In Broad Daylight Read Online Free PDF Page B

let it go. He was guilty of
    reading too much into everything. "Big family."

    She moved her shoulders in a vague shrug. There was the hint of a longing expression on
    her face. "I always wanted a big family."

    He looked down at her left hand. Again, he wondered why there was no ring there. "How
    does your husband feel about that?"

    The question stiffened her slightly. Everything was still raw. There hadn't been enough
    time for a proper scab to form over things, even though she'd never really loved Wade.
    Somehow, that seemed to make it all worse. He had deserved better, he'd deserved
    someone who could have loved him to distraction.

    She looked toward the doorway, away from the detective who stirred up too many things
    inside of her with his questions. "My husband doesn't feel anything at all. He's dead."

    Dax felt as if he'd just stomped on a delicate structure, breaking it into a hundred pieces.
    "Oh, I'm sorry."

    In her mind's eyes, she could still see Wade, see his kind face. God, but she had tried to
    love him, really tried.

    "Yes, so am I." She knotted her hands together before her. "Wade was a good man. He was killed in a freak accident during maneuvers." She looked at him, gauging her words,
    doling them out slowly only after examining them. She wasn't used to being overly cautious.
    She liked to be open; it was a freedom she'd embraced wholeheartedly after leaving home.
    But this detective put her on her guard. "He was a marine." She shifted her weight,
    impatient to leave the subject, impatient to get on with the pressing job of finding Annie.
    "That was the last of them. Anyone else you want to question?"

    He'd called in backup. Several uniformed patrolmen had searched the building from top to
    bottom as well as the surrounding grounds. No sign of the missing girl had turned up. No
    handy clues, no lost hair ribbons like in the movies. Annie Tyler didn't wear hair ribbons.
    And she seemed to have vanished into thin air.

    In addition, the phone number the headmaster had produced as the one given by the
    couple Brenda had taken on the tour of the building had turned out to be bogus. No big
    surprise there. Dax had expected as much.

    There were times he hated being right.

    "No, no more questions right now. Except for you." He saw the wariness creep into her
    eyes. What was she waiting for him to say? "Can you describe the couple?" He looked from her to Harwood, hoping that one of them had retained enough detail to create a half-decent sketch. Most people, he knew, weren't good with details.

    "I can do better than that," Brenda told him. She took a pad from the easel and picked up a newly sharpened pencil from the desk. "I can sketch them for you."

    That would have been the next step, putting one or both of them together with a sketch
    artist. Exchanging looks with Nathan—Nathan's had unabashed admiration clearly
    registering in his—Dax turned back to the woman. "You can do that?"

    "Drawing is my hobby," she told him. "It relaxes me." And these days, she thought, she had to work really hard at relaxing. Decisions had to be made, events had to be faced up
    to.

    Because her time was running out.

    "Great, see what you can whip up for us." As Brenda sat down and got busy, Dax looked at Harwood. "We're going to need the little girl's address. Her parents have to be notified."

    He'd held off doing that, hoping against hope to find the child without alarming her
    parents. He knew what his own parents had gone through the time his brotherTroyhad
    been lost in the woods while hiking with his friends. He'd been fifteen at the time and no
    one had taken him, but it had been harrowing nonetheless. "Missing" was one of the most pain-evoking words in the English language. It had been the worst twenty-eight hours his
    parents had ever gone through.

    Obviously anticipating the request, Harwood produced a folded piece of paper from his
    pocket and surrendered it to him. On it was theTylers' address and phone