In Broad Daylight (6 page)

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 theTylerswe 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. Wehaveto

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

ifHarwoodAcademyhad 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 theTylershad an English housekeeper." She realized the

admission underscored the fact that she subconsciously agreed 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."

"Yeah, I got that problem, too," Nathan muttered, gathering the two sketches together.

They were striking out when they should be forging forward. Brenda turned toward Dax.

"Now what?"

Her eyes were bright, he thought, as if she was barely harnessing the energy within her.

He knew what she had to be feeling. Desire to do something was knotted up with the

realization that everything was moving forward much too slowly.

"Now some of the patrolmen and I get a canvas of the area around the school grounds, see

if anyone might have noticed something." He glanced at his partner. "Nathan, see if we can get those sketches onto the local news stations—"

At the suggestion, the housekeeper came to life. She rose to her feet, her expression

utterly horrified: "Mr. Tyler wouldn't want the media alerted. He absolutely abhors

publicity about his personal life."

While he was sensitive to a parent's anguish, Dax could have cared less what an

overpaidHollywooddirector did or didn't want.

"I'm afraid this is out of Mr. Tyler's hands," Dax told the woman crisply, then because she still looked terrified, he relented. "The public is incredibly helpful, Ms. Danridge.

Someone might have seen something." And that, he thought, was all the time he had to

spare for hand-holding. He turned to his partner.

"Nathan, we're going to need phone lines set up at the precinct for the calls that are

going to start coming in."

The notepad was out again. "You pulling together a task force?"

"That's what I'm doing," Dax responded glibly.

He looked as if he was about to walk out. Brenda shifted so that she was directly in his

path. "What can I do?"

Dax would have thought that by now, all she would have wanted to do was go home. "You've

already done a great deal."

He was putting her off, she could tell by the tone of his voice. She didn't want to be

swept under the rug. "What can I do?" she repeated.

He glanced over toward the technician who was wiring the telephone Brenda had just used

in hope that when the kidnapper called the next time, they might be able to trace the call.

Even if they did, he had a hunch it would probably be coming from a public phone. But

sometimes they got lucky.

The blonde with the killer legs was still waiting for him to answer her. "You could stay

here and talk to theTylerswhen they arrive home." He was leaving someone from the task

force to speak to them, but there was no harm in their seeing a familiar face, especially if

that familiar face could walk them through what had happened at the school.

Hewasbrushing her off. "Mrs. Tyler won't be due in for another couple of hours and Mr.

Tyler will probably be here in the morning."

"Good estimate." Sidestepping her, he set his sights on the front door.

Didn't he understand that she could be useful? That she knew Annie better than anyone

and that maybe that knowledge might be helpful? Moving quickly, she got in his way again.

"What do I do until then?"

He put his hands on her shoulders and deliberately moved her to the side, out of his way.

"You might try praying," he told her as he left.

She was at her wits end.

The journey to that destination hadn't been an overly long one. As the brash, annoying

Detective Cavanaugh had suggested, she'd remained at theTylerestate, waiting for Annie's

mother to arrive. Secretly, she'd hoped that perhaps the kidnapper might have a change

of heart and call again.

But he didn't.

Trying to keep her frustration under wraps, she'd spent the time she was waiting for

Rebecca Allen-Tyler to make her appearance talking to the policeman who had been left on

duty.

Exactly seven-hours after she had placed the call to her, Annie's mother swept into the

mansion riding on a tide of reporters. By now, the story of Annie's kidnapping as well as

her sketches of the two kidnappers had led off every station's evening news broadcast.

The little girl's abduction from theHarwoodAcademywas fodder for the newest media

feeding frenzy.

Brenda braced herself as she faced the former actress. To her credit, Annie's mother

did look distraught, and she did have the housekeeper shut out the media reporters. Her

personal bodyguard, a man who looked as if he'd just walked off with the Mr. Olympia

bodybuilding crown, stood like a towering sentry at the front entrance.

"How could you have allowed something like this happen?" Rebecca screamed at her the

moment she recognized her.

"Mrs. Tyler, I'm very, very sorry—" Brenda began.

"Sorry? You don't know the meaning of the word sorry. You'll be sorry all right, sorry you

were ever born when Simon and I finish suing your asses off for this."

She'd already given the woman the details over the telephone when she'd placed the

original call. Brenda supposed that three thousand miles was a long distance to work up her

anger. That didn't excuse what had come out of the woman's mouth, though.

"With all due respect, Mrs. Tyler, we thought there was a fire going on. And if it were my

daughter, my first thoughts wouldn't be about suing people, it would be about moving

heaven and earth to get her back."

"How dare you!" Rebecca Tyler shrieked. "Howdareyou?"

Brenda looked at the patrolman closest to her. "I don't think I'm needed here right now."