Marie Ferrarella - Heart of a Hero

She pressed her lips together. “I guess maybe you really are a detective.”

He grinned at her remark. “That’s what I’d like to think.”

The grin gave him an innocent, boyish quality. She wondered if he’d practiced it to make people let their guard down, or if it came naturally.

“Is there a trail?” Dakota knew it was foolish to hope that there was. The people she was dealing with didn’t make mistakes. But even so, they were human. Maybe…

The next moment her heart sank as Andreini shook his head. She told herself it wasn’t anything she hadn’t expected.

“Just to the parking lot. Small flecks of mud on the asphalt,” he explained. They had led to an empty carport. The kidnapper had probably parked there, taking a chance that the person the spot belonged to wouldn’t come home to create a commotion about having someone in his or her space. “Even after I have it analyzed, I probably won’t be sure if it came from the same sole, just from the same source, which is only logical.”

Dakota frowned impatiently. She didn’t want logic, she wanted her son.

“So where does that put us?” Back to square one, she thought before he could reply.

The key was to keep moving forward. Things had a way of happening when you kept them in motion. “In my office, asking questions.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What kind of questions?”

There was that wary tone again. What was she afraid he’d find out? What was she hiding? “Hopefully helpful ones. The more I know about your son, his routine—”

She felt her patience fraying again, just as it had last night. “He’s two years old, he doesn’t have a routine.”

“Everyone has a routine,” he corrected. “Even if it’s only one that’s imposed on a child by his mother. The more I know,” Rusty repeated, “the better equipped I am to find him quickly.”

There was that assurance again. No hesitation, just a tacitly understood guarantee. She’d lived long enough in Las Vegas to know that there was no such thing as a guarantee or a sure thing. Only fools who believed in them. Andreini sounded confident, as confident as a greenhorn watching his first spin of the roulette wheel.

Yet he didn’t really strike her as being a fool, or gullible.

Dakota bit her lip. She knew that she was hoping for the impossible—that somehow this man who’d pushed his way into her life was right. That he would get Vinny back for her. Quickly, before the man who had him taken could make her son forget her.

God, but she hated being this vulnerable, this easy a target emotionally. Self-conscious, she glanced down and realized that she’d slept in the sweater she’d dragged on last night to cover up.

She had to look as bad as she felt. “I need a shower and to put on some clothes.”

The latter was a matter of opinion, Rusty thought, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. As far as he was concerned, the woman in front of him looked great just the way she was, with the mark of sleep still in her eyes and her hair all mussed and tangled, fresh from her bed.

Maybe he could do with a shower himself, Rusty thought. A cold one. The hot one he’d been planning on to get the stiffness out of his shoulders would have to be temporarily put on hold.

“Me, too,” he agreed. “I’ll be back within an hour.” That should give her enough time, he judged. “We can do the interview here if you want. That way, if a ransom call does come, you’ll be here to get it.”

But she shook her head at his offer. Though she’d jumped when the telephone had rung last night, she wasn’t expecting to receive any calls. Not if Vinny had been taken by the person she suspected. The man didn’t want to contact her. There was nothing she could offer in exchange for her son, nothing he wanted but her son.

“I don’t have to be here,” she told him. “I can have the calls forwarded to my cell phone,” she added as an afterthought.

Dakota led the way out of her room. “Besides, I’d rather go down to your office.”

He was coming to understand the way her mind worked. She took nothing at face value. “To see if it’s on the level?”

The barest hint of a smile curved her mouth. “Something like that.”

Rusty nodded. He preferred it that way, actually. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have her see the framed photographs of the children they’d recovered. The extensive gallery covered the length of one complete wall and was designed to inspire hope in every despairing parent who crossed their threshold. He figured it would do the same for her.

“Want me to pick you up?” He knew the answer to that even before the words were out of his mouth.

She crossed to her front door and opened it. “No, I can find my own way.”

He merely nodded, accepting her need for independence. Everyone found their own way to deal with a tragedy. She was a hell of a lot stronger than most of the women he’d encountered who had been in her place.

Walking out of the apartment, he turned around abruptly. “One more thing.”

About to close the door, she looked up impatiently. “What?”

“Your name.” She’d never once introduced herself. “Did I hear you correctly last night?”

That’s right, she realized, she’d avoided telling him her name, but he’d heard her correcting the telemarketing person who’d called last night. That had been a slip. Maybe her mistake was in not having changed it, but that had been because she’d believed that the man who had taken her son only knew her by her stage name. It had given her a sense of security, of comfort, to revert to her own name.

Showed what she knew, she thought contemptuously.

Dakota left her hand on the door. “Depends on what you think you heard.”

Cagey, always cagey. It was beginning to fascinate him. “Dakota Armstrong.”

She gave a slight nod. “That’s me.”

Somehow, although he had no idea what a Dakota Armstrong would look like, the name suited her. It was different, unique. As was she.

Rusty put out his hand. “Glad to know you, Dakota Armstrong.”

She didn’t take his hand. She didn’t want a friend, she wanted someone who could do something for her. So instead, she merely closed the door on him.

Her voice came through the barrier. “I’ll see you in about an hour.”

Shaking his head, Rusty hurried up the stairs to his apartment.

He made it to his office in almost half that time. A five-minute shower was all he’d needed before he’d hurried into a fresh pair of jeans and a new shirt. He let the wind dry his hair as he drove to the office, leaving the top down on the vintage blue-and-white Mustang convertible that Megan and Chad had given him for graduation. It was the car he’d spent the better part of two years fantasizing about when he hadn’t been immersed in the minutia of forensics.

He’d expected to be the first one in the office. He’d expected wrong.

There was no need to insert the key into the lock. The door wasn’t locked. As he turned the knob and walked in, he saw Megan coming out of the coffee room, a mug of coffee in one hand, a plate containing two-thirds of a Danish pastry in the other.

Her expression immediately brightened when she saw him. “Hello, little brother, what brings you in so early?” She temporarily set down both mug and plate on the desk in the middle of the foyer. Carrie, their secretary, wasn’t due for another hour. “I thought you’d be basking in your success and sleeping in today.” Before he could respond, she added, “Mrs. Quinn left a message on the machine this morning, saying that she just wanted you to know that there’ll always be a place set for you at their table.”

He’d almost forgotten about yesterday. He’d found the Quinns’s eight-year-old daughter earlier that morning. One of the informants Ben—another partner at the agency who’d come to them via the police department—had cultivated during his career had tipped them off about a little girl who fit Julie Quinn’s description being held in a nearby vacant warehouse. Rescue and reunion had taken place in a matter of hours.