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  Dax nodded his agreement and she hurried back to her classroom.

  The stillness met her at the door the moment she opened it. It seemed to accuse her of negligence.

  I'll find you, Annie, I promise I will, she vowed silently.

  Taking her purse from the bottom drawer in her desk, she turned around only to swallow a gasp. Harwood was standing almost directly behind her.

  "Sorry," he apologized. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

  "I guess we're all a little jumpy right now." As she started for the door, he took her arm, detaining her for a moment. She looked at him quizzically.

  "I just want you to know that I don't for a moment think you have anything to do with this." He paused, searching for words. She noticed that there was a thin line of perspiration on his upper lip. This had to be very difficult for him, she thought. The academy was his whole life. To have its reputation jeopardized this way had to have him cringing inwardly. "And I don't hold you responsible."

  In a day and age when people were quick to shed blame and point fingers in an attempt to get attention refocused somewhere else, she was grateful for his taking the time to reassure her. He had no way of knowing about the precarious state she felt herself in.

  "Thank you."

  Harwood took her hand in both of his and nodded in the general direction of the front of the school. She knew he meant to indicate the two detectives who were out there, waiting for her.

  "Are you up to this? Going to Annie's house, I mean. I can take you home if you're not. No one'll think the less of you."

  As if she could go home. As if she could find a shred of peace until the little girl was recovered, safe and sound.

  Very delicately, Brenda pulled her hand away from his. "I'm fine, Matthew," she assured him. "I just want to do anything I can to help."

  He sighed and nodded. "Of course you do. We all do." He walked with her to the hall. "Call me and let me know if I can do anything for the Tylers."

  "I will," she promised, then hurried down the long corridor to the massive double doors at the front of the building.

  Outside, Dax and Nathan waited by the car. Unlike when they'd first arrived, there were few cars left. One by one, the teachers had all been dismissed, the children, as soon as they were quizzed, had been sent home. The only sign that something was amiss were the two patrol cars parked on the far side of the lot. But even that was being wrapped up.

  Nathan waited in vain for an explanation. Finally, he asked, "Do you know what you're doing? Isn't taking the kid's teacher, along a little unorthodox? Even if she is a knockout."

  "Her being a knockout has nothing to do with it and no, it's not a little unorthodox, it's a lot unorthodox," Dax corrected him. "But I've got a feeling she might be useful. She seems to know the kid pretty well and she's got this calming effect on people."

  Other than himself, he added silently. One of the teachers had been close to hysteria once she discovered the reason for their presence on the premises. Brenda had calmed the woman down sufficiently so that she could give them a statement. The teacher hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary, but if she had, Brenda would have been responsible for getting it out of her.

  Besides, something told him to keep the woman close. He wasn't sure just which instincts he was going on, but by and large, he'd learned to trust them and he wasn't about to dismiss them now.

  He straightened as he saw Brenda hurry through the double doors. The slight sultry breeze was playing with the ends of her hair that had come undone from the knot she'd arranged her hair into.

  Damn but she was one hell of a good-looking woman, he thought again.

  Martha Danridge was visibly trembling as she admitted them into what could only be termed a mansion some twenty-five minutes later. The three-storied building, complete with stables, a tennis court and two pools, sat atop a hill that was at the end of a long, winding road. The first time Brenda had seen it, she'd thought of a castle nestled in the center of a fairy tale. And Annie was the lonely princess.

  Rebecca Allen-Tyler had spared the time to tell her that it was an actual castle, transplanted from Ireland and rebuilt stone by stone because she'd fallen in love with it on their honeymoon.

  The king and queen, it seemed, spent hardly any time at all in their castle with their princess.

  The housekeeper seemed barely capable of processing their names as Dax introduced himself and Nathan, then indicated Brenda. "And you already know Annie's teacher, Brenda York."

  "Yes, I already know Mrs. York." The crisp English accent seemed at odds with the nervous expression on the older woman's face. One hand was working the edge of her apron as she closed the front door. "Mrs. Tyler isn't here."

  "But she did call you," Annie said.

  "Yes." Tears welled up in the woman's brown eyes and she looked close to breaking down right before them. She covered her mouth with her hands, holding back a sob until she could regain some measure of control over her voice. "How could such a terrible thing happen? That poor little bit of a thing, she must be so frightened."

  Brenda slipped her arm around the woman's shoulders in mute comfort. It was the same thought that kept crossing and recrossing her own mind ever since she realized Annie wasn't out on the lawn with the rest of the class. Chillingly, she'd known that something was very, very wrong right from the first.

  "The important thing is that we're going to get her back," Brenda assured the woman who sobbed into her handkerchief. The doorbell rang and Brenda's head bobbed up, alert.

  "That's going to be the tech team," Dax told the housekeeper. He'd placed a call, giving them the Tylers' address, while he and Nathan had waited for Brenda.

  Motioning to the housekeeper not to trouble herself, Nathan fell back and opened the front door. Two men and one woman, all carrying large black bags that looked like suitcases, walked in.

  Dax approached the housekeeper. "We're going to need to place bugs on all your phone lines."

  "Yes, of course," Martha whispered, her voice cracking.

  She was still shaking, Brenda noted. Again she slipped her arm around the woman's thin shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.

  "Why don't you show them where all the phones are?" she suggested gently.

  Like a marionette whose string had been pulled, Martha nodded, her head bobbing up and down.

  But before she could leave the foyer, Dax moved in front of her. "There hasn't been a ransom call yet, has there?"

  "No." She swallowed hard, renewed panic entering her eyes as she looked from one detective to the other, and then at Brenda. "At least, I don't think so. I was out at the store until just a little while ago, when Mrs. Tyler called me. There are no message on the answering machine," she tagged on as if to cover her absence.

  Dax didn't know if the woman was simpleminded or just addled by the situation. "Kidnappers don't generally leave messages on answering machines."

  "Oh." She seemed completely deflated as she looked to Brenda for help.

  "You have caller ID, don't you?" Brenda asked. It seemed a safe enough assumption. A power couple like Annie's parents would want the service to help them avoid people they didn't want to talk to.

  Again, Martha bobbed her head up and down. Brenda saw a phone in the living room and crossed to it. She spun the dial located in the upper right-hand corner. No calls other than the one with a 212 area code had registered in the last three hours. That would have been Annie's mother, calling from New York with instructions for the housekeeper.

  Brenda looked at Dax and shook her head. He turned toward the team Nathan had just admitted. "Let's get those taps set up. The kidnappers might be calling any minute now."

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the telephone began to ring.

  Everyone froze.

  * * *

  Chapter 4

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  Martha stared at the pristine white telephone as if it were a giant snake, coiled and poised to spring at her. Her eyes
were huge as she turned them on Dax.

  "Oh, my God, it's ringing." Fear resonated in her voice. "What do I do?"

  It was too late to set up the wire tap. They had to hope for a second call. Dax looked at the housekeeper. "Answer it," he ordered

  She began to visibly tremble.

  "I can't," the housekeeper choked out the words. "Please don't make me." Frantic, Martha looked from one detective to the other. "What if I say the wrong thing? I just couldn't live with myself if something happens to that child because of me—"

  Dax did a poor job of hiding his exasperation. The seconds were ticking away fast and the phone continued to ring. "Look, lady—"

  Not knowing what else to do, afraid that the moment and the call would slip through their fingers, Brenda snatched up the receiver.

  "Tyler residence," she enunciated in what she prayed was a fair imitation of Martha's English accent.

  Surprised, Dax stared at her. In desperation, because the kidnapper might be expecting a woman's voice on the other end, he was about to tell Brenda to answer the telephone, but she'd anticipated him. The woman had a cool head, he thought.

  Making eye contact, he indicated that she should keep the person on the other end of the line talking. If the kidnapper talked, there was a slim chance that a clue, a noise in the background, might be picked up, one that would help them locate where Annie Tyler was being held.

  Brenda felt as if her stomach was going to revolt and come surging out of her mouth any time now. Her morning communes with the porcelain bowl were a thing of the past only by two weeks. And this felt much worse than morning sickness.

  Concentrating on the kidnapper, she was still vaguely aware that six sets of eyes were trained on her.

  The police technicians and two detectives were gathered in a semicircle around her, obviously straining to hear the other side of the conversation. She held on to the receiver with both hands, tilting the ear piece slightly so that at least some of the dialogue could be made out. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Martha sinking onto the sofa.

  The instant she heard the voice on the other end, Brenda knew she hadn't a prayer of trying to recognize it. The kidnapper could have been a man or a woman for all she knew. They were using a voice synthesizer. The irritating vibrations sounded like words being blown through a harmonica.

  "We have the little girl. We don't want to harm her."

  You bastards. Brenda struggled to keep her feelings from spilling out. "And we do not want her harmed," she told the caller, plucking words out of nowhere. Her mind felt as if it was completely blank. "What do you want us to do?"

  The voice on the other end of the line paused, as if playing out the moment. Brenda could feel the tension rising with every second that passed. "Tell the Tylers we want two million dollars and then she'll be returned. That shouldn't be hard for them to manage."

  Dax suddenly grabbed Nathan's jacket and pulled it open. His partner jumped, staring at him accusingly. "Hey."

  The protest faded as Dax took out his pad and the pen he kept there and began to quickly scribble something down. Done, he held the pad up for her to read as the metallic voice droned in her ear.

  She squinted, trying to make out the words he'd written. The detective had alternated between printing and using script, both of which were almost illegible.

  Giving him an exasperated look, she filled in the gaps as best as she could.

  "How do we know she's still alive?" Brenda asked. She kept her eyes on Dax. "We want proof." Dax nodded as she got his message right. "A photograph of Annie holding today's newspaper in her hands."

  This time, there was no pause. There was anger. "We're the ones with all the cards here, bitch. We make the terms, not you."

  She suppressed the urge to beg the kidnapper not to hurt Annie, to let her go. That would only empower him or her. Instead, she reiterated more forcefully, "We need proof."

  When there was no answer, she raised her eyes to Dax for instruction. To her horror, he took hold of her wrist and pushed her hand down until the receiver was back in its cradle.

  He'd made her hang up the phone.

  She stared at him, stunned and furious. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "The kidnapper was going to hang up on you."

  She couldn't believe what he was saying. "So I got him first, is that it?" she demanded heatedly.

  There was an edge to his voice. Because the risk wasn't foolproof. But rules needed to be established. "He's right, he's got all the cards. But if he feels that way, we stand less of a chance of getting the girl back, even if we do hand over the money."

  "If?" she echoed. "We're not going to do what they say? This isn't a statistic, Detective, this is a little girl we're talking about. A living, breathing, please God, little girl. We have to do what they say." Her eyes narrowed accusingly as she looked at him and then toward the telephone. "Provided, of course, that they call back."

  "They'll call back," he said with a conviction he didn't quite feel. The others said nothing to contradict him, but he knew that Nathan didn't approve of what he'd done.

  Dax sweated out the next minute and a half as they dragged themselves up, a microsecond at a time.

  The phone rang again.

  Though she'd been waiting for it, praying for it, the sound made her jump. Relief flooding through her, her knees feeling almost too weak to support her, Brenda jerked the receiver up and placed it to her ear.

  "Hello?"

  She was aware of Dax peeling the earpiece back from her ear so that he could hear. Brenda resisted the urge to hold it in place.

  "Don't you ever, ever do that to me again, bitch!" There was barely suppressed fury in the kidnapper's voice. "Or you get to hear the bullet go through her head. Understood?"

  She couldn't even swallow. There was no saliva left in her mouth. "Understood."

  Again there was a pause. She could feel the moments pulsating.

  "You'll have your picture," the clipped, metallic voice finally told her. "I'll call back tomorrow and tell you where you can find it."

  "Tomorrow?" Brenda thought of Annie having to endure the night as a prisoner somewhere. Annie, frightened, thinking no one would come for her. That nobody cared. "Why not today?"

  "Because I said so."

  The line went dead.

  "Hello? Hello?" Helpless, she looked up at Dax. "He hung up."

  Very gently, Dax took the receiver out of her hand and replaced it in its cradle. "You did great," he told her. The woman looked as if she was going to sag to the floor right in front of him. He put his arm around her shoulders, offering her support. She seemed to stiffen against him. "You want to sit down?"

  Brenda deliberately shrugged him off. "No. What I want is to find Annie."

  "Yeah, we all do." Battling to keep frustration at bay, he scrubbed his hand over his face, then looked at her. He'd heard everything she had, but she'd been a mi-croinch closer to the receiver. Maybe that was enough. "Did you hear anything in the background, anything at all?"

  She shook her head. "It was like talking to ET's evil twin. I couldn't even tell you if it was a man or woman. But 'he' kept switching his pronouns, interchanging 'I' and 'we' several times. That means there's at least two of them."

  He nodded. It just reinforced his suspicions that the bogus couple who'd asked for a tour of the school were the ones who had taken the little girl. It would have helped if Harwood Academy had surveillance cameras in place, but for a prestigious school, they were appallingly lax in electronic security. A condition he figured the headmaster was going to fix—if he was given a chance. He suspected the kidnapping was going to cost the man some withdrawals.

  He looked at Brenda. Unlike the housekeeper, she'd kept her cool throughout the ordeal. He knew it couldn't have been easy on her. "Quick thinking on your part, using that accent."

  "I thought they might know the Tylers had an English housekeeper." She realized the admission underscored the fact that she subconsciously agree
d with the detective. Someone had gone through a great deal of trouble to plot this all out. Her eyes lit as information worked its way forward through her brain. The kidnapper hadn't demanded to speak to either parent. "The kidnapper seemed to know that neither of Annie's parents were home."

  Dax nodded. "They did their homework. This wasn't a random snatch, this was very well planned."

  The thought chilled her. Had she been observed as well? In the classroom, had someone been watching? For how long? The north side of her classroom was completely exposed with a large bay window that comprised half the wall. She pushed the thought away.

  She saw Nathan retrieve his notepad and then place it back into his pocket. "You know," she told Dax, "you've got pretty lousy handwriting. You should do something about that."

  It was nothing he hadn't heard before. His sister Janelle had said his notes all looked as if they'd been done by a drunken spider whose legs had been dipped in ink. "You managed to read it, didn't you?"

  She laughed shortly. "Only because I'm versed in scribble."

  "Whatever it takes," he responded. Dax turned his attention to the housekeeper. Seeing him look at her, the woman tried to rally but rising from the sofa seemed to be more than she could manage at the moment. He crouched before her. "Have you noticed any strangers around here lately?"

  Martha didn't have to pause to reflect. "Mrs. Tyler's having the guest house remodeled."

  That meant that any number of people could be on the premises without having to justify themselves. Anyone could have passed himself off as a plumber, an electrician, a plasterer.

  Dax shook his head. "Plenty of opportunity for people to be coming and going." He looked at Brenda. "Where are the sketches you made?"

  She'd finished the second one on the way over. "In the car."

  He turned toward Nathan. Nothing more had to be said. "I'm on it," Nathan told him, leaving.

  "No, I can't be sure." Martha shook her head as she looked from one sketch to the other that Dax held before her. Her eyes returned to the one of the man. "Him, maybe, but…" Her voice trailed off as she looked up at Dax helplessly. "They do tend to blend in together. Mrs. Tyler is always having something remodeled."