"I'm getting them Daddy." Daddy?" the cashier said. "You can't be this girl's father." I'm watching her while her mother goes shopping for some more r...squé items," I said carefully. "She didn't want her daughter exposed."The woman nodded as she finally found the code she needed to scan. She hit a couple of keys on the cash register and looked down at Angelique. "That came to fifteen dollars and forty-six cents."I reached into a pocket and pulled out fifty cents as Angelique held up the twenty.. The girl was like a breath of fresh air around the old place. It was just what she needed, she was not ready to sit and gather cobwebs just yet. * * * ‘Hello?’ Danni said sarcastically when Nicole failed to respond for the zillionth time that day. ‘Err…sorry,’ Nicole grinned ruefully and sipped her coffee. ‘I was listening — honest!’ ‘Jesus, what’s the matter with you these days? It’s like you’re on another fucking planet half of the time! Between you and my annoying brother, I’m beginning to. Aaliyah straightened her back, putting an imperious tilt to her head. "Then let us go see Rashid."Zaritha smiled. "You would like that. I'm not stupid enough to let you step foot outside of these caves without a diamond anchor about your throat." Just like sapphire stopped thoughts, diamond stopped teleportation."Then how do you plan to take me to your Master?" I guess I'll have to summon help." No." Aaliyah reached out and seized Zaritha's cheeks, staring into her red eyes. "You forget who. The worse worst case scenario would be an unfortunate but genuine self-inflicted accident that could be readily proven by the local Medical Examiner and one of the Deputy County Sheriffs as such. Our local ME and most of the senior Deputies were senior Wilde family members ... and present upstairs at this meeting. The Sheriff himself was an ignorant tool only vaguely related to us and hailing from a minor allied family, but that's a different rant.•Thirdly, prime her information pipeline by.