him. “I’m here to see him.”
Standing next to his wife, Sam said, “Lucky him,” in a voice audible only to Savannah. She gave him a jab in the ribs with her elbow and he laughed. “I’ll behave,” he promised, giving her an affectionate nuzzle. “God knows you’re woman enough for me.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Savannah told him, managing to keep a straight face until after he’d entered his own office.
Dakota caught the tail end of the exchange and felt a fleeting tinge of envy. She’d never enjoyed that sort of relationship with a man, the kind that came with lighthearted teasing and heavy doses of love. Not even with Vincent.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t change your mind,” Rusty told her as he waited for her to enter his office.
“Why?”
“Because I want to help.”
She could almost believe him. He sounded sincere. But she knew the only reason he wanted to help, no matter what he said, was because of the money. What she had in her purse would more than cover any fee he wanted to charge.
“Have a seat.” Rusty gestured to the chair in front of his desk. He closed the door behind her before crossing to his own chair, then waited until she sat before beginning. She looked not unlike a bird on a wire, trying her best to not lose her balance. “Change your mind about going to the police?”
“No.” The retort was immediate and sharp. Her voice softened a shade. “I haven’t. I told you before, I don’t want the police brought in on this.”
She’d seemed genuinely concerned about her son. Why was she so wary of the police? Had the kidnapper contacted her and issued the standard threat about killing the hostage if the police were summoned? She had to know the police were still her first, best bet. “Do you mind telling me why?”
She never flinched as she returned his gaze. “Yes, I do mind.”
Kidnappings were hard enough without facing obstacles provided by the parent. “I can’t help you if you keep things back.”
There was no way to read the look in her eyes. “What about that track record you were bragging about?”
If they were going to get anywhere, she was going to have to get rid of that chip on her shoulder. He tried diplomacy. “Most parents are completely open with us, telling us everything they can in order to help us find their missing children.”
She looked down at her perfectly lacquered nails, torn. Consumed with worry. She wasn’t afraid for Vinny’s safety, she was just afraid of never seeing him again. “What is it you want to know?”
He began with the logical question, taking out the tape recorder he kept in his desk. Cade had few rules, but one of them was that the first interview had to be taped. “Would Vinny’s father kidnap his son? Or have him kidnapped?”
The question passed by her, unheard. She was staring at the tape recorder. “What are you doing?”
She was acting as if he’d put a snake on the table instead of a machine, Rusty thought. “Taping the conversation.”
“Why?” It was a demand, not a question.
“Agency rules. Just a way to keep the facts fresh and on record.”
She wanted to tell him to put it away. She wanted to bolt. But most of all, she wanted Vinny. So she didn’t tell him to get rid of the machine and she didn’t leave. Folding her hands in front of her, exercising extreme control over her worn nerve endings, she looked at him.
“What did you ask me?”
Rusty repeated the question. “Would Vinny’s father kidnap his son? Or have him kidnapped?”
“No.”
In his estimation, she’d answered too emphatically. “No disrespect, but maybe you don’t know the man as well as you think you do—”
Dakota laughed shortly. He had that right. “Truer words were never said, Andreini, but even so, I know he wasn’t the one to take the boy.”
He had to push it to the limit. There was more than one case of a child taken by an estranged spouse in their files. “What makes you so sure?”
She set her mouth grimly. “Because Vinny’s father is dead.” And that was when the trouble had all started, she remembered.
“Oh.” He couldn’t gauge by her tone whether the man’s death had left her bereft or relieved. “I’m sorry.”
She lifted her shoulders carelessly, not about to display any more emotion in front of this stranger than she already had. “Yeah, so am I. He had a lot of faults, but he was a good guy. Or tried to be,” she amended, saying it more to herself than to Rusty.
There was a hell of a lot more to this than she was telling him, Rusty thought. He had to get her to talk to him. And for that, he was going to have to get her to trust him.
He figured he had his work cut out for him.
Chapter 4
Making himself comfortable, Rusty took out the worn notepad he kept in his pocket, the one that seemed to have an endless supply of paper and had been with him since he’d started. If he had one superstition, he would have had to say it revolved around the notepad. Every case he’d entered there had been solved.
“Let’s start with where you work.”
“Why?”
It certainly hadn’t taken long for her defensiveness to kick in again. He’d hoped that maybe she would have put it aside once they’d actually gotten started.
“Because I intend to go there and scout around, maybe talk to a few people.”
She didn’t want him talking to the people she worked with, didn’t want any suspicions being raised. It was her business that this was happening, not anyone else’s.
“There’s no reason for that,” she protested. “Vinny was stolen out of his crib in the apartment, not out of a dressing room.”
He wasn’t sure just what she was alluding to. Maybe she worked at a clothing shop. The one thing he did know was that he had to get her to be more cooperative or this investigation wasn’t going to go anywhere. The woman had to be convinced of the validity of every step he took and to stop challenging each one as it occurred, otherwise this wasn’t going to go anywhere.
Maybe a little personal insight would help. He knew Sam and Savannah wouldn’t mind.
“The woman you passed earlier is Savannah Walters. Her little girl was kidnapped by the wife of someone she worked with at the time of the abduction. Someone she trusted,” he emphasized. He leaned forward, making his point as sincerely as he could. “I need to talk to anyone you’ve had contact with to rule out that possibility.”
Resistance came naturally to her. She’d been resisting for so long that it was second nature to her. “I can rule it out for you right now. I’m not that friendly with anyone at work.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he said under his breath as he jotted something down on his pad.
She raised a brow, immediately on the defensive. “What?”
That had been a slip. It wasn’t like him. Rusty admonished himself as he looked up. “You seem like the private type.”
Dakota frowned slightly. That wasn’t what he’d said originally. “I believe in minding my own business.”
“I still need your place of business.” He indicated an empty line on the form. “For the record. Humor me,” he told her when she didn’t respond.
With a sigh, she gave him the address of the store where she worked in Newport Beach. It didn’t matter really. As soon as she got Vinny back, Dakota