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  As if to confirm what he told her, his scanner squawked to life. "Looks like he's on his way to the bus terminal," a disembodied voice informed them.

  "And so are we," Dax told Brenda as he started up the car.

  They gave the cyclist a wide berth until he'd placed the bags into a locker located in the last row of lockers at the far end of the bus station. He no sooner began walking away from the locker, key in hand, when Dax gave the word.

  "Looks like this is going to take a while, guys. Grab him."

  The moment he said it, even as he and Brenda hurried over to the man, the place came alive with police. All wore various outfits and they closed ranks around the cyclist, pulling out their badges and letting them hang out on plain sight as they came.

  The cyclist looked completely thunderstruck. His eyes grew as huge as two serving plates when he saw the displayed badges and the drawn service revolvers that went along with them. Despite the disbelief on his face, his hands went straight up in the air in surrender.

  "Hey, what is this?" he cried. "Some kind of prank?" Hands still raised above his head, he looked from side to side as if he was expecting one or more of his friends to pop out of the wings, laughing with triumph as they pointed at him.

  "If it is," Dax promised, "you just might wind up wishing you were never born." Gun still trained on the cyclist, Dax nodded toward two of his men. "You and you, stay here, keep an eye on the locker. The rest of you, come with me." He made eye contact with Brenda and nodded in response to the silent question in her eyes. She could come with them to the police precinct.

  "But I didn't do anything wrong," the cyclist cried, tugging against the cuffs that had been slapped on him. "This is all a mistake."

  "We'll see," Dax promised grimly, leading the way out of the terminal.

  The cyclist, looking as if he were on the verge of a nervous breakdown, clung to the story he'd given them the instant they were in the interrogation room. He looked at Dax, repeating the words not like a man who'd memorized his alibi, but a man who was terrified of being convicted of something he hadn't done.

  "A guy in a bar told me I could make an easy two-hundred dollars if I picked up a couple of bags for him and delivered them to the locker at the bus depot. I'm out of a job, so I said okay." He took a breath. "No," he repeated before the detectives in the room could ask him again, "I don't know who he is. I never saw him before. He gave me the money and then left."

  Dax looked at him skeptically. "And he trusted you."

  The cyclist, booked as John Michael Powell with no priors, shrugged his shoulders. "I guess I've got an honest face."

  Dax leaned into him, his face inches away from Powell's. "And a non-functioning brain. How did you know that what you were transferring weren't illegal drugs?"

  The cyclist stared straight ahead. "I didn't." And then he twisted around to look at the other two men in the room. "Look, if I'm guilty of anything, it's being stupid. I don't know what this is all about."

  Exasperated, Dax slid the sketch Brenda had made in front of the man. "Did the guy in the bar look anything like this?"

  Relieved to finally be believed, Powell stared at the sketch for a long time. When he raised his eyes, he looked hesitant. "Maybe. But he had a mustache and he talked kind of funny. Like he had some kind of an accent. I don't know what kind. French?"

  Powell looked hopefully from one detective to another, as if trying to discern if he'd said the right things, the things that would set him free.

  Actors had access to makeup, Dax thought, looking down at the sketch again. The kidnapper could have made himself up to look like anyone he wanted. And that also meant he could have been somewhere at the bus depot when they were there, watching them without their spotting him. Dax had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  "Can I go now?" Powell pleaded. "I told you all I know."

  "We'd like you to be our guest a little while longer," Dax said. He took his jacket from the back of the chair. "I'm going back to the bus terminal," he told Nathan. The latter was still wearing the navy-blue jumpsuit issued by the city's sanitation department. He grinned at his partner as he nodded at the disguise. "By the way, good look for you."

  Nathan said something unintelligible under his breath. Dax left it that way.

  Brenda had witnessed the proceedings on the other side of the one-way mirrored glass. The second she saw Dax stepping out of the room, she was in the hall.

  She caught up to him in two strides. "Where are we going?"

  He knew better than to think he could leave her behind at this point. And if luck was with them and they captured the kidnapper—since the two men he'd left at the terminal hadn't called to say anyone had come to take out the contents of the locker—he wanted her along to help calm the little girl. Provided the stars were all aligned correctly and things went their way for a change.

  He kept trying to focus on the positive and ignore the gnawing feeling at the bottom of his gut.

  "Back to the bus terminal," he told her. "I've got a hunch."

  Brenda found that she had to lengthen her stride to keep up. The man's legs were longer than they looked. "About?"

  The thought of keeping her in the dark crossed his mind fleetingly, but she was so in tune to all this, he let the notion drop. "I hope I'm wrong, but I've got a feeling that our kidnapper might have been there all along, watching us watching his messenger."

  "And?"

  "And," he said, pressing the button for the elevator, "there was a hell of a lot of confusion when we came down on the guy he sent."

  She tried to cling to the positive. "But you left two policemen back there. They were supposed to watch the locker."

  That didn't change what he felt. "Yeah, but there was a small window of time opened when nobody was watching anything but all of us were converging on Powell. If the kidnapper is as good as I think he is, that was all the time he needed."

  She stepped into the elevator and took a deep breath. "I hope that for once, your hunch is wrong."

  "So do I," he told her grimly as the doors closed. "So do I."

  * * *

  Chapter 12

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  Brenda looked around Dax's arm into the metallic space that had just been exposed. The space was as large as the hole in the pit of her stomach.

  The din around them in the bus terminal had faded to a dull background noise. "I guess this doesn't mess up your average."

  Dax had gotten the bus terminal's general manager to open the locker in question. The man stood to one side now as they looked in to find that the black bags Powell had deposited were gone. Just as Dax's gut had told him, the kidnapper had used the momentary confusion with the cyclist to make off with the money.

  The two plainclothesmen he'd left watching the locker both shrugged helplessly as they looked on.

  "Nobody came near it, Detective, I swear," the younger of the two told him.

  The officer beside him nodded in confirmation. "We watched it the entire time. Nothing. People came and went, but nobody stopped."

  "Well, they didn't just disappear by themselves," Dax barked, frustrated. He looked at the manager, a short, bald man with a wisp of a mustache under a large nose. "You have surveillance cameras here?"

  "Just a couple." He pointed first in one direction, then another. "One by the ticket counter, one by the lockers."

  There was no point in bothering with the camera located over the ticket counter. "I want to see the tape from the one by the locker."

  "This way."

  The manager brought them to a small room off to the side which could barely accommodate Dax, the two officers and Brenda, much less the small man sitting at the two monitors.

  Dax glanced toward Brenda, but her expression told him she was staying where she was. He let her remain and turned toward the manager. "Wind it back to two o'clock and go from there."

  It wasn't long into the tape that Dax had his answer. Watching, one of the officers beside him swore
under his breath. While the police surrounded Powell, an average-sized man wearing a San Francisco Giants jacket and a Giants baseball cap pulled over his eyes opened the locker in question, took out the bags with the money and then closed the door again, locking it.

  He quickly disappeared out of camera range.

  Brenda looked at the clock in the lower right-hand corner of the tape. "Gone in under sixty seconds." She turned her eyes toward Dax. "Now what?"

  He blew out a breath. Damn, but he'd wanted to be proven wrong. Just once, it would have been nice if something went off according to plan. "Now we go back to the Tylers and tell them that we lost the guy who kidnapped their daughter."

  She felt for him. Felt for all of them. It was easy to see from their expressions that everyone associated with the case was personally involved. It was hard not to be. "Isn't there anything else?"

  Dax felt like he was staring at a blank wall. What they needed was a break, and right now, there was none in the offing.

  "Follow up the leads coming in on the phone and pray for a miracle. I'd say we're overdue." He looked at the general manager. "You got a printer around here? I want a picture of that guy." He was going to have it passed around in order to see if anyone remembered seeing the man at the time in question. Maybe they could get a general description of his car.

  The manager scrambled to provide a hard copy.

  Once he had the print, Dax handed it to one of the two officers and gave them instructions. He wanted the general area canvassed. Maybe someone would recall seeing a man in a Giants jacket and cap, carrying two black bags, leaving the area. It was worse than a long shot but it was all he had at the moment.

  Other than the grim task directly ahead of him. This wasn't as bad as telling someone a member of their family was dead, but it was a close second.

  Thanking the general manager, he left his men to their work and walked out of the terminal. Outside, the air was heavy and muggy. It didn't help his mood any.

  Dax paused at the car and looked at Brenda over the hood. He didn't want to drag her into this any further than she already was. "Why don't I drop you off home first?"

  About to open the passenger door, Brenda stopped. "Didn't you just say that you were going back to the Tylers?"

  His expression was grim as he nodded. "Yes, but you don't have to go through that with me. It's not something to do if you can avoid it."

  Her eyes met his. She seemed to look right into him. "But you have to."

  He shrugged carelessly, masking his dread. He'd rather chew nails than do what he had to do right now. "It's my job."

  She understood that. Understood, too, that she didn't want him having to face it alone. He'd brought out something protective in her. Usually, it was a reaction she felt only for children. It almost made her smile. Wouldn't the big, strong police detective love hearing that? "You might need a buffer."

  Hell, he needed more than that. Right now, he couldn't help wanting a stiff drink and the power to will himself into soothing amnesia, at least for a few hours. But that was the coward's way out and he was a Cavanaugh. Cavanaughs weren't allowed to be cowards, or even entertain cowardly notions. It just wasn't done.

  He studied her face for a moment. "I thought you didn't like the Tylers."

  "I don't, but no one should have to go through this kind of thing alone."

  "Can't argue with you there." Dax got into the car. He couldn't say why, but he felt oddly comforted, knowing she was going to be there with him when he delivered the news.

  It was no better than he'd expected.

  Simon ranted and raved about police incompetence, threatening to sue everyone, past or present, who had ever been attached to the police department. While he went on with his tirade, Annie's mother fell silent, then gave way to sobs.

  She was the one Dax felt for. But his words all felt flat on his tongue as he tried to offer them to her in some measure of consolation. He wasn't good at that sort of thing, never had been.

  It was Brenda who put her arms around the woman and held her as she cried. And he was grateful for her having the guts to come with him when she knew what it would be like. No doubt about it, the woman was a warrior.

  "It's just a set-back," she told Rebecca. "These things never go smoothly, but the recovery record has improved an incredible amount." She told her everything she could think of that might help, might give her something to cling to until this was finally over. "And Annie's very resilient. She'll keep her head about her. She's very brave and if there's a way to get away, I know Annie'll find it."

  Rebecca raised her head from where she'd buried it in her shoulder. Her face was tear-stained and blotchy. For once, the woman wasn't involved with her appearance. Instead, Rebecca looked at her, her eyes searching for something. "You know her well?"

  Brenda could hear the plea in the woman's voice. She wanted to be told that it was going to be all right, that Annie would come through this and that she would be home again.

  Brenda nodded in response to the question. 'Teachers aren't supposed to have favorites. But she's mine." As she spoke, she struggled to beat back her own fear. Giving in to it would do neither of them any good. "She's a terrific little girl who can do anything she sets her mind to."

  Rebecca pressed her lips together, another sob threatening to breath through. "I hardly know her, except that she's small and mousy."

  Brenda smiled with affection as she thought of the little girl. Annie was small for her age, but that had nothing to do with her inner spirit.

  "Not so mousy. It's just something she does to avoid attention. But she's been blossoming these last few months."

  "And I've been too busy to see it." Rebecca grasped her arm. "I want a chance to get to know her." She sobbed the words out.

  Helpless, Brenda could only hold the other woman. "And you'll get it. I promise."

  "Then go do something about it," Simon snapped. Pacing, he was livid and red-faced. Gone was the unruffled Hollywood kingpin. In his place was a man who his legion of fans and detractors wouldn't have recognized. "Stop making empty promises." Crossing to Brenda he glared at her. "Don't think I've forgotten that this is all your fault. You should have been more careful with my daughter."

  Releasing Rebecca, she stepped back from the woman, anger smoldering in her eyes as she locked eyes with Simon. It took everything she had not to tell the man exactly what she thought of him. "Maybe you should have been, too."

  Simon looked as if he was going to hit her. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  Dax slipped in between the furious director and Brenda. "It means maybe you should calm down, Mr. Tyler." His tone was cold, warning the man to back off. "I'm having Detective Brown stay with you in case the kidnapper calls back tonight."

  Deprived of his target, Simon breathed fire. "What about her?" He jerked a thumb at Brenda. "He's going to want to talk to her."

  "Already taken care of," Dax assured him. He'd had the technician set up call forwarding so that any call coming in could be patched through to Brenda's cell phone if she wasn't with the Tylers at the time the kidnapper called.

  In his gut, he didn't think the kidnapper was going to call, but he couldn't leave the possibility open, just in case. Taking Brenda's arm, he ushered her out of the mansion before anything else could be said.

  "You okay?" he asked once they were outside and in his car again.

  She fumbled with the seat belt. The metal tongue resisted fitting into the slot. She tugged on the belt again. This time, it fit. Brenda realized that her temper was dangerously short and took a second to draw in a deep breath. "Yeah, why?"

  'Tyler was pretty hard on you back there."

  The second he said it, she could feel herself getting a second wind.

  "Oh, that." She shrugged his concern away. "I've had worse. A lot worse."

  Starting the car, he backed out of the long winding driveway. "A lot of angry parents at Harwood?"

  "No." She shook her head, rememberin
g. The sadness that encroached surprised her. It had been a long time since she'd felt sad when thinking of her childhood. This thing with Annie had brought it all into vivid focus again. "Just one angry parent. Mine." She shrugged, trying to make light of it. "My father was always mad at the world and I was its representative."

  His foot hovered on the brake as they took the incline down. "He beat you?"

  She was about to deny it, but what was the point? It was all part of her and fortunately, in the past. "Sometimes."

  Eyes on the twisted path, he spared her a quick look. "Where was children's services?"

  "Servicing other children," Brenda quipped, then decided he deserved more of an answer than that. "To get into the picture, someone would had to have called them."

  He didn't see why no one would have. "Nobody noticed you had bruises?"

  There were no bruises visible to the world at large. "My father was very good at hitting me only where they couldn't be detected."

  "How about the hospital?" It was the duty of doctors in the ER to report anything suspicious when it came to children.

  He was being incredibly sweet, she thought, worrying about the girl she'd been. She found that enormously touching. Hormones again, she reasoned. But the effect was still there.

  "He never broke anything so I never had to go. Besides, most of the damage he inflicted was verbal." She sighed, reliving a moment. It had been just after her mother left. He'd put the blame on her shoulders and almost succeeded in making her believe she was at fault. "He did know how to run a person down."

  There was a light at the bottom of the hill. Dax stopped there and looked at her. It was as if she was talking about someone else's past. "You don't seem any the worse for it."