Heart of a Hero Read online

  Rusty looked at the fingers splayed over the receiver. As if her small hand could possibly pose a physical deterrent. A tinge of amusement wafted through him. He banked it down.

  What was traveling through him in far larger waves was curiosity. Why was she so adamant about not calling in the police? Was she a fugitive of some sort? On the run from someone?

  Maybe she was someone’s estranged wife who’d suddenly taken off with her child, snatching him away from her husband. Either explanation would go a long way toward accounting for the wariness he’d perceived each time their paths had crossed.

  He let his hand drop from the air as he studied her. “Why don’t you want to call the police?”

  Her eyes narrowed. She saw no reason to have to explain herself to this man. Not that she would have, anyway. Trusting people was a waste of time and she’d learned a long time ago that depending on anyone just left her open to betrayal and despair.

  “Because I just don’t, all right?” Suddenly aware that she was standing there in nothing but her nightgown, she grabbed a sweater that was draped over the back of a kitchen chair and dragged it on. “What are you, my mother?” She punched her arms through the sleeves. “Who are you, anyway?”

  Rusty shrugged off the hostility directed at him as part of her emotional roller coaster ride she was obviously on.

  “I’m the guy who lives upstairs.” He jerked a thumb up toward the ceiling, his manner matter-of-fact. “The one you woke up with your screaming.”

  She appeared to be more in control of herself now than she had even a minute ago. And with that control Rusty saw the hard shell slip back into place, the one he encountered each time he saw her.

  “Sorry.” She shrugged carelessly. “You can get back to your beauty sleep.”

  He had no intention of leaving her. Whether or not she admitted it, the woman needed someone to stay with her until a search for her missing son could get properly under way. In his experience, bluster and bravado were common smokescreens for fear.

  “Look,” he began gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off as if his touch had burned her very skin. “What are you afraid of?”

  “My baby’s just been kidnapped, what do you think I’m afraid of?”

  He looked at her for a long moment and watched as her body language grew more defensive. Though it wasn’t completely uncommon to have someone slip into a house and steal a child from their bed, the method spoke of some degree of familiarity with the victimized family. Which brought him back to the feeling that the kidnapping was the work of someone who knew her, someone who specifically wanted her son. He’d seen the boy and although Vinny was cute, the child was no more or less eye-catching than most other children his age.

  No, there had to be more at work here than she was admitting.

  He nodded at the telephone, giving every indication of remaining just where he was for the time being. “If you don’t want to call the police, maybe you should call your husband.”

  What did it take to get rid of this man? She needed to be alone. She had to think. She felt as if everything was closing in on her. First Vincent, now Vinny. She’d die before she’d let anyone keep her from her son. And now she had some misguided Good Samaritan—or worse—to deal with. “I don’t have a husband.”

  Rusty glanced at her hand and saw that it was bare of jewelry. There wasn’t even a tan line where a wedding ring might once have been.

  “Ex-husband, then.”

  What did it take to get this man to leave her alone? “I don’t have one of those, either.”

  She hadn’t conceived her son on her own. “Boyfriend?” He was hazarding guesses now.

  Her brows drew together. Of all the cheap tricks. Was this his way of finding out whether there was anyone else living with her? Her son had just been kidnapped, didn’t this man have any shame?

  “Are you trying to hit on me?” Dakota demanded angrily.

  Rusty was calm in the face of her fury. It was in his nature to remain that way. He’d found out a long time ago that losing your head when those around you were losing theirs never accomplished anything.

  “No,” he told her genially, “just trying to rule out parental kidnapping.” To his surprise, he saw her pale slightly.

  And then she regrouped as she lifted her chin in a gesture that would have been called defiant by the mildest of observers. Striding over to the door, she threw it open.

  “Why don’t you just rule yourself out the door if you want to rule out anything?”

  The angrier she became, the calmer he remained. “Look, you need help.”

  She started pacing. He was making her crazy. For all she knew, he was in on it. Just because he had this lean, trustworthy face and soulful blue eyes was no reason to believe a thing he was saying or to buy into his good-neighbor act. She’d been conned by the best.

  “No kidding, Sherlock.”

  Feeling at a loss, fervently wishing that this was all a bad dream, she nervously dragged her hand through her hair.

  She’d been so careful to hide her tracks. How had this happened? How had they been found?

  When she turned around, she saw the open door and noted the fact that the man hadn’t yet taken the blatant hint and left.

  “You want to help? Okay, help.” She was new in town, without a single friend to turn to. Not that she would have expected any friend to stand by her. Not when faced with the consequences that friendship entailed. “Tell me where I can find myself a good private detective.”

  This wasn’t making any sense. Most people in her position would have immediately wanted the police to take up the search. Why was she so adamant about not calling them in?

  Maybe it was shock, he thought. People in shock did strange things. His sister had handled a case six months ago where the mother insisted on talking to the kidnapped child as if he was right there beside her. There was no question in his mind that if the case hadn’t been resolved positively, the woman might have wound up spending the next few years of her life in an institution.

  He tried again. “The police—”

  How many ways did she have to spell it out? “I said I don’t want the police.”

  “It’s a kidnapping,” he told her gently, “the police and the FBI have the manpower to blanket the area.”

  Oh, God, calling in the FBI would be even worse. Vinny would disappear forever. She couldn’t do any of that. And this guy, whoever he thought he was, certainly couldn’t be allowed to do that, Dakota thought frantically.

  “Stop talking to me as if I were an idiot. I know exactly what’ll happen if I call in the police, you don’t. No police. No FBI. Nobody on public payroll,” she insisted adamantly. “I need someone I can buy, someone who’ll work just for me. If you don’t know anyone like that—”

  Dakota moved to the open front door again, her meaning clear.

  He hadn’t said anything to her earlier because it would have sounded too opportunistic, as if he were trying to take advantage of the situation and her pain. But since she was insisting on this path, so be it.

  Rusty placed his hand on the side of the door and to her annoyed surprise, pushed it closed. “I think it’s time I explained to you what I do for a living.”

  Chapter 2

  Her heart stopped beating in her chest.

  She stared at the man who had pushed his way into her apartment, into her dilemma. Any second now Dakota was sure her head would spin off if she relinquished the slightest iota of control she was exercising over it. Even now, the room felt as if it had tilted beneath her feet.

  What he did for a living?

  Dakota’s mouth was desert-dry as she whispered, “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  Until this moment the thought hadn’t occurred to her. It should have. The times Andreini had tried to start up a conversation, he’d struck her as being too exuberant, too innocent-looking to be a policeman. But why not? Nothing came in stereotype these days. She of all people should know
that by now.

  Look at Vincent. She would never have taken him to be who he ultimately turned out to be. Not with that blond hair and that Nordic complexion.

  For that matter, look at her. She wasn’t what she tried to pretend to be, either. But that was different. That was for survival purposes.

  Rusty looked at her more closely. Was it his imagination, or did she look afraid there for a second? “Not exactly—”

  “Then what, exactly?” she cut in before he had a chance to explain anything further.

  “I’m a private investigator—”

  Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him with contempt. A private investigator. She’d just said she needed one. How convenient.

  “Yeah, right.”

  He couldn’t decide whether her contempt was aimed at him or his profession.

  “No, I am.” To prove it, Rusty dug into his back pocket for his wallet.

  Did he have some kind of fake I.D. on him? Something he used to pick up women who thought that kind of a career was cool? Dakota laughed shortly, wondering just how far this man would go with this charade and what kind of a ghoul hit on a woman whose baby had just been stolen.

  Her contempt was barely contained. “Pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Undeterred, Rusty pulled out his wallet. “Maybe you can think of it as luck.”

  Enough was enough. She wanted him out of here so she could think. The fear that she was never going to see her son again kept washing over her.

  “And maybe I can think of it as a scam.” Her eyes narrowed to condemning slits. “Like someone trying to take advantage of a rotten situation.”

  He’d been taken with her the second he’d first seen her walking across the parking lot, her fingers firmly wrapped around her son’s hand. The sway of her hips, the long, slender legs that seemed to go on forever, urging a man to follow, and the long mane of blond hair that begged to be touched, all of it coming together to form the quintessential fantasy. Rusty couldn’t remember ever being mesmerized like that. There was no disputing the fact that the woman was not merely attractive, but stunningly gorgeous by anyone’s standards.

  And he had a feeling that her looks had not come without some heavy price tag. The woman had a chip on her shoulder a mile wide and obviously didn’t trust people easily.

  But then, he’d always been the patient one in his family.

  Without saying another word in his defense, Rusty opened his wallet, flipping past the photographs he had of his older brother and sister, of his mother and the father they all rarely spoke of—the one who had inadvertently been instrumental in getting all three of them involved in the agency that tried to undo horrible wrongs done to children and their families. As far as Rusty knew, he was the only member of the family who actually had a picture of their late father, although he knew that Chad had eventually made his peace with the man who had all but ruined his life.

  He held the wallet open to show the woman the private investigator’s license that had been issued to him a week after he’d graduated from the University of Bedford with his degree in criminology.

  As he watched, a layer of the disbelief on her face melted away.

  Score one for the home team, he thought.

  Taking one of the business cards that Cade Townsend, the founder of the agency, had presented to him as a graduation gift, Rusty handed it to the woman. “This is where I work.”

  “‘ChildFinders Inc.,’” she read out loud. “‘Russell Andreini.’” Looking up, she held the card out to him. “You don’t look like a Russell.”

  Rusty smiled. “Everyone says that.”

  For a while, when he’d been younger and taken himself more seriously, he’d tried to convince people to address him by his given name, but it just never took. Everyone kept forgetting. Eventually he stopped reminding them that his name was now Russell and resigned himself to being Rusty, the person people always opened up to. As time went on, he’d come to the conclusion that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  He moved to close her hand over it, but she jerked it away. “Keep it.”

  She pursed her lips as she looked at the card again. The address was a street she wasn’t familiar with, but then, she was new to the area. As she had been to the seven other areas she’d lived in these past two years.

  Everyone, she thought, was always looking out for number one. “You’re looking for a job.”

  What had happened to make her this cynical? he wondered. His sister Megan had always had a tart tongue, but there had never been this edge to it, this me-against-the-world attitude that he sensed within the woman he was talking to.

  “I’m looking to help,” he told her quietly.

  Dakota looked down at the fancy writing on the card and ran her thumb over the raised letters. Expensive. She blew out a breath.

  “Well, if this is on the level, I probably can’t afford you,” she said cynically.

  Money was the last thing he was thinking of. “We’re flexible. Something can be worked out.”

  She’d had men trying to find a way into her life and her bed since she was fourteen years old. That was when she’d reached her full height and had ripened. Her beauty had been more curse than blessing, until she had learned to make it work for her.

  Her eyes hardened. “I’ll bet.”

  He wasn’t going to waste time arguing with her about his own motives. Instead, he gave her a little background information.

  “Cade Townsend founded the agency when his own son was kidnapped. My sister was the FBI agent who worked the case. She joined him a couple of months after he opened his doors.”

  Dakota had a tendency to not believe what was told to her, or to at least take it with a huge grain of salt. But there was something in Rusty’s eyes…something that seemed sincere.

  She hesitated. “Did they ever find his son?”

  “Yeah, they did.” The smile on his face fairly lit it up. “And a whole lot of other kids along the way. They’re still finding them.” He saw doubt war with something else in her eyes. This one wasn’t easily convinced of anything. “You can look up anything you want about the agency on the Internet.”

  “I don’t own a computer.”

  Her statement took him by surprise. His whole life revolved around technology and the answers it could yield. He’d gotten into it because of Megan, whose wizardry at the computer was outdone only and just marginally by that of Savannah King Walters, Sam’s wife, who worked for them part-time. It had gotten so that Rusty assumed everyone had at least one computer in their lives, if not several. There was one in each room in his apartment.

  “That makes you rather unique.”

  Dakota, decades weary beyond her twenty-four years, laughed dryly. “Right, unique.”

  She fingered the card Rusty had refused to take back, her mind working at a frantic pace. Nothing mattered but getting Vinny back. She thought she knew who had taken him, was pretty sure on that score, but she had no idea where he had been taken. There were at least several possibilities, if not more.

  Even if she did know where, she knew she couldn’t just waltz in and get Vinny. Not without help. Without backup. She looked at the man in front of her. Maybe she needed this overgrown Boy Scout at that.

  But she wanted him to convince her, to make her feel that she wasn’t going to regret this decision. “How good is your track record? Fifty percent? Sixty?” she added hopefully.

  Rusty shook his head and her heart plummeted.

  “Well, then, I guess I don’t—”

  “One hundred.” He saw her eyes widen at the number. “Our track record is one hundred percent,” he told her.

  She knew it. It was a scam. All of it. She thrust the card at him, jabbing at a chest that was harder than she’d expected.

  “You’re lying,” she accused angrily. Did he think she was some kind of mental midget? Nobody had that kind of success.

  He merely looked down at the card she was pushing against him, but d
idn’t take it from her.

  “It’s a matter of record. No case we take on is ever closed until we find the missing child. Sometimes we get lucky and it’s fast, sometimes not, but we never give up.” It was a promise he was making her. “It took three years to find Darin, Cade’s son,” he added when she looked at him blankly as he said the name.

  Oh, God, she wanted to believe him so badly. But she’d stopped believing in Santa Claus the year she’d turned six. “How much does all this cost?” There was still some jewelry she could sell, she thought. Pieces Vincent had given her to convince her of the seriousness of his intentions. She’d been saving them for an emergency and this more than qualified.

  “Like I said, things can be arranged. We’re not in it for the money.”

  Next he was going to tell her that he was a monk in disguise. “But you’ve got to eat,” she pointed out cynically. “And your apartment upstairs doesn’t come free.”

  “We can take your case pro bono.” He knew Cade would have no problem with that. Cade had been the one who had said that money was secondary to their work. His superior was completely dedicated to the belief that no one should be made to go through what he had.

  “I don’t need charity.” Her indignation heated and then she looked past him toward the framed photograph on the coffee table. The photograph of her and Vinny taken on his last birthday. They’d been in Salinas then. Two locations ago. “What I need is my son back.”

  “I know you do. And we’re going to do whatever’s necessary to find him and get him back.”

  He hadn’t used the word “try,” she noted. It was almost as if he was making her a promise. God, she wished she could believe that he was on the level, wished that she wasn’t so damn suspicious of everything and everyone.

  But there was good reason to be.

  The phone rang just then.

  Dakota jumped. Her nerves all close to the surface, she bit her lower lip to stifle the scream that had risen instantly.

  But as she swung around and reached for the receiver, Rusty caught her wrist. She looked at him accusingly. Was he crazy?