Heart of a Hero

As he continued asking questions, he noted that Dakota vacillated between being wary, snappish and wry. Writing down her answers in his own brand of shorthand, Rusty continued to wonder why she would behave in such a fashion, considering the circumstances.

He had no way of knowing that the woman sitting so rigidly in front of him was wrestling with her thoughts and her conscience. Throughout the questioning, she kept trying to decide whether or not to be completely honest and tell Rusty who she believed had abducted her son. But each qualm of conscience brought fear with it. Fear that if Rusty knew who he might be facing, he would back away. And she did need him.

But not telling him might delay finding Vinny. In addition, keeping Andreini in the dark might also prove dangerous to him, if not fatal.

The man had a right to know who he was up against.

But, she insisted silently, she had a right to get back her son.

Dakota played with the tips of her nails and decided, for the time being, to keep silent about the identity of the man who’d cast such a dark shadow over her life for the past two years.

Half an hour later, she saw Rusty close his notepad and hit the stop button on the tape recorder. For now, the questions stopped.

She had a question of her own.

“You haven’t talked about payment.”

He’d never been good when it came to talking about money. As a teenager, because he had always been naturally handy, he had worked on neighbors’ cars to earn spending money. But he had always had trouble asking for what was due him. Exasperated when she thought people were taking advantage of him, Megan had taken over the financial end of his business.

“You can stop at Carrie’s desk on your way out, she’ll be happy to go over everything with you. If there’s any problem,” he said, anticipating that there would be strictly because of what she’d said in her apartment last night, “it can be worked out. The main thing is to find your son.”

She was starting to believe that he believed that. “Yes, it is, but I don’t intend to do that on credit.”

Dakota dug into her purse, searching for what she’d slipped inside just before she’d left. Her fingers curved around the multifaceted surfaces.

She tossed the item on his desk with a carelessness that surprised him. He’d thought that every woman revered jewelry. The diamond necklace sitting on top of his papers would have inspired reverence in a Spartan.

The sparkle emanating from it was almost blinding. “Is it real?”

“As real as you are.” She tried to not think about when she had received it from Vincent. He’d made her close her eyes before he’d slipped it around her neck. She’d felt like a queen. She’d felt loved. What she’d been, she knew, was blinded. She smiled at Rusty. “I never accept imitations.”

The smile struck him as incredibly sad. Rusty picked up the long, gleaming string of near-perfect diamonds. When the sunlight hit it, it was like holding blue fire with his fingertips. He couldn’t begin to estimate its worth.

“I don’t think the bill’s going to be quite this high.”

She shrugged carelessly. The necklace had been in its box since Vincent had died. Because she’d accidentally discovered the necklace’s true origin, the gift no longer meant anything to her. He’d bought it for someone else, but had taken it back after the breakup.

“Make change,” she told him, rising.

“Two bracelets and a pair of earrings?” he offered, raising a brow.

“Whatever.” She didn’t care about the necklace. She cared about getting Vinny back. Quickly. Dakota paused in the doorway. “You’ll call me if there’s anything?”

He crossed to the doorway to stand beside her. Who had been the man in her life? Did she miss him? Had she hardened her heart to everyone because losing him had been so devastating? Questions occurred to him that weren’t restricted to the immediate case at hand. He wanted them answered.

“I’ll call you regularly one way or another.”

She only wanted to hear from him if he had something positive to tell her. She didn’t know how much more of this she could take without breaking. “Make it one way,” she instructed.

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