In Broad Daylight

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.

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