Innocent Hostage (22 page)
“But why?”
“You dumped her. Said she’d get her own back one day.”
Breck thought for a moment while Hull and Raker said nothing, just waited.
“So this thing at the preschool was killing two birds with one stone.”
“I’m more concerned with what she’ll do next.” Hull glared at Billy. “I bet you know.”
Billy attempted an insouciant shrug, but his injuries turned it into a shrinking twitch. “All I know is that she’s leaving, and before she does, she wants to get her own back on everyone who’s ever crossed her.”
“Christ. The way she sees things through a glass darkly, that could be a list as long as your arm.” Raker sounded as if he had had quite enough of Tania. “She’s way out of control and we have to find her. God knows who her next victim will be.”
“You said she was leaving. Do you mean leaving Auckland or leaving New Zealand?”
Billy stared at them. “How should I know?”
“You were going with her, weren’t you?” Hull asked.
Billy colored. “Yeah. Well, I thought so.”
“Got a passport?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Breck was startled when Hull grabbed Billy by the front of his hospital gown and growled, “Don’t frig around with me, you little toad.
Were you going overseas
?”
“J-Just to Australia.”
“How did she plan on squeezing more money out of me from Australia?” Breck asked.
“She…she was gonna—”
At the expression on Billy’s face, the three men stilled.
“She was gonna what? What, Billy?” Breck stalked over to the bed and loomed over the hapless Billy. “What was she gonna do after that? She wasn’t going to give Kit back to me, ever, was she?” He had to stop right there because he was choking up with anger.
Billy cleared his throat nervously. “She had some scheme going. She knows someone who wants a kid.”
Breck opened his mouth and shut it again. He was conscious of a great weight pressing down on his head that made it hard to think, impossible to articulate. He tried again. This time his voice came out as a croak. “She was—she was going to
sell
Kit? But she’s his mother!”
Billy nodded. “Yup. That gave her the right to do as she liked with the kid.”
“What about your kid? I bet you’re Bobby’s father. Was she going to give
him
away too?”
Billy blanched. “Of course not.”
“But you can’t be certain, can you, Billy?”
“Where are the children?” Raker demanded. “Where are Pixie and Bobby?”
“At my house, of course.”
“So you have a baby-sitter.”
Billy shook his head. “Pixie keeps Bobby in line. They don’t need no baby-sitter.”
Breck thought of all the years he had said that Tania was good with kids. And he thought of how he’d had to impose on Jace and Abe’s goodwill so that Kit could be cared for while he rushed around trying to solve the Tania puzzle.
“It’s an offence to leave children under the age of fourteen on their own,” Raker commented. “But I guess Tania knows that.”
“Is it?” Billy looked genuinely shaken.
Breck reflected that he’d always thought Marty was a dimwit, but hell, Billy was worse. Why had Tania thrown in her lot with the Kerr men? Control, he supposed. They had been easy to control.
And he hadn’t been, so she wanted revenge because he’d edged her out of his life. But she’d still managed to control him from afar. She’d used Kit.
“What happened when you went to see Mrs. Reynolds?” Hull asked.
Billy huddled inside his hospital gown. “Who?”
“Tania’s great-aunt.”
“Oh. Her. Old bitch wouldn’t let me in. So we left.”
“Why wouldn’t she let you in?”
“Said I looked like a crim. Me!”
Breck shifted from one foot to the other. Billy’s indignation would have been funny if Ingrid and Kit were not at the mercy of Tania. This wasn’t getting them any closer to finding Tania and Breck just wanted the questioning to be over. It wasn’t providing any useful information.
“So you went back and bashed her head in just to get even. When did you do that?”
“Fuck! I never! What are you talking about? She―” Billy’s whining ground to a halt as he realized the implications of Hull’s comment. If it was possible, Billy turned ever whiter. “Tania? She-she did that?”
“Okay, Billy. We’re going to your place now to see if Tania has turned up. Got a key, or do we just kick the door down?” Raker’s face was expressionless.
Billy almost leapt out of bed. “No! Don’t do that! I’ll give you the garage door remote.” He fished it out of the tray where his personal possessions had been tossed and they left him huddling under the bedclothes, looking miserable.
“Yup.” There was a rustling sound as Stella leafed through a bunch of papers. “Here she is.”
Ingrid tapped Angela’s details into her iPhone. “Thanks Stella. I should be back at work tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the next day.”
“Make sure you’re well, first. Oh, by the way, you had a couple of visitors today,” Stella said. “Your stepfather and some other guy.”
Ingrid felt herself growing tense. “Oh, my God. Did my stepfather see all the damage?”
“Relax girl. I guided him away from the main room and he said he was glad we were doing some redecorating. He didn’t see the real damage.”
“Thanks Stell. I’m in no shape to go a round with my parents at the moment. This other guy, did he leave a name?”
“No. Just shook his head and smiled when I offered to pass on a message.”
Now what? Ingrid wasn’t sure she needed any more surprises right now. “How old was he?”
“Umm…in his early fifties, I’d say.”
“Oh! He wasn’t an inspector, was he?”
“No. He would have presented his credentials.”
Ingrid thought of a couple of arrogant inspectors who rode roughshod over the regulations. “Not necessarily.”
“Well, he wasn’t one I’ve met before. But he knew the rules about strangers in preschools. He didn’t engage with any of the kids, didn’t linger at all. He said we have a very nice preschool and that he’d be in touch with you.”
In spite of Stella’s assurances, Ingrid chewed her lip worriedly. Pedophiles were a preschool teacher’s greatest nightmare. “Could you file a report about it, Stell?”
“Already have. Must say he didn’t seem…never mind.”
“I know. But thanks for everything, Stell. See you soon.”
Stella was a godsend. She knew the rules but wasn’t fazed by them. Sometimes she wasn’t a very shrewd judge of character, but she made up for that by her can-do attitude. Ingrid reflected that if her circumstances were different, if for example she was more solvent, she’d like to appoint Stella as her manager so that would leave her free to do other things.
Like what,
a little voice asked. Yeah, well, she’d lived and breathed Rowland Private Preschool for so long that she’d subjugated all those long ago desires and interests and now she could hardly remember them.
Let’s see. She could join a club and play tennis. Uh, huh. Always wanted to do that. Running around after a bunch of kids kept her fit, but she wanted
pleasure
with her fitness. Of course, there was one pleasure that would keep her fit. Breck could help her out there. She grinned to herself. Speaking of desires…
She really, really wanted to know what he thought about her. He was one of the most tight-mouthed people she’d ever come across. The joke was that most people considered her to be quiet and secretive. Most people hadn’t met Breck Marchant. She so hoped he’d pass that entrance exam with flying colors.
Boy, how she’d changed. Once she would never have considered going out with a cop. Now it was all she thought about.
Then she remembered something else she wanted to do as soon as she could. She wanted to trace her father. Now that she’d met Breck and knew a little about Abe, she thought maybe her ideas about cops had been skewed by her mother’s outlook. There was no doubt that Marla Rowland tended to see the world from a less-than-impartial point of view. She often failed to understand what others were feeling to the point where she lost friends through her inability to empathize. When Tom had discovered that his goddess had feet of clay, he’d simply worked around the difficulties and pretended they did not exist. But Ingrid had known her mother a lot longer than Tom had, and she could not be so forgiving. Losing her best friend at age eight due to her mother’s snobbishness “not quite our sort of people, darling” and her first boyfriend at age fourteen “nowhere near good enough for you, darling”, Ingrid had begun to question, albeit silently, some of her mother’s opinions. And lately she’d come to wonder more and more about her absent father, the cop.
Why had he never attempted to get in touch with her? Had he jettisoned her into the too-hard basket along with her mother, or had Marla prevented him from seeing his daughter? After seeing the situation between Tania and Breck, she no longer assumed that her father had washed his hands of her.
Pulling her laptop closer, she went looking for a man she hadn’t seen in twenty-two years.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Breck clicked off his cell phone and chucked it on to the bed. “Yes!” he yelled, punching the air.
“Daddy?” Kit pounded into the bedroom.
“Everything’s fine, Kit. Just fine. I passed the exam. I’m gonna be a detective!”
“Cool!”
“Yeah, cool.” He’d phone Ingrid. Then he’d phone Jace and Abe. He dialed Ingrid’s number and she picked up immediately.
“You got it, didn’t you?”
He grinned, marveling at how she knew what he was calling her about. “How did you know?”
“Your number came up in more ways than one.”
He snorted with laughter. “In the words of my son, you are so cool.”
“Yeah, I’m so cool I didn’t realize that the woman we’ve been looking for has been right under my nose all the time.”
“What woman? You don’t mean Tania?”
“No. Not bloody Tania.” Her petulant tone said it all. “Angela—Angela Briscoe.”
“How do you mean—under your nose?”
“She applied for a job at the preschool recently but because we had no vacancies, we didn’t pursue the matter. Fuck it.”
He heard a thump on the other end of the phone as if Ingrid had slammed a book down. She rarely swore, so he knew how angry she was with herself.
“Hey, Miss Rowland. Forget about trying to be perfect.”
“I
have
to be, don’t you see? They’re still watching me.”
“Who? What?”
“Never mind. I didn’t mean…”
“Ingrid, who’s watching you?”
“Oh, shit.”
Lord, the little fairy princess had really let loose. “Look, Kit and I are coming over now.”
He clicked off the phone and bundled Kit into the SUV. “I think Ingrid needs us,” he explained.
“Is Mum there?” Kit looked worried.
“No, no. I think Ingrid is still sick. We’ll look after her.”
And when they arrived, he was glad he hadn’t wasted a moment. She’d left the door unlocked
again
so they barreled in to where she sat at her desk, her head on her arms and her face as pale as milk.
He was curious about her comment that someone was watching her, but she looked so ill he couldn’t possibly mention it right now.
“Come on, sweet thing. Bedtime.” He pulled the chair back and plucked her out of it. She sagged against his chest and sighed as Kit struggled to tug down the bedding. Breck braced one knee on the side of the bed and gently eased her down. There was no fight left in her. He’d seen the many moods of Ingrid but he’d never seen her quite like this. She shouldn’t have left hospital so soon, but he understood her anxiety to quit the place. “Just go to sleep and you’ll feel better when you wake up.”
“You dumped her. Said she’d get her own back one day.”
Breck thought for a moment while Hull and Raker said nothing, just waited.
“So this thing at the preschool was killing two birds with one stone.”
“I’m more concerned with what she’ll do next.” Hull glared at Billy. “I bet you know.”
Billy attempted an insouciant shrug, but his injuries turned it into a shrinking twitch. “All I know is that she’s leaving, and before she does, she wants to get her own back on everyone who’s ever crossed her.”
“Christ. The way she sees things through a glass darkly, that could be a list as long as your arm.” Raker sounded as if he had had quite enough of Tania. “She’s way out of control and we have to find her. God knows who her next victim will be.”
“You said she was leaving. Do you mean leaving Auckland or leaving New Zealand?”
Billy stared at them. “How should I know?”
“You were going with her, weren’t you?” Hull asked.
Billy colored. “Yeah. Well, I thought so.”
“Got a passport?”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
Breck was startled when Hull grabbed Billy by the front of his hospital gown and growled, “Don’t frig around with me, you little toad.
Were you going overseas
?”
“J-Just to Australia.”
“How did she plan on squeezing more money out of me from Australia?” Breck asked.
“She…she was gonna—”
At the expression on Billy’s face, the three men stilled.
“She was gonna what? What, Billy?” Breck stalked over to the bed and loomed over the hapless Billy. “What was she gonna do after that? She wasn’t going to give Kit back to me, ever, was she?” He had to stop right there because he was choking up with anger.
Billy cleared his throat nervously. “She had some scheme going. She knows someone who wants a kid.”
Breck opened his mouth and shut it again. He was conscious of a great weight pressing down on his head that made it hard to think, impossible to articulate. He tried again. This time his voice came out as a croak. “She was—she was going to
sell
Kit? But she’s his mother!”
Billy nodded. “Yup. That gave her the right to do as she liked with the kid.”
“What about your kid? I bet you’re Bobby’s father. Was she going to give
him
away too?”
Billy blanched. “Of course not.”
“But you can’t be certain, can you, Billy?”
“Where are the children?” Raker demanded. “Where are Pixie and Bobby?”
“At my house, of course.”
“So you have a baby-sitter.”
Billy shook his head. “Pixie keeps Bobby in line. They don’t need no baby-sitter.”
Breck thought of all the years he had said that Tania was good with kids. And he thought of how he’d had to impose on Jace and Abe’s goodwill so that Kit could be cared for while he rushed around trying to solve the Tania puzzle.
“It’s an offence to leave children under the age of fourteen on their own,” Raker commented. “But I guess Tania knows that.”
“Is it?” Billy looked genuinely shaken.
Breck reflected that he’d always thought Marty was a dimwit, but hell, Billy was worse. Why had Tania thrown in her lot with the Kerr men? Control, he supposed. They had been easy to control.
And he hadn’t been, so she wanted revenge because he’d edged her out of his life. But she’d still managed to control him from afar. She’d used Kit.
“What happened when you went to see Mrs. Reynolds?” Hull asked.
Billy huddled inside his hospital gown. “Who?”
“Tania’s great-aunt.”
“Oh. Her. Old bitch wouldn’t let me in. So we left.”
“Why wouldn’t she let you in?”
“Said I looked like a crim. Me!”
Breck shifted from one foot to the other. Billy’s indignation would have been funny if Ingrid and Kit were not at the mercy of Tania. This wasn’t getting them any closer to finding Tania and Breck just wanted the questioning to be over. It wasn’t providing any useful information.
“So you went back and bashed her head in just to get even. When did you do that?”
“Fuck! I never! What are you talking about? She―” Billy’s whining ground to a halt as he realized the implications of Hull’s comment. If it was possible, Billy turned ever whiter. “Tania? She-she did that?”
“Okay, Billy. We’re going to your place now to see if Tania has turned up. Got a key, or do we just kick the door down?” Raker’s face was expressionless.
Billy almost leapt out of bed. “No! Don’t do that! I’ll give you the garage door remote.” He fished it out of the tray where his personal possessions had been tossed and they left him huddling under the bedclothes, looking miserable.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ingrid trawled through the registered preschool teachers’ website looking for the Angela she’d known at university. She couldn’t bring the woman’s surname to mind, but she would know it as soon as she saw it. She leaned back in her chair. Lord, her back ached. And her head ached. Even her teeth ached. Bloody Tania. Perhaps she should wait till tomorrow to do this.
Pushing herself to her feet she made her way back to the sofa. Her cell rang, startling her.
“Stella! How are things? How are you coping with—?”
Stella warbled on cheerfully.
“You are? Doing just fine without me? Perhaps I should take a couple of weeks off…” She snorted with laughter as Stella growled, “You dare.”
“I’m looking for a teacher named Angela something or other who trained with me. Can’t remember her other name but—she
what
?”
“Don’t you recall?” Stella chirped. “Angela Briscoe. She applied for a job here several months ago, but we’re fully staffed and couldn’t take her on. I remember her because she said she had trained with you.”
“Yup.” There was a rustling sound as Stella leafed through a bunch of papers. “Here she is.”
Ingrid tapped Angela’s details into her iPhone. “Thanks Stella. I should be back at work tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the next day.”
“Make sure you’re well, first. Oh, by the way, you had a couple of visitors today,” Stella said. “Your stepfather and some other guy.”
Ingrid felt herself growing tense. “Oh, my God. Did my stepfather see all the damage?”
“Relax girl. I guided him away from the main room and he said he was glad we were doing some redecorating. He didn’t see the real damage.”
“Thanks Stell. I’m in no shape to go a round with my parents at the moment. This other guy, did he leave a name?”
“No. Just shook his head and smiled when I offered to pass on a message.”
Now what? Ingrid wasn’t sure she needed any more surprises right now. “How old was he?”
“Umm…in his early fifties, I’d say.”
“Oh! He wasn’t an inspector, was he?”
“No. He would have presented his credentials.”
Ingrid thought of a couple of arrogant inspectors who rode roughshod over the regulations. “Not necessarily.”
“Well, he wasn’t one I’ve met before. But he knew the rules about strangers in preschools. He didn’t engage with any of the kids, didn’t linger at all. He said we have a very nice preschool and that he’d be in touch with you.”
In spite of Stella’s assurances, Ingrid chewed her lip worriedly. Pedophiles were a preschool teacher’s greatest nightmare. “Could you file a report about it, Stell?”
“Already have. Must say he didn’t seem…never mind.”
“I know. But thanks for everything, Stell. See you soon.”
Stella was a godsend. She knew the rules but wasn’t fazed by them. Sometimes she wasn’t a very shrewd judge of character, but she made up for that by her can-do attitude. Ingrid reflected that if her circumstances were different, if for example she was more solvent, she’d like to appoint Stella as her manager so that would leave her free to do other things.
Like what,
a little voice asked. Yeah, well, she’d lived and breathed Rowland Private Preschool for so long that she’d subjugated all those long ago desires and interests and now she could hardly remember them.
Let’s see. She could join a club and play tennis. Uh, huh. Always wanted to do that. Running around after a bunch of kids kept her fit, but she wanted
pleasure
with her fitness. Of course, there was one pleasure that would keep her fit. Breck could help her out there. She grinned to herself. Speaking of desires…
She really, really wanted to know what he thought about her. He was one of the most tight-mouthed people she’d ever come across. The joke was that most people considered her to be quiet and secretive. Most people hadn’t met Breck Marchant. She so hoped he’d pass that entrance exam with flying colors.
Boy, how she’d changed. Once she would never have considered going out with a cop. Now it was all she thought about.
Then she remembered something else she wanted to do as soon as she could. She wanted to trace her father. Now that she’d met Breck and knew a little about Abe, she thought maybe her ideas about cops had been skewed by her mother’s outlook. There was no doubt that Marla Rowland tended to see the world from a less-than-impartial point of view. She often failed to understand what others were feeling to the point where she lost friends through her inability to empathize. When Tom had discovered that his goddess had feet of clay, he’d simply worked around the difficulties and pretended they did not exist. But Ingrid had known her mother a lot longer than Tom had, and she could not be so forgiving. Losing her best friend at age eight due to her mother’s snobbishness “not quite our sort of people, darling” and her first boyfriend at age fourteen “nowhere near good enough for you, darling”, Ingrid had begun to question, albeit silently, some of her mother’s opinions. And lately she’d come to wonder more and more about her absent father, the cop.
Why had he never attempted to get in touch with her? Had he jettisoned her into the too-hard basket along with her mother, or had Marla prevented him from seeing his daughter? After seeing the situation between Tania and Breck, she no longer assumed that her father had washed his hands of her.
Pulling her laptop closer, she went looking for a man she hadn’t seen in twenty-two years.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Breck clicked off his cell phone and chucked it on to the bed. “Yes!” he yelled, punching the air.
“Daddy?” Kit pounded into the bedroom.
“Everything’s fine, Kit. Just fine. I passed the exam. I’m gonna be a detective!”
“Cool!”
“Yeah, cool.” He’d phone Ingrid. Then he’d phone Jace and Abe. He dialed Ingrid’s number and she picked up immediately.
“You got it, didn’t you?”
He grinned, marveling at how she knew what he was calling her about. “How did you know?”
“Your number came up in more ways than one.”
He snorted with laughter. “In the words of my son, you are so cool.”
“Yeah, I’m so cool I didn’t realize that the woman we’ve been looking for has been right under my nose all the time.”
“What woman? You don’t mean Tania?”
“No. Not bloody Tania.” Her petulant tone said it all. “Angela—Angela Briscoe.”
“How do you mean—under your nose?”
“She applied for a job at the preschool recently but because we had no vacancies, we didn’t pursue the matter. Fuck it.”
He heard a thump on the other end of the phone as if Ingrid had slammed a book down. She rarely swore, so he knew how angry she was with herself.
“Hey, Miss Rowland. Forget about trying to be perfect.”
“I
have
to be, don’t you see? They’re still watching me.”
“Who? What?”
“Never mind. I didn’t mean…”
“Ingrid, who’s watching you?”
“Oh, shit.”
Lord, the little fairy princess had really let loose. “Look, Kit and I are coming over now.”
He clicked off the phone and bundled Kit into the SUV. “I think Ingrid needs us,” he explained.
“Is Mum there?” Kit looked worried.
“No, no. I think Ingrid is still sick. We’ll look after her.”
And when they arrived, he was glad he hadn’t wasted a moment. She’d left the door unlocked
again
so they barreled in to where she sat at her desk, her head on her arms and her face as pale as milk.
He was curious about her comment that someone was watching her, but she looked so ill he couldn’t possibly mention it right now.
“Come on, sweet thing. Bedtime.” He pulled the chair back and plucked her out of it. She sagged against his chest and sighed as Kit struggled to tug down the bedding. Breck braced one knee on the side of the bed and gently eased her down. There was no fight left in her. He’d seen the many moods of Ingrid but he’d never seen her quite like this. She shouldn’t have left hospital so soon, but he understood her anxiety to quit the place. “Just go to sleep and you’ll feel better when you wake up.”
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