“I do still tire easily though, Doris. I need to lie down. Thank you for checking on me.”
Savage hated that she was so down. He’d done that.
Brandon cleared his throat. “I’ve been worried about Sahara. Doris tells me you went to see her the day she disappeared. I didn’t even know you two were friends.”
“You didn’t? How strange. I thought Sahara told you everything. I saw her quite often.” Seychelle turned her head again, looking him directly in the eyes. This time her blue eyes weren’t so listless. They were that deep blue, almost mystical. Challenging. Her voice had a soft, musical quality to it.
Savage felt the knots in his stomach tighten. He would be going there every night and he wanted members of Torpedo Ink on her every second. He didn’t like the way Brandon was looking at her. The man liked victims, and he didn’t like women standing up to him. Right at that moment, Seychelle looked very fragile and worn. But her eyes and voice were saying something altogether different from her body. Her look all but told Brandon to fuck off.
“What was her state of mind that day?” Brandon looked as if he was truly concerned. “She’d been very upset, crying often. I was so worried about her. I had even told Doris I was afraid she would harm herself. She’d gone back to cutting herself. She did that years earlier, but I managed to get her to stop.”
“She seemed very happy. She certainly didn’t talk about harming herself. She’d been telling me for weeks that you wanted the house back. She said you needed it for your new girlfriend and she completely understood.” That sweet musical note was building in her voice.
“It was so generous and kind of you to let her stay there rent-free, Brandon,” Doris said.
“Rent-free?” Seychelle echoed. “She paid rent, Doris. Didn’t Brandon tell you? Sahara has her own money. She illustrates children’s books. There is a huge demand for her work. She has a very large bank account and paid for all the repairs on the house and the upkeep of it. I helped her go over all the invoices for tax purposes and sort everything out for her attorneys so everything would be in order for Brandon when she left. The books were right there for you on the kitchen counter, Brandon. The ones pertinent to the house. She had the roof repaired for you, and new plumbing put in. The heating system was upgraded. She retiled the upstairs bathrooms. Everything was paid for and all receipts were copied and left for you.”
Her voice was different now, the notes much more musical and directed toward Doris, countering the mesmerizing effect Brandon’s voice had on the older woman. Savage clenched his teeth. His woman was taking chances. Brandon might not hit women, but he liked to play his games with them. He’d been setting Sahara up, using his voice, trying to see what he could force her to do—how far down he could take her. Was he setting her up to commit suicide? Savage hadn’t realized Sahara had money. Had he been talking her into making him the beneficiary of her money if she died? Had Seychelle just told him she’d helped Sahara change that?
Savage needed to find that out. Brandon might forgive and move on to other things, but if he was set on getting a payload, he might be angry enough to retaliate against Seychelle. Savage detested that he wasn’t with her to watch over her himself. He knew he could rely on his brothers and sisters, but it left him feeling impotent and out of sorts. Edgy. Angry. At himself. At the circumstances. Even at Seychelle, for not letting him explain.
If it wasn’t bad enough that Brandon had wormed his way into Doris’s life, he was now walking with his latest girlfriend along the road between Seychelle’s cottage and the headlands. Ever since the conversation, three times a week, he had parked his car up the street and forced a very reluctant girlfriend to walk, no matter the weather, in the evening with him.
The girl appeared, according to the Torpedo Ink members who watched over Seychelle, to be very young and too thin, listless, yet eager to please Brandon, hurrying to do whatever he whispered to her. After she did it, he whispered again to her, and she would get tears in her eyes and look at the ground as if she hadn’t met his expectations. They always walked past Seychelle’s cottage, and he would stare at it, even as he kissed his girlfriend or acted as if he was nibbling on her neck.
Aside from Brandon coming three times a week to walk by the cottage, an older man of about fifty had appeared on the headlands with a camera, taking photographs of the birds, or appearing to do so. Then he photographed the cottages along the road where Seychelle lived. That wasn’t necessarily a threat. The buildings were historic, and more than one person had painted and photographed them.