“She’s a beautiful little girl.”

Brent felt as if his throat was constricting again. His eyes stung, and he didn’t bother trying to blink back the tears. Would he ever see her again?

“Yes, she is,” he agreed quietly. His fingers tightened around the remote, but he made no move to stop the video. “I shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing. Thinking about eating. Thinking about—” His voice halted abruptly as guilt washed over his face.

“Thinking about what?” Callie half expected him to say something about killing the man who’d done this horrible thing.

She was caught completely by surprise when he quietly confessed, “You.”

Racing Against Time
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To

Helen Conrad,

still wonderful

after all these years

Contents

Prologue

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

Prologue

He sat in his car and watched them.

Just as he had yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. Watched them and memorized their movements.

He didn’t want there to be any slipups.

That was what had gotten him in trouble before. Thinking he hadn’t made a mistake when he had. He’d been too confident, too sure that he was smarter than the people around him.

This time he knew better. Knew that he couldn’t allow the fact that he was more intelligent than the people he was dealing with to blur his caution, his inbred sense of survival.

That had gotten away from him before, caused his downfall.

Pride went before a fall.

He still had his pride. And it was that pride he meant to avenge.

His pride and his life.

Because the man who lived in the house he was watching, whose comings and goings he had quickly committed to memory, had taken it all away from him. Taken away his life, his pride.

His daughter.

Payback time was finally here.

Very carefully he turned the key in the ignition. The vehicle he was sitting in purred to life, ready to do his bidding.

He smiled to himself as he moved the transmission shift lever into drive.

He was through waiting.

It was time to act.

Chapter 1

Brenton Montgomery didn’t generally oversleep.

Quite the opposite, in fact. Former decorated Aurora police officer, former respected A.D.A. and presently, highly regarded criminal court justice, he had been blessed with an inner clock that went off anywhere from two to five minutes before the alarm clock on his nightstand. It had been that way ever since he’d had a need for an alarm clock.

But every once in a while, after he put in a particularly long night poring over briefs and struggling with his conscience over which was the right path for him to take for all parties who stood before his scarred judge’s desk in criminal court, Brent discovered that sleep wouldn’t come.

And then, when it finally did arrive, it brought with it an asbestos blanket that smothered him, effectively separating him from the rest of the world. From the rest of his life.

This morning he’d rolled over in the four-poster bed that Jennifer had selected—the bed that was the single inanimate holdover from his brief mistake of a marriage—and had hardly been aware of opening his eyes. He didn’t remember focusing on the clock beside his telephone. But the instant he did, he’d sat bolt upright as the flashing blue digital lights imprinted themselves on his brain.

Seven-fifty.

He was due in court at eight-thirty.

Brent had no memory of his trip down the front stairs.

“I thought you’d decided to sleep in this morning, Judge.”

The statement greeted him exactly twelve minutes later as, damp from his shower, his clothes sticking to him as if he’d woken up in a swamp, Brent hurried into the kitchen and past his housekeeper, Delia Culhane. The sight of his five-year-old daughter, Rachel, sitting on a stool at the breakfast counter registered along the perimeter of his mind. She was wearing something blue. Maybe lavender or light purple.

“If I had intended on sleeping in, Delia, I would have told you.”

Without meaning to, Brent bit the words off gruffly as he swung open the refrigerator and grabbed one of the individual orange juice containers that Delia kept stocked for Rachel. There was no time for breakfast. This was going to have to do.

It took effort to rein in his temper. He had no patience with tardiness, least of all his own. “I should have been in the car two minutes ago.”

Briefcase in one hand, juice container in the other, Brent hurried out the back door to the garage where his BMW was housed, a hastily tossed goodbye hanging in the air behind him.

After he’d driven down the first long block, it occurred to him that for the first time in five years, he hadn’t kissed his daughter goodbye.

He debated turning around, but there was no time. He was already going to be late.

Brent kept on driving.

“About time you got here. Everyone else is already seated at the table, eating.”

Barking out the greeting to his firstborn daughter as the back door opened then closed behind her, Andrew Cavanaugh barely dragged his glance away from the professional stove that took up half of the back wall. The French toast he was preparing commanded his entire attention, although his family knew that he could have very easily prepared any one of a number of meals blindfolded and made them to mouthwatering perfection. Approaching his sixth decade, he was a better chef than he had been a police chief, and he had been a very, very good police chief.

Callie Cavanaugh slid in at the wide kitchen table beside her older brother, Shaw. She nodded at her three other siblings and removed the napkin from the center of her plate. She wasn’t really hungry, but breakfast in the house where she and her brothers and sisters had grown up was a ritual. It had been ever since her father had retired from the force.

Andrew claimed it was his way of keeping track of his brood and anyone else who wanted to show up at the table for a meal. There was never a shortage of food. Or love, for that matter, though that was not always as blatantly on display as the plates were. But it was understood. You had a problem, no matter what your age, you showed up at the table. There’d be someone along to help sort things out, by and by.

All five of the Cavanaugh children had followed in their father’s footsteps and joined the Aurora Police Department. Even Lorrayne, the youngest and the official family hellion had finally come around, after giving her father twelve years of grief and turning the rest of his black hair gray. The fact that all of them chose to go into law enforcement was a testament to the regard with which they held their father.

Callie took a sip from the glass of orange juice that was next to her plate. There were times when it seemed to her that everyone named Cavanaugh found their way into law enforcement eventually. Her grandfather had served, as had both of her father’s brothers. The younger of the two, Brian, was currently the chief of detectives. Another brother, Mike, two years his junior, had died in the line of duty fifteen years ago. His son, Patrick, had joined the force, as well.

Only Uncle Mike’s daughter, Patience, had broken away from the family mould and become a veterinarian. But even she had ties to the department. In her capacity as vet, she treated all the dogs that had been recruited into the K-9 division.

Uncle Brian’s only daughter, Janelle, worked in the D.A.’s office while his sons Troy, Jarrod and Dax had all taken the long, blue path into law enforcement, as well.

“So, what kept you?” Andrew wanted to know as he placed a piece of French toast dusted with powdered sugar on Callie’s plate.

She looked down at the serving. It was quite possibly the largest piece of French toast to ever have come out of a pan, but then, Andrew believed bigger was better when it came to breakfast. He knew that quite often there would be no time for lunch or possibly even dinner until the wee hours. So breakfast, he maintained, was a definite necessity for survival, and the more, the better.

“I caught every red light from the apartment to here.” It was a lie, but Callie felt it could be excused. If she told her father the truth, he’d look at her with those sympathetic blue-gray eyes of his, and she wasn’t up to that right now. Better sarcasm than kindness. Kindness had a way of creeping under the layers of the barriers she’d laid around herself and undermining all her hard work. She smiled prettily at him. “Wouldn’t want me speeding now, would you?”

He saw right through her, the way he did all his children. It was the sixth sense that some parents were blessed with. Or cursed with, depending on the point of view.

Still, he played along, knowing what saving face was all about. More than once he’d drifted in the same rudderless boat his daughter had occupied. And on occasion, it came by to give him a return trip to the land of hopelessness. The only difference was that for him, there’d never been any real closure, no tangible evidence to extinguish the last flicker of hope that Rose was still alive.

“No,” he agreed. “Would like to see you getting up earlier, though, so you could make it while the meal was still hot.”

She looked down at the serving he’d just placed before her. There was steam curling from it. “Any hotter, Dad, and my plate’ll go up in smoke.” She waited until he finished filling her coffee cup, then reached for it. “You know, I can pour my own cup of coffee.”

Andrew stopped to top off Shaw’s cup before placing the pot back on its stand. “I know. So can I.” He raised one semidark eyebrow as he fixed her with a penetrating look. “Or would you want to deny an old man one of the few pleasures he has left in life?”

Shaw snorted as he polished off the last of his own breakfast. “Old man,” he echoed. “That’ll be the day.”

Adding a drop of cream to her pitch-black coffee, Callie smiled at the wordplay. She picked up the cup with both hands and took a long, deep sip. Her father’s coffee was guaranteed to get a stopped heart beating again, and this morning she knew she needed all the help she could get.

She’d barely slept, having finally drifted off, if it could be called that, somewhere around three. Memories of Kyle insisted on haunting her. Last Saturday had marked one year since his death.

Funny, she’d thought she was finally making progress, finally moving on with her life. Wrong.

Just went to show you that you could never count on anything. Other than family, she amended. The sun would stop rising in the east before she would ever stop counting on her family to come through for her.

But this wasn’t the kind of thing her family could really help with. The best they could do was just silently be there for her. Support her with their presence, but not their words. Words were useless.

Callie counted on her work to take up the slack, to blanket the pain until she could handle it. So far, the pain was refusing to let itself be pushed into the background for more than a few days at a time.

It wasn’t that she wanted to forget Kyle. Kyle embodied so many of the best moments of her life. She just wanted to be able to think of him without shards of glass cutting into her chest and gut, making it an effort to breathe.

That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

As if reading her mind, she felt her father’s hand on her shoulder. Just a little extra pressure, nothing more. But it was enough. She smiled her thanks, grateful for his understanding. Equally grateful that he didn’t verbalize anything.

And then he was on his way, back to the stove and his first love. They all knew, because he’d told them countless times, how he’d put himself through school as a short-order cook and had managed to develop into one hell of a chef over the years, whenever his career didn’t put demands on him.

The stack of French toast piled on the platter beside the stove was beginning to rival the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Andrew drew over a second platter and decreased the pile, then glanced over his shoulder toward the table.

“Seconds, anyone?”

It was a misleading question. Most of them had already had seconds. By the looks of it, Clay was on thirds. Their father’s cooking was far too good to resist. Callie was thoroughly convinced that even Gandhi would have been tempted to at least temporarily turn his back on his well-publicized fast to sample a little of her father’s creations.

But just as Andrew asked, the sound of a beeper going off framed his words. Five sets of eyes went to the appendages they kept clipped to their belts.

A blue light highlighting a phone number was looking back at her. “Mine,” Callie declared.

“And we have a winner,” Andrew sighed, shaking his head.

Andrew knew she would be leaving momentarily. On the other side of the fence now, he felt the frustration that he knew his wife had had to endure every time he’d been called away from the table, or missed a meal because of the demands of his job.

He glanced accusingly at the barely touched fare on his oldest daughter’s plate. The powder hadn’t even faded yet. “You haven’t had time to eat enough food to keep a hummingbird alive.”

“They eat twice their body weight, Dad,” Teri informed him as she broke off a piece of what was to become her third serving of French toast. “You wouldn’t want Callie to roll out of here, would you?”

“No chance of that happening even if she ate three times her body weight,” Clay, Teri’s younger brother by two and a half minutes, commented. Though they were twins, they hardly looked alike. Fair, with long blond hair, Teri looked like their mother, while Clay, though not as dark as Shaw, had their father’s black Irish look.

Callie held her hand up for silence as she dug out her cell phone. She might as well not have wasted the effort. There was an annoying message on her LCD screen. She frowned. “No signal.”

“Must be Clay’s magnetic personality, interfering,” Teri cracked. “Hey,” she protested as Clay helped himself to the remainder of her toast. She pulled back her plate, but it was too late. The right flank of her French toast had been victimized.

Andrew pretended to shake his head. “Ah, the sound of squabbling children, how could I have forgotten what that was like?”

All but two of his children had moved out, but the apartment Clay had been subletting from an aspiring actor had suddenly been reclaimed by its owner when the latter returned from the east coast. That left Clay without a place to stay. Temporarily.

Temporarily had already woven its way into two months without any visible signs of terminating. And Andrew, secretly, couldn’t have been happier even though he said nothing out loud to confirm it.

“Hey, if you didn’t want them coming around, Dad, you’d stop leaving food out for them to find,” Lorrayne pointed out.

“Respect your elders, Squirt,” Shaw told her just before he drank deeply of his third cup of leaded coffee.

Rayne lifted her chin defensively, her blue-gray eyes narrowing beneath her bangs. “Just who are you calling Squirt?”

Knowing that the only way to quiet this crowd was to arm herself with a handful of tranquilizer darts and use them effectively, Callie crossed into the living room to get away from the din before placing her call to the number registered on her beeper. A glance at the screen told her the transmission signal had returned.

Holding one hand over her ear as she turned away from the breakfast noise, she quickly hit the keypad numbers with her thumb.

“This is Cavanaugh,” she said the second she heard someone pick up on the other end. “You paged me?”

“Better get down here, Callie.”

She recognized the voice. It belonged to the man she’d been partnered with until recently. Seth Adams. The man had made detective five years before she had and had resented being “saddled” with her. He’d thought nepotism had placed her where she was. He’d soon learned that it was aptitude that had gotten her her badge, nothing more, nothing less. Still, they blended together like oil and water. The captain agreed that a separation was in order.

“What’s up?” she wanted to know.

“We’ve got a dead woman on the sidewalk. Looks like she was struck and thrown by a car.”

She waited for something more to follow. When it didn’t, she asked, “Hit-and-run?”

“Absolutely.”

It didn’t make sense to her. “Vehicular manslaughter. How’s that my territory?”

Callie dealt with the living, not the dead. Specifically, with searching for missing persons. It was a department that was near and dear to her father’s heart. Fifteen years ago, her mother had gotten into her car and driven away. She never came back. The car was eventually found submerged in a lake twenty miles north of Aurora, but no amount of searching had ever turned up her body.

Her father never gave up the hope that someday Rose Cavanaugh would come walking back into the house she’d stormed out of in the wake of an argument her father never stopped blaming himself for. In some small way, Callie felt that by working in missing persons she kept up her father’s hope that her mother was still alive.

“She wasn’t alone, Callie. From all appearances, the woman had a little girl with her. The first cop on the scene went through the dead woman’s wallet. Delia Anne Culhane. Judge Brenton Montgomery’s housekeeper.” He paused for a moment, letting the words sink in. “The missing kid is his daughter.”

A knot came out of nowhere and tightened itself in the pit of her stomach as she recognized the name.

“I’ll be right there.” Hanging up, Callie turned around. Her father was standing just shy of the threshold, watching her. He couldn’t have gotten very much from her side of the conversation, she thought. She debated saying something to him. He knew Montgomery better than she did. Another time, she decided. “I’ve got to get going.”

It was then that she noticed her father was holding a brown paper bag in his hand. Full if the bulge in the middle was any indication.

He held it out to her. “Packed you a lunch.” He smiled, the character lines about his eyes crinkling. “In case you get hungry one of these days.”

She knew he meant well, but she wasn’t thirteen anymore, being sent off to school. “Dad—”

Taking her hand, he closed her fingers around the top of the bag. “Humor me. I’ve been both mother and father to this bunch for fifteen years.” His smile took twenty years off his age. “These parental urges get hard to fight sometimes.”

As always, she retreated from the line of skirmish. She’d learned long ago to pick her fights, and this wasn’t worth more than a few words. She grinned at him, nodding at the bag. “Will I like it?”

The expression on Andrew’s face was incredulous, as if he couldn’t believe she had to ask. “Is the pope Catholic?”

“Last I checked.” She paused to kiss his cheek. “Thanks, Dad.” The words had nothing to do with the lunch he’d tucked into her hand, and everything to do with the care he’d spent raising her right.

Embarrassed, Andrew waved her on her way. “Go. They’re waiting on you.” He guessed at the caller. “Tell Adams I said hello.”

Callie stopped. She hadn’t told him who was on the phone. “How is it you know everything?”

He gave her a crooked grin. “I’m old. I’m supposed to know everything. I’ve got it in writing. Now get going before the crime scene gets contaminated.”

If it hasn’t already been, she thought. Nodding, Callie hurried out the door she’d used less than ten minutes ago.

An hour and a half later, Callie paused outside the closed doors of the courtroom. Gathering courage and the right words.

There were no right words. Not for this.

The corridor on the second floor was mostly empty. Courts were in session behind the black double doors that lined both sides of the long hallway. If she listened intently, she could swear that she could almost hear various lives being altered.

And behind this particular set of doors some family’s life was being rearranged by a man known to be both just and fair. And not easily swayed by pretense. A dark, sober man who brooked no nonsense, stood for no lies. And had had his share of grief.

And she was going to add to it.

Callie let out a long breath, then took in another, centering herself. She’d just left the scene of the accident.

The scene of the crime, she amended grimly.

The judge’s housekeeper, a woman in her late thirties, still pretty, still with so much life ahead of her, had died instantly, according to the coroner’s preliminary findings. And, despite the fact that the hit-and-run had occurred on the corner of a well-traveled street, there had been no witnesses to see what had happened. At least none who had come forward so far.

But it was still early.

Because there were no witnesses, there would have been no reason to suspect that the dead woman, who had been in the judge’s employ for just over four years, hadn’t been alone.

If it wasn’t for the pink backpack found twenty feet from the body.

Rachel Montgomery’s backpack.

A backpack but no Rachel Montgomery.

And it was up to her to tell this to the judge. To tell him that the peaceful world he’d left just a short while ago was no more. His housekeeper was gone and quite possibly so was his daughter.

Staring at the black door closest to her, Callie squared her shoulders. This kind of thing was never easy. Adams had said he was willing to go see the judge and tell him what had happened, but she’d vetoed that. He’d looked at her in surprise when she had volunteered to be the one to break the news to Montgomery. But there was a reason for that.

She knew the judge. Once upon a time, they’d had a brief connection. Before life with all its details had gotten in the way.

Into the valley of death rode the 600, she thought as she pushed open the door. Her path was immediately blocked by a tall man in dark livery. He looked like a solid wall of muscle and he wasn’t about to go anywhere.

“Can’t go in there,” the bailiff warned. “Court’s in session.” He motioned for her to remove herself voluntarily. Or he would do it for her.

In her head Callie was aware of some giant time-piece, ticking the minutes away. Ticking away the minutes of Rachel Montgomery’s life.

She had her identification out in less time than it took to think about it. Callie held it up to the bailiff, who stared at it with a note of skepticism in his eyes.

“I realize it’s in session,” she said as patiently as she could, “but Judge Montgomery is going to want to hear this.”

Still the man was not about to go anywhere. Or let her go, either. “Tell me, Detective. I’ll tell him.”

“It’s about his housekeeper. And his daughter,” she added, unwilling to reveal anything further. If she’d wanted a third party to take care of this, she would have phoned the courthouse and brutally left a message.

Just as she uttered the word daughter, Brent raised his penetrating blue eyes away from the face of the youthful offender before him and looked toward the back of the room.

Right at her.

Chapter 2

He knew her.

Brent looked at the woman in the light-gray suit who’d just walked into his courtroom. Recognition set in instantly. In the space of one extraordinary moment, the entire scenario returned to him in total. From beginning to end.

He’d been at a charity fund-raiser, one of those boring things he was obligated to attend. He hadn’t been appointed a judge yet, but there were whispers, rumors. And he knew he couldn’t displease the gods in charge even though he would much rather have been home, dressed in his oldest clothes, standing over his daughter’s crib, watching her breathe.

It seemed like little enough to ask, to stand in awe and watch a miracle breathe.

Besides, he and Jennifer were riding the cusp of another one of their eternal disagreements and he hadn’t felt like putting on his public face, the one that appeared unperturbed by anything. He hated glad-handing, hated being anything but genuine.

But there was the pending judgeship to consider, and Jennifer would have given him no peace if he’d declined the invitation to the event. So he’d accepted and made the best of it. Making small talk with even smaller people.

His wife was off somewhere in the huge ballroom, politicking. Rubbing elbows and who-knew-what-else with men she thought might further her life and his career. Or maybe just her life.

He remembered feeling completely cut off from everyone and everything, and longing just to go home.

And then he’d seen her.

Surrounded by men who bore vague resemblances to her, leaving him to guess, to hope, that they might be family rather than ardent admirers. As if that could possibly matter to him in his position. He was hopelessly married.

That had been the word for it. Hopelessly. Because there seemed to be little hope that his marriage could transform into what he’d first thought it might become. Happy. Fulfilling. Tranquilizing.

A surge of all three feelings, plus a host of a great many more shot through him the first time he looked in her direction. In the direction of the most exquisite creature he’d ever seen.

Her hair wasn’t pulled back the way it was now, in a thick braid the color of wheat the instant it first ripened. It had been loose about her bare shoulders then, sweeping along them with every movement she made. Creating havoc in his gut as he found himself wanting to do the same with his fingers.

She was wearing something light and gauzy and blue. It seemed to be held against her body by magic. Certainly not gravity, which should have been on his side and sent the garment pooling down to her strappy, high-heeled sandals.

He remembered there was music. The first he’d become aware of that night, even though the band had been playing all evening and would continue to do so for the remainder of the event.

He wasn’t quite sure how he came to find himself standing in front of her, or where he unearthed the courage to introduce himself to her. He didn’t normally do things like that. He was given to hanging back and observing. It was both his failing and his strength. Standing on the perimeter of life where he felt he could do the most good. Impartially.

Maybe he’d come forward because he recognized the man standing to the woman’s left. Andrew Cavanaugh, the retired police chief of Aurora. Her father, he was to learn later. The others were her brothers and cousins.

Whatever the reason that had prompted him to shed his cloak of silence, he was suddenly standing before her. Introducing himself and asking her if she would like to dance. Something else he didn’t do willingly, even though he’d been instructed in the fine art of dancing only recently. Jennifer had insisted on it. So he wouldn’t embarrass her, she’d said.

He had no desire to embarrass Jennifer. Had no thoughts of his wife whatsoever. For the space of a score of heartbeats, she was completely excised from his brain, if not his life.

He vividly remembered the way Callie Cavanaugh’s smile had gone straight to his head as she’d raised her eyes to his and accepted the hand he held out. Remembered how low her voice was, like fine, hundred-year-old brandy being reverently poured into a crystal glass. Low and sexy.

Remembered, too, the electricity, the tension, the indescribable feeling of lightness that came over him as he held her in his arms and danced.

One small dance, a simple exchange of words, and a connection was made that felt as if it had been forged out of steel in the beginning of time.

Before.

He’d looked down into her eyes and gotten lost.

But he had a child and a position and a wife—who intruded into the moment the instant the music faded away. Like an avenging hawk, jealous that her cast-off had attracted someone else’s attention, Jennifer had swooped down from wherever it was that she had been roosting to reclaim what was hers.

And he was obliged to let her.

Even though his eyes followed Callie as she moved from the floor.

He had no idea what they called it. A connection, chemistry, kismet. Some term invented by inert poets who had nothing better to do than to bury people in rhetoric. He couldn’t put a label to it himself. All he knew was that he’d felt something nameless. Something wonderful. Something he’d never felt before. Or since. Something that whispered into his ear “If only” long after the dance, the fund-raiser itself, was over.

If only…

But the timing then had been all wrong.

As it was now.

Brent roused himself, realizing that he’d paused and that his secretary and his aide were both unabashedly staring at him.

“Court is in session.” He shot an accusing look at the bailiff in the rear of the room. The latter raised his hands helplessly.

Callie circumvented the man, her attention on Brent. God, but he had only gotten better looking since she’d seen him. The next moment, she upbraided herself. How could she even think something like that? She was here to give him awful news, not appraise his appearance.

“Excuse me, Your Honor.” She took another step toward him, only to find herself in a dance now with the bailiff who tried to get in front of her. “I need a word with you.”

Brent hated disruptions. “Can’t it wait, Officer Cavanaugh?”

“Detective Cavanaugh,” Callie automatically corrected, wishing what she had to say could be put off. “And no, I’m afraid it really can’t.”

Brent looked to his left, to his aide, Edwin Cambridge, who in turn looked pained as he stared down at the calendar he had drawn himself to accommodate the judge’s cases. Precision was Edwin’s passion. He felt it a matter of honor to have things running smoothly in the court.

The man sighed, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod of his head.

“There’ll be a slight recess,” Brent announced to the two opposing lawyers, who looked at him with exasperation. The plaintiff was seated to the far left of the center. The man, barely in his twenties, looked greatly relieved at the interruption, like someone who had been granted a stay from the governor just before the switch was thrown.

Brent beckoned Callie forward. He wondered if she’d ever married that detective he’d heard she was engaged to and what had brought her into his courtroom today. Had there been a bomb threat? Should they be evacuating? After the events that had rocked the country very recently, nothing seemed impossible anymore.

“Make this quick, Detective Cavanaugh,” he demanded, suppressing the urge to ask her how she’d been since that evening. “I have a very full schedule today.”

“You have a full schedule every day,” Edwin informed him.

Brent chose to ignore the man. It seemed simpler that way than to engage in a dialogue with him. Edwin liked getting in the last word.

“You might want to reschedule your cases,” Callie suggested tactfully as she followed Brent to his chambers.

Brent closed the door behind her, locking Edwin out, much to the latter’s displeasure, then turned around. The judge crossed his arms, looking for all the world like an angel of darkness to her.

“All right, Detective, I’m waiting. And this had better be good,” he warned her, although a part of him didn’t believe that she would just waltz into his courtroom without a damn good reason.

Callie took a breath. “Actually, it’s not. It’s bad.” Her eyes met his. There was no easy way to do this, no way to prepare someone for the words she was about to say. There wasn’t even a way to prepare herself to say them. They felt like molten lead in her mouth, and even while she wanted nothing more than to expel them, she knew the damage they would do the second they were out. “Very bad.”

Something seized his gut, tightening it so that for a moment he stopped breathing. A prayer materialized out of nowhere as he hoped that, for whatever reason, the woman he’d once held in his arms and danced with was overstating the matter.

“I didn’t realize that you have a flare for the dramatic.”

If only. If only this wasn’t more than she thought it was and the little girl was somewhere, safe but frightened, hiding. Ready to be found.

Callie pressed her lips together, wishing it was so. But the truth was all she’d ever known and she couldn’t sugarcoat this. “I don’t.”

The two words hung in the air between them, foreboding. Frightening.

He tried not to let his imagination run away with him. It couldn’t be helped.

Was this about his wife?

His ex-wife, Brent amended. The first in his family to don black robes and become a judge, he was also the first in his family to get a divorce. Not all firsts were commendable, he’d thought bitterly at the time. Just unavoidable. Had this woman come to tell him that something had happened to Jennifer?

Inner instincts had him bracing himself. “Well then, what is it, Detective? I really—”

Do it. It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid. The faster, the better.

Her father had counseled her with that. She was not entirely sure if that was the best approach to use. All she knew was that she didn’t want to prolong this any more than was absolutely necessary.

Sympathy flooded through her as she said, “Your housekeeper was killed this morning.”

Brent stared at her as if she’d just spoken in tongues. He’d just seen his housekeeper, what, two, two and a half hours ago. How could she possibly be dead?

“Delia? Killed?” he echoed in blatant disbelief. “How?”

Beneath the composure she could see that he was genuinely upset. Was it just shock? Or was there something more going on between the judge and the crumpled woman who had been reduced to a chalk outline by the cruel whimsy of fate?

“Hit-and-run.”

The words were only marginally sinking in. And then fear sprang up, huge and hoary, seizing him by the throat.

Rachel.

“What time?”

Callie blinked, thinking she’d misheard the question. “Excuse me?”

“What time?” he demanded again, his voice rising, booming about the small chambers. “What time was she killed?”

Callie thought back to the coroner’s estimation. “Approximately eight o’clock.”

Approximately. Delia always liked to be early. Had the housekeeper gotten his daughter to school before eight and been on her way home when the car had struck her?

Or—

His mind couldn’t, wouldn’t go there. Not if it didn’t have to.

As if he were poised on a spring, Brent suddenly turned from the woman in his room and began dialing the phone on his desk. Halfway through, he realized he’d transposed two of the numbers. Swallowing a curse, telling himself that everything, at least for Rachel, was all right, he began dialing again.

“Judge, who are you—”

Callie didn’t get a chance to finish her question, to ask the judge who he was calling. The expression on his face as he looked up at her stopped her dead, sucking out her very breath.

There was controlled terror in his eyes.

“She was taking my daughter to school. I want to find out if Rachel is in her classroom.”

Very gently Callie placed her hand over his to stop him. The man needed more information before he called anyone. He deserved it.

Callie hated this, absolutely hated this. But he had to be told. “We found your daughter’s backpack at the scene.”

Brent could feel the blood draining out of his face as he looked at the woman who was discharging the nail gun straight at his heart.

“Where is she?” Everything inside of him was shaking, and it was all he could do not to allow it to take complete control.

Was he going to go into shock? She looked toward the chair behind him. Maybe she could get him to sit down. “Your Honor—”

He felt like shaking her, grabbing her waist and squeezing out of her the words he needed to hear. Why was she putting him through this? Why this torture in slow motion?

“Where is she?” he demanded again, his voice bouncing along the walls of the small, austere chambers like captive thunder.

Callie hated this feeling of helplessness. She knew everything took time, that good police work was far removed from magic or the quick solutions that the public was spoon-fed via TV dramas. But that didn’t keep her from wishing she had answers for this heart-broken father standing before her.

She curbed the urge to place a comforting hand on his shoulder, knowing it wouldn’t be appreciated. Knowing he’d push it away.

“We don’t know,” she told him honestly. “We think she might have run off when she saw your housekeeper struck by the vehicle.”

Brent shut his eyes, searching for strength, for resolve. He shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that.”

But even as he said the words, his brain demanded: How do you know? How do you know what a traumatized five-year-old would do? He knew he was operating on hope and nothing more.

Get hold of yourself, man. She’s fine. She probably ran off to school. It’s Delia who you should be concerned about.

Brent thought of the bright young woman who’d formed such a bond with his daughter. Delia had come to him with excellent references and a real hunger to make a difference in someone’s life. Rachel had been that someone.

Still, denial was part of survival and it was strong. He looked at Callie, a kernel of hope popping up. Maybe there was some mistake. “Are you sure it was my housekeeper?”

She knew what he was asking, what he was hoping. Her heart went out to him. He hadn’t had an easy time of it, and she admired the fact that he was a single father. Like her father had been for the past fifteen years.

Grimly, Callie took out the plastic-encased wallet that the CSI agent had inserted into a bag at her request and given to her. Delia Culhane’s wallet had been placed inside, opened to the woman’s driver’s license. Callie held it up for the judge’s benefit.

“Oh, God.” He took it into his hands, staring at the woman’s face through the plastic. The license hardly did her justice. It didn’t capture the sparkling eyes, the laughter that his daughter was so quick to respond to. “Did she suffer?”

Callie continued to watch every nuance that passed over the judge’s face. She felt like a voyeur and hated it, but this was her job. To read people and look for telltale signs that gave them away. She didn’t have to like it.

“Coroner said she died instantly.”

At least that was something. Brent nodded, handing the bagged wallet back to her, his eyes on the telephone on his desk. He was dialing again the moment Callie took the wallet from him.

Callie tucked the wallet back into the wide pockets of her jacket. She indicated the telephone. “Are you calling your daughter’s school?”

He nodded, then raised his eyes to hers. Maybe she was right. Maybe Rachel had run off, hurrying to the school to notify someone about what had happened. She was a bright little girl, a feisty girl, far older than her young years. Rachel would know that Delia would need help. He pressed the last button on the keypad.

“It’s all I can think of.”

It was a logical next move. “Where does she—”

He heard the question begin, but his attention suddenly shifted to the voice that was coming from the other end of the receiver. A high, sweet voice that was asking him how she might direct his call.

“Principal Walsh, please.” He struggled to sound calm. “Yes, this is an emergency.”

Brent shut his eyes as a click and then silence greeted him. The operator had placed him on hold. Placed his very life on hold.

He felt a hand touch his black-draped arm.

He was still wearing his judge’s robe, he realized. Somehow that struck him as ironic, given the fact that at this moment he felt as if there was no justice in the world. Not if hardworking women could be struck down and left like so much litter on the road. Not when young children, babies really, could vanish on their way to school in a city where they were supposed to be safe.

The detective was looking at him, compassion in her blue-gray eyes.

“If you give me the name of the school, I can have someone there probably before you get taken off hold,” Callie told him helpfully.

He was about to tell her the school’s name when he heard a click and then a woman’s deep voice echoing in his ear. It was the school’s principal. The one time he’d met her, he remembered thinking she looked like a feminine version of a U.S. Marines drill sergeant. He also remembered thinking that Rachel would be safe in a place run by a woman like that.

“Yes, this is Judge Brenton Montgomery. My daughter attends the morning kindergarten sessions at your school. Could you have someone check to see if she arrived this morning? Rachel Montgomery,” he said in reply to the question. “No, I don’t remember her teacher’s name.” He almost lost his patience, then fought to regain it. “No, wait, it’s Preston, Presley, something like that. Yes, Peterson, that’s right. Mrs. Peterson. Could you please check if Rachel arrived? Because there’s been an accident, that’s why.”

What a hollow phrase that was, he thought in disgust. There’s been an accident. Delia Culhane’s life was cut short and it could be explained away by a single sentence that consisted of four words. It just didn’t seem right or fair.

He blew out a breath, the last of his patience tethered by a thin thread. “Yes, I’ll hold.”

Brent turned from the wall and looked at Callie. He felt as if he was tottering on the very brink of hell, waiting to plunge down into the fires below as he stood there listening to the sound of silence pulsing against his ear. Waiting until the principal’s messenger returned and she in turn told him what he wanted to hear. That Rachel was miraculously there.

Or was that pulsing sound his own heart, marking time, waiting, hoping?

Praying.

But Bristol and Oak was such a huge intersection and Rachel was such a little girl. Would she have run across it, terrorized by the sight of her beloved nanny being hit by a car?

Or was she still somewhere in the area, hiding? Crying. Waiting for him to come and rescue her. He wanted to be down there, looking for her. His inertia was strangling him.

Placing a hand over the receiver’s mouthpiece, he turned toward Callie.

“Was it a drunk driver?” What other explanation could there be for hitting someone? No matter that it was early, maybe someone was still celebrating something from the night before. And death had stolen in at the end of the celebration.

Her own negative answers wearied her. “We don’t know. We don’t have any real details yet.”

“What did the witnesses say?”

“We haven’t found any witnesses. Yet,” she emphasized.

Of course they hadn’t, he realized. If there were witnesses, someone would have been able to tell them where his daughter was. Which direction she’d gone in. He wasn’t thinking straight.

Callie saw Brent suddenly stiffen, his eyes intent as a voice came on the line. She didn’t hear the words, only the muffled sound of someone talking.

She didn’t need to hear the words. She read his expression.

The receiver slipped from Brent’s fingers to the cradle beneath. Dread washed over him as he looked at Callie.

“Rachel didn’t come to class today.”

Chapter 3

Callie’s heart immediately went out to him.

It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that look of complete devastation; the look that said the person’s insides had just been seized and twisted into a knot. Fifteen years ago she’d seen it on her own father’s face.

For the sake of his children, Andrew Cavanaugh had kept up a good front the night his wife’s car had been found nearly submerged in the river. So good a front that Callie had thought perhaps her parents’ arguments had taken their toll and he’d ceased to care for her mother.

But then Callie had come up behind him late that second night, when the hopelessness of the situation had hit him and he’d thought he was alone. And heard him quietly crying.

It was a sound she would never forget. It marked the first time that her very secure world had been breached. The first time the door to that world had been thrown open, leaving them all vulnerable, and she realized that no one was ever completely safe.

Nothing had brought it home to her more acutely than when Kyle had been killed right in front of her eyes. Her fiancé hadn’t even known that she had reached him a heartbeat later, that she’d held him to her on the sidewalk in front of the bank and sobbed his name over and over again. He was already dead by then. As dead as the man she had shot an instant before she’d reached Kyle. Shot and killed the bank robber who had first turned his weapon on her—the man who had killed Kyle.

Callie struggled to get her emotions under control now, struggled to keep a steady voice. Emotions only impeded progress on the cases she worked. She more than anyone else knew that.

She glanced toward the back of the framed photograph on Brent’s desk. “I’m going to need a recent photograph of your daughter, Judge. The sooner we have police officers looking for her, the sooner we’ll find her.”

He nodded numbly, feeling like a man who was underwater and drowning. His brain seemed to be processing everything in slow motion. But he knew the credo. “Every minute counts.”

“Yes, it does.” She took out her pad, ready to jot down any shred of information that could be used. “How much does she weigh?”

At first his mind was blank, then he remembered. Delia had told him the information after Rachel’s last pediatric checkup. “Forty-eight, no, forty-nine pounds.”

“Height?”

“Three foot three.” He looked at her. “She’s small for her age.”

She offered him a smile she knew wasn’t going to help, but she felt bound to try, anyway. “Do you remember what she was wearing this morning?”

He opened his mouth to tell her, but this time when no words came out, there was no belated memory to struggle to the foreground. “Something blue. I think.” Damn it, why hadn’t he looked at Rachel? “I didn’t notice,” he confessed.

Didn’t notice because he was late. Because today was his day to preside over his court a half hour earlier because his docket was so overcrowded. So he hadn’t looked at his daughter because he had to listen to some jaded lawyer plead the case of an equally jaded two-bit drug dealer. And because of these two people who mattered less than nothing to him, he hadn’t sat down to breakfast with his daughter, hadn’t noticed what she was wearing.

Hadn’t kissed her goodbye.

The knot inside of him twisted a little more. He looked toward Callie as he upbraided himself. “I didn’t kiss her goodbye.”

Callie looked up from the note she’d just made. “Excuse me?”

Damn it, what was wrong with him? Rachel was the most important person in his world, how could he have just ignored her like that? What kind of father was he?

Callie saw Brent square his shoulders like a man prepared to face a firing squad for his transgressions. “This morning when I left the house I was in a hurry. I didn’t kiss Rachel goodbye. It was the first time I didn’t kiss her goodbye.”

As far as she was concerned, that placed him head and shoulders above a great many fathers she knew. “You’ll kiss her twice to make up for it when we bring her back.”

“When,” he echoed. He wasn’t the kind of man who deluded himself. He wasn’t an optimist by nature. Yet he wanted to cling to the single word.

“When,” Callie repeated firmly. As far as she was concerned, it was a promise. She couldn’t operate any other way. Every crime was to be solved, every missing person to be found. The thought of failure was impossible at this juncture. “We’re going to find your daughter, Judge. The success record for recovering children is getting better all the time.”

“Better” meant that there were failures. But he already knew that.

No, he couldn’t go there, couldn’t allow himself to think that he might never see Rachel again, never sit at a table again, cheating at Old Maid for the pleasure of seeing her laugh with glee because she’d won again. She was the only bright light in his life, and he would have gladly given up his own life to ensure that she would be returned, unharmed.

“Judge, the photograph,” Callie prodded gently, nodding toward the frame.

He took it from his desk and handed it to her. Callie quickly removed the photograph from its frame. She placed the empty frame on the desk, then looked at the photograph. It was a professional portrait, taken at a studio. Happiness radiated from the small face and intelligent eyes. She could almost hear the little girl giggling.

“I’ll get this back to you as soon as possible,” Callie promised.

She had nearly reached the door before the fact that she was leaving registered with Brent. He felt as if a vacuum had suddenly been created around him. He knew he couldn’t just stay here.

“Wait.” He threw off his robes, tossing the black garment in the general direction of his chair. “I’m coming with you.”

She stopped dead. The sympathy she felt for him did not interfere with her duty. “You know the rules, Judge. You can’t do that.”

Yes he knew the rules, but he was in no-man’s-land now and rules didn’t work here, didn’t mean anything. “I’m not the judge right now.” Crossing to her, he looked down into her eyes. “I’m Rachel’s father. I’m Brent.”

She’d called him that once, he recalled. Long ago when they had danced. When Rachel had been safe.

He was making this hard for her, Callie thought. And though he’d just thrown the title aside, his being a judge might very well be the reason all this was happening. But it was still early and she didn’t want to heap theories on the man until she had a few more facts to work with.

“I need you to go home,” she told him as gently as possible. “There might be a ransom call.”

Ransom. Money.

Bitterness rose up in his throat as he turned the words over in his head. Ever since he could remember, his wealth had always been more a burden than a joy. It had made him doubt who his friends were. Then he’d discovered that Jennifer had been far more attracted to his wealth and his potential prestige than she had been to him.

And now was money the reason his daughter had been snatched?

What other conclusion could there be? “Then you do think she’s been kidnapped.” It wasn’t a question, it was a resigned statement.

Callie surprised him by shaking her head. “It’s far too early in the game to make a call, Jud—Brent,” she said. “But it’s always wise to keep all the options open. I’m still hoping your daughter just ran off. She witnessed a traumatic scene this morning. Anyone would have run off.”

Another shaft went through his heart. That Rachel had gone through something like that by herself, without having him there to shield her, broke his heart. Rachel was just a baby. Babies were supposed to feel secure, to know nothing but simple, happy times, not see someone they loved killed right before their eyes.

“She shouldn’t have seen that.”

Callie heard the accusation in his voice and instinctively knew he was blaming himself. That wasn’t going to help either him or his daughter. “It’s a very hard world, Brent. We can’t protect our children forever.”

He looked at her. “You have children?”

“No. I was speaking figuratively.” She had to get going. Callie opened the door behind her. “Go home, Brent. Someone will be there to talk with you shortly—”

“You,” Brent said firmly. He’d heard via the grapevine that she was an outstanding detective, very much a credit to her father and her family name. All the Cavanaughs were. He wanted, needed, the best right now. “I want you to be the one to come to the house and tell me what’s happening.”

She was about to protest that she was going to be out in the field, but then stopped herself. She could stretch a minute here, borrow a quarter of an hour there and somehow find the time. He deserved that kind of consideration. Everyone going through what he was going through did.

Besides, the most odious part of this investigation was still ahead of them. Like it or not, she was going to have to question Brent to make sure that he hadn’t choreographed his own daughter’s abduction for some macabre reason of his own. Of all the things she had to do while working a missing child case, she hated this part most of all. Hated pointing a veiled finger at a parent while their heart was already splintered in a thousand pieces over what might have happened to their child.

These were the rules, she reminded herself. If they were going to make any headway, she had to follow the rules. It was all any of them had. And in times of turmoil, rules were what held them together when everything around them demanded that they fall apart. Rules and order had been what had kept her going after Kyle had been taken from her. Following rules, keeping to a schedule.

Placing one foot in front of the other until somehow, paths from here to there were made.

She was still placing one foot in front of the other, Callie thought. But now she was a little more clear on where she was going. And the place beneath her feet felt a little more like solid ground, a little less like clouds.

She nodded in response to his request. Or maybe it wasn’t so much of a request as a mandate. Not that she could blame him.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

He looked at her. It would have to do. “Send in my aide on your way out, will you? He’s probably right outside, trying to hear what’s going on.”

She nodded, offering him an encouraging smile as she left the chambers.

A little more than an hour later, Callie was driving up the long hill that led to Brent Montgomery’s home. She’d left the photograph of the bright-eyed, smiling blond child with Greg Harris, the computer operative they had on loan from the PR division of the police department. Greg’s instructions were to print several thousand copies of Rachel Montgomery’s photograph, along with a short description as to her vitals and what was presumably her last known location. Bristol and Oak, where Delia Culhane had been struck down by the vehicle.

The intersection outside of the upscale development was a busy one. While Bristol itself wasn’t Aurora’s main thoroughfare, each end of it led onto a freeway. Someone had to have seen something, Callie argued with herself. They just had to get the word out as quickly as possible and hope that one of Aurora’s good citizens stepped up. Fast.

This was definitely not a tract house, Callie thought as she pulled up the circular driveway. With its stone facade, the house where Brent and his daughter lived reminded her of a medieval castle. The place where she had grown up could have easily fit into the building twice.

Maybe two and a half times, she mused, getting out of her car. She couldn’t begin to imagine what someone with just one child could do with all that space. It seemed cold and removed to her. Perfect for a museum. In her father’s house, they were always tripping over each other, but somehow that seemed cozier.

Her heels clicked on the gray-and-white cobblestones as she hurried up the walk to the door.

The doorbell had hardly peeled once before the massive door was being opened. Brent was in the doorway, the tiny spark of hope in his eyes extinguishing the moment he looked at her face.

The structure should have dwarfed him, but it didn’t. He seemed to be a perfect match for his surroundings. Powerful, commanding a feeling of awe and respect.

And massive sympathy, she thought, looking into his eyes. Dark blue, they seemed endlessly deep with pain. And she had nothing to tell him that would change that. Yet.

“The technicians will be coming soon,” she told him as she entered.

“Technicians?”

“To wire the phones.” A place like this had to have a battalion of telephones. She turned to look at him. “In case there is a ransom call.” She could see what he was thinking, that the kidnapper would know to hang up before the call could be traced. “Not every criminal has a genius IQ. That only happens in the movies. Most kidnappers are greedy, and their greed causes them to slip up. When they do, we’ll be right there.” He closed the door behind her. For a moment the silence embraced her, bringing with it a huge sadness. She struggled against the urge to offer empty platitudes. “How are you holding up?”

He’d been raised to keep a stiff upper lip when it came to the public. There was to be no hint of scandal, no implication that everything wasn’t perfect. He was a Montgomery, and perforce, everything was perfect. Or so the facade went. Inbred instincts brought the immediate response of “fine” to his lips, and then he paused. He took his responsibility as judge solemnly to heart. That meant he couldn’t lie.

“I’m not.”

She was surprised by his honesty. Most men pretended they could handle any situation that came their way, whether they could or not. That put in him a very small, rare class.

“This will all be in the past soon enough, Judge—Brent.” She corrected herself again when she saw him look at her sharply. Belatedly she realized what he would read into her words.

“Did you find out anything?”

“Not yet.” Guilt washed over Callie. She hadn’t meant to mislead him, only to offer hope. “The CSI team on the scene is working on identifying the kind of car the man who killed your housekeeper was driving.”

Most of the vehicles that frequented the road fell into four or five categories, popular models of economical foreign cars. “How’s that going to help find my daughter?”

She knew how frustrating this had to be for him. They were crawling when he wanted to be running. “Every piece of the puzzle is necessary in order to create the total picture.” She gave him something positive to work with. “In the meantime, we have beat cops going door to door with your daughter’s photograph. If she’s in the area, willingly or unwillingly,” Callie emphasized, “we will find her.”

She believed what she was saying, he thought. But he knew the odds. He couldn’t have been a judge in the criminal system if he didn’t. “And if she’s not in the area?”

“We will still find her.”

She looked around the immediate area. The foyer led into a spacious living room that seemed much larger for its restraint in furnishings. There were no antiques, no museum pieces gracing walls or tables. This was a house that belonged to a man who felt no need to prove anything to anyone. A man who was confident in his own skin. It would take a lot to rattle him. And he had been rattled. Badly. It was time to share her theories with him.

“You know, there is a chance that someone might have been stalking your housekeeper and that this was strictly about her. Did Ms. Culhane have any boyfriends, odd friends…?” Her voice trailed off, letting him fill in the blanks.

Brent took no time to think. He didn’t have to. “Not that I know of.”

The housekeeper wouldn’t have been the first one to have a secret life her employer didn’t know about. “What did she do on her days off?”

It was hard not to pace about the room. Brent could feel the pressure building up inside of him, searching for release.

“Stayed here most of the time. She really cared about Rachel.” He wasn’t giving the woman her due, he thought. In his concern about his daughter’s safety, Delia had become a footnote. “Delia was a great help when Rachel’s mother left. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been here.”

She noticed the way he structured the sentence, referring to the woman as Rachel’s mother rather than his wife or ex-wife. Jennifer Montgomery must have hurt him a great deal, Callie thought, for Brent to have iced over his heart this way.

“Were you and Ms. Culhane—close?”

“She didn’t like being called Ms.” His mouth curved slightly as he remembered the speech Delia had given him. “Thought that sounded too vague. She was unmarried by choice and she had no problem with the world knowing it.” He could see the detective was still waiting for an answer to her question. “If by ‘close’ you mean did we sometimes have lengthy talks about what we thought was best for Rachel, yes.” His eyes darkened slightly at what he knew was the implication. “If you mean anything else, no.”

Callie pressed on. “You didn’t take her out to dinner or—”

Brent cut her short. “Once each year for her birthday. With Rachel,” he added, his voice stony, cold. “And there is no ‘or,’ Detective. Delia Culhane was my housekeeper and Rachel’s nanny. And a very, very good woman.” He took offense for the woman who could no longer speak for herself. “She doesn’t deserve the kind of thoughts you’re having.”

“I’m not having any thoughts, Judge.” Callie used his title deliberately, to drive home the point that she was being professional, nothing more, nothing less. “I’m doing my job. The more information I have, the better I can do it.”

“Well, unless there’s some deep, dark secret I didn’t know about, my daughter’s kidnapping,” the term stung his tongue but he couldn’t continue to pretend that it was anything else, “doesn’t have anything to do with Delia beyond the obvious. That she died trying to protect my daughter.”

Callie knew that was what he wanted to think, but she didn’t have the luxury of allowing him to believe that without questioning the woman’s integrity further. “Miss Culhane wouldn’t have tried to take Rachel on her own, would she?”

He glared at her. “The woman is dead, Callie.”

This was the first time he’d used her name, and she paused for a long moment to gather her thoughts.

Callie took a breath. “Yes, but maybe she orchestrated the kidnapping in order to get money—or revenge—” She still couldn’t rule that out. Perhaps the woman felt she had received some slight or had some grievance against him. Even if it was imaginary, it still needed to be checked out. “And it backfired.” There was no honor among thieves, there were only thieves. “Her partner decided that he couldn’t share the money with her.”

Brent was adamant as he shook his head. “She’d been with me since Rachel was a year old. Look, Callie, it’s my job to read people. Delia Culhane didn’t have a mean or mercenary bone in her body. She was entirely selfless.”

Callie blew out a breath as she took in his information. Whether or not he was right still had to be determined, but for the moment she could pretend to believe him.

“All right, for the time being let’s pretend that she was pure as the driven snow. Still, I need to look through her things, just as a formality.” He wasn’t fooled, she thought. “Would you mind showing me her room?”

With conscious effort he strove to take the edge off his temper. He knew she was just doing her job. “No, I wouldn’t mind, but you’re going entirely in the wrong direction.” He looked at her. “Just as you will with your next tack.”

God, but he was tall, she thought. And decidedly masculine. Even more than he’d been that night they danced. He seemed to draw the very air out of the room. “My next tack?”

This time he allowed himself the slightest hint of a smile. Because the very thought was hopelessly ludicrous. “Where you rule me out as a suspect.”

He was going to make it easy for her. She was grateful for that. “Personally I don’t see you as a suspect.”

He wondered if she was patronizing him, then decided that she wasn’t. Still he wanted his question answered. “And you’re basing this on what? On our dancing together once?”

She hadn’t expected him to oppose her on this, much less bring up that incident. She was equally surprised that he even remembered dancing with her. But she remembered.

Funny how some things just stuck in your mind. She’d thought back to that evening, that dance, more than once. She couldn’t even say why, because she had never allowed her thoughts free rein when it came to that memory. He’d been married and she wasn’t the type to be with a married man in any way that wasn’t completely public.

“On your reputation,” she replied tersely. “And on the fact that you know my father. Dad’s a damn good judge of character.” She smiled at him. “And he always liked you.”

He went at it like the lawyer he’d once been. “Hearsay.”

“All right, then, on my gut instinct.”

Again Brent overruled her. “Not admissible in court.”

She looked at him. “You want me to question you like a suspect?”

He knew this had to be done and he wanted it over with as fast as possible. “I want you to rule me out as a suspect. Officially.”

“All right, then.” She took a deep breath and began asking him questions as they walked to the rear of the main floor and his late housekeeper’s room.

Chapter 4

“I want my daddy. Where’s my daddy?”

Rachel wiggled against the restraints that had been added to her seatbelt. It was like the time Tommy Edwards threw ropes around her when he was playing Spider-Man. He told her they were webs, but they weren’t.

She could hardly move.

Outside the rear passenger window, scenery she’d never seen before whizzed by. She screwed her eyes shut tight for a second, determined not to cry. Crying was for babies, and she wasn’t a baby. She was a big girl. Delia always told her so.

The thought of her nanny, lying on the road where cars could hit her if she didn’t get up brought a tight, scratchy feeling to her throat, making it feel as if it was going to close up.

Rachel struggled against that, too. She had to be brave. Brave until her daddy came for her. She knew he would.

She wanted to have his arms around her now, making her feel safe. Why wasn’t he coming?

Where was he?

Sucking in air, she looked through the closed window and screamed “Dad-dee!” as loud as she could. But there was no one to hear her anymore. There were no people here. Just her and this man who had grabbed her, pulling her into his funny-looking car.

Delia had tried to grab her back, screaming for help, but he’d pushed her away. And then, when she’d tried to pull open the door, he’d made the car spin around. There was a big “Whap” and she heard Delia scream once. When she’d struggled to look out the window, Delia was lying down. She’d tried to call to her, but the man had pulled her back, holding her by the arm and squeezing. Hard. Squeezing until she promised not to cry out.

She’d promised, but he’d held on to her anyway, driving with just one hand. He held her like that until they were someplace she’d never seen before. Then he’d tied her up and put her in the back seat.

She wanted her daddy.

He looked at her in his rearview mirror. She was a spunky little kid.

Like his Alice was.

The thought of his daughter brought a fresh salvo of pain to the middle of his chest, stoking the red-hot fire in his belly. He hadn’t seen Alice in five years, didn’t even have any idea where she was now. That bitch had taken her away, the one who had promised to stick by him. For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Just not during a jail sentence.

He pressed his lips together, forcing his mind forward. He’d lost Alice. For now. But he’d found another. This was going to be his Alice now. The goddamned judge owed him that.

Hell, Montgomery owed him a lot more, but this would do. For starters.

“You can call for your daddy all you want,” he told the little girl mildly. He took care to keep his voice low, nonthreatening. He didn’t want to scare her. He wanted her happy. And to love him. Just like Alice had. “But it won’t do you any good. He gave you to me. Said you were mine now.”

Something funny was happening in her tummy. It felt like ants running up and down inside. Red-hot ants. She’d felt like this when she’d watched that movie on TV, the one about witches. Until Delia had turned it off.

Rachel began breathing hard, frightened. Telling herself that her daddy wouldn’t do that to her. He’d never give her away. He loved her.

But he hadn’t kissed her goodbye today. He’d left without even talking to her.

She could feel tears stinging the corners of her eyes and stuck out her lower lip. “That’s not true.”

He liked the fire he saw. She was like him, never giving up. Good. “Yes, it is. He doesn’t have time for you anymore. He’s too busy being a judge.”

Busy. Daddy said he was in a hurry this morning. And he’d left fast. “My daddy always has time for me,” she declared, but she wasn’t so sure anymore.

He raised his eyes to look at the small face in the rearview mirror. She was petulant. He was gaining, he thought, satisfied with himself. “He didn’t even kiss you goodbye this morning, did he?”

It hadn’t been a difficult matter for him to break into the house yesterday, when the housekeeper had gone to pick the little girl up, and plant two cameras in the house, one in the living room, one in the kitchen. Child’s play for a man of his talents, really. And he had seen everything.

The judge should have let him make restitution. Should have let him slide. Winked and looked the other way as a deal was struck. Not stripped him of everything. Not stolen his life.

Rachel’s mouth fell open, and she stared at the back of the man’s head. “How did you know that?”

A smile slid over his lips. He turned to look at the little girl in the back seat. There was no traffic here, no other cars at all. They were in the country now. And entirely on his terms.

“Easy. I’m an angel.” Alice always liked angels. Had insisted on having them all over her room. On the wallpaper; scattered throughout her room. There’d been stuffed cherubs lining her shelves. She even wore one around her neck on a chain. He’d always called her his special angel. “Angels know everything.”

Rachel bunched up her face, glaring at him contemptuously. “You’re lying,” she accused righteously. “You’re not an angel. Angels don’t drive cars.”

He saw no reason to argue over this. She was too smart to be taken in. Probably didn’t believe in Santa Claus, either. Good, that made things easier.

“No, you’re right,” he agreed, turning around again. “I’m not an angel. But I am your new daddy. So you’d better get used to the idea.”

He flipped on the radio after fumbling with the controls for a moment.

Rachel screwed her eyes shut again. But this time as her lower lip quivered, a tear leaked out from beneath her lashes.

Brent paced back and forth in his den, his cordless phone against his ear. He was too upset, too restless to even attempt to sit down. “That’s right, Carmella,” he told the secretary on the other end of the connection, “a leave of absence. I’m taking a leave of absence.”

“But, Judge, your calendar’s full.” The rustle of pages could be heard, mingling with the young woman’s protest. He knew his schedule was never far from her reach.

Brent could hear how flabbergasted she was. Since they’d begun working together, he hadn’t taken more than a few days off, all one at a time, weaving his life around his career the best way possible.

But this was different. This took precedence over everything else.

“Yes, I know, but it can’t be helped.” He rubbed his forehead, trying to think. The headache was getting the better of him, knocking thoughts into the background. “Judge Holstein always said he would cover for me if I needed it.” It was time to call in favors. “And there’s Judge Reynolds and Judge Wojohowitz. They can be counted on to pick up some of the slack.”

Carmella sighed into his ear. He knew what she was thinking. Rescheduling the docket was going to be a severe challenge. She was good, but she wasn’t a miracle worker. But that was exactly what he was in the market for right now, a miracle worker.

He wondered just how closely Callie Cavanaugh fit that description.

There was more shuffling of pages as she asked, “How long is this leave for?”

He couldn’t tell her that it was open-ended. For one thing, her protest would be heated, for another, that meant admitting to himself that his daughter wasn’t going to be found by the end of the day.

Or two.

For once in his life Brent forced himself to be and sound optimistic.

“A week.” He paused, and then, because he was what he was and optimism came at a high premium, he added, “And after that we’ll see.”

There was another pause on the line. Carmella was having trouble comprehending, he thought. A few days was reasonable, a week was stretching it. Since this was unexpected, fathoming anything else was close to impossible.

“Judge—”

He didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to remain on the line with her anymore, even though Carmella Petrocelli was one of the most pleasant people he’d ever met and competent on top of that. The woman was dependability itself. He didn’t want her asking questions. Carmella was one of those people who cared, and he couldn’t handle that right now. It would make him break down.

“Do what you can, Carmella.”

Like the small terrier she had as a pet, Carmella hung on. “Judge, does this have to do with that police detective this morning? Is anything wrong?”

Natural instincts had him wanting to say no, that everything was fine, but the news would be out soon enough. He tried to convince himself that this was for Rachel’s good. The more people who actually knew, the better. It was just that it was so hard for him to admit that he was not in control of a situation and this time, he was so out of control it scared the hell out of him.

“My daughter’s—” What could he say? Missing? No, she was more than missing, she was stolen. No amount of denial was going to change that. He began again, his mouth dry, the words sticking to the roof like bits of white, dampened bread. “My daughter’s been kidnapped, Carmella.”

“Oh, my God, Judge.” The receiver echoed with her concern. “I…I don’t know what to say. Is there anything I can do?”

Yes, find my daughter. Show me the bastard who did this so I can kill him for ever touching my little girl.

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