In Broad Daylight

by Marie Ferrarella

  Before checking with Nathan, he'd called the Tylers, letting them know that Brenda and he had gotten the photograph of their daughter and that the little girl was still alive and apparently well.

  Tyler had told him they planned to go on the air this afternoon to plead with the kidnapper. Dax had a feeling that it wouldn't do any good, but he kept his opinion to himself.

  Behind him, Dax could hear the rhythmic tapping of keys. Brenda had taken a seat at the most sophisticated-looking computer the second they'd entered the academy's state of the art computer lab. The keys hadn't stopped clicking since she'd sat down.

  He crossed to her. She hardly seemed aware that there was anyone else in the room, her attention was so rabidly focused on the monitor. She'd scanned in the picture they'd retrieved from the bathroom at the fast-food restaurant and she was in the process of magnifying and cleaning up the tiny speck reflected on Annie's glasses.

  He thought of his own approach at the keyboard. Three fingers, a maximum of errors. For him, the computer had been no improvement over the ancient electric typewriters that had graced the precinct when he'd first joined the force.

  In contrast, Brenda's fingers flew over the keyboard. "You really know your way around all this stuff, don't you?"

  "Hmm?" Lost in thought, it took a second for her to hear his words. "Oh, yeah, I do."

  The speck had begun to take on a shape, but her head was starting to ache from staring at it so much. Brenda paused to massage her temples.

  "I fell in love with the first computer I ever saw. We didn't have one when I was growing up. My father didn't see the point of it since it couldn't cook or clean. And computers didn't interest my husband, but the second I got into a classroom, I knew I had to have one." She smiled, remembering. It had been like opening up a whole new world to her. "I've tried to stay on top of things as far as progress in the computer industry goes." Glancing toward him she grinned. "It's both my hobby and my passion, I guess. I like the challenge."

  Turning back to the computer, she straightened. Her back systematically cracked in three places, one after the other. She could feel her headache spreading down her spine.

  Dax saw her rotate her shoulders. The movement reminded him of a sleek jungle cat stealthily making its way through the brush. She did it again. Because he had nothing else to do, he came up behind her and began to knead her shoulders. He felt her instantly tense under his hands. Gently but firmly, he held her in place when she tried to get up.

  "Just trying to help you work the knots out of your shoulders." He laughed shortly as he continued kneading. "I've felt more relaxed rocks than you."

  "Work many knots out of rocks do you?" It was hard not to groan the words out. He was hurting her, but at the same time, she could feel some sort of release. The tension wasn't exactly flowing out of her, but what he was doing was definitely helping ease it. "Is this what they mean by exquisite pain?"

  The only context he was familiar with when it came to "exquisite pain" was lovemaking. His mouth curved. "I don't think they were talking about shoulder massages at the time."

  Since Brenda seemed to be able to take it, he slowly increased the pressure he was applying. She winced once, but she didn't complain. She had grit, he'd give her that. The lady was a lot tougher than she looked. Probably carried all her tension around in her shoulders as well as on them.

  "I'm surprised you haven't broken into a hundred little pieces by now."

  Considering what she'd been through in her life, so was she. But she kept that to herself. There was no reason to share it with a stranger, no matter how magical his hands might be.

  Brenda shrugged. "I guess I'm a type A personality."

  She didn't have to tell him that, he'd already surmised as much. "You should think about being an A-minus once in a while." The stiffness wasn't abating, even a little. "Damn, I've worked on some hard knots before, but I think you take the prize."

  For her part, she struggled not to let her eyes slip shut. This really did feel good. "You moonlight as a masseur?"

  "No moonlighting, but my cousins and brothers hit me up every so often for a good massage." Janelle referred to him as "iron hand" and refused to let him come anywhere close to her, but Troy and Jared swore by him. "Stress of the job," he explained.

  She would imagine that being a policeman had to be very stressful in a city like Aurora. They had their share of crime. "So who does you?" The question came out before she could think to stop it. She bit her lower lip. He probably thought she was trying to pry into his personal life.

  "I don't get tense." That wasn't strictly true and he amended his statement. "At least, not to where it makes me walk around like a wooden soldier."

  She took no offense. After all, if nothing else, wooden soldiers had great posture, right? But she was curious about something.

  "You don't get stressed?"

  "Sure." Taking a smaller amount of muscle between his thumb and forefinger on either side of her neck, he squeezed, then began to massage again. Finally, the knots grew smaller. "You can't work this job and not get stressed."

  "Well, then?"

  Moving in a downward pattern, he pressed his palm against her back. Brenda tried not to sigh. "I find other ways to release the tension."

  "Oh." An image of Dax, his limbs tangled with those of some nubile, raven-haired woman, suddenly flashed through her brain. "Sorry," she murmured, shifting uncomfortably. "Didn't mean to pry."

  Realizing what she had to be thinking, Dax laughed. Yes, he did alleviate some of the tension he felt by temporarily losing himself in fast, nonbinding relationships that lasted slightly longer than a dandelion in bloom. But that wasn't something a man mentioned around a woman, at least not unless he was setting ground rules. He wasn't sure if he wanted to set any rules here, or even if they were necessary. This was a whole new place he found himself entering.

  Besides, it wasn't what he meant. "I swim and I work out regularly."

  She had no idea why that made her happy. Or why it ushered in a feeling of relief. She only knew she could feel her mouth curving. "That would explain the upper body strength."

  "Come again?"

  To explain, she reached over her shoulder and placed one of her hands over his. "It feels as if you actually could pulverize those rocks you mentioned."

  "Oh." He stopped massaging her shoulders and took a step back. "Sorry. If it was too hard, why didn't you say something?"

  She didn't want to tell him his hands on her felt like heaven. So she gave him what had become her standard excuse. "Because my father taught me not to complain."

  Because if she had, he'd only hit her harder. So she'd learned to bite her lip and take it, mentally taking herself off somewhere else and vowing to leave the first real opportunity she found.

  And Wade had been it.

  "Was your father a military man, too?" Dax asked. Her husband had been a soldier. Maybe she was drawn to a man in a uniform because she wanted to please her father.

  "No, just a frustrated bully who didn't like to hear crying."

  Pausing, he turned her chair around to look at her, making the natural deduction. "You cried?"

  She didn't like being put under a microscope and examined. But she couldn't find the words to tell him to back off. Maybe in part because she didn't entirely want him to. "I learned not to."

  "Or else?"

  "Or else," she echoed. Those were her father's words. Or else I'll whip the flesh right off you. It wasn't something she cared to go into. What happened to her within those four walls where she'd grown up was something she never talked about. In the beginning, she'd wanted, at least just once to unburden herself. But Wade hadn't wanted to listen, saying the past was best left behind her and that there was nothing to be gained by bringing it up and reliving it. So she'd let it die.

  Except that it wouldn't.

  It came back to her in dreams sometimes. She'd see her father looming over her, a belt in his hand, yelling at her to be quiet ev
en as he whipped her over something she'd done, or had forgotten to do.

  Or for something that someone had done to him.

  She learned quickly enough to make herself scarce after serving her father supper.

  Brenda pressed her lips together. "Let's just leave it at that."

  He looked at her for a long moment. This conversation was getting way too serious. That was usually his signal to back away. The less he really knew about a woman, the less likely he was to get tangled up with her. But there was something in Brenda's eyes that kept him from his usual dance. "You know, I'm a pretty good listener."

  Any minute now, she was going to say things she was going to regret, open doors she wanted to keep closed. She needed to distract herself. So Brenda turned her chair around, back to the desk, and started working on the image on the screen. She tried to sound amused, detached. "Are you, now?"

  He placed his hand on her chair. "Yes, I am."

  She was aware that his fingertips were just a hair's breadth away from the side of her neck. The sensitive side. She strove to keep things light. "And just what is it you listen to?"

  "Anything you might want to tell me." That wasn't enough and he knew it. She seemed adept at finding loopholes. "Anything you might need to tell me," he amended.

  Turning her head, she looked over her shoulder, expecting to see a flirtatious grin on his lips. Instead of a grin, she saw a smile. An encouraging smile. As if he meant what he said and he wanted her to take him up on his offer.

  But the words were so deep down inside of her now, she didn't know if she could drag them up.

  "Nice to know," she murmured. "Thanks for the massage." She moved her neck from side to side. "It feels much better."

  He'd only scratched the surface. "Good."

  An image of giving her a full body massage materialized in his mind. He banked it down. Something was humming between them, he realized. Something he couldn't put a name to or identify. Something he wasn't even sure he liked, but it made him curious and he'd never been able to back away from a puzzle. It was what made him good at his job. But once the puzzle was solved, he moved on. That's what made him lousy at relationships.

  Brenda hit a few more keys, striving to clean up the image she'd enlarged. It was still fuzzy, but she'd finally brought it to a level where the speck now had a form.

  And it was a female form.

  She tried one more time, enlarging it further. Everything lost its perspective. Brenda hit another series of keys, reforming lines and parameters. She stared at the face that had emerged on the surface of Annie's glasses. "It's her."

  Dax leaned over her shoulder, his hand braced on the back of her chair as he stared at the less than pristine image. "Her?"

  Her heart hammered harder. Whether it was because she felt they were getting nearer to finding Annie, or because he was standing so close, she didn't know. "The woman who was at the school."

  He turned her chair around so that he could look at her. "Are you sure?"

  Brenda blew out a breath, trying to be as truthful as possible. "Could I differentiate between her and her twin sister, or a lookalike cousin? No. But barring that I would say that the woman there," she moved her chair back around so that she faced the screen again, "definitely bears a striking resemblance to Mrs. Kingsley, the woman I was giving the tour to when the fire broke out. And Annie disappeared."

  That was good enough for him. "Can you remember if she was with you at all times?"

  She shook her head. "All I remember was focusing on getting the children out," she said honestly. "I really don't remember where she or her husband were during all this, but I'm fairly certain that they were—" Her eyes widened as a thought materialized. "Wait a second, the girls' bathroom."

  Was she talking about the bathroom at the fast-food restaurant? Had she seen something there that he'd missed? "What about it?"

  But she was talking about the bathroom at the school. "The woman asked to use it just after we started the tour. It was right after we came out of the music room. She wasn't gone long." Certainly not long enough to arouse any suspicion. "But she joined us in the art room and I didn't think anything of it. We were on our way to the library when the alarm went off."

  It was falling into place now. "That was probably when she started the fire," he told her. "When she supposedly went to the bathroom."

  She frowned. "In all the excitement, I forgot about that." Brenda was annoyed with herself. He'd asked her questions, why had that faded to the recesses of her mind until just now? "Damn it, I should have remembered that."

  So far, she'd been nothing but a huge asset. She was being much too hard on herself. "Don't beat yourself up about it, you remember it now."

  Brenda blew out a breath. "Right, for all the good it does."

  "It establishes a time line," he pointed out. Dax knew how frustrating it had to seem to her, but this was the way things worked in the real world, things didn't come together in a rush. It was usually one piece at a time. "Every clue, however small, helps to give us a whole."

  "You do fortune cookies, too?" The second the words were out, she regretted them. "Sorry, that sounded kind of snippy, didn't it?"

  "Not when it's followed by an apology. You've been through a lot."

  Emotionally, she'd been through the wringer. And her attraction to Dax, not to mention being pregnant didn't exactly help things along. "Not as much as Annie has."

  There was no arguing that, but getting mired in thoughts of what might be happening to the little girl, even as they stood here talking, wouldn't help free her. They had to keep their efforts focused on the goal. He nodded toward the enlargement on the screen. "Can you print that up?"

  "No sooner asked than done." Brenda hit Ctrl P and the printer spit out an exact copy of what she had on the monitor.

  Taking it out of the tray, Dax studied it. It was still somewhat fuzzy. He raised his eyes to hers. "Can you clean this up any more?"

  Brenda shook her head. "Not without being creative and enhancing it. This is still the image. Anything I come up with beyond that could be subjected to interpretation."

  "Good enough. This just confirms our theory that the couple kidnapped Annie." There was no doubt in his mind that if the woman was standing there watching, the man had to be one taking the picture.

  Dax saw the doubt on Brenda's face. "What?"

  Funny how things began to come together. First the memory of the woman stepping out for a moment, now this. "I saw both of them once we were outside the building. They came and told me that these were less than ideal conditions for them in which to view the school. They said that they'd be back when things settled down."

  He followed her line of thinking. "So what you're saying is how could she have taken Annie and still be there to talk to you?"

  Brenda nodded. "Can't be in two places at the same time." She chewed on her lip, thinking out loud. "Maybe in all the chaos that followed the alarm going off and the fire engines arriving, one of them managed to get Annie to go with them and stashed her."

  "And what, came back later to get her?" That didn't seem very feasible to him. "You said you combed the school."

  Against the orders of the firemen, she'd run into the building, screaming Annie's name. She ran through the entire first floor, but Annie hadn't been there. While she'd been doing that, Annie could have been taken somewhere else.

  "Maybe not thoroughly enough."

  He had another idea. "And maybe there's someone else involved."

  Brenda rose from her chair. "You mean one of the teachers?"

  His eyes were on hers. "Do you have any better ideas?"

  It seemed like the logical way to go, but he and his partner had ruled the teachers out. "But you already questioned them."

  "So we'll question them again." It wouldn't be the first time a felon managed to slip by without detection. "More closely this time."

  The school was supposed to open again tomorrow. It was going to be difficult enough to go
about business as usual without having the police there again to requestion everyone and remind them of Annie's kidnapping. "They'll think you suspect them."

  "Then they'd be right," he told her simply. He saw the surprise on her face at his bluntness. "I suspect everyone until proven otherwise."

  She pressed her lips together, then asked, because she had to know, "Even me?"

  The smile took over his lips very slowly. "No, not you."

  She believed him. But again, she had to know. "Why not?"

  This time, the smile gave way to a grin. "Call it a gut feeling."

  She'd heard that cops often relied on their gut instincts, but had thought that was just another myth. "And what kind of an average does your gut have?"

  He had this sudden urge to kiss her. Definitely bad timing. But because he thought it was best to play it safe right now, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets. "Oh, about ninety-seven percent of the time."

  "Ninety-seven percent wrong or ninety-seven percent right?"

  He laughed. "Ninety-seven percent right." He grew serious. "Do you want me to suspect you?"

  "No, of course not." She was relieved that he still didn't, even though he was retracing his steps deductively. But that didn't change the way she felt deep down. "It's just that I feel so responsible for this."

  Dax put his hands on her shoulders, anchoring her in place so that she couldn't try to escape his words. "Listen to me. You didn't do anything wrong. You had, how many kids to take care of?"

  "Twenty."

  "Twenty." He nodded. He would have been undone by more than two. "Twenty kids you had to get out of the building—"

  And she'd failed. "I only got out nineteen," she reminded him.

  His eyes searched her face. "You always this determined to take the blame?"

  Brenda shrugged off his hands and turned away from him. She crossed to the window and looked out. The computer room faced the front of the building. Where they had all gathered to get away from the fire that had been little more than a hoax. The front lawn looked so empty, so desolate to her now. "Habit," she murmured.