A tangle of two fire engines and one ambulance, each belching personnel onto the front lawn of the very private Harwood Academy less than twenty minutes ago, made finding a place to park his navy Crown Victoria a feat comparable to finding a place to stand within ten minutes of the beginning of the annual Rose Bowl Parade.

“Looks like this is the place,” his partner, Nathan Brown, commented.

“Yeah, and it looks like everyone else has found it ahead of us.”

Muttering a frustrated expletive, Dax brought the vehicle to a forty-three degree angle against a late model Mercedes in the small parking lot, unfolded his large frame and got out, slamming the door behind him.

Gregarious and outgoing, the eldest son of Brian Cavanaugh, chief of detectives of the Aurora, California, police department, Dax was known for his easygoing humor. But not today. Nothing sobered him faster than a kidnapping. Especially the kidnapping of a child, as this was reported to be.

He glanced toward his right, to assure himself that Nathan had gotten out and was keeping up as he cut across the lot. Nathan was as short as he was tall and on unseasonably hot days like today, he liked to complain about his “freaky, stork-like legs.” To which Dax would respond by saying something about his partner’s stubby limbs.

But no such banter took place today. Because a six-year-old girl might be missing.

Dax held a good thought. It was in his nature, a special “Cavanaugh gene” that resided in about two-thirds of the family and shone like a beacon during the darkest of times.

Dax scanned the area, taking in the outer chaos quickly.

The lawn and lot were filled not with only cars and firefighters, but well-groomed, uniformed children. The last batch, coming in various shapes and heights, were being shepherded incredibly well by their teachers. There was noise and confusion everywhere. The firefighters appeared to be retreating. The emergency medical personnel, who had arrived on the tail of the second fire truck, were packing up. The opened rear doors showed Dax that they had no one to take back with them.

False alarm?

Dax sniffed the air. The smell of smoke was conspicuously absent.

“Looks like they’re all dressed up with nowhere to go,” he commented, looking at a team of firefighters who were retracting the hose that had ultimately not been necessary. It had been usurped, he later discovered, by a fire extinguisher.

Nathan squinted, looking toward the unharmed four-story building that housed the academy. “Kind of elaborate for a fire drill,” he quipped.

“This was no drill,” Dax commented.

The children, he’d noted, seemed more excited than frightened. He remembered the monotony of his own school days. An honest-to-gosh fire would have been more than welcomed to break up the tedium that marked his less than auspicious elementary career. He hadn’t figured out that he liked learning until somewhere midway through high school.

He wouldn’t have fit in here, Dax judged as he and Nathan picked their way through the pint-sized throng. These were the children of the wealthy.

Wealth came in all sorts of forms. In his family wealth was the amount of love available at any given moment of the day or night. Dollars, at times, had to be stretched, but love never was.

Even for him. And he had been a wild one, turning his late mother’s dark hair gray way before its time, he thought fondly.

One pint-sized student stood directly in his path, looking up at him as if he were a giant oak tree. Curiosity was imprinted on the boy’s face. Dax gave him an obligatory smile and stepped to one side.

“What do you think it costs to send your kid here?” Nathan asked, raising his voice to be heard above the commotion.

Nathan had three kids, all of whom were under the age of twelve. Remembering his own household with its rabble of four, Dax figured Nathan’s wife had sainthood pretty much under wraps.

He laughed dryly at his partner’s innocent question. “More than you and I make in a year, buddy.”

Nathan blew out a breath and nodded. The academy, established some fifty years ago by the grandfather of the present headmaster, had been the first place of learning for some of the present captains of industry, both within the world of business and in the entertainment world. If rumors he’d picked up were true, a couple of senators had emerged from these halls as well.

“Hey, the public school system’s not all that bad,” Dax pointed out. “You and I went through it and we turned out pretty good.”

Nathan spared him a long look. “Well, at least one of us did.” Suddenly, the shorter man was alert, spotting the person he figured they were both looking for. “Nine o’clock,” Nathan nodded in that general direction. “Looks like that might be the guy who runs the place.”

Dax was already changing direction. “He’s not a ‘guy,’ Brown, he’s the headmaster. See, that’s why your kid’ll never go here.”

“Yeah, that and the fact that I’m short a hundred-thousand dollars for the tab.” Nathan sighed. He tried to match Dax’s stride as the latter lengthened his. “Damn it,” he barked, lowering his voice again because of the children who appeared to be everywhere, “slow down, Icabod.”

Dax grinned at the jive. He bore about as much resemblance to the Washington Irving character as a sunset bore to a light bulb. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a small waist that came from more than a passing acquaintance with the department’s gym, Dax had his mother’s emerald-green eyes and his father’s black hair, quick smile and chiseled features.

Women, much to his partner’s wistful envy, threw themselves at Dax. He was good at catching them, then setting them down. Life was too unsettled for the kind of long-term commitment a relationship would have asked of him. Besides, he was enjoying himself and in no hurry to have that part of his life over. If he felt the need for family, hell, there were his siblings and his cousins to turn to. At last count, the younger Cavanaughs numbered eleven. There was always family to spare as far as he was concerned.

Nathan checked his pocket for his pad. “Think this was all a mistake, like the fire?”

Dax shook his head. “No.”

The expressions he observed on the teachers’ faces looked too worried, too concerned. It went beyond just trying to keep track of the children closest to them until they were herded back into the building and their classrooms.

Just before he reached the headmaster, a stately looking man whose iron-gray hair made him appear older than his chronological years, a young woman got into his line of vision.

The instant she did, his eyes were locked on her.

For a second Dax almost forgot to breathe; she was that startlingly beautiful. The kind of beautiful he would have fully expected to see on the cover of one of those magazines that populated the checkout area of his local supermarket. The kind of beautiful he wouldn’t have believed was real, or could be achieved without a great deal of powder and paint; both of which would have been visible in person.

Except it wasn’t. The young woman before him with the spun-gold hair appeared to be all fresh-faced and natural.

As air returned to his lungs, he felt his pulse quickening the way it did whenever he was confronted with a life or death situation. But this was neither. Gorgeous or not, she was just another person who was there, he reminded himself.

And he had a job to do. There was a little girl who was presently unaccounted for.

“Mr. Harwood?” Dax’s deep voice cut through the din as easily as a sword cut through butter.

Matthew Harwood looked away from the young woman he was talking to, proper concern etched with stately precision on his square face. He looked weary as well as wary.

“Yes?”

“I’m Detective Cavanaugh, this is Detective Brown,” Dax nodded behind him, doing his best to ignore the woman on Harwood’s left. “You reported a missing little girl.”

“I reported it,” the woman who had altered his breathing pattern responded before Harwood could say anything. “Her name is Annie Tyler and she’s in my class.”

Which placed her in the first round of questioning. He’d hit a jackpot at a time when he couldn’t afford to be distracted, Dax thought. And if ever there was a woman who was distracting, this was one.

Nodding at the information, he looked around. “Is there somewhere where we can go and talk? Somewhere a little less noisy?” he asked.

As if second-guessing him, Harwood was already waving over an aid. “Mrs. Miller, could you take over Mrs. York’s class?”

Mrs. York.

She was married.

Droplets of disappointment, materializing out of nowhere, rained over him. But maybe it was better this way. He was good at perpetually keeping several balls in the air at the same time, but the law of averages was against him. Someday, one of those balls was going to drop and he couldn’t allow for it to be one associated with his work. He loved being a cop, loved making a difference. Loved the rush when a crime was finally solved, or a perpetrator was brought to justice.

Or a child was recovered, he underscored. That meant focusing exclusively on the job.

Focused or not, glancing at the woman’s hand seemed only natural.

There was no ring on the appropriate finger.

Widowed?

Divorced?

Not his concern, the same harsh voice that had long ago been assigned the role of his personal devil’s advocate whispered within him.

Mrs. Miller was a pleasant-faced, full-figured woman who radiated enthusiasm and sunshine as she approached. She also radiated concern as her eyes shifted to the blonde. “Oh, I hope we find her.”

We. As if they’d somehow misplaced the child. Was the little girl given to pranks? To disappearing from sight, only to watch from a secret hiding place as pandemonium ensued? Was this a bid for attention? So many of these kids hardly cohabited with their parents at all and were desperate for attention.

“I’m sorry, you are…?” Nathan was asking the blonde before he could.

“Brenda York.” Brenda put out her hand. When Dax took it, he thought it felt icy. As if she was worried. Or afraid. “I teach first grade.

His own first grade teacher had been a Mrs. Flack, a short, squat woman with bottle-orange hair. She’d favored shapeless smocks, sensible dark brown shoes and smelled of peppermint because she always seemed to be sucking on the candy, something her students, unfairly he thought, weren’t allowed to do. Had Mrs. Flack looked remotely like Brenda York, he might have discovered the pleasure of learning a lot earlier than in high school.

“This way,” Harwood directed, pointing toward the front entrance.

Behind them, the last of the firefighters were getting onto a truck. The first truck had already pulled away. The din that had been humming since before their arrival was gradually fading into the warm May air. It amazed Dax how quickly order was restored. Each and every student seemed aware that it was time to go back to the world they had vacated for such a brief amount of time. The excitement of the fire, real or imagined, was over. The teachers had obviously done their level best to keep the news of the possible abduction from spreading and reaching any young ears.

Dax glanced over his shoulder, watching the students as they resumed a tight formation before they literally marched back into the building.

Hushed whispers hummed in the air like june bugs, all, he guessed, centering around his and Nathan’s recent arrival. He returned one child’s gaze and smiled before turning back around.

His eyes met Brenda’s completely by accident. Hers were a deep crystal blue. Intense, shining like two blue lights, they seemed to penetrate his very soul. He could have sworn there was some kind of electrical shock that had gone through him.

She lowered her eyes and turned back away.

Dax felt like a survivor of a train wreck who hadn’t been aware that the train had even gone off course until the impact had hit.

Behind him, Nathan stood up on his toes. “One step at a time, buddy, one step at a time.”

He gave Nathan a dirty look. Nathan gave him a knowing one.

They entered the building. The floors were polished to a high sheen, but were amazingly non-slippery. Lawsuits obviously were the scourge of even a place like Harwood. Well-cared for wooden doors lined both sides of the corridor like timeless, learned sentries. The headmaster brought them to the far end of the hall.

“We can talk in here,” Harwood was saying.

Opening a door, he led them into a somber room whose walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books. The only break in the decor were two windows that somehow managed to filter out the light and allowed only gloom into the medium-sized room, and the door which seemed to shyly claim a space amid massive bookshelves.

Once the door was closed behind them, all noise, soft or otherwise, from the outside world ceased to exist. For a moment, the only sounds evident were the individual breaths that they took.

It was a room designed for intimidation, Dax thought. Any kid who was called in here was already scared out of his or her mind. He exchanged looks with Nathan and could tell that the same thought had crossed his partner’s mind as well.

Rather than stand with them, the headmaster took his place behind the massive desk; whether to demarcate his position or to keep himself separated from the situation, Dax didn’t know, but it came across as a definite power play of some sort.

The teacher, he noted, remained with him and his partner. Joining ranks? Or infiltrating the enemy?

She smelled of jasmine, or maybe gardenias. He never could get things like flowers straight. To him, a flower was a flower. But the scent, well, that was pretty unnerving right now.

For the first time in his life, he wished he had a cold, or some kind of allergy that would have blocked his nasal capacity. He found the scent seductive.

Just like the woman.

Brenda York appeared agitated, he noted. Was that natural concern on her part? Or was there something else at play here? He had too little input to go on and his gut was otherwise occupied, giving him no clue.

The thing that sometimes bothered him about his chosen way of life was that he could never look at anything simply. Everything had two sides and, like as not, multi-layers that usually needed unraveling. It made simplicity a thing of the past and an unattainable dream these days.

Harwood cleared his throat. But right now, Dax was more interested in what Brenda York had to say. He turned toward her, the action blocking out the headmaster.

“Are you the one who first noticed she was missing?” Dax asked her.

She still couldn’t believe any of this was happening. It was like a nightmare, a horrible, horrible nightmare and she was waiting to wake up. Except that she was already awake.

Calm, you have to stay calm. You can’t help Annie if you’re not calm.

She realized she was clenching her hands at her sides, digging her nails into her palms. She forced herself to open them. “Yes.”

The single word sounded tortured to Dax. An act? The truth? For the time being, he gave her the benefit of the doubt as he began to ask his questions. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nathan take out his pad. Nathan believed in writing everything down. As for him, he kept all the notes in his head. He’d always had that ability, to go into the recesses of his mind and pluck out whatever tiny fact he needed whenever he needed it.

He watched her face, looking for any telltale sign that might give him a clue as to what she was thinking, what she was really feeling. “Are you sure she’s missing? Maybe she wandered in with another group of kids. I saw a lot of activity going on when we pulled up—”

This time, Harwood was the one who cut in. “Our children are taught discipline from the very first day they come to Harwood Academy,” he informed Dax with alacrity. “They do not wander.”

Dax couldn’t tell if the man was taking offense on behalf of his students, or if he felt that anything other than perfect behavior reflected badly on him.

In complete control of the situation, Dax lifted a shoulder and carelessly let it fall again. “Yeah, but kids are still kids. There’s all this noise and excitement going on, firefighters, trucks, ambulances—”

“Ambulance,” Harwood corrected automatically. “There was only one.”

Dax inclined his head. The man was a stickler, he thought. Possibly a little obsessive. He was grateful that his parents hadn’t had the money to send him to a private school.

“Ambulance,” he allowed. “With all this confusion, she might have taken the opportunity to duck out on you and get in with one of her friends.”

If only, Brenda thought. If only.

But she’d searched the area, asking all the children who might have seen her if they had. Each time, she’d gotten a shake of the head in response. The tiny mouse of a child, who reminded her so much of herself at that age, was nowhere to be found.

“That’s just it,” Brenda told him, her voice growing a little more firm with every word she uttered, “Annie doesn’t really have any friends.”

There was a glimmer of pain in her eyes as she told him that. Dax couldn’t help wondering if it was genuine, or if he’d been confronted with a very good actress. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time a kidnapper had tried to put something over on him.

And until proven otherwise, he had to think of her that way. As someone who might somehow be involved in the kidnapping, if that was what it actually was. After all, Annie Tyler was last seen in her care.

Glancing at Nathan before continuing, Dax crossed his arms before him. A full moment went by before he spoke again. Time, his father had told him early in his career, was both their friend and their enemy. The more time that went by, the less likely a missing child was to be found. But if you gave a guilty person who wasn’t a hardened criminal enough time, they tended to say or do something to incriminate themselves.

Dax studied the blond woman before him, trying not to notice that, even though she was wearing a lavender two-piece suit, the killer figure she possessed was more than evident. He motioned her toward a seat, but she shook her head, obviously preferring to stand.

Or refusing to be placed in the position of having someone stand over her.

He placed himself so that he could easily look at both her and the headmaster. “All right, Mrs. York, why don’t you tell us exactly what happened. And start at the beginning. Before the fire trucks.” He watched her chest rise as she take in a deep breath. Steeling himself off, he forced his eyes to her face. “Take your time,” he counseled quietly. “And don’t leave anything out.”

Chapter 2

Her mind felt as if it were completely jumbled up, with all the thoughts glued together in one giant ball. Brenda strove to peel apart the layers, arranging the events of the last hour in their proper sequence.

Because she didn’t begin immediately, Dax fired a question at her. Patience, when it came to cases, had never been his strong suit. The few times he had been assigned to a stakeout, he had all but climbed up one side of the wall and down the other.

“Let’s begin with the fire.” He pinned her with a look. “Was there an actual fire?” He hadn’t smelled any smoke entering the building, but something or someone had to have set off the alarm.

As if riding to her rescue, Harwood drew himself up behind his desk.

“Yes, there was,” he cut in. “A small one.” He glanced at Brenda before adding, “The fire chief told me that some papers in a wastepaper basket had caught fire. They used one of our fire extinguishers to put it out. It turned out simpler that way.”

Dax exchanged looks with Nathan. Wastepaper baskets didn’t just spontaneously combust. “That sounds as if it might have been deliberately set.” His gaze swept over Brenda before returning to the headmaster. “Are any of your kids budding pyromaniacs or overly fascinated with matches?”

Brenda’s eyes widened at the suggestion. “No!” she snapped. Some of her pupils were starved for attention and might on occasion act out, but they were five-and six-years-old and that kind of behavior was only normal.

Harwood was sputtering indignantly. “I assure you that my school—”

Dax waved his hand in a downward motion, as if banking down their protests.

“Just a question,” he told them mildly, although he had posed it to see both of their reactions. The woman was protective while the headmaster came off as concerned about his school’s reputation. “Would anyone else have set the fire?”

Nathan raised an eyebrow, looking up from the notes he was religiously scribbling down. “You’re thinking maybe it was a diversion?”

Dax nodded.

So had she, the moment she’d overheard the fire chief telling Matthew Harwood that the origin of the fire had been found in her wastepaper basket. A diversion to take attention away from the fact that Annie Tyler was being stolen.

The very thought ate away at her. She should have realized something was wrong. There was no earthly reason why, but somehow, her instincts should have told her that something was wrong.

She might as well tell him before he found out on his own. “It was my wastepaper basket.”

Her student, her wastepaper basket. Dax looked at the woman with deepening interest. It seemed too simple, but then, most criminals were not the masterminds that so frequently populated the more intriguing mysteries and action movies. Wanting to race, he still took it one step at a time.

Facing her, his back blocking out Harwood, he asked, “Were you in the room at the time?”

She could almost sense what he was thinking. Brenda took a breath and shook her head. “No. The class and I were giving a tour to Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley—”

She saw the good-looking detective’s eyes narrow just a little, as if he was filtering in this new information. “Who?”

“Parents of a prospective new student,” Harwood explained, moving so that Dax could see him. The man looked none-too-happy about being ignored. “It’s done all the time.”

That didn’t sound quite right to him. In his experience, teachers were all too happy to escape from their classroom for a few minutes, leaving a slightly more mature child in charge of the class for the duration of their absence.

“Taking your whole class out?” Dax asked in disbelief, waiting to be corrected.

No such correction came. “It’s to show how well-behaved our students are,” Harwood told him. “We’re quite proud of that.”

The detective still didn’t look as if he believed them. Brenda felt a spark of resentment building. She knew he was just doing his job, but she couldn’t help feeling that he was wasting precious time with these trivial details.

“The students each take turns telling the parents about the different activities we have here at Harwood.” She enumerated some of the highlights. “There’s a little theater group, an art room, things the regular schools cut back on.”

His face never changed expression as he listened to her description. She liked the shorter detective better, she thought. At least Detective Brown looked compassionate.

“And where was Annie during this show-and-tell process?” the suspicious detective asked.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the little girl. Annie had begun at the head of the group but with each step taken, she kept drifting toward the rear of the line. Strangers always affected her that way; made her even shyer than she was.

“She was hanging back.”

The poker face remained. “And you didn’t coax her forward?”

Was that suspicion she heard in his voice? Did he actually think she’d do anything to harm any of the children, especially Annie? Just what kind of a monster did he think she was? Fueled by guilt, it took effort to bank down her anger. “I was just about to do that when the alarm went off.”

“And then what?”

She’d heard the alarm just as they’d left the art room. She remembered feeling a sense of panic. The idea of a fire spreading through the school had always horrified her. Because of that, she had been the one to suggest to Matthew that they double the amount of fire drills performed. “And then I made sure that I got my class outside the building.”

Dax deliberately moved into her space, crowding her. “You didn’t stop to count heads?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No, not until we were all outside the building.”

“And then you counted heads.”

Brenda could feel her temper unraveling as guilt danced around it. She should have kept Annie with her. But she could remember how painful it was at times not to be able to just shrink away, to hang back. Annie had been making progress, opening up a little, but there’d been a relapse in the last few days and she’d been trying to get at the source of it without much success.

So she’d tried not to push too hard and then this had happened.

Brenda raised her chin up as if she were silently showing him she was up to any challenge he was throwing her way.

His sister did that move, Dax thought. Just before she lit into him.

“Yes,” the teacher responded between clenched teeth, “then I counted heads.”

Nathan looked up from the notes he was taking. “When you saw she was missing, what did you do?”

There had been no hesitation on her part. “I ran back into the building.”

As if he felt he had to vouch for her actions, Harwood interjected, “One of the firefighters attempted to stop her, but she went right around him.”

Nathan smiled at her before resuming his notes. “Brave lady.”

Stubborn would have been the way he’d have put it, Dax thought. He was well-acquainted with stubborn. His family, especially the female portion of it, had a patent on the emotion.

Brenda shrugged off the praise. Bravery had nothing to do with it.

“I had no idea where the fire was or how bad it was. I was just worried that Annie might have run back to the classroom.” She saw the silent question in the taller detective’s eyes and explained. “She has this stuffed animal she keeps in her desk, a rabbit.” It had taken more than a week of coaxing before Annie had told her about the rabbit. It had been a gift from her father and she clung to it whenever she missed him and wanted him close. “I thought she might have gone back for it.”

Dax never took his eyes from her face. “But she didn’t?”

Brenda shook her head. “She wasn’t there.”

“Was the rabbit?”

The question caught her short. “I didn’t think to check.” There had been a fireman in the room. He’d just finished putting out the fire and there was water everywhere. Water, smoke, but no Annie. “Why, was that important?”

At this point, until things were ruled out, everything was important. “It might be. If it’s missing, then she either took it herself, or someone who knew about her attachment to it took the rabbit to try to use it to lure her away.” He paused for a moment as the words sank in, trying not to allow the distress he saw in the woman’s eyes to get to him. He couldn’t afford to have his sympathies, or anything else, get in the way so that it impaired his judgment. “Where are these Kingsleys now?” he asked.

Harwood stepped in to field the question. “They left soon after the alarm went off, right after we evacuated the building. Said they’d be back when things were calmer.” His tone told Dax that the man didn’t hold out much hope that they would return.

He looked from Brenda to Harwood. “And they left together.”

“Yes,” Harwood answered.

Dax shifted his eyes toward the woman. “Were they together all the time?”

Brenda thought for a moment, but her mind still felt as if it was wrapped up in cotton batting. Some events were sharp, others that took place almost at the same time were hazy.

“I think so.” She bit her lip, hating this, hating the fact that she felt so shaky. She looked at him helplessly. “I’m not sure.”

Dax’s expression remained stony. “Think about it,” he advised.

All right, she wasn’t imagining it. He did suspect her. But why? Because the fire had started in her room? Because Annie was her student? Or because he was one of those gung ho policemen who wanted to clear his caseload and it didn’t matter to him if he had the right person or not?

Either way, she wasn’t about to let this continue. If he suspected her, he wouldn’t take anything she said at face value and that could only impede finding Annie.

Shutting down the host of emotions bouncing wildly around inside of her, Brenda raised her head and looked him squarely in the eye. “Are you inferring that I had something to do with this?”

Dax took the opportunity to play along with the lead she gave him. “Did you?”

Thinking he suspected her was one thing, having him almost come out and say it was another. The reality of it cut through her like a saber, drawing blood and indignation.

“No! I would never—”

He raised his hand, silencing her with a single motion. He had no time for theatrics. For the time being, he’d buy into her innocence.

“Then let’s continue.” Dax turned toward Harwood. The man’s complexion was almost ashen. The headline Teacher Involved in Student’s Kidnapping had probably flashed through the headmaster’s mind, Dax mused. “And you’re sure she’s not around anywhere. Did someone check the other classrooms?”

Had his suspicions clogged his ears? “I already checked the other classrooms—” Brenda began. That was why the police had been called in to begin with.

“But not everywhere,” Nathan gently pointed out.

Dax thought of his own unruly elementary school experience. There were coat rooms and closets and a basement that probably ran the length of the school. A kid could hide anywhere. He had on more than one occasion. The sixth-grade coat room was where he’d stolen his first kiss from Amanda Jackson.

Brenda blew out a breath. “No, not everywhere,” she agreed.

“The students are all returning to their rooms,” Harwood pointed out. Had the door to his office been opened, the sound of shuffling feet would have been evident. “The teachers would notice someone who didn’t belong in their room. We keep the class sizes quite small.”

“Besides,” Brenda felt compelled to insist again, defending the little girl who couldn’t defend herself, “Annie wouldn’t do that. Annie was just beginning to come out of her shell, she wouldn’t deliberately run off or hide.”

“Shell?” Dax left the word hanging in the air, waiting for her to elaborate.

Oh Annie, I hope you’re not too scared. Brenda struggled not to let her empathy get the better of her. Annie had to be so frightened right now.

“Annie was—is,” she amended because the condition still held the little girl fast, “painfully shy, insecure. She’s an only child. Her father’s the film director Simon Tyler and her mother is an actress, or was. Rebecca Allen-Tyler. Supposedly, she’s retired now, but she’s still always off somewhere, away from Annie. They both usually are.” She knew that Simon was in Europe, directing a movie and Annie’s mother was somewhere in New York, on a shopping spree and visiting friends. Annie had shared that with her just this morning.

He wasn’t familiar with the woman’s name, but he did recognize the girl’s father. Dax didn’t know much about movies, leaving that to the film enthusiasts in the family. However, even he knew who Simon Tyler was. Anyone who ever walked into a blockbuster movie in the last ten years was familiar with Simon Tyler. His name appeared above only the highest moneymakers.

“So who takes care of her?” he asked Brenda, since she seemed to be the expert here.

An image of Annie, her eyes huge and sad, flashed through her mind. “The housekeeper for the most part,” Brenda told him.

Dax studied her again, trying to view her as an integral part of the scenario instead of quite possibly the most stunning woman he’d ever seen. “You seem to know a lot about her. You take that much of an interest in all your students?”

There it was again, that suspicion. She knew he was doing his job, but she didn’t have to like it. “Yes, I do. But Annie is special.”

“Special how?” Dax prodded.

“She’s very intelligent,” Harwood said. It was evident that he disliked being ignored.

Nathan flipped to yet another clean page. “Doogie Howser intelligent?”

Dax looked at his partner as if the latter had just lapsed into a foreign language. “Who?”

Nathan gave him a patronizing grin. TV trivia was the one area that he had covered while Dax wandered through it like a newborn babe. “I’ll explain it in the car,” Nathan promised.

“Gifted,” Brenda explained for his benefit. “And yes, I think she was.”

She didn’t add that she related to the little girl on almost all levels. Annie felt isolated from her parents and so had she. But in her own case, it was a physically and verbally abusive father who had caused the chasm that existed between she and her parents.

Until she left both of them, her mother had been no help, no buffer against her father’s volatile temper. Two days before her ninth birthday, she’d come home to find a note from her mother in the kitchen, addressed to her. The note said that she couldn’t take it any longer and that she was leaving in search of what she knew had to be a better life.

The memory shivered up and down her spine now, all these years later. Her father had beaten her when she’d told him the contents of the note.

At eighteen, she’d taken her mother’s cue and left home for good, marrying Wade York not because she was in love with him, but because she loved him for being everything her father was not. Eventually, she’d come to learn that loving someone for lack of certain qualities wasn’t enough. After seven years of trying, she and Wade had drifted apart.

In addition to the feeling of isolation, she’d related to the shy, withdrawn girl with the golden hair on another plane. Annie had been tested at near genius level, the same level that she herself had attained. In her case, there had been no one to push her; no one to help her make use of her potential; no teacher who had seen the spark. She’d been left on her own to discover it, finally enrolling in college while her husband, a marine, was shipped from one end of the globe to the other.

Brenda was determined that Annie was not going to fall by the wayside as she had.

But now Annie was missing. And it was her fault. She’d failed the girl.

Dax stepped back to open the door leading out of Harwood’s office. “Why don’t we go back to your classroom?”

“All right.” She squared her shoulders and pushing past him, she took the lead.

Once out in the hallway, Harwood was quick to catch up to her. “No one blames you for this, Brenda,” he said in a hushed tone.

Her anger, directed against both the brash detective and herself, softened slightly as she turned toward the man who had been nothing but kind to her. The man who, she knew if she’d give him a chance, would have been ready and eager to be more to her than just the man who signed her paychecks.

But despite the fact that he was a highly educated headmaster and Wade had been a marine who’d entered the service before he’d graduated high school, Matthew Harwood was too much like Wade for her. The fact that he was also her employer gave her an excuse to be tender to him, softening the blow. Harwood was sensitive and kind, but she wanted to make it on her own now.

If she wasn’t strong enough for one, how could she ever hope to be strong enough for two?

She paused before her classroom before turning the doorknob. Dax could see the tension skimming up and down her back. Apprehension? Guilt? It was still too soon to tell.

The classroom was empty.

The children who normally occupied it had temporarily been moved to the school library until the smell of smoke could be eradicated from the room.

As if of like mind, Dax and Nathan went straight to the wastepaper basket beside the desk.

Knowing they probably preferred to have her hang back, Brenda still joined them. Even looking at the basket, burnt and misshapen, the fact that the fire had started here still amazed her. She was so careful. How could this have happened? The metal container was completely blackened, as was the side of the desk closest to the basket.

“Looks like this is the only place the fire damaged,” Harwood noted.

Nathan looked around and nodded. “Lucky.”

“Controlled,” Dax countered. He raised his eyes to Brenda. “Whoever set this did it after the alarm went off.”

Why was he looking at her like that? Did he expect her to suddenly fall to her knees and confess? “How can you tell?” Brenda asked.

He’d already made the calculations. “Because it took the firefighters less than ten minutes to get here. Ten minutes would have been enough time for the fire to have spread throughout the whole room if it had started first. The alarm was tripped and the firefighters were already on their way when the fire was set. Someone wanted to be sure that no one was hurt during all this.” Dax paused as he looked at her. “Do you have any matches in the classroom?”

So much for thinking she was being paranoid. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

There was no smoking allowed on the premises. Besides, he doubted if she was a smoker. There were no nicotine stains between her middle and index fingers and her teeth were blazing white. Which begged the question, “Why?”

“We have a science project going.” She gestured toward the cone-shaped papier mâché structure sitting in the middle of a table in the far corner. It looked like a child’s version of a tropical island. “The children and I are making a volcano.”

Plausible, he thought, nodding. “Can I see the matches?”

Nerves were skittering through her as she opened the top drawer to her desk. She didn’t know whether to be furious or to search for the name of a good lawyer. Reaching for the box where she kept her matches, she stopped.

“They’re not here.” There wasn’t much to move around in the drawer, but she went through the motions with no success. “I keep them in a metal box, but it’s not in here.”

The taller of the two detectives said nothing, only nodded, but by now she was convinced that he thought she was involved in this more than just peripherally. Closer scrutiny into her life might only convince him of the fact. Recently widowed, her finances were not in the best of shape. Maybe he’d think that she decided to supplement it by ransoming Annie.

The very thought moved a cold shiver up and down her spine. The nausea that she had been struggling to keep at bay threatened to overpower her.

She blew out an annoyed breath as she slammed the drawer shut harder than she’d intended. “Look, I can take a lie-detector test.”

Guilty people didn’t usually volunteer to do that—unless they were very, very good, Dax thought. Lie detectors were not infallible and had been known to be fooled. Still, he decided to pass—for now. “That won’t be necessary.”

She surprised him by not grasping at the truce he offered her. “I think it is just to get that look out of your eyes. I want you to understand that I love Annie Tyler, maybe because no one else seems to, but I think that she is a wonderful little girl who has been given a raw deal from the day she was born.”

He decided to play devil’s advocate just to see her reaction. “Having parents who can buy you anything you want doesn’t seem like such a raw deal to me.”

“Anything but their time,” she pointed out evenly.

He looked at her with renewed interest. Not all kidnappings were about ransoms. Sometimes children were taken because the kidnapper thought they were rescuing the child from an unhappy life. “Maybe you could give her a better life.”

“I know I could—” Brenda stopped abruptly. “I didn’t take Annie. I wouldn’t traumatize her like that. Besides, I was right out there in plain sight all the time,” she pointed out.

That didn’t constitute an ironclad alibi. “Accomplices aren’t unheard of.”

She’d had just about enough of this. “Detective Cavanaugh, I want a lie-detector test,” she repeated. “I insist.”

“We’ll see what we can do to accommodate you later,” Dax told her before turning toward Harwood. “Right now, I’d like to talk to some of the other teachers, see if they saw anything. And while you’re at it, I’d like the address and phone number of those prospective parents Mrs. York was showing around.”

“Of course,” Harwood agreed quickly. “It’s in my office. I’ll go back and get it. Mrs. York can help you with the other teachers.”

Right now, Dax thought, Mrs. York looked as if she’d rather hand his head to him on a platter.

Chapter 3

“You really suspect her?”

Nathan was leaning back against the desk at the front of the room, his attention diverted toward Brenda York. He glanced at his partner. To his left a stocky, pleasant-faced teacher was leading a gaggle of second-graders out of the art room, which had been set aside to conduct questioning.

Dax was looking at Annie Tyler’s teacher from across the room. She was saying something to one of the kids who looked concerned. The boy smiled at her and nodded. She had a way about her, he thought. Made people trust her. Put them at their ease.

And at her mercy?

He glanced at his partner. “We’re supposed to suspect everyone, Nathan, you know that.”

Nathan gave a little shrug. His small pad inside his jacket pocket rustled against his shirt. The pages, thick with notes, were no longer smooth. “Yeah, but she seems so upset about it.”

Dax smiled. “You always did have a weakness for blondes.” He turned toward his partner. “The woman had access. By her own admission, she knows the little girl inside and out, that means she’d know exactly how to handle her.”

Shaking his head, Nathan frowned. “What’s her motive?”

She moved like poetry, Dax thought. Flowing into every step. Confident, yet incredibly feminine.

Abruptly, he wiped the thought from his mind, telling himself he had to get out more. Dax shoved his hands into his pockets. “Money’s always a good motive. Most people can’t have enough of it.”

“So you do suspect her.”

Dax shrugged. He was thinking out loud, but he and Nathan had that kind of relationship. Half-formed thoughts could be voiced in safety.

“My gut tells me no, my training tells me to hold off any final judgments.”

As he watched the woman stop to comfort one of the last children in the line, Nathan sighed. “If I were single, my gut would be telling me a whole lot of other things besides hold off.”

Dax laughed but made no comment. Precisely because his gut, or whatever part of him that was instrumental in allowing attraction to set in, was telling him a great deal, none of which included the phrase “hold off.” If being a cop, a good cop, wasn’t so ingrained in him, he might have followed through on one of any number of instincts.

As it was, he felt something stirring within him, something beyond the enormous sexual pull that kept harassing him. Harassing him because it couldn’t go anywhere. She was part of a case. And she was married.

She was also human. He saw the strain on her face before she locked it away.

Leaving Nathan behind him, he crossed to her. “You looked tired. Why don’t you take a break?”

The sound of the detective’s voice coming from behind her startled Brenda. She’d been allowing her mind to wander for a second. And grasp onto some awful scenarios. Regaining control over her emotions, she turned around to face him.

“That won’t help Annie.”

The sincerity he heard in her voice crept through the layers of steeliness he’d imposed around himself whenever he was working. He had to admit she impressed him. Someone else in her position would have been looking to distance themselves from the police as they covered their own tail. But she didn’t. Her concern was completely centered on the missing child.

“You know, about that lie detector test—”

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and she raised her chin again, as if bracing herself for a further confrontation. “Anytime, Detective.”

Anytime.

If he’d had the luxury right now, he would have allowed his thoughts free rein in a fantasy. But he didn’t have that luxury. What he had was a missing child.

Dax looked into her eyes. Nothing there made him doubt his decision. “I think we can skip it. The department doesn’t like having its time wasted.”

Was she finally allowed to get off the hook—or was he just toying with her? The thought that he suspected her of being involved in the kidnapping made her furious, never mind that logically, she knew it was his job to suspect everyone.

Brenda measured her words out slowly. “Then you finally believe that I didn’t have anything to do with this?”

He knew he was stepping outside the lines, but they paid him for going with instincts, and his professional one told him exactly what Nathan’s told him. That Brenda York wasn’t involved in this.

His eyes held hers and something inside him fidgeted. It gave him pause. But commitment was a funny thing. Any kind of commitment, even to a state of mind. It meant boxing himself in and he didn’t like to do that either. He liked the freedom that noncommitment represented.

So, he didn’t answer her.

Instead, he said, “You’ve been a great help with the kids.”

She’d had a calming effect, putting questions to them that had needed to be answered. They’d asked children from all the grades if any of them had seen anything suspicious. There’d been a few conflicting stories, none of which had amounted to anything. But even that was headway. It meant the kidnappers were very good at their job and that this had all been premeditated.

“I’m not too good with them myself,” he added since the stillness made him uncomfortable.

“No children of your own?”

He knew that if his late mother had had her way, he would have been married for years by now, with half a dozen kids. Truthfully, pleasing his mother had been the only reason he’d ever considered the state of matrimony—and very nearly made a fatal mistake he would have regretted, one way or another, for the rest of his life.

Dax shook his head. “No wife of my own.”

She gave him an amused look. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

Dax grinned. Sharp lady. “No, no kids of my own. You?”

She paused for a moment, as if about to say something, then shook her head. “No, I don’t have any children.” She nodded toward the last of the children filing out the door. “Those are my kids.”

He had the feeling she’d almost said something else, but let it go. He was guilty of reading too much into everything. “Big family.”

She moved her shoulders in a vague shrug. There was the hint of a longing expression on her face. “I always wanted a big family.”

He looked down at her left hand. Again, he wondered why there was no ring there. “How does your husband feel about that?”

The question stiffened her slightly. Everything was still raw. There hadn’t been enough time for a proper scab to form over things, even though she’d never really loved Wade. Somehow, that seemed to make it all worse. He had deserved better, he’d deserved someone who could have loved him to distraction.

She looked toward the doorway, away from the detective who stirred up too many things inside of her with his questions. “My husband doesn’t feel anything at all. He’s dead.”

Dax felt as if he’d just stomped on a delicate structure, breaking it into a hundred pieces. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

In her mind’s eyes, she could still see Wade, see his kind face. God, but she had tried to love him, really tried.

“Yes, so am I.” She knotted her hands together before her. “Wade was a good man. He was killed in a freak accident during maneuvers.” She looked at him, gauging her words, doling them out slowly only after examining them. She wasn’t used to being overly cautious. She liked to be open; it was a freedom she’d embraced wholeheartedly after leaving home. But this detective put her on her guard. “He was a marine.” She shifted her weight, impatient to leave the subject, impatient to get on with the pressing job of finding Annie. “That was the last of them. Anyone else you want to question?”

He’d called in backup. Several uniformed patrolmen had searched the building from top to bottom as well as the surrounding grounds. No sign of the missing girl had turned up. No handy clues, no lost hair ribbons like in the movies. Annie Tyler didn’t wear hair ribbons. And she seemed to have vanished into thin air.

In addition, the phone number the headmaster had produced as the one given by the couple Brenda had taken on the tour of the building had turned out to be bogus. No big surprise there. Dax had expected as much.

There were times he hated being right.

“No, no more questions right now. Except for you.” He saw the wariness creep into her eyes. What was she waiting for him to say? “Can you describe the couple?” He looked from her to Harwood, hoping that one of them had retained enough detail to create a half-decent sketch. Most people, he knew, weren’t good with details.

“I can do better than that,” Brenda told him. She took a pad from the easel and picked up a newly sharpened pencil from the desk. “I can sketch them for you.”

That would have been the next step, putting one or both of them together with a sketch artist. Exchanging looks with Nathan—Nathan’s had unabashed admiration clearly registering in his—Dax turned back to the woman. “You can do that?”

“Drawing is my hobby,” she told him. “It relaxes me.” And these days, she thought, she had to work really hard at relaxing. Decisions had to be made, events had to be faced up to.

Because her time was running out.

“Great, see what you can whip up for us.” As Brenda sat down and got busy, Dax looked at Harwood. “We’re going to need the little girl’s address. Her parents have to be notified.”

He’d held off doing that, hoping against hope to find the child without alarming her parents. He knew what his own parents had gone through the time his brother Troy had been lost in the woods while hiking with his friends. He’d been fifteen at the time and no one had taken him, but it had been harrowing nonetheless. “Missing” was one of the most pain-evoking words in the English language. It had been the worst twenty-eight hours his parents had ever gone through.

Obviously anticipating the request, Harwood produced a folded piece of paper from his pocket and surrendered it to him. On it was the Tylers’ address and phone number. “Annie’s father is on location in Europe. Her mother’s in New York, I believe, visiting friends.”

Brenda looked up from the image that was forming beneath her pencil on the sketch pad.

“I already put calls through to them,” she informed Dax. “Her mother’s catching the first flight out of Kennedy. Her father’s taking his private jet. But neither of them will be home for several hours.”

She’d jumped ahead of him again. There was no end to the surprises this diminutive blonde delivered, Dax thought. “So if there’s a ransom call—”

She’d thought of that as well. “There’s a housekeeper at the house, a Martha Danridge. She’s been with them for several years. I told Annie’s mother it might be wise to give Ms. Danridge instructions on what she wanted her to say if the kidnappers called.”

Nathan shook his head. Admiration shone in his eyes as he looked at the young woman. “You ever stop being a teacher, Mrs. York, we could certainly use you on the force.”

She smiled at him, dismissing the compliment with grace. “Just covering bases.”

The woman was clearheaded, Dax thought. He liked that. The women he came in contact with outside his own family tended to be a little foggy when it came to that department.

It was actually something he thought of as a plus. That way, he wouldn’t be tempted to make a mistake and get involved with any of them on more than just a passing, superficial level.

He came up behind her and looked over her shoulder at the sketch she was completing. It was of the woman. Her face was gaunt and there was a slight edge to it, a sharpness that made the viewer wary. “You really can draw.”

Brenda looked up at him. “I told you I could.”

“So you did.” He extrapolated on what she’d just told him. “You know the Tyler’s housekeeper?”

“Only by sight.”

She’d been to the house once, to talk to Annie’s parents about Annie. Martha Danridge had let her in and brought her to Annie’s mother. Annie’s father was away, which seemed par for the course, and her mother, completely forgetting about the appointment that had been made to discuss Annie’s painful shyness, had been on her way out. Perforce, the conversation had been brief. Rebecca Allen-Tyler had thanked her for her concern and dismissed her the way she might a waiter who’d brought the wrong order to her table.

Brenda’s heart had gone out to the little girl, knowing her mother undoubtedly treated her with the same regard: as something to be suffered, but not necessarily with patience. People like that, she thought, didn’t deserve having a bright, sensitive little girl like Annie.

Dax made a judgment call. “Close enough,” he told her.

She didn’t understand. “For what?”

He had a feeling she could smooth the way for them with the housekeeper faster than they could manage themselves. Badges tended to rattle people and the situation was already stressful enough. He’d seen her in action with both jittery teachers and anxious children. Her calming effect would be welcomed.

“I’d like you to come with us,” he explained. He could feel Nathan staring at him. “You can finish the second sketch on the way there.”

Brenda nodded. Her mouth curved. She was eager to do what she could. Being suddenly cast adrift while the detectives went on with the investigation would have made her insane.

“All right. I just need to stop by my room to get my things. I’ll meet you outside.”

Dax nodded his agreement and she hurried back to her classroom.

The stillness met her at the door the moment she opened it. It seemed to accuse her of negligence.

I’ll find you, Annie, I promise I will, she vowed silently.

Taking her purse from the bottom drawer in her desk, she turned around only to swallow a gasp. Harwood was standing almost directly behind her.

“Sorry,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I guess we’re all a little jumpy right now.” As she started for the door, he took her arm, detaining her for a moment. She looked at him quizzically.

“I just want you to know that I don’t for a moment think you have anything to do with this.” He paused, searching for words. She noticed that there was a thin line of perspiration on his upper lip. This had to be very difficult for him, she thought. The academy was his whole life. To have its reputation jeopardized this way had to have him cringing inwardly. “And I don’t hold you responsible.”

In a day and age when people were quick to shed blame and point fingers in an attempt to get attention refocused somewhere else, she was grateful for his taking the time to reassure her. He had no way of knowing about the precarious state she felt herself in.

“Thank you.”

Harwood took her hand in both of his and nodded in the general direction of the front of the school. She knew he meant to indicate the two detectives who were out there, waiting for her.

“Are you up to this? Going to Annie’s house, I mean. I can take you home if you’re not. No one’ll think the less of you.”

As if she could go home. As if she could find a shred of peace until the little girl was recovered, safe and sound.

Very delicately, Brenda pulled her hand away from his. “I’m fine, Matthew,” she assured him. “I just want to do anything I can to help.”

He sighed and nodded. “Of course you do. We all do.” He walked with her to the hall. “Call me and let me know if I can do anything for the Tylers.”

“I will,” she promised, then hurried down the long corridor to the massive double doors at the front of the building.

Outside, Dax and Nathan waited by the car. Unlike when they’d first arrived, there were few cars left. One by one, the teachers had all been dismissed, the children, as soon as they were quizzed, had been sent home. The only sign that something was amiss were the two patrol cars parked on the far side of the lot. But even that was being wrapped up.

Nathan waited in vain for an explanation. Finally, he asked, “Do you know what you’re doing? Isn’t taking the kid’s teacher along a little unorthodox? Even if she is a knockout.”

“Her being a knockout has nothing to do with it and no, it’s not a little unorthodox, it’s a lot unorthodox,” Dax corrected him. “But I’ve got a feeling she might be useful. She seems to know the kid pretty well and she’s got this calming effect on people.”

Other than himself, he added silently. One of the teachers had been close to hysteria once she discovered the reason for their presence on the premises. Brenda had calmed the woman down sufficiently so that she could give them a statement. The teacher hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, but if she had, Brenda would have been responsible for getting it out of her.

Besides, something told him to keep the woman close. He wasn’t sure just which instincts he was going on, but by and large, he’d learned to trust them and he wasn’t about to dismiss them now.

He straightened as he saw Brenda hurry through the double doors. The slight sultry breeze was playing with the ends of her hair that had come undone from the knot she’d arranged her hair into.

Damn but she was one hell of a good-looking woman, he thought again.

Martha Danridge was visibly trembling as she admitted them into what could only be termed a mansion some twenty-five minutes later. The three-storied building, complete with stables, a tennis court and two pools, sat atop a hill that was at the end of a long, winding road. The first time Brenda had seen it, she’d thought of a castle nestled in the center of a fairy tale. And Annie was the lonely princess.

Rebecca Allen-Tyler had spared the time to tell her that it was an actual castle, transplanted from Ireland and rebuilt stone by stone because she’d fallen in love with it on their honeymoon.

The king and queen, it seemed, spent hardly any time at all in their castle with their princess.

The housekeeper seemed barely capable of processing their names as Dax introduced himself and Nathan, then indicated Brenda. “And you already know Annie’s teacher, Brenda York.”

“Yes, I already know Mrs. York.” The crisp English accent seemed at odds with the nervous expression on the older woman’s face. One hand was working the edge of her apron as she closed the front door. “Mrs. Tyler isn’t here.”

“But she did call you,” Annie said.

“Yes.” Tears welled up in the woman’s brown eyes and she looked close to breaking down right before them. She covered her mouth with her hands, holding back a sob until she could regain some measure of control over her voice. “How could such a terrible thing happen? That poor little bit of a thing, she must be so frightened.”

Brenda slipped her arm around the woman’s shoulders in mute comfort. It was the same thought that kept crossing and recrossing her own mind ever since she realized Annie wasn’t out on the lawn with the rest of the class. Chillingly, she’d known that something was very, very wrong right from the first.

“The important thing is that we’re going to get her back,” Brenda assured the woman who sobbed into her handkerchief. The doorbell rang and Brenda’s head bobbed up, alert.

“That’s going to be the tech team,” Dax told the housekeeper. He’d placed a call, giving them the Tylers’ address, while he and Nathan had waited for Brenda.

Motioning to the housekeeper not to trouble herself, Nathan fell back and opened the front door. Two men and one woman, all carrying large black bags that looked like suitcases, walked in.

Dax approached the housekeeper. “We’re going to need to place bugs on all your phone lines.”

“Yes, of course,” Martha whispered, her voice cracking.

She was still shaking, Brenda noted. Again she slipped her arm around the woman’s thin shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

“Why don’t you show them where all the phones are?” she suggested gently.

Like a marionette whose string had been pulled, Martha nodded, her head bobbing up and down.

But before she could leave the foyer, Dax moved in front of her. “There hasn’t been a ransom call yet, has there?”

“No.” She swallowed hard, renewed panic entering her eyes as she looked from one detective to the other, and then at Brenda. “At least, I don’t think so. I was out at the store until just a little while ago, when Mrs. Tyler called me. There are no message on the answering machine,” she tagged on as if to cover her absence.

Dax didn’t know if the woman was simpleminded or just addled by the situation. “Kidnappers don’t generally leave messages on answering machines.”

“Oh.” She seemed completely deflated as she looked to Brenda for help.

“You have caller ID, don’t you?” Brenda asked. It seemed a safe enough assumption. A power couple like Annie’s parents would want the service to help them avoid people they didn’t want to talk to.

Again, Martha bobbed her head up and down. Brenda saw a phone in the living room and crossed to it. She spun the dial located in the upper right-hand corner. No calls other than the one with a 212 area code had registered in the last three hours. That would have been Annie’s mother, calling from New York with instructions for the housekeeper.

Brenda looked at Dax and shook her head. He turned toward the team Nathan had just admitted. “Let’s get those taps set up. The kidnappers might be calling any minute now.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the telephone began to ring.

Everyone froze.

Chapter 4

Martha stared at the pristine white telephone as if it were a giant snake, coiled and poised to spring at her. Her eyes were huge as she turned them on Dax.

“Oh, my God, it’s ringing.” Fear resonated in her voice. “What do I do?”

It was too late to set up the wire tap. They had to hope for a second call. Dax looked at the housekeeper. “Answer it,” he ordered

She began to visibly tremble.

“I can’t,” the housekeeper choked out the words. “Please don’t make me.” Frantic, Martha looked from one detective to the other. “What if I say the wrong thing? I just couldn’t live with myself if something happens to that child because of me—”

Dax did a poor job of hiding his exasperation. The seconds were ticking away fast and the phone continued to ring. “Look, lady—”

Not knowing what else to do, afraid that the moment and the call would slip through their fingers, Brenda snatched up the receiver.

“Tyler residence,” she enunciated in what she prayed was a fair imitation of Martha’s English accent.

Surprised, Dax stared at her. In desperation, because the kidnapper might be expecting a woman’s voice on the other end, he was about to tell Brenda to answer the telephone, but she’d anticipated him. The woman had a cool head, he thought.

Making eye contact, he indicated that she should keep the person on the other end of the line talking. If the kidnapper talked, there was a slim chance that a clue, a noise in the background, might be picked up, one that would help them locate where Annie Tyler was being held.

Brenda felt as if her stomach was going to revolt and come surging out of her mouth any time now. Her morning communes with the porcelain bowl were a thing of the past only by two weeks. And this felt much worse than morning sickness.

Concentrating on the kidnapper, she was still vaguely aware that six sets of eyes were trained on her.

The police technicians and two detectives were gathered in a semicircle around her, obviously straining to hear the other side of the conversation. She held on to the receiver with both hands, tilting the ear piece slightly so that at least some of the dialogue could be made out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martha sinking onto the sofa.

The instant she heard the voice on the other end, Brenda knew she hadn’t a prayer of trying to recognize it. The kidnapper could have been a man or a woman for all she knew. They were using a voice synthesizer. The irritating vibrations sounded like words being blown through a harmonica.

“We have the little girl. We don’t want to harm her.”

You bastards. Brenda struggled to keep her feelings from spilling out. “And we do not want her harmed,” she told the caller, plucking words out of nowhere. Her mind felt as if it was completely blank. “What do you want us to do?”

The voice on the other end of the line paused, as if playing out the moment. Brenda could feel the tension rising with every second that passed. “Tell the Tylers we want two million dollars and then she’ll be returned. That shouldn’t be hard for them to manage.”

Dax suddenly grabbed Nathan’s jacket and pulled it open. His partner jumped, staring at him accusingly. “Hey.”

The protest faded as Dax took out his pad and the pen he kept there and began to quickly scribble something down. Done, he held the pad up for her to read as the metallic voice droned in her ear.

She squinted, trying to make out the words he’d written. The detective had alternated between printing and using script, both of which were almost illegible. Giving him an exasperated look, she filled in the gaps as best as she could.

“How do we know she’s still alive?” Brenda asked. She kept her eyes on Dax. “We want proof.” Dax nodded as she got his message right. “A photograph of Annie holding today’s newspaper in her hands.”

This time, there was no pause. There was anger. “We’re the ones with all the cards here, bitch. We make the terms, not you.”

She suppressed the urge to beg the kidnapper not to hurt Annie, to let her go. That would only empower him or her. Instead, she reiterated more forcefully, “We need proof.”

When there was no answer, she raised her eyes to Dax for instruction. To her horror, he took hold of her wrist and pushed her hand down until the receiver was back in its cradle.

He’d made her hang up the phone.

She stared at him, stunned and furious. “What the hell are you doing?”

“The kidnapper was going to hang up on you.”

She couldn’t believe what he was saying. “So I got him first, is that it?” she demanded heatedly.

There was an edge to his voice. Because the risk wasn’t foolproof. But rules needed to be established. “He’s right, he’s got all the cards. But if he feels that way, we stand less of a chance of getting the girl back, even if we do hand over the money.”

“If?” she echoed. “We’re not going to do what they say? This isn’t a statistic, Detective, this is a little girl we’re talking about. A living, breathing, please God, little girl. We have to do what they say.” Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she looked at him and then toward the telephone. “Provided, of course, that they call back.”

“They’ll call back,” he said with a conviction he didn’t quite feel. The others said nothing to contradict him, but he knew that Nathan didn’t approve of what he’d done.

Dax sweated out the next minute and a half as they dragged themselves up, a microsecond at a time.

The phone rang again.

Though she’d been waiting for it, praying for it, the sound made her jump. Relief flooding through her, her knees feeling almost too weak to support her, Brenda jerked the receiver up and placed it to her ear.

“Hello?”

She was aware of Dax peeling the earpiece back from her ear so that he could hear. Brenda resisted the urge to hold it in place.

“Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again, bitch!” There was barely suppressed fury in the kidnapper’s voice. “Or you get to hear the bullet go through her head. Understood?”

She couldn’t even swallow. There was no saliva left in her mouth. “Understood.”

Again there was a pause. She could feel the moments pulsating.

“You’ll have your picture,” the clipped, metallic voice finally told her. “I’ll call back tomorrow and tell you where you can find it.”

“Tomorrow?” Brenda thought of Annie having to endure the night as a prisoner somewhere. Annie, frightened, thinking no one would come for her. That nobody cared. “Why not today?”

“Because I said so.”

The line went dead.

“Hello? Hello?” Helpless, she looked up at Dax. “He hung up.”

Very gently, Dax took the receiver out of her hand and replaced it in its cradle. “You did great,” he told her. The woman looked as if she was going to sag to the floor right in front of him. He put his arm around her shoulders, offering her support. She seemed to stiffen against him. “You want to sit down?”

Brenda deliberately shrugged him off. “No. What I want is to find Annie.”

“Yeah, we all do.” Battling to keep frustration at bay, he scrubbed his hand over his face, then looked at her. He’d heard everything she had, but she’d been a microinch closer to the receiver. Maybe that was enough. “Did you hear anything in the background, anything at all?”

She shook her head. “It was like talking to ET’s evil twin. I couldn’t even tell you if it was a man or woman. But ‘he’ kept switching his pronouns, interchanging ‘I’ and ‘we’ several times. That means there’s at least two of them.”

He nodded. It just reinforced his suspicions that the bogus couple who’d asked for a tour of the school were the ones who had taken the little girl. It would have helped if Harwood Academy had surveillance cameras in place, but for a prestigious school, they were appallingly lax in electronic security. A condition he figured the headmaster was going to fix—if he was given a chance. He suspected the kidnapping was going to cost the man some withdrawals.

He looked at Brenda. Unlike the housekeeper, she’d kept her cool throughout the ordeal. He knew it couldn’t have been easy on her. “Quick thinking on your part, using that accent.”

“I thought they might know the Tylers had an English housekeeper.” She realized the admission underscored the fact that she subconsciously agreed with the detective. Someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to plot this all out. Her eyes lit as information worked its way forward through her brain. The kidnapper hadn’t demanded to speak to either parent. “The kidnapper seemed to know that neither of Annie’s parents were home.”

Dax nodded. “They did their homework. This wasn’t a random snatch, this was very well planned.”

The thought chilled her. Had she been observed as well? In the classroom, had someone been watching? For how long? The north side of her classroom was completely exposed with a large bay window that comprised half the wall. She pushed the thought away.

She saw Nathan retrieve his notepad and then place it back into his pocket. “You know,” she told Dax, “you’ve got pretty lousy handwriting. You should do something about that.”

It was nothing he hadn’t heard before. His sister Janelle had said his notes all looked as if they’d been done by a drunken spider whose legs had been dipped in ink. “You managed to read it, didn’t you?”

She laughed shortly. “Only because I’m versed in scribble.”

“Whatever it takes,” he responded. Dax turned his attention to the housekeeper. Seeing him look at her, the woman tried to rally but rising from the sofa seemed to be more than she could manage at the moment. He crouched before her. “Have you noticed any strangers around here lately?”

Martha didn’t have to pause to reflect. “Mrs. Tyler’s having the guest house remodeled.”

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