Chapter 9: The Search

My father ended the gala at nine-forty.

By ten we were all in his study on the second floor, with the door shut and the fire lit.

Mom sat on the sofa with a blanket over her knees.

Caleb stood by the window with his hands in his pockets.

Brynn and I sat side by side on the leather bench, in our gala dresses.

Dustin stood at the door.

Dad had asked him to come, because he sat on the Foundation's board.

"I want every room searched," my father said. "The house, the staff quarters, the office."

He turned to the door.

"I want every phone and computer looked at by someone who doesn't care whose name is on it."

"Dad, that's extreme," Caleb said.

"A girl was accused of stealing eighty million dollars in front of three hundred people. It isn't extreme."

He rang a bell, and a man in a gray suit came in, the head of the family's security.

He was told what to do, and he did it.

We waited.

It was almost an hour.

Mom's fingers kept moving on the blanket, and she kept looking at the closed door.

Once she glanced at me and opened her mouth.

Caleb turned from the window.

She closed it again.

I saw Dustin watch that happen, and I saw his eyes narrow.

At eleven the security man came back with a flat silver box in his hands.

"This was in the second-floor suite at Hartwell House," he said. "Miss Brynn's room."

Dad took the box and opened it.

The necklace lay on black velvet, a thin diamond line with a drop at the center.

He looked at Brynn, and all the color went out of her face.

"I didn't buy it," she said. "I swear. Dad, I didn't."