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  Dax nodded. "Okay," he repeated. And maybe, just maybe, he thought, things were okay for the first time since the kidnapping case had begun. He smiled down at the girl. "Thanks, Alice."

  "Alicia," the little girl corrected with an indignant sniff.

  Brenda bent down to the girl's level. "He's not good with names," she confided, looking at Dax. "You can go join the rest of the class," she told her, nodding at the other end of the room.

  Alicia hurried off to see what she had missed so far.

  Matthew Harwood jumped when Dax and Brenda entered the room. Had he not been sitting behind his desk, Dax had the impression the man would have sank onto something. He looked clearly shaken to see them unannounced.

  Dax had warned the secretary to remain where she was just before he'd walked in on the headmaster. You could tell a lot about a person caught off guard.

  "Detective Cavanaugh," Harwood greeted him nervously. "Any leads?"

  Dax didn't bother wasting time with idle chatter. He was having trouble controlling his temper as it was. "Mind telling me why you lied?"

  Harwood's pale complexion turned even paler. "I beg your pardon?"

  Brenda couldn't hold back any longer. "Alicia Maxwell told us she saw you taking Annie Tyler in the opposite direction of the entrance when we were evacuating the children out of the building because of the fire alarm."

  Dax's face was completely stony as he added the final nail into the coffin. "You told us you hadn't seen her that morning."

  Harwood began to draw short, shallow breaths. "I was mistaken. With everything that happened, I got confused."

  Dax didn't need any finely honed instincts to tell him that the man was lying. Harwood's very state testified to that. "Get unconfused," Dax ordered.

  Harwood's dark brown eyes shifted from Dax to Brenda and then back again like tiny marbles in search of a place to rest. It was as if Alicia's unwitting observation was the last straw, overburdening a mind that was already on the brink of snapping.

  He broke down in front of them, dropping his head in his hands as he struggled to keep back a sob. His world, already cracking, now shattered right before his eyes. When he looked up again, his eyes were wild and pleading for understanding.

  "She wasn't supposed to be hurt. She was never supposed to be in any danger."

  Dax restrained himself from hauling the man up to his feet and shaking him. "Then you did take her."

  "No, they did," Harwood cried. "I just lured her away from the others, told her it was a shortcut out. I had her wait in the gym until they came for her."

  "They?" Dax demanded.

  "The Jamisons, Jim and Cloe." Harwood looked at Brenda. "That's their real name, not Kingsley."

  "That's the name they gave you," Dax corrected coldly. He sincerely doubted the couple had used their real name. More and more, they were beginning to seem like professionals who had hooked up with Harwood in order to use his connections for personal gain.

  Harwood knotted his fingers together, staring at the single spot on his desk blotter. "I don't know how this happened. Please, you've got to believe me, it wasn't supposed to be this way."

  "Why don't you start at the beginning?" Dax told him. "And talk fast." Every minute they spent here was a minute they lost in recovering Annie. He just prayed it wasn't already too late.

  Ashamed of what he had done, knowing that the path that had led him to this desperate act was no excuse, Harwood lowered his eyes again. "The school's been in financial trouble for a long time. I—I wasn't as careful with the finances as I should have been."

  The man was being euphemistic. Dax cut through the rhetoric. "You gambled away your money."

  Harwood's head jerked up, surprise written on his face. He'd tried to be so careful. No one was supposed to know. "How did you know that?"

  "I looked into some things." It had been what he was working on this morning when Brenda had called. When looking at a dead end, he'd learned to approach the problem from another angle. Harwood had been the other angle. "You were in debt pretty badly."

  Stunned, Brenda could only look on and listen. There had been rumors that the school needed to cut back, that mounting expenses made it difficult to maintain the high quality they had up until now, but she had no idea it was because Harwood was gambling away his money. No one even knew that Harwood went to gambling resorts, much less was addicted to them.

  The man looked as if he was aging visibly right before her eyes as he made his confession. "The school was going to have to shut its doors, I was going to go bankrupt. They were going to take my house … I was desperate."

  Dax prodded the man along. "How did you get mixed up with the 'Jamisons?'"

  Harwood took a deep breath. "I met them in Tahoe. At Caesars Palace." He licked his lips, trying to push the words out. "I'd just had a streak of incredibly bad luck, lost more than I could ever afford to lose. I was at the bar, trying to think of what I could do, getting pretty plastered I guess," he admitted ruefully. "This couple sat down next to me and started talking. They were very sympathetic, said they knew what it was like to be on a losing streak. We talked for a while, I told them about the school, they seemed to be familiar with it. Somewhere along the line, I forget just when, Jim said he had an idea that might just help all of us."

  "I just bet he did," Dax said grimly. He leaned over the man. "Whose idea was it to take Annie and hold her for ransom?"

  Matthew scrubbed his hand over his face, trying to pull the events of that fuzzy night into focus. "Jim's," he finally remembered. "He said the daughter of a big-time producer like Tyler would get me as much money as I needed to pull myself out of debt and help get the school back up on its feet."

  Dax looked at Brenda. His theory was right. He'd felt it in his gut all along. He took no joy in it. "They played you, Harwood."

  Confusion creased Harwood's face, deepening the lines already there. "Played me?"

  "They didn't just find you by chance, they went looking for you," Brenda broke in. How could he? How could he have risked the life of a child to help cover up his own weaknesses, his own mistakes? She wanted to grab him by his shirt and shake him. "Detective Cavanaugh had a hunch that this was an elaborate plan to get back at Simon Tyler for something, as well as get the money."

  "I—I don't know what to say. I'm so, so sorry."

  "Not good enough, Harwood," Dax snapped. "When are you suppose to get in contact with them?"

  "I was supposed to get in contact with them last night." He sounded as if he was trying vainly to keep from babbling. "Right after they got the money."

  Last night had come and gone and Harwood had looked like a man facing his own firing squad when they had walked in just now. "But?" Dax demanded.

  Harwood looked close to tears. "But I can't reach them. No one's answering the phone. I went over this morning, but they're not there."

  Dax exchanged glances with Brenda. It was getting to look very, very bad. "Where's there?"

  Digging into his pocket, he produced a folded sheet of paper with the name and address of a motel. Underneath was the cell phone number that "Jim" had given him. "They said they'd be staying there until this was over," he offered. "They're from Los Angeles."

  Well, at least that tallied, Dax thought. He asked what he felt in his bones was a useless question, but then, one never knew. Sometimes even the smartest criminals did stupid things. "Did they give you an L.A. address?"

  Harwood shook his head as guilt entered his features. "I never thought to ask."

  "It probably would have been bogus, anyway," Brenda pointed out.

  "Probably," Dax agreed.

  Hysteria began to fill Harwood's voice. "You have to understand." Again, he addressed his words first to Brenda, then to the detective, "I was desperate. I was going to lose the school, my house, everything."

  Dax looked at him coldly. "I'd say you've already lost it."

  Without another word, he turned from the man and took out his cell phone. He needed an
officer to come down and take Harwood away.

  Harwood turned to Brenda, begging for absolution. When she began to turn away from him, he grabbed her arm. "I was desperate," he repeated, his voice cracking.

  "And what do you think Annie is now? If she's even alive," Brenda shouted at him. Disgusted with Harwood, she shook the man off. "She's a little girl, Matthew. How could you?"

  "I don't know, I don't know." Harwood buried his face in his hands and began to sob.

  Dax flipped his cell phone closed, returning to them. "Someone'll be here in five minutes to take you down to the precinct," he told the man. "You can consider yourself under arrest."

  Without feeling, he recited the familiar words that encompassed the man's rights. Harwood looked as if he barely heard them.

  Not wanting to wait, Dax handcuffed the headmaster to his chair. "That'll hold you until they arrive." Even as he said it, the faint sound of a siren was heard in the distance. With a grim nod, Dax began to walk out of the office.

  One step behind him, Brenda followed him out past a stunned-looking secretary. "Where are you going?" Brenda asked.

  Taking out Harwood's sheet, he held it up. "To the motel. Maybe I'll get lucky." He still had the sketches Brenda had done in his pocket. Maybe if he showed them to the motel manager, he would jar the man or woman's memory.

  Preoccupied, it took him a minute to realize that Brenda had lengthened her stride and fallen into step beside him. "Where do you think you're going?"

  There was no hesitation on her part. "I'm going with you."

  "No, you're not."

  "You can shout all you want, I'm still going."

  Without giving her a backward glance, he strode out the door. A patrolman was just pulling into the parking lot. Getting out of his car, he hurried up the steps.

  "He's in the headmaster's office," Dax told the policeman. "Handcuffed to his chair." He gave the man his keys. "I want those back later." With that, he continued down the stairs.

  Brenda followed him, refusing to be put off. "Look, I just gave you a big break on this." She trailed him to his car. "I could have gone to Harwood myself, but I didn't. I called you first. You owe me."

  At his car, he threw open the driver's side, then stared at her for a long moment over the vehicle's roof. Finally, he shrugged. Maybe brainstorming with her while they drove would prove useful. All he knew was that he didn't have time to waste arguing.

  "C'mon."

  He didn't have to say it twice.

  "Give me that piece of paper," she said to him once they were on their way. "The one Matthew gave you with the cell number on it."

  He dug into his breast pocket, holding it out to her as he drove through an intersection. "Harwood already said they weren't answering."

  She took out her cell, carefully punching in the numbers that were meticulously written down on the sheet. How could a man who was so neat, who seemed so careful in everything he did, mess his life up so badly? It didn't seem possible.

  "Maybe, but it can't hurt to try again, can it? Who knows, maybe one of them'll slip up and answer. If they do, you could tie the signal in, couldn't you?"

  "I'd have to call into the precinct first, have them track it from there." It was a shaky idea at best, but he gave her points for trying. "The good news is that the precinct can track it via the wireless provider."

  Brenda frowned. If they needed to call the precinct first, there was no point in trying to get someone on the line now. She was about to disconnect when she heard a voice answering on the other end of the line.

  Exchanging looks with Dax, she placed the earpiece next to her ear. "Hello?"

  "Hello? God, is that you?"

  The voice was gravelly. It sounded nothing like the man who had been in her classroom several days ago. "Who is this?"

  "Jake. Jake the Prophet. Don't you know me, God? You told me to be out here."

  Because she was willing to play any long shot, she asked, "Where's here, Jake?"

  There was a long pause, as if the man on the other end was looking around, trying to find a landmark. "Katella and somethin'. I can't read it. Why don't you just look down and see? Oh-oh, gotta go." The line went dead.

  Frustrated, she closed the phone.

  Dax looked at her. "Well?"

  She drew the most likely conclusion she could. "From the sound of it, I'd say they threw the phone away and some homeless person picked it up. Calls himself Jake the Prophet and he's somewhere along Katella, thinking that God uses a cell phone."

  A half smile twisted his lips. "Who's to say?" Dax murmured as he took a shortcut to the motel.

  The motel was located in a run-down part of town where people came and went without making eye contact and no one knew anyone else. It had been chosen for a reason, Dax thought as he parked his car in the uneven parking lot.

  When confronted with the two sketches that Dax showed the motel manager, who obviously had no use for the police by the way he looked at Dax's badge, claimed not to recognize either person depicted until threatened with obstruction of justice.

  That loosened his tongue. "Yeah, yeah, they were here, but they checked out."

  "Did they have a little girl with them?" Brenda asked eagerly. She showed him Annie's photograph, but the man was shaking his head before he even looked at it.

  "Not that I saw." He shifted accusing eyes toward Dax. "They stiffed me."

  Every shred of evidence could be important. "They didn't pay?" Dax asked

  Uttering a curse, the man laughed humorously. "Oh, they paid all right. With a credit card. Except that it bounced this morning. I ran it through when they registered, but the jerk on the night desk forgot to make sure it was still good last night. This morning, when I did it, I found out the account's been closed."

  Dax held out his hand. "Give me the number."

  Brenda looked around his shoulder as he dialed a number that would connect him to the credit card company. "What good is that going to do?"

  "You'll see."

  After he identified himself and gave the supervisor he'd been connected to his badge number, he was told the reason for the ban. The credit card had been reported stolen yesterday.

  "All right, listen very carefully," Dax instructed the woman. "I need you to lift that ban for a few hours. We think the people who stole the card are responsible for kidnapping a little girl. Right now, the card is the only lead we have in order to track them. If we get lucky, they're going to try to use it again and soon. Call me at this number the second they do." He gave the woman his cell phone number.

  "Now what?" Brenda asked as he flipped the phone shut and put it away.

  This was the hard part. "Now we wait."

  * * *

  Chapter 15

  « ^ »

  Dax led the way outside. "You want to go somewhere and grab a cup of coffee?"

  She felt the tension closing in on her again. Tension because of Annie. Tension because of Dax. She grabbed at anything that could hold it at bay even a second longer. "Might as well. There's no point in standing around here."

  There was a coffee shop less than two miles away from the motel. They drove over. The morning was sunny, with a humid haze beginning to settle on the city.

  Picking up the two containers he'd ordered, Dax turned to face her. "You want to stay inside?"

  Somehow, that felt too confining. She needed space. Brenda indicated a small table with an umbrella located a few feet away from the entrance.

  "Outside." She glanced at the jacket pocket where he kept his phone. "The signal'll be stronger." It was as good an excuse as any.

  "Right." Shouldering open the door, Dax followed her to the table. As far as he was concerned, the signal was already strong, at least the one that was prompting him to be with her.

  To his surprise, when he'd asked her what she wanted, she'd ordered the decaffeinated coffee. He noticed the face she'd unconsciously made as she took a sip after sitting down. He'd seen less pained expressions on peopl
e who'd swallowed sour milk.

  "That good, huh?"

  Setting the container on the table, she regarded it with less than affection. "It's like drinking hot water with a brown crayon in it."

  His own was a double espresso, guaranteed to bring all the hairs on his body to attention. To him, there was no reason to drink coffee if there was no caffeine in it. "You're not supposed to have caffeine?"

  She lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. Studies reversed themselves, depending on the month they were done. "Doctors keep changing their minds about that. I figure I might as well be safe than sorry." She paused to take another sip. It was no better than the first. She stiffened to stifle a shiver. "Oh, well, at least it's not forever."

  He took a long sip of his espresso, letting the thick liquid pour itself through his veins. "You should have been honest with me, you know."

  She raised her eyes to his face in that way that always seemed to make his stomach throw itself in voluntarily into a knot. "Guilty as charged, Your Honor."

  He had no idea where the sudden wave of impatience came from. He did his best to bank it down. "Then if you know that, why didn't you tell me?"

  She pushed the container away. The bottom caught on something uneven on the surface and nearly tipped over. She caught it just in time. It didn't improve her mood. "Just how was I supposed to work it into the conversation? 'What's your favorite kind of baby carriage, Dax? And, oh yes, by the way, I'm pregnant.'"

  "No," he said, just managing to keep his tone civil. "But you should have said something." He paused, gathering himself together, then looked at her. Faults and all, he still wanted her. "Is it Wade's?"

  One look at his face told her he wasn't trying to insult her. Just being a cop, gathering facts to sort out at will. "You have to ask?"