Zac answered all of her questions, no matter how much they pained him. Mia admired that more than she could have expressed. If he had been a more selfish person, his pain would take over him, completely making him forget how he answered could affect whether or not he ever got his daughter back.

"Why weren't you concerned when you began receiving threats?" Mia scribbled furiously on her pad as she spoke. "It sounded like you had become accustomed to things like that. Would you mind telling me why?"

Zac took a deep breath. "My brother's and I were in a pop group in the late nineties. We disbanded a few years ago to pursue our personal lives. Sometimes we got threats. Nothing ever happened, so I guess I got too cocky." He paused, focusing a gaze on one of the many framed photographs of his pale-haired daughter.

Suddenly Mia had a mental picture of three long-haired blondes in her mind. She suppressed a smile, thinking of the year she'd turned thirteen. That had been the year she'd discovered Hanson, years after the original pandemonium surrounding the release of their first album. How could she have forgotten? That had been the year that..... Mia shook the offending thought out of her head and forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. Even if the task at hand was suddenly reminding her of things she'd relegated to the recesses of her brain.

"My wife hated the bodyguards," he finished softly, causing a stab of grief to go through Mia's heart. Zac's grief was unimaginable to her.

Mia scribbled a phrase that she knew would unreadable later on the pad of paper on her lap. "I'm so sorry," she whispered for what seemed like the thousandth time that day.

Zac didn't respond, not that she'd thought he would. What was there to say? That he was sorry too that his wife had died and his daughter was gone? Her pain at the situation was only a fraction of what this man must be feeling.

"I only have a few more questions." Mia bit the inside of her mouth until she tasted blood, the physical pain helping her to gain composure. Feeling under control of her feelings, she steadily asked him the next question.

"How did your wife die?"

Zac's head shot up. If looks could kill, the one he gave her would have mutilated her body. "What does that have to do with this?"

"You said this afternoon that she died only three months ago. Her death could very possibly be connected in some way with this case."

"I seriously doubt that," Zac said sarcastically, with a venom in his tone that sent a chill down her back. "My wife committed suicide."

Mia suppressed the desire to again express her sympathy, instead busying herself by jotting that down with the rest of her notes.

"You look surprised." Zac was trying hard to be less angry but he felt his resolve slipping as he talked to this woman. "It was all over the tabloids. Everyone wanted to know what I had done to make my wife kill herself."

"That's horrible!" Mia gasped. How could people be so cruel to use someone's grief for a seedy tabloid story. She felt herself getting surprisingly angry at anyone who would exploit this poor man's grief.

She glanced once again at the the blinking light on his answering machine. "Did you tell anyone about Amie?"

Zac shook his head. They knew him all too well, however. Why else would everyone have called on the same day?

"That's probably for the best." Mia nodded, mumbling under her breath to herself before looking up. "The fewer people know about this, the better. It sounds as if whoever took Amie wants this all to be very quiet."

Zac again stared at his daughter's smiling face in the picture frame. He didn't care. They could take whatever they wanted from him. All he wanted was his baby.

"And you're positive you don't want the police involved?"

Zac looked up in shock. "How could you even suggest that? I told you what they said! If I tell the police they'll kill her!" he practically shouted.

Mia simply nodded. "I know." She knew the pain in Zac's eyes would haunt her for the rest of her life. She vowed at that moment that she would do ANYTHING to find Amie.

Anything.