LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

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