Hero in the Nick of Time Read online

  Still, he supposed if he now refused this woman, it would make him a hypocrite.

  He didn’t like the sound of the word. Or the feel of it. Like a general in the field, he would have never asked anyone to do something he wouldn’t. That included bringing along a client into the trenches.

  With a sigh, he flipped his notebook to the next page and took out a tape recorder from his drawer, which he placed between them on the desk. He saw a flicker of triumph in her eyes, coupled with just the slightest touch of wariness.

  At least she didn’t jump to conclusions without prompting, he thought.

  “I say, all right.” He gestured for her to sit down again. “But I will hold you to your promise. There’s to be no question as to who’s in charge of the investigation.” It wasn’t a warning, it was a fact. The first moment she tried to take over, client or not, she would be sent away. There was good reason for him to feel that way. “I don’t want you trying to get ahead of me.”

  Mac took her seat, appearing relaxed. “I sincerely doubt if I could.”

  He took it as more flattery. Flattery was window dressing meant to distract the eye and take attention away from the fact that there was nothing of substance beneath. He’d never been taken in by flattery, even when he was much younger.

  “If that’s supposed to lull me into a false sense of security, you needn’t bother, Doctor. Of late, I have a habit of holding everything suspect.”

  Mac liked honesty. It was the first quality she looked for in a person and the only one she required. “Then we have something in common.”

  They were probably limited to that one thing, Cade thought. He sincerely doubted that there were any other traits that they shared.

  “All right—” he pushed down the record button on the machine “—let’s get started.”

  For the next hour, he fired questions at her. To her credit, Mac answered every one to the best of her knowledge, without flinching or hedging.

  At first glance, if everything Mac told him was true, it seemed that they could rule out that Heather was kidnapped in order to exact revenge. And, with no ransom note in the picture, it didn’t look as if whoever took her—if they took the little girl intentionally—was looking to return her.

  Cade looked at his notes. What he saw, what he’d heard, was slightly baffling and rather unbelievable. It was either a daring kidnapping in broad daylight, or a strange carjacking that had gone horribly awry.

  “It sounds as if your sister was deliberately run off the road.”

  It was the same thought Mac had been wrestling with. “But why? She doesn’t have an enemy m the world. My sister volunteers at the local hospital three times a week. All the kids in the neighborhood adore her. There’s no disgruntled boyfriend in the wings or offstage, no one with a grudge of any sort. Why would this happen?”

  “I would say that it might have been something as simple as misplaced road rage, if your niece hadn’t been taken.”

  Cade frowned, thinking. He’d never been an optimist by nature, but sitting in this chair, hearing the stories he’d heard, he had become acquainted with the very worst side of humanity. And it prompted him to look for the worst in a situation. Ugly possibilities were suggesting themselves to him now.

  “Outside the immediate family, was anyone overly attentive to Heather?”

  Mac thought before she spoke, wanting to be absolutely certain about the information she gave him. Instead of answering him, she took out her wallet and extracted Heather’s photograph. It was taken at a studio less than a month ago. She placed it on the desk between them.

  Cade picked it up and looked at the little girl. Dressed in a frilly pink outfit, Heather had her head thrown back, her mouth captured in a laugh that he could almost hear and felt himself tempted to share. She’d been posed with a soft, live rabbit.

  Mac noted his reaction. Nothing short of what she’d expected. She’d made her point. Heather was the kind of little girl who turned people’s heads. “Everyone paid attention to Heather.”

  “Can I keep this?”

  She gestured for him to take the photograph. “Please.” She noted the look on his face, and it made her uneasy. “What are you thinking?”

  Cade knew she wasn’t going to like it, but that wasn’t the point of the investigation. She wanted the truth, and he owed it to her. “That this might have all been set up.”

  “Set up how?”

  “Your sister might have been run off the road in order to kidnap Heather.” He looked down at the photograph again. “Children like your niece are in high demand.”

  “Demand?” Mac didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand. “By whom?”

  “By couples who have no children.” The reality was harsher than that. “The step before that would be the baby brokers.”

  “Black market babies?” She spoke incredulously.

  “Maybe. Right now, this is all pure speculation.” He tucked away the photograph into his pocket. “I might be completely off. The police might have already located your niece while you were telling me the details of your story.”

  Though she would have loved to believe that, Mac had a sinking feeling that it was far from likely. Still, what Cade had proposed sounded too fantastic to sensibly entertain.

  “But to pull that off, they’d need someone to run her off the road, ambulances, paramedics...” She looked at him. “It doesn’t sound real.”

  “There’s a reason why the saying ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ came into being. And maybe you’re right,” he allowed. At least, they could hope. “But for now, why don’t we take it one step at a time and see if we can unravel this as we go along? Do you know the name of the ambulance company that took your niece away?”

  Frustrated, Mac shook her head. She hadn’t thought to ask that.

  “Is your sister up to being questioned?”

  That he asked rather than assumed made a good impression on Mac. “She’s up to doing anything she can to find Heather.”

  “Good.”

  Cade jotted down a few more notes in his pad. The crime had occurred in Newport Beach, along the Pacific Coast Highway, the PCH. He wasn’t all that familiar with the department down there, but there was no time like the present to remedy that. He’d have to get in touch with the detective in charge of the investigation. Stepping on official toes was something he was very careful not to do. He’d found that professional courtesy had a fifty-fifty chance of being returned. The odds could have always been better, but a man in his profession took what he could get.

  Cade raised his eyes to look at her. The stray thought that she was an exceptionally pretty woman to be the pillar for her family occurred to him. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

  Several things raced through Mac’s mind, but they all sounded suspiciously too close to hysteria to voice. Panic was something that she kept secretly bottled up inside her. Giving way to her own feelings of despair wouldn’t do Moira or Heather any good. And probably would give Townsend the excuse he was looking for to leave her behind.

  “Only that I’m willing to do anything to get my niece back as quickly as possible.”

  That was already understood. Cade shut off the tape recorder and then closed the notepad. He rose, tucking the notepad into his pocket. “All right, I’ll see what I can find out.”

  Mac was back on her feet instantly, not about to give him the opportunity to leave without her. She was tall, but he was taller and had incredibly long legs.

  “The agreed-upon pronoun is we, not I,” she reminded him as she followed him to his door.

  Cade stopped, turning to look at her. Good as her word—or threat—she appeared ready to shadow his every movement. This, he thought, could get very irritating, even for a man who had schooled himself to turn patience into almost a religion.

  “Starting now?”

  “Starting right now—unless you have something else to do first.”

  Taking a deep breath, Cade sighed. “Even a
condemned man gets a last meal.”

  “We’ll eat on the way. Part of ‘expenses.’ I’ll pay.”

  No, he thought, he had a serious hunch that if there was any “paying” to be done, he would be the one doing it. In spades.

  “I was talking about breathing space,” he clarified. “I wasn’t being literal.”

  Mac flushed, but recovered quickly. One of the very few women in her chosen course of study when she’d begun it, she’d had to learn how to roll with the punches and spring up quickly. It had been the only way to earn her the respect of her peers.

  “My mistake,” she admitted. But then her eyes pinned him. “We’re going to have to get our lines of communication straight if we’re going to be working together.”

  It was on the tip of Cade’s tongue to suggest that perhaps that indicated that working together was not the best idea, but that would only embroil him in a further exchange with her. One, he had a feeling, he wasn’t going to win any more than he had won the first.

  Well, he decided, Dr. McKayla Dellaventura was accomplishing at least one thing. She was temporarily taking his mind off his own loss.

  She was also getting under his skin, something he hadn’t thought possible until just now. “C’mon,” he murmured, surrendering for now.

  As he walked into the outer office, Cade saw Rusty slapping Sam on the back just as Megan released him from what appeared to be a rather intense hug. From their expressions, they’d all just shared something hugely uplifting. He thought of the case Sam was working on. The natural assumption was that Sam had cracked the case.

  He looked from Sam to Megan. “Something going on here I should know about?”

  Whether it was the fact that she was a woman or that she went further back with Cade than the others did, Megan found that she was more in tune to Cade than either Sam or Rusty were. Though his face was impassive, she noticed the edge in his voice immediately.

  Small wonder, given what today was. In a heartbeat, sympathy for Cade and what he was continuously forced to endure washed over her. Their association went back to the day she’d been called in by the Bureau to help find Darin Townsend. That the book was still opened on this abduction was something Megan never quite allowed to leave her mind.

  With a bearing reminiscent of an overly large, affectionate puppy, Rusty turned to Cade to answer his question. “We’re celebrating Sam’s news.”

  Rusty, Cade knew, never took the short route when a longer one was available. “Which is?”

  Sam couldn’t hold it in any longer. He’d found out this morning and had gone from stunned to jubilant in record time. “We’re pregnant. I mean, Savannah’s pregnant, but I’m going to be a father.”

  “You already are a father,” Megan reminded him.

  “Yes, but this is different,” he insisted. “This time it’s from scratch.”

  Savannah already had a daughter. It was in reuniting the two that Sam had become such an integral part of their lives, and they of his. But this meant being there from the very beginning, an awe-inspiring prospect any way he looked at it.

  “Hell, I never even had a dog before. Suddenly, I’m going to be the father of two—” Like a thunderclap sounding over his head, Sam suddenly realized what he was saying and to whom. He wouldn’t have hurt Cade for the world. There weren’t words enough to apologize. “Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  But Cade shook his head. “No, that’s great, really great. I’m very happy for you, Sam.” And he genuinely was. He didn’t want people tiptoeing around him because of the ongoing tragedy in his life. Especially not people he had gotten so close to and cared about. “I just hope the baby has the good sense to get its looks from Savannah so it doesn’t stop clocks.” There was affection in the grin that spread out on Cade’s face. “You’ll make a great father. You already know how to say yes.”

  Megan had ducked into her office and returned now with something she’d worked on this morning before Sam had stopped by with his announcement. Moving to his other side, she placed her hand on Cade’s arm to get his attention.

  “Cade, before I forget, I thought you might want this.” Megan handed him a photograph fresh from her color printer.

  Cade turned toward her. “What is it?” The question died in his throat as he looked at the reproduction. A bittersweet feeling twisted inside him before he blocked it.

  “It’s an update of what Darin would look like now.” Judging by the expression that came over Cade’s face, Megan realized it was a needless explanation. “I just upgraded the software.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Maybe she shouldn’t have given this to him now. “I thought it might help—”

  Cade caught the hesitation in her voice. He was making her uncomfortable, he realized. Making all of them uncomfortable. “You thought right.” Very carefully, he folded the page and tucked it into his wallet. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Meagan’s eyes shifted to the woman who had come in earlier. She read the body language. “Going somewhere?” she asked Cade.

  “I’m—we’re,” he corrected himself, glancing at Mac, “on our way out. This is Dr. McKayla Dellaventura, our newest client.” Cade made the introductions quickly. “Rusty Andreini, Megan Andreini. And Sam Walters, my partners.” Without thinking, he placed his hand on the small of Mac’s back, ushering her out. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised Megan. “Great news, Sam,” he said again. “Give Savannah my best.”

  They all seemed to get along well, Mac thought. Desperate for assurances, she took it as a good sign. Following Cade to his car, she nodded toward the building they had just left. “Nice people.”

  “Yeah, they are.” He unlocked the passenger door, then held it open for her. “The best.”

  She wasn’t accustomed to manners that, by and large, could be termed as courtly and had fallen by the wayside in today’s world. It took her a moment before she recovered and got into the car. He closed the door, then rounded the hood to his side.

  There were all sorts of newly formed questions rattling around in her head. She selected one at random, since it seemed to pertain to him.

  “Who’s Darin?” The moment she asked, she saw Cade’s jaw tighten ever so slightly. Maybe she had no business asking, but the look on his face when Megan had handed him the computer-generated photograph had instantly caught her attention.

  “Darin’s my son.” He looked at her as he turned the key in the ignition. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, only that in talking about his son, it somehow kept Darin alive for him. “Today is his sixth birthday. And before you ask—” he anticipated her question “—he’s been missing for three years.” Suddenly, Cade found himself describing that horrifying event.

  He’d looked away for a minute, only a minute when that man had asked him directions. Older than Cade, the man had looked somewhat harried. There’d been a little girl, maybe four, maybe younger, tugging urgently on his arm, and Cade remembered thinking how fortunate he was with Darin. Darin who was always so well behaved.

  When Cade had looked back, the kiddie train ride was over, but Darin wasn’t sitting in the tiny, colorful engineer’s seat. He wasn’t rushing over to him, arms outstretched, bubbling over with words. Eager to share every single aspect of his new adventure.

  Closing his eyes, Cade could vividly recall the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach as he began calling for Darin. Began searching.

  Darin wasn’t anywhere in the park.

  Every last man on the security detail combed the entire park for hours after that. All they’d found was Darin’s Angels cap near one of the men’s rooms.

  From then until now, there’d been a lot of winding roads that all led to dead ends. Thousands of “tips” called in, amounting to the same.

  Cade had gone over that day, those few minutes, in his mind more than a thousand times, replaying the scenario, looking for that microscopic detail that he might have missed before. That detail that would lead him to his son
.

  He’d even placed an ad in the local papers, trying to find the man he’d spoken to in case the man had inadvertently seen something. But that had led him nowhere as well. There’d never been a response.

  The words felt like sharp nails being driven through his heart all over again as he said them. Three years. He’d missed three years in his son’s life. Three years he was never going to get back. But somehow, some way, he was going to find a way to make that up to Darin. It would begin the moment they were reunited.

  The answer pulled Mac up short. She’d come to the agency because a friend of her father’s had recommended it to her. Because time was so important, she hadn’t stopped to familiarize herself with the background information. She twisted in her seat, straining the seat belt she’d just finished buckling. “You can’t find your own son?”

  Cade banked down the flash of temper he felt. “My son is why I started this agency. And to date, his is the only open case we have on our files.” His foot on the brake, he held off backing out of the lot. “Why, would you be more comfortable with another investigative agency?”

  Mac’s first instinct was to say yes. Her second was more analytical. The man was obviously dedicated to his work. And if their track record was as close to perfect as humanly possible, she couldn’t ask for more than that.

  “No. I was told that your agency is the best, and if you have only one unresolved case, then those are the best statistics I’ve ever heard. I’m only sorry that it has to be your own son.”

  “So am I,” Cade replied quietly.

  She looked at him. “At least you know then what my family and I are going through.”

  “Yes,” he replied solemnly, taking his foot off the brake. “I know exactly what you’re going through.”

  Chapter 3

  “Moira, honey, it’s Mac. I brought the detective with me. The one who’s going to find Heather for us.”