Fatal Charm

“I think you better be going, don’t you? The police will be arriving soon.”

“I can handle them. I’m here with your permission.”

“Yes, but I’d rather not have anyone link you and me, particularly with you here at this hour. This police department is a small one and rumors travel fast. Two of the parents at the day school are cops, and I don’t want them to get wind of this.”

Amanda’s telephone rang just as she finished speaking. Tony felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end—a sure sign he’d learned never to ignore. “Remember to write down the number that flashes on the caller ID,” he said, automatically moving toward the extension. “The system will store the number in memory, but it’s better to have a hard copy.”

She glanced at the number marked Pay Phone that appeared on the LED display. She jotted it down.

With a nod, Tony picked up the extension at the same time Amanda did. The electronically altered voice had the same effect on him as fingernails on a chalkboard. He heard Amanda argue briefly as the woman moved up the deadline they’d given him to get the file. Now she wanted it by the end of tomorrow. Amanda protested, but the woman hung up abruptly.

Amanda gave the phone a hostile glance, then slammed it down. “So much for trusting them to keep their word.”

“I had a feeling she’d call tonight and find some way to keep the pressure up. These variations of routine and changes of plans are meant to keep us off-balance. This person knows what she’s doing.”

“Can you get the file they want?”

“I think so.” Tony dialed Raymond’s direct number. “Track this pay-phone number, will you?” he said without identifying himself. He read out the number, then added, “Use my cellular when you call back.” Tony hung up and glanced at Amanda. “I’m going to take the tape with me—”

Flashing red lights suddenly could be seen through the smaller side windows that hadn’t been broken. Amanda’s eyes grew wide. “It hasn’t been twenty minutes! What a time for them to become efficient! Now what?”

“I’ll duck into your garage and wait there. My pickup’s in your driveway, so with luck, they’ll assume it’s yours,” he said, deciding to leave the tape where it was for now.

Through a crack in the door, Tony watched Amanda greet the officer and usher him inside. The officer stepped in, looked around, and then asked her a few routine questions meant to give him some leads. Getting nothing useful, he held out the report while she signed it.

“I’m afraid that we have very little to go on,” he said. “Our chances of catching the person or persons connected to this are slim.”

“I know,” she admitted.

“We’ll increase patrols in this area, and if you have any more problems, give us a call.”

Tony waited until Amanda closed the front door before coming out. His patience was strained to its limit. Glancing out the front door to make sure the officer was gone, he went to his car and retrieved his cellular phone. He joined her back inside a moment later.

Amanda gave him a worried glance. “What if Raymond already called you?”

Tony shook his head. “It takes longer than that to track down a number, particularly at this time of night. We have a few minutes more to wait.” He walked to the tape recorder and rewound the message. “Help me listen for background sounds. See if there’s anything significant.” In his own mind, Tony blocked out the dialogue, concentrating. Finally he shut off the recorder.

“All I could hear was what sounded like traffic,” Amanda said.

“Same here.”

His cellular phone rang just as he finished speaking. Raymond confirmed that the number matched a pay phone and gave him an address. “Let me go over there,” Raymond said. “Maybe I can dust for prints and get something.”

“No, no way. They may be watching the booth, waiting for my next move. They expect me to have some contacts. Finding out I traced the call shouldn’t come as too big a surprise. Seeing me there won’t be, either. On the other hand, having my former partner show up might scare them off. I don’t want them to know you’re involved. And, again, don’t tell anyone at the Bureau about any of this. We don’t know who might feed information to these bastards,” Tony said, writing down the address. “I’ll take care of this. All I need you to do is meet me tomorrow so we can go to your office, as we agreed.” Once again, regret flooded over him. His planned betrayal could cost him the best friend he’d ever had.

“I’m going, too,” Amanda said, looking at the address he’d written down.

“Why? There’s no reason for you to come.”

“That address is about a block from my day-care center. If someone’s throwing rocks at my house, they might have done something worse at the center. Don’t try to talk me out of it. I’m coming,” she answered flatly.

Tony decided against arguing. The lady had a mind of her own. If he said no, she’d probably just follow him. He didn’t really have a choice, and at least this way he could keep an eye on her. He’d find out nothing useful unless she relaxed. Maybe pretending to confide in her would help.

As they got underway, he glanced over at Amanda. He had to find some way of getting her to lower her guard around him. “I don’t think we’re being followed, and that’s a good sign. I don’t expect to find anything at the phone booth, but I’ve got to make a show of going there to look around and dust for prints. These people will expect me to have a few tricks up my sleeve and connections to check out things like fingerprint records. If I don’t act as they expect, they’ll get nervous, thinking I’ve got some master plan in the works or something.”

“I wonder how they’ll react to my coming along?” Amanda’s voice was hesitant, as if she had suddenly become unsure of herself.

“How else could you keep an eye on me?” Tony suggested, watching her reaction carefully.

Amanda glanced at him, startled. “Does an intermediary do that?”

“Sometimes.”

Tony gave her an appraising glance, then focused his attention back on the road. He could see the lines of worry that sharpened her face in response to the thoughts she was keeping hidden from him. Amanda seemed determined to keep him at arm’s length, though he was doing his best to disarm her. He knew women found him attractive, and he’d always managed to get what he wanted. Until now. He fought the urge to pull over to the side of the road and kiss her until she went soft in his arms, her reserve shattered.

The thought suddenly gave way to another realization. That impulse had nothing to do with finding a key to making Amanda more cooperative with his investigation. Exasperated with himself, he clenched the steering wheel tightly.

“You don’t allow yourself to need anyone, do you?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Certainly not people I don’t know.”

“Like me?”

“All I know about you is that in one day you’ve turned everything in my life upside down.”

She had a point. “If you want to know anything about me, ask.”

He saw the questions crossing her face. She studied him for a moment, then with a more guarded expression, shook her head. He couldn’t be sure, but her reluctance made him think that she’d decided making him angry was not to her best advantage. “You’re a man of secrets,” she said. “I know the type, believe me. I could ask you a million questions and never get any genuine information.”

“Your ex was like that?” he asked, neither confirming nor denying her accusation.

Amanda nodded. “After we’d been married a while, I realized we never really talked about things that mattered. He never shared anything that was important to him or wanted to talk about what was important to me. His job was far more interesting to him than I ever was.”

That last line, so close to what his wife, Lynn, had said to him so many times, stung, flooding his brain with bitter memories. “Some men don’t always know how to show or even talk about what they’re feeling. It doesn’t always come to us as easily as women want.”

Amanda gave him a long, guarded look. “Well, at least you’ve told me something about yourself, though in a roundabout way,” she said.

Tony realized that, if anything, his being open had made her more suspicious of him. Regret filled him as he acknowledged that, had circumstances been different, he would have wanted her to know him, just as he would have wanted to know her—in every possible sense. Aware of the danger of entertaining those thoughts, he drew back into himself. Nothing could get in the way of his finding his daughter and punishing the creeps who had taken her away from him.

Tony pulled up next to a public phone beside a convenience store. “Wait for me here.” Tony retrieved a fingerprint kit from the back seat and walked up to the booth. Though he went over every inch of it, there were no prints. It had been wiped completely clean. As he turned to look back at her, he saw Amanda coming out of the convenience store. Muttering an oath, he rushed up to her. “What are you doing?”

“Making myself useful. I went inside to talk to the clerk, thinking he might have seen something.”

Tony transfixed her with his coldest glare. “You know absolutely nothing about questioning a witness! You may have ruined any chance we had.”

“He didn’t see anything,” Amanda protested.

“And I supposed you asked him really nicely?” he scoffed.