Harlequin Intrigue March 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 2

  Jana did not roll her eyes, but Audra had the sense she wanted to. “I’ve examined April and questioned Mia several times,” she said. “But she swears she never touched April, and I couldn’t find a mark on the child. If Mia really pinched her, it would leave a mark, don’t you think?”

  “It’s important to take accusations like these seriously,” Audra said. “We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to bullying.”

  “And it’s just as important not to brand an innocent, perfectly pleasant child as a bully simply because some sniveling ninny is trying to get attention.” Jana’s voice rose and her knuckles blanched white as she gripped her knees.

  “I won’t allow you to label any child that way.” Audra spoke sharply. “If I hear it again—and especially if I hear it in front of the children—you will be dismissed.”

  Jana paled and bowed her head. “I’m sorry. I’m frustrated with this whole situation and I let my frustration get the better of me. It won’t happen again.”

  “I hope not,” Audra said. “Perhaps it would be helpful if I talked to the girls.”

  Jana leaped up. “You don’t need to do that. I was teaching children when you were still in diapers,” she said. “I think I know how to handle a group of four-year-olds.”

  “Then handle it,” Audra said, outwardly calm, but inwardly seething. She had long suspected that Jana, who had operated her own day care center in Kentucky, where she had lived before her husband transferred to Colorado, resented working as a teacher under someone so much younger. “Instead of telling April to ignore Mia, tell Mia to ignore April. Separate the children as much as possible. And keep an eye on them. I don’t want any more complaints.”

  Jana glared at her. “Is that all?”

  “Yes, that’s all.”

  She left, closing the door very firmly behind her. Audra sighed. She didn’t have a sense that anything she had said had changed Jana’s mind, but then again, she didn’t know the woman very well. The school she had run in Kentucky had gotten rave reviews. One of the parents Audra had contacted when checking Jana’s references had even cried as she talked about how much her little boy missed his former teacher. That kind of experience had to count for something.

  A knock on the door interrupted her musings. “Come in,” she called.

  Brenda stuck her head around the door. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Everything’s fine. How was the class?”

  “Oh, they’re a great bunch of kids,” Brenda said. “They were learning a new counting song and the cutest little girl—Mia Ramsey—volunteered to teach it to me. Such a sweetie.”

  Audra’s stomach clenched. A “sweetie” who might very well be a bully. But what if Jana was right, and April was making things up, or at least exaggerating, in order to get attention? Shy, awkward children, so used to being overlooked, did sometimes act out as a way to be noticed. Audra had done it herself.

  Brenda had come all the way into the room now, and was watching Audra, looking apprehensive. “Is there something else?” Audra asked. Another Monday problem to tackle?

  “Did you watch the news this morning?” Brenda asked.

  Another knot in Audra’s stomach. Since her father’s disappearance, she avoided the news. “No. Why?”

  Brenda winced. “There was a story about a man attacked in Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park. I guess he was hurt pretty bad. He says your father attacked him.”

  Audra held herself very still, keeping in all the emotions that battered against her insides. Her father, the man she had loved and depended on all her life, was now some wild man, lurking in the wilderness and doing crazy things. She didn’t understand any of it. She hated all of it.

  “I’m sorry,” Brenda said. “I hated to tell you, but then I thought if one of the other teachers or a parent, or even a child, said something, you ought to be prepared.”

  “Thank you.”

  She expected Brenda to go then, but she didn’t. “There’s another reason I felt I should tell you,” she said.

  “Yes?” Could this really get worse?

  “There’s an officer out front who wants to see you. He didn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it’s about your father.”

  Audra closed her eyes. Of course the police wanted to talk to her about her father. It was that kind of Monday.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Audra remembered Officer Mark Hudson as having a smile that would melt chocolate and a laugh that had set up a butterfly flutter in her chest. Add in thick blond hair and sky-blue eyes, and the sum was a man who, under other circumstances, Audra wouldn’t have minded seeing again. But the handsome cop wasn’t smiling now, and unlike the other times when he had questioned her about her father, today he seemed more forbidding than friendly. He entered her office and stood beside her desk, frowning down at her, the way a teacher might confront a student who had misbehaved.

  She shook off the notion, straightened her back and spoke first. “I heard there was a news report that my father attacked someone in the park. Is that true?”

  The frown lines on Hudson’s forehead deepened. “A man was attacked early this morning. He says the person who attacked him was your father.”

  She curled her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. “That doesn’t sound like Dad at all,” she said softly.

  Hudson pulled the visitor’s chair closer to her, alongside the desk instead of across from it, and sat, the various items attached to the belt at his waist softly clanking and creaking as he did so. She caught the scent of his aftershave—something clean and woodsy—and felt disoriented. This man was hunting her father. He wasn’t her friend, so she shouldn’t be thinking about how good he smelled and looked.

  She forced herself to look into his eyes. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “We need to find your father before more people are hurt,” he said. “Or before someone hurts him.”

  She gasped. “What do you mean?” She had visions of officers going after her father with orders to shoot to kill. “I don’t care what you say, I can’t believe my father would deliberately hurt anyone. He’s not like that.”

  “I’m sure he isn’t like that with you,” Hudson said. “But remaining on the run in the wilderness is the act of a desperate man. One who might do anything to avoid being caught.”

  “Then tell me why he’d attack a stranger,” she said. “What does he possibly have to gain by that? Are you even sure it was him? After all, people thought he killed that hiker, Marsha Grandberry, and it turned out to be someone who was trying to frame him for the crime.”

  The murderer, Toby Masterson, had kidnapped her father’s former girlfriend, Eve Shea, and tried to use her to lure Dane from hiding. After Masterson died, some people whispered Dane had killed him in order to save Eve, but that wasn’t the same as the kind of unprovoked attack Officer Hudson was talking about.

  “The man who was attacked says he asked the man he encountered if he was Dane Trask and the man said he was,” Hudson said.

  “So they had this conversation and then Dad just attacked him?”

  “The man had a gun. I think he was injured when your father disarmed him. Your father did hurt him, but I believe he acted in self-defense. He probably could have killed the man if he had wanted to, but he didn’t.”

  The relief that surged through her made her eyes sting with tears. “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “Why are you hunting him, like...like some wild animal? Why can’t you just leave him alone?”

  “Until we have him in custody, he won’t be safe,” Hudson said. “The reward TDC is offering for his capture has raised a lot of interest. People are coming into the park just to look for your father. The man he fought with today isn’t the first one of those people to be armed. It’s against the law to carry a weapon in a national park, but that hasn’t stopped everyone.”r />
  “Then make TDC end the reward offer,” she said.

  “We don’t have the authority to do that. They aren’t breaking any laws. They may even think they’re helping.”

  “I still don’t see why you’re here.” She sat back, trying to put more distance between them. “You’re wasting my time and yours.”

  “Are you sure your father hasn’t been in touch with you?”

  “No. I’d tell you if he had. Why are you even asking?”

  “I’m asking because he contacted his former administrative assistant, Cara Mead, and his former girlfriend, Eve Shea. You’re his daughter. It would be very natural for him to turn to you for help.”

  “I don’t know why he hasn’t contacted me, but he hasn’t.” Part of her was hurt that her father had turned to others for help instead of her. But she was also relieved. Whatever he was involved in, how could she possibly help him? She wasn’t a lawyer or a cop. She ran a preschool for a living. “Look, Officer Hudson. I understand why you think I must have heard from my father, but I’m telling the truth.”

  “Call me Hud,” he said. “Everyone does.”

  She looked away, unsure how to respond. He was being friendly, but how could he be her friend? “Maybe he hasn’t contacted me because he’s always been the one to help me,” she said.

  “How did he help you?”

  She shrugged. “Just, you know—Dad things. He gave me advice. He lent me money when I needed it.” He drove me to rehab and paid for lots of therapy. But that was personal, not anything the cops needed to know.

  “He and your mother never married, is that right?”

  He knew this. They had been over everything the first time he talked to her, right after her dad disappeared. But the cops always asked the same questions over and over, as if double-checking her answers. “My mother was Dad’s college girlfriend,” she said. “He offered to marry her, but she said no.” She had asked her mother once why she’d said no. “We were young and stupid and we certainly weren’t in love,” her mother had replied. But she had gone on to marry two other men, and had, at least eventually, not been in love with them, either.

  “Was he around much when you were growing up?” Hudson asked.

  “All the time. He and my mom shared custody. For a while in high school I even lived with him full-time.” Her mom had been married at the time to a man who didn’t like Audra. The feeling had been mutual. “He was always there for me,” she added.

  “And it hurts that he’s not here now.”

  She stared at him, stunned at his perception. “Yes.” She swallowed. “Yes, it does. Which is why I’d do anything to help you find him if I could.”

  He nodded, though whether to confirm that he believed her or because she had given an answer he liked, she couldn’t tell. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how he’s managed to pull this off,” Hud said. “I think he must have planned this ahead of time. He may have cached food and water in the park, and other supplies. Maybe he scouted out caves and other places he could use for shelter. Others have told us he spent a lot of time hiking in the park.”

  “It was one of his favorite places,” she agreed.

  “When did he go there?” Hudson asked. “How often?”

  “He went on weekends or after work, but I don’t think it was that often. Maybe once a month. It could have been more. I mean, we each had our own place, and we didn’t see each other every day.”

  “Tell me again about the last time you saw him.”

  “I told you all this before,” she said. “Don’t you have it written down somewhere?”

  “I do, but it’s helpful to go over it again. You might remember something you didn’t mention before, or something might stand out for me that I didn’t pay attention to before.”

  “All right.” She stared at the desk, trying to bring that day over seven weeks ago back into focus. “We had dinner the night before I left for vacation in Paris,” she said.

  “You went there to see friends, right?”

  “Right. I’d been planning the trip for a couple of years, so I was really excited to go. I think that’s why I don’t really remember a lot about that night. Dad seemed normal to me, but if he wasn’t, I might not have noticed. I wasn’t really focused on him.”

  “What did you talk about at dinner?”

  “We talked about Paris. He went there once, when he was in the military. He was stationed in Germany and went there on leave. He told me about the museums he visited and talked about places I planned to go. We talked about the friends I visited—Denise and Richie. Dad had met them a couple of times.” She paused, then added, “We talked a little about the new school TDC is building near their headquarters. I won the contract for the on-site day care and preschool, and I was really excited about that.”

  “Did you father work on that project?” Hudson asked.

  “I think he did the initial environmental assessment. Or someone in his department did, anyway. That happens way before construction, though, so he didn’t have anything to do with the project once they broke ground.”

  “You mentioned before that he told you to be careful before he left you that night.”

  “Well, yeah. But I didn’t think there was anything odd about it. He was always telling me to be careful. Parents do that. But then he said it again, and it did strike me as odd that he would say it twice, and so intently. I even joked about it, and asked him if he had some kind of presentiment that something terrible was going to happen.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  “He said, ‘I mean it, you be careful—in Paris, and after you get home.’”

  “Anything else?”

  “No.” His expression of disappointment made her feel awkward, as if she’d failed him somehow.

  “Did your father have a favorite place in the park?” he asked. “A place he liked to camp or hike?”

  “No. That wasn’t something we shared.”

  “You don’t like to hike or camp?”

  “I enjoy it, but I’m not into it the way Dad is. I thought it was fun for a night or two, but Dad would camp for a week or more.” She stopped to fight back another wave of emotion. “I wonder if he thinks it’s so much fun now.”

  “Maybe he enjoys the challenge. He trained for this kind of thing in the army.”

  “Maybe.” She glanced at the clock, astonished to see it was after ten. “I really need to get to work,” she said.

  He stood and moved the chair back in front of the desk. “Thank you for your help,” he said. “If you think of anything else, call me. Do you still have my card?”

  “Yes.” She had it tucked inside her billfold. Not that she intended to ever use it, but she liked knowing it was there. She stood also. “I have to get to playground duty,” she said.

  “You run this place and you have to do playground duty?” he asked.

  “It’s important for the students to get to know me, and it’s a good opportunity to observe their interactions with one another and with the teachers. You can’t really run a business if you sit behind a desk all day.”

  “Did your father teach you that?”

  She smiled. “Yes, he did.”

  “We’re not hunting him,” he said. “Not like an animal, or like a criminal. When we find him, we want to help him. Only a desperate man would do what he’s done.”

  “Why is he so desperate?” she asked.

  “That’s what we have to find out.”

  * * *

  HUD SHOULD HAVE been reviewing the case on the drive back to Ranger Brigade headquarters, but instead he found himself focused on Audra Trask. Barely five feet tall and fine-boned, she struck him as the sort of person others might underestimate on first meeting. Then again, maybe the real clue to her spirit lay in the abundant dark hair that swirled like a storm cloud about her head,
the thick curls refusing to be tamed.

  Of all the people associated with this case, she was the one he felt for the most. Of all the people Dane Trask had hurt with his disappearing act, Audra struck him as the most bereft, more confused than devastated just now, but if Trask continued these dangerous games, Audra might be the one who was most damaged by his actions.

  He turned off the highway onto the road leading into Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park. The high desert of this part of southwest Colorado struck most first-time visitors as flat and uninteresting, without the majesty of the distant snow-capped peaks or the lushness of river valleys only a short drive away. The canyon that gave the park its name revealed itself with stark suddenness to those who parked at one of the many scenic overlooks along the roadway and took a short walk to the canyon rim. The chasm that opened at their feet split the earth like a knife gash cut into a lavish confection, layers of crimson and shell pink and silver plunging over three thousand feet to the slender silver ribbon of Gunnison River.

  It was this wilderness—approximately 130,000 acres, including the park and two adjacent national recreation areas—that Dane Trask had chosen as his hideout. This was also the territory of the Ranger Brigade, a unique, multiagency task force designed to fight crime on these vast public lands.

  Hud didn’t know if Trask had committed any crimes, but the man had disappeared in the Rangers’ jurisdiction, so they were the ones tasked with finding him. The longer this one man eluded them, the more frustrating the case became.

  He turned into Ranger headquarters, a low-slung building just inside the park entrance, and parked out front. He had scarcely exited his car when a man hailed him from across the parking lot. “Officer Hudson!”

  An athletic man with windblown sandy hair trailing past his shoulders jogged over to Hud. “Roy Holliday,” he said, offering his hand.

  Hud didn’t accept the handshake. He didn’t know this man, and letting a stranger get you in his grip could be a recipe for trouble with the wrong person. “What can I do for you, Mr. Holliday?” he asked.