OâNeil. Fear for her worried mother. Fear that this girl in front of her, a child who had apparently been raised without boundaries or empathy, could have done something truly terrible.
She stepped closer to Tiffany, deliberately invading her space, and fixed her with a laser stare that had melted far harder-bitten characters than Tiffy Dante would ever be. This time it was Tiffany who looked away, breaking eye contact.
âIâm going to find Daisy OâNeil,â Savannah said, her voice low and even, but with an ominous underlying tone. âIâm not going to rest until I find her. And when I do, she had better be alive and healthy. Or someone is going to pay a very, very dear price for hurting her.â
The girls said nothing. But Savannah carefully noted all three of their facial expressions. Tiffany looked cocky, as usual. Bunny seemed a bit nervous, maybe worried.
But it was the look in Kikiâs eyes that bothered Savannah most. Kiley Wallace looked sad, deeply sadâ¦and guilty.
And that didnât bode well for Daisy OâNeil.
Â
Savannah left the girls to ponder her threat and headed back to the house. Entering by the same door she had exited in the breakfast room, she could hear male voices in a nearby room. And from the tone of those voices, she surmised that Dirkâs interview with Andrew Dante was going even worse than before.
But that was no great surprise. Dirk was highly skilled at leaning on street thugs and threatening the truth out of them. He was a lot less accomplished in dealing with âregularâ folk.
In fact, most regular folk considered Dirk Coulter boorish, overbearing, and antagonistic, and they spent as little time as possible in his presence. And while Savannah agreed with their evaluation of him, she also knew that most of his less than gracious behavior sprang from his deep concern for crime victims and his passion to find justice for them.
And realizing that, she had decided long ago to cut the guy a lot of slack. She felt the same way he did about crime solving, and for the same reasons. She just had slightly better manners, having been raised by a Southern granny.
Except for abusive jerks in grocery stores.
And cocky, arrogant teenagers.
And the occasional street punk who rubbed her the wrong way andâ¦
Okay, so maybe she wasnât all that much better behaved than Dirk. She could live with that.
As she walked from the breakfast room into the kitchen, she heard Dirk saying something about search warrants, and Dante reply with the name of a powerful, prestigious local attorney.
No, things werenât going all that well in the Coulter-Dante interview.
Any business of her own that she wanted to conclude had to be done right away. She had a feeling she and Dirk were due to be tossed out on their backsides at any moment.
Hoping she would run into the maid again, she walked through the formal dining room and back into the great room. But instead of the maid, she ran into yet another young woman.
Sitting at the grand piano, running the fingers of one hand lightly over the keys in a practiced scale, the woman appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She also looked deeply sad. With a pretty, heart-shaped face, enormous blue eyes, and extremely short, platinum blond hair, she had a fey quality about her, exuding fragility and vulnerability.
She, too, was abnormally slender, but instead of the Skeleton Key silk pajamas uniform, she was wearing an exquisite dressing gown of silver jacquard. And even though the fabric was most complimentary to her figure and coloring, the style seemed more be-fitting to an older woman.
She looked a little like a kid playing dress up in her motherâs clothes.
Except that she appeared anything but playful. Her big blue eyes were filled with tears, and her head was bowed in a defeatist pose as she practiced her scale with first one hand and then the other.
Savannah took a few steps closer, and the woman
She stepped closer to Tiffany, deliberately invading her space, and fixed her with a laser stare that had melted far harder-bitten characters than Tiffy Dante would ever be. This time it was Tiffany who looked away, breaking eye contact.
âIâm going to find Daisy OâNeil,â Savannah said, her voice low and even, but with an ominous underlying tone. âIâm not going to rest until I find her. And when I do, she had better be alive and healthy. Or someone is going to pay a very, very dear price for hurting her.â
The girls said nothing. But Savannah carefully noted all three of their facial expressions. Tiffany looked cocky, as usual. Bunny seemed a bit nervous, maybe worried.
But it was the look in Kikiâs eyes that bothered Savannah most. Kiley Wallace looked sad, deeply sadâ¦and guilty.
And that didnât bode well for Daisy OâNeil.
Â
Savannah left the girls to ponder her threat and headed back to the house. Entering by the same door she had exited in the breakfast room, she could hear male voices in a nearby room. And from the tone of those voices, she surmised that Dirkâs interview with Andrew Dante was going even worse than before.
But that was no great surprise. Dirk was highly skilled at leaning on street thugs and threatening the truth out of them. He was a lot less accomplished in dealing with âregularâ folk.
In fact, most regular folk considered Dirk Coulter boorish, overbearing, and antagonistic, and they spent as little time as possible in his presence. And while Savannah agreed with their evaluation of him, she also knew that most of his less than gracious behavior sprang from his deep concern for crime victims and his passion to find justice for them.
And realizing that, she had decided long ago to cut the guy a lot of slack. She felt the same way he did about crime solving, and for the same reasons. She just had slightly better manners, having been raised by a Southern granny.
Except for abusive jerks in grocery stores.
And cocky, arrogant teenagers.
And the occasional street punk who rubbed her the wrong way andâ¦
Okay, so maybe she wasnât all that much better behaved than Dirk. She could live with that.
As she walked from the breakfast room into the kitchen, she heard Dirk saying something about search warrants, and Dante reply with the name of a powerful, prestigious local attorney.
No, things werenât going all that well in the Coulter-Dante interview.
Any business of her own that she wanted to conclude had to be done right away. She had a feeling she and Dirk were due to be tossed out on their backsides at any moment.
Hoping she would run into the maid again, she walked through the formal dining room and back into the great room. But instead of the maid, she ran into yet another young woman.
Sitting at the grand piano, running the fingers of one hand lightly over the keys in a practiced scale, the woman appeared to be in her mid-twenties. She also looked deeply sad. With a pretty, heart-shaped face, enormous blue eyes, and extremely short, platinum blond hair, she had a fey quality about her, exuding fragility and vulnerability.
She, too, was abnormally slender, but instead of the Skeleton Key silk pajamas uniform, she was wearing an exquisite dressing gown of silver jacquard. And even though the fabric was most complimentary to her figure and coloring, the style seemed more be-fitting to an older woman.
She looked a little like a kid playing dress up in her motherâs clothes.
Except that she appeared anything but playful. Her big blue eyes were filled with tears, and her head was bowed in a defeatist pose as she practiced her scale with first one hand and then the other.
Savannah took a few steps closer, and the woman
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