Innocent Hostage (12 page)
She arrived at the same time as he did. No doubt about it, she might be traitorous but she thought on her feet and moved fast. If she wasn’t so small she’d make a great policewoman, but somehow he couldn’t see her dealing with drunks outside bars and adult entertainment strips on Saturday nights.
Her betrayal bit and roiled inside him. How could she? How could she contact his parents knowing how he felt about them? He’d thought that he and she might—ah, to hell with it. He struggled to swallow his anger.
“Hop into Ingrid’s car, Kit. She’ll keep an eye on you until I get back,” was all he said to his son. But he stalked over and leaned in her driver’s window while Kit was stowing his backpack in the trunk of the little Fiesta.
“Since you are so concerned about Kit that you contacted my bloody parents, you can do me the favor of looking after him,
Ms.
Rowland,” he snarled. “And if you ever try a stunt like that again, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
He loped across to the SUV and revved the engine. He might hate her guts at the moment, but he trusted her with Kit. He drove away with the picture of Ingrid’s dropped jaw and indignant expression in his mind’s eye. She hadn’t recoiled in fear, but she’d looked like a stunned mullet. Good. She wouldn’t make
that
mistake again.
****
Ingrid sat there, unable, for a moment, to drive. What the heck was Breck so steamed up about? And what did his parents have to do with anything? Dismayed, she bit the inside of her mouth as she pulled out into the traffic flow. She glanced in the rear vision mirror at Kit, strapped into the back seat. She knew what she was going to do and she despised herself for it. She was going to pump Kit for information, something she always tried not to do with any of her charges. Kids were so open that often she had to stop them giving away family secrets.
Kit was a different flavor. It was like squeezing water out of chalk to get anything out of him. Nevertheless, something was very wrong here and she was going to get to the bottom of it. As she turned into the side road leading to her apartment she took a deep breath and asked, “Kit, what is your father so angry about? I don’t understand.”
“Grandma and someone else came. Dad wouldn’t let them come in. I think they wanted to talk to me.”
“But why shouldn’t they talk to you? Grandparents love their grandchildren and they always want to talk to them.”
“They said something about phone calls to report on Daddy. Daddy got angry.” Ingrid noticed that Kit had regressed to calling his father “Daddy” again.
“I wonder what they meant about
reporting
on Daddy? That doesn’t sound right.” Ingrid kept fishing. Hell, if there was a piscatorial prize, today she’d win it. But she needed to know what was going on so she continued to pump Kit for information. “
Reporting
sounds serious.”
“It was about me. The man said they were checking up on me.” His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap.
Poor little Kit. Trouble had come to their door and he knew he was the cause of it. What a terrible situation for a child.
“I still don’t understand. Did they say something else?”
“The man is getting a court nawder.”
“A-a court nawder?” Ingrid was mystified. What the hell was that? Then she slammed on the brakes and pulled into the side of the road. “Shit!
Now
I understand. Your father thinks
I
contacted your grandparents because I was concerned for your welfare. How
dare
he!” She bashed both hands on the steering wheel. “I’ll have his guts for garters!” Surely Breck Marchant knew her better than that? What was wrong with the man?
Kit shrank away from her.
She struggled to rein in her temper. “Sorry, Kit. I’m really angry with your father. He thinks I told your grandparents that you two guys needed help.”
“Daddy is a good Daddy!” Kit shouted suddenly.
Ingrid jumped. She had never heard Kit raise his voice before except in the playground. Then Kit kicked the back of her seat, yelling “Go away! I hate you! They are
mean
people.”
Ingrid guessed the ‘mean people’ were Breck’s parents. If they intended to get a ‘court nawder’ then they were mean, all right.
She put the car into gear and drove home. Kit refused to get out of the car. “I want to go home. I want Daddy.” Then he began to weep with big gusting sobs that tore the heart out of her chest.
“Oh God, Kit. I’m sorry. It’s all a misunderstanding.” She clambered into the back seat and tried to cuddle him but he thrust her away. For the first time in her life she found herself unable to console a child. At preschool she was always able to cajole them out of a fit of the dismals or persuade them to choose another activity if they’d gotten frustrated with the one they were trying to master. But poor little Kit had had a bellyful of angst bottled up inside him for months, maybe years. No amount of cajoling was going to stem the flow of his anger and despair.
“They’ll take me away from him, I know they will,” he snuffled.
“Oh, no they will
not!
” she exclaimed. “Your father and I will fight tooth and nail against anyone trying to take you away from him ever again, you hear me?”
But he just looked at her with a woeful face and drenched eyes and she knew he didn’t believe her. He’d been lied to before, poor little boy. She’d like to get her hands around Tania Kerr’s neck and wring it until the woman’s eyes popped. “Kit, I have an idea.” What she was about to propose could lose her the preschool operator’s license. Considering the black mark already chalked up against her, it might be the end of her career. But she would not stand by and see these two shafted by the system a second time.
“What?” Kit had grown impatient of her introspection.
“If those people—your grandparents—try to take you away, I can hide you at my place. But that’s a last resort, Kit. Please don’t tell anyone except your Dad, okay?”
“Okay.” Kit looked out the car window. “Are we getting out?”
Ingrid sighed. He might at least have been a tiny bit grateful, considering her career was on the line. But of course he was too little to understand.
Anyway, it wouldn’t come to that, she was sure of it. Breck’s parents would never take away Breck’s son. Their textbooks on child rearing were full of comments about how important the parent-child relationship was, how nothing could break the bond. She snorted. They hadn’t met
her
father, had they?
Breck bundled everything into the trunk and they hightailed it away from the fairy princess’s castle as fast as they could.
A fraught silence hung inside the vehicle as they headed home. Breck looked at Kit. “Are you okay, son?”
“I guess.”
Yeah, that was how Breck felt too. Not very good, not quite average, but okay. Breck sighed. Today’s call-out hadn’t been a difficult one, just time-consuming. They’d used Jack Tanner as negotiator and he’d saved them hours of difficult bargaining. The man was a genius and Breck had total confidence in him. But the whole time Breck had been lying prone on wet leaves cradling his Bushmaster, he’d had Kit at the back of his mind. And that wasn’t good. He was no longer a competent operative with the AOS while his mind was wandering from the job at hand. As for his chances of joining the Special Tactics Group—well, those had been blown into oblivion.
Ingrid’s offer to help him study for the detective entrance exam might have worked. If you failed, you were permitted to try again. For sure he’d fail on his first attempt. But he and Ingrid—no. All that was best forgotten. Betrayal was something you didn’t get over.
He sighed. He had no way to move but down. He’d have to withdraw from the AOS and revert to ordinary police work. It would be like tearing off an arm. It took years to get into the AOS. They didn’t take just anybody and the continuous pysch testing, incident evaluations and range practice caused a lot of squad members to drop out. He’d lapped it all up because he enjoyed learning on the job. He hated baseless theory, learning for the sake of learning, but if he had a physical action to relate it to, then he learned quickly.
If he went back to ordinary police work he’d take a drop in pay, but a senior sergeant’s pay was not to be sneezed at. Nor would he have to worry about sudden call-outs. Shifts were rostered weeks in advance so he could make plans. But somehow he couldn’t work up the energy to make plans for a future that bored him stupid.
****
Breck sloshed through the rain, holding fast to Kit’s hand. “What the hell…?” A crowd of strangers milled around outside their front door, presumably waiting for them. As soon as they appeared, four pairs of eyes fastened on them.
“Who are
they
?” Kit asked, his voice wobbling.
“I’m not sure. Stand behind me, Kit.”
Oh, wonderful. His mother, father and two strangers watched his approach. A short, bald guy stepped forward and held out a document. “Sir, I represent Anna and Jeremy Marchant, your parents. This is an interim order from the Family Court to surrender your son, Kit Marchant, to Child Services.” Then he stepped back a pace. “I didn’t realize you were a cop. Is that the AOS insignia?”
Breck nodded. He thought quickly. Which Family Court judge had been awed enough by the initials after his parents’ names to issue an interim order without investigating the circumstances? One of their cronies, no doubt. The lawyer looked uncomfortable. The AOS uniform had given him pause. Breck could milk that. “Kit’s been staying with his kindergarten teacher while I was on call-out. It’s an arrangement we have.”
The other stranger in the group peered out from behind Jeremy Marchant. “Kindergarten teacher? Qualified?”
Breck stared hard at her. “Yes. As a matter of fact she’s the manager.” He was not going to mention Ingrid’s name in case his parents linked it to her phone call. “Excuse me, who are you?”
“Sorry. Ann Ellis, Child Protection. Here.” She thrust out a card but kept her distance. Probably because he was clanking around with a bunch of dangerous looking stuff hanging off him. Even his parents looked taken aback.
“Really? I remember contacting you people when I was concerned about Kit two months ago. Nobody got back to me. Two weeks later his stepfather held him hostage. I don’t think
Child Protection
is much use to us.”
“Y-you called us? About Christopher?”
“His name is Kit.”
“And you’re saying you have a child-minding arrangement in place?”
“Sure do. Don’t we Kit?” Breck pressed Kit’s shoulder in warning. “Unfortunately Kit doesn’t have grandparents who live close by or I’m sure they’d care for him.” He looked straight at his parents, his chin leading the way. “Except we hardly ever see them.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not like that.” Jeremy Marchant looked like a man who saw the ground slipping away from under him. “Tania called us and—”
“
What
??”
“
Now
what’s your problem? We’re aware you’re divorced, but Tania has always stayed in touch—”
“Don’t you read the papers? What about the TV news?”
Jeremy Marchant looked contemptuously down his nose at his son. “What on earth has all this got to do with Tania?”
But the solicitor had linked the names together. He leaned towards Jeremy Marchant. “Mr. Marchant, you never told me how you came by this information. The police are looking for Tania Kerr. She disappeared some weeks ago, isn’t that right?” he appealed to Breck.
Breck nodded. He unlocked the door. “Rather than annoy the other residents, let’s go inside.” Already the nosy guy next door was leaning in his doorway, his nose twitching.
Everyone crowded in behind Breck and Kit. Breck felt like the Pied Piper.
“What this gentleman is trying to tell you—” Breck broke off. “Sorry, what is your name?”
“Kelly.”
“What Mr. Kelly is trying to tell you, Father, is that Tania is being sought by the cops because she and the other two children in their family disappeared some weeks ago during a domestic dispute. Her husband’s in gaol because he produced a firearm and held Kit hostage.”
Her betrayal bit and roiled inside him. How could she? How could she contact his parents knowing how he felt about them? He’d thought that he and she might—ah, to hell with it. He struggled to swallow his anger.
“Hop into Ingrid’s car, Kit. She’ll keep an eye on you until I get back,” was all he said to his son. But he stalked over and leaned in her driver’s window while Kit was stowing his backpack in the trunk of the little Fiesta.
“Since you are so concerned about Kit that you contacted my bloody parents, you can do me the favor of looking after him,
Ms.
Rowland,” he snarled. “And if you ever try a stunt like that again, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”
He loped across to the SUV and revved the engine. He might hate her guts at the moment, but he trusted her with Kit. He drove away with the picture of Ingrid’s dropped jaw and indignant expression in his mind’s eye. She hadn’t recoiled in fear, but she’d looked like a stunned mullet. Good. She wouldn’t make
that
mistake again.
****
Ingrid sat there, unable, for a moment, to drive. What the heck was Breck so steamed up about? And what did his parents have to do with anything? Dismayed, she bit the inside of her mouth as she pulled out into the traffic flow. She glanced in the rear vision mirror at Kit, strapped into the back seat. She knew what she was going to do and she despised herself for it. She was going to pump Kit for information, something she always tried not to do with any of her charges. Kids were so open that often she had to stop them giving away family secrets.
Kit was a different flavor. It was like squeezing water out of chalk to get anything out of him. Nevertheless, something was very wrong here and she was going to get to the bottom of it. As she turned into the side road leading to her apartment she took a deep breath and asked, “Kit, what is your father so angry about? I don’t understand.”
“Grandma and someone else came. Dad wouldn’t let them come in. I think they wanted to talk to me.”
“But why shouldn’t they talk to you? Grandparents love their grandchildren and they always want to talk to them.”
“They said something about phone calls to report on Daddy. Daddy got angry.” Ingrid noticed that Kit had regressed to calling his father “Daddy” again.
“I wonder what they meant about
reporting
on Daddy? That doesn’t sound right.” Ingrid kept fishing. Hell, if there was a piscatorial prize, today she’d win it. But she needed to know what was going on so she continued to pump Kit for information. “
Reporting
sounds serious.”
“It was about me. The man said they were checking up on me.” His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap.
Poor little Kit. Trouble had come to their door and he knew he was the cause of it. What a terrible situation for a child.
“I still don’t understand. Did they say something else?”
“The man is getting a court nawder.”
“A-a court nawder?” Ingrid was mystified. What the hell was that? Then she slammed on the brakes and pulled into the side of the road. “Shit!
Now
I understand. Your father thinks
I
contacted your grandparents because I was concerned for your welfare. How
dare
he!” She bashed both hands on the steering wheel. “I’ll have his guts for garters!” Surely Breck Marchant knew her better than that? What was wrong with the man?
Kit shrank away from her.
She struggled to rein in her temper. “Sorry, Kit. I’m really angry with your father. He thinks I told your grandparents that you two guys needed help.”
“Daddy is a good Daddy!” Kit shouted suddenly.
Ingrid jumped. She had never heard Kit raise his voice before except in the playground. Then Kit kicked the back of her seat, yelling “Go away! I hate you! They are
mean
people.”
Ingrid guessed the ‘mean people’ were Breck’s parents. If they intended to get a ‘court nawder’ then they were mean, all right.
She put the car into gear and drove home. Kit refused to get out of the car. “I want to go home. I want Daddy.” Then he began to weep with big gusting sobs that tore the heart out of her chest.
“Oh God, Kit. I’m sorry. It’s all a misunderstanding.” She clambered into the back seat and tried to cuddle him but he thrust her away. For the first time in her life she found herself unable to console a child. At preschool she was always able to cajole them out of a fit of the dismals or persuade them to choose another activity if they’d gotten frustrated with the one they were trying to master. But poor little Kit had had a bellyful of angst bottled up inside him for months, maybe years. No amount of cajoling was going to stem the flow of his anger and despair.
“They’ll take me away from him, I know they will,” he snuffled.
“Oh, no they will
not!
” she exclaimed. “Your father and I will fight tooth and nail against anyone trying to take you away from him ever again, you hear me?”
But he just looked at her with a woeful face and drenched eyes and she knew he didn’t believe her. He’d been lied to before, poor little boy. She’d like to get her hands around Tania Kerr’s neck and wring it until the woman’s eyes popped. “Kit, I have an idea.” What she was about to propose could lose her the preschool operator’s license. Considering the black mark already chalked up against her, it might be the end of her career. But she would not stand by and see these two shafted by the system a second time.
“What?” Kit had grown impatient of her introspection.
“If those people—your grandparents—try to take you away, I can hide you at my place. But that’s a last resort, Kit. Please don’t tell anyone except your Dad, okay?”
“Okay.” Kit looked out the car window. “Are we getting out?”
Ingrid sighed. He might at least have been a tiny bit grateful, considering her career was on the line. But of course he was too little to understand.
Anyway, it wouldn’t come to that, she was sure of it. Breck’s parents would never take away Breck’s son. Their textbooks on child rearing were full of comments about how important the parent-child relationship was, how nothing could break the bond. She snorted. They hadn’t met
her
father, had they?
Chapter Thirteen
Breck struggled up the path to Ingrid’s apartment block, bristling with equipment he didn’t dare leave in his SUV. He had checked in his weapons, but his BP jacket was slung over one arm and he hefted his tool kitbag in the other. He was spoiling for a fight. How dare that prissy bloody schoolteacher judge him? She had a bunch of kids she saw for seven hours a day so she thought she was an expert.
Try having a kid twenty-four hours a day, Ingrid. And then try to hold down a complex full-time job with everyone snapping at your heels.
God, he felt so let down. He’d been within a hair’s breadth of sinking into a relationship with her. He sure could pick ’em. He hammered on the door.
“Come in!” she called, just like before.
Still had the brains of a louse. “Kit!” he bellowed from the doorway. “Time to go. Thank you, Ms. Rowland.”
For nothing,
he added beneath his breath.
Kit scuttled out, casting anxious glances over his shoulder. “Come
on
,” Breck hissed. “Let’s get out of here.”
Breck bundled everything into the trunk and they hightailed it away from the fairy princess’s castle as fast as they could.
A fraught silence hung inside the vehicle as they headed home. Breck looked at Kit. “Are you okay, son?”
“I guess.”
Yeah, that was how Breck felt too. Not very good, not quite average, but okay. Breck sighed. Today’s call-out hadn’t been a difficult one, just time-consuming. They’d used Jack Tanner as negotiator and he’d saved them hours of difficult bargaining. The man was a genius and Breck had total confidence in him. But the whole time Breck had been lying prone on wet leaves cradling his Bushmaster, he’d had Kit at the back of his mind. And that wasn’t good. He was no longer a competent operative with the AOS while his mind was wandering from the job at hand. As for his chances of joining the Special Tactics Group—well, those had been blown into oblivion.
Ingrid’s offer to help him study for the detective entrance exam might have worked. If you failed, you were permitted to try again. For sure he’d fail on his first attempt. But he and Ingrid—no. All that was best forgotten. Betrayal was something you didn’t get over.
He sighed. He had no way to move but down. He’d have to withdraw from the AOS and revert to ordinary police work. It would be like tearing off an arm. It took years to get into the AOS. They didn’t take just anybody and the continuous pysch testing, incident evaluations and range practice caused a lot of squad members to drop out. He’d lapped it all up because he enjoyed learning on the job. He hated baseless theory, learning for the sake of learning, but if he had a physical action to relate it to, then he learned quickly.
If he went back to ordinary police work he’d take a drop in pay, but a senior sergeant’s pay was not to be sneezed at. Nor would he have to worry about sudden call-outs. Shifts were rostered weeks in advance so he could make plans. But somehow he couldn’t work up the energy to make plans for a future that bored him stupid.
****
Breck sloshed through the rain, holding fast to Kit’s hand. “What the hell…?” A crowd of strangers milled around outside their front door, presumably waiting for them. As soon as they appeared, four pairs of eyes fastened on them.
“Who are
they
?” Kit asked, his voice wobbling.
“I’m not sure. Stand behind me, Kit.”
Oh, wonderful. His mother, father and two strangers watched his approach. A short, bald guy stepped forward and held out a document. “Sir, I represent Anna and Jeremy Marchant, your parents. This is an interim order from the Family Court to surrender your son, Kit Marchant, to Child Services.” Then he stepped back a pace. “I didn’t realize you were a cop. Is that the AOS insignia?”
Breck nodded. He thought quickly. Which Family Court judge had been awed enough by the initials after his parents’ names to issue an interim order without investigating the circumstances? One of their cronies, no doubt. The lawyer looked uncomfortable. The AOS uniform had given him pause. Breck could milk that. “Kit’s been staying with his kindergarten teacher while I was on call-out. It’s an arrangement we have.”
The other stranger in the group peered out from behind Jeremy Marchant. “Kindergarten teacher? Qualified?”
Breck stared hard at her. “Yes. As a matter of fact she’s the manager.” He was not going to mention Ingrid’s name in case his parents linked it to her phone call. “Excuse me, who are you?”
“Sorry. Ann Ellis, Child Protection. Here.” She thrust out a card but kept her distance. Probably because he was clanking around with a bunch of dangerous looking stuff hanging off him. Even his parents looked taken aback.
“Really? I remember contacting you people when I was concerned about Kit two months ago. Nobody got back to me. Two weeks later his stepfather held him hostage. I don’t think
Child Protection
is much use to us.”
“Y-you called us? About Christopher?”
“His name is Kit.”
“And you’re saying you have a child-minding arrangement in place?”
“Sure do. Don’t we Kit?” Breck pressed Kit’s shoulder in warning. “Unfortunately Kit doesn’t have grandparents who live close by or I’m sure they’d care for him.” He looked straight at his parents, his chin leading the way. “Except we hardly ever see them.”
“Oh, come on. It’s not like that.” Jeremy Marchant looked like a man who saw the ground slipping away from under him. “Tania called us and—”
“
What
??”
“
Now
what’s your problem? We’re aware you’re divorced, but Tania has always stayed in touch—”
“Don’t you read the papers? What about the TV news?”
Jeremy Marchant looked contemptuously down his nose at his son. “What on earth has all this got to do with Tania?”
But the solicitor had linked the names together. He leaned towards Jeremy Marchant. “Mr. Marchant, you never told me how you came by this information. The police are looking for Tania Kerr. She disappeared some weeks ago, isn’t that right?” he appealed to Breck.
Breck nodded. He unlocked the door. “Rather than annoy the other residents, let’s go inside.” Already the nosy guy next door was leaning in his doorway, his nose twitching.
Everyone crowded in behind Breck and Kit. Breck felt like the Pied Piper.
“What this gentleman is trying to tell you—” Breck broke off. “Sorry, what is your name?”
“Kelly.”
“What Mr. Kelly is trying to tell you, Father, is that Tania is being sought by the cops because she and the other two children in their family disappeared some weeks ago during a domestic dispute. Her husband’s in gaol because he produced a firearm and held Kit hostage.”
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