Chapter 2
T he next morning Heather woke up, determined to find a way out of this mess. When the housekeeper came to clean the room, Heather asked her, “Any chance you could send a message for me?”
The woman frowned at her, then glanced back at the doorway uneasily. “Can’t you leave?” Her English was decent but the accent hard to decipher.
“No, I’m being held prisoner.”
The woman gave her a half shrug and a commiserating look.
Heather muttered, “ Great , nobody’ll help.” Yet the presence of a guard at her door probably was threat enough for this housekeeper.
Heather wasn’t even sure what it would take to get somebody to help, but she knew good people had to be out there. She certainly couldn’t blame the cleaner for being terrified of the guard outside her door, plus the high-profile diplomatic presence of Faheed. He was a pretty imposing figure to begin with, and, since he got to hand off all responsibility, using all that lovely diplomatic immunity BS, it made him even more terrifying because he could do whatever he wanted, with no repercussions. Heather didn’t know how he’d gotten away with so much for so long but suspected that his brother, Saheed, had facilitated his efforts.
When the woman was almost done cleaning, Heather smiled at her. The woman hesitated but then quickly laughed nervously. That was a good sign, or at least it was something. Yet, if Heather had a chance to give her a message to send, who would she call? She didn’t know who to call. That was the problem. Who did you call when you found yourself in this situation? It’s not as if she had any experience with criminals. She was in the whiskey business, for God’s sake.
Yet here she was, desperately looking for somebody, anybody who could give her a hand. She had access to the internet, but she also knew that Faheed and Saheed checked out what she did on a regular basis. So it’s not as if she could search for avenues of escape or who to contact at this time. She knew better than to even type in how to hire a hitman , which would bring instantaneous repercussions on her.
She didn’t want to kill Faheed. She just wanted to get away from him. As emotions momentarily overwhelmed her, the cards vibrated in her pocket. She placed her hand over the pocket to calm them. She knew when she calmed that they would too. They were direct conduits to her own emotions.
The next day followed the same pattern, and it drove her crazy. As the days continued to blend one into another, she was getting more and more frustrated. Letting her go was a choice on Faheed’s part, not hers.
She would end up leaving Finland without anybody the wiser. At that, she pondered leaving a note behind. Would Faheed notice? How could they notice, if Faheed and Saheed left with her? With a groan, Heather felt sure Saheed would inspect her room the moment she packed up to leave. If not himself, via a surrogate.
Heather worried that Faheed or Saheed had a greater chance of finding any note she left behind. Even if somebody nice found her note, Heather had no guarantee they would take her note to someone who could help. There were too many ifs and buts—and possible retaliatory threats.
She pulled out her cards from her pocket and mentally asked if she would safely escape this nightmare and received a strong yes. Frowning but delighted, she looked around nonplussed, wondering where a rescue could come from.
Yet the cards hadn’t lied to her yet, so she would go on trust.
She had two worries prominent in her mind, getting free and protecting her company. They were her constant companions.
While she had a good relationship with her managers and her directors, the company ran more or less without her. Thus, if people out in the world at large were willing to take bribes, she wouldn’t be surprised if someone in her company would do so as well. She didn’t want to think of that, but she wasn’t a fool. There had been multiple attempts at espionage in the past. Even now, Heather felt in her gut that Faheed’s lawyers were trying to break her father’s will, trying to break the family trust her father had set up for just such an event.
Yet her sister had already made further provisions to leave everything to Heather that had to do with the family business. Those legal documents existed with both sisters’ signatures on them. That had been mandatory per Father’s will, which was not terribly unusual with a family business, except that Hannah may not have told Faheed about this—the tiny little fact that the family business wasn’t Hannah’s to hand off.
As far as Heather was concerned, if Hannah had held back even that much from Faheed, Heather considered that to be a good thing. But then again, it would explain the argument that Faheed and Hannah had not long ago. She refused to talk to Heather about it, yet it upset Hannah greatly. Maybe it had even brought about her sister’s death.
Hannah hadn’t been in the same situation that Heather was in right now, being locked in. Her sister had always had a certain amount of freedom to come and go, mostly because she was thoroughly in love with Faheed and would never have done anything to change that. Little did she know that it was probably her beloved Faheed who was responsible for her death.
Heather shook her head at that. “Why does the world not care?” she muttered out loud. Not that anyone knew to care about it.
She had her laptop with her and her cell phone, but she couldn’t even use them. Everything went through Faheed. She knew that, right now especially, she was being closely monitored. He’d warned her not to even attempt to contact anybody, and, since he had a lot on his mind that she wasn’t privy to right now, she needed to do her best not to piss him off.
It hadn’t been a light warning. She knew exactly what he meant and had done her best to maintain a certain aplomb around him. As long as he thought she was being cooperative, there was a chance that she could get out of this alive. She was afraid that she was about to become Faheed’s next wife, whether she wanted to or not, and, in Faheed’s world, that was certain death. She had never wanted to be in his company for even a minute, so marriage was an absolute no as far as she was concerned, but, for him, it would just make economic sense.
It would be one more notch on his trophy stand, giving him a valid reason to retain control of Heather’s whiskey company, whether she wanted that or not. And that was half the problem. He seemed to always do whatever he wanted, and nothing seemed to stop him.
“But not me,” she vowed. “He won’t get what he wants this time. Not from me.”
And, with that, another knock came on the door, as Saheed came to escort her to Faheed’s suite for brunch, whether she wanted to or not. With that little gesture, she became even more determined to get word out to someone, somewhere, that she was being held against her will.
Surely someone would care.
*
“If she’s here,” Royce noted, “surely she would be in the same hotel as the diplomat.”
“And yet,” Rick replied, as they walked up to the front entrance of the hotel in question, “nobody has reported seeing her.”
“How is that even possible?” he muttered.
“Because Faheed is touting Heather as his actual wife.”
“But his wife, Hannah, is dead.”
“Yes, except, and this is potentially very pertinent, the two of them looked a lot alike, almost to the point of being mistaken for twins.”
“Ah, crap,” he muttered in understanding. “So there is a chance that he is trying to pass off Heather as his wife in order to keep any questions at bay.”
“Maybe, it’s hard to say. He won’t tolerate personal questions, which is fairly standard for diplomats.”
“If Heather is free to walk around…”
“We don’t know that. If she were free, as in free to come and go as she pleased, that would be a different story,” Rick replied, frowning at him. “You and I both know that women can walk around with their kidnappers or guardians, yet not be free, not say anything to anybody, and still look perfectly natural, as if they are happy to be there.”
He nodded. “I guess that’s quite true, isn’t it? Damn.” Royce was frustrated as they walked into the hotel. He looked around and asked Rick, “Are we staying here?”
“We are. Mostly because Faheed is here.”
“Interesting. What are the chances that we’ll even see him?”
“Not likely. He keeps to himself, using a private dining room. Nobody’s allowed in or out. Meals are served by one server and passed off to his team. Then he’s served from there. Or he eats in his suite with security in the hallway.”
“Great, so security’s heavy, and Heather may or may not even be here.”
“First of all we must confirm that she’s even here. If she is, then we have to verify if she is the woman who reached out to MI6 because we don’t know that for sure. We also have no confirmation that Heather is really a prisoner. Once we figure all that out, the real work begins—getting her out of here.”
“ Great ,” Royce muttered. “Rescuing damsels in distress appears to be the call of the day.”
“We’ve done a lot of it lately,” Rick agreed, “for one reason or another.”
“And that won’t stop, since women are often kidnap victims,” Royce noted, “but the circumstance in this one seems just a little bit off.”
“More than a little bit, if you ask me,” Rick replied, “but some cases are just that way.”
“Yeah, they sure are,” Royce muttered, as they quickly checked in. They were given their rooms as requested, and, as they walked up slowly, Royce checked out the security in the area. “I wonder if we’ll even catch sight of them.”
“Not likely. Our intel says they have an entire floor to themselves.”
“All that for one diplomat?” Royce asked.
“A very wealthy one, remember that. He doesn’t travel in standard style and always has his entourage.”
After they checked out their rooms and dumped their bags, Royce and Rick set out on a fact-finding mission. Picking up a coffee in the hotel coffee shop, they quickly did a full-on hotel sweep, checking out each floor, including the floor where she was potentially being held.
By the time they had the layout, Royce frowned. “Where are the guards? That absence alone is curious, plus normally we don’t have a location this fast.”
Rick whispered, “Maybe the guards are in each room.”
Royce groaned. “Which means we can’t single out which room houses the diplomat and which one has Heather?
Rick nodded. “Faheed may just be that cloaked in his immunity that he has no need to post guards and simply doesn’t worry about people like us,” Rick pointed out. “Faheed’s obviously of the opinion that he can do what he wants and that it doesn’t matter.”
“I think you’re right there.” By the time they had checked out everything, Royce summarized, “Okay, so we have four main exits, six other exits, plus the fire exits, all leading to the ground floor and on to the garage for parking. We need a source of information to find out when they leave the building, so we can enter her room.”
“Yeah, good luck with that, finding a source and knowing which room is hers.” Rick laughed.
Royce cocked one eyebrow at him. “I was thinking of coming from the roof into her room, straight to the source.”
“Except we don’t know what room is hers though,” Rick pointed out. “I’m okay with the roof as a starting point, though we still have to confirm she’s here.”
“Yeah, that’ll be a slightly different challenge,” Royce conceded. “I wonder what window washers they use at the hotel.”
Rick smiled at him in approval. “Now that’s a good point. We’ll have to get that information from Jonas.” He quickly sent off a series of texts.
Royce laughed. “Can’t say I’ve had too many occasions where I got to put MI6 to work for me.”
“That is also partly their deal, and they want her, so she can testify against the diplomat.”
“Sure, but getting her has to be paramount, with the testimony secondary, if you ask me.”
“Agreed. We just want to ensure that nothing happens to make our lovely diplomat pull out of the country on the run with Heather.”
“He does that on a regular basis, I gather?”
“Yeah, he has uncanny instincts when it comes to smelling trouble, and he very quickly books it.”
“You think it’s more than uncanny instincts?”
“It’s something to keep in mind,” Rick nodded, “but the sense of self-preservation is strong. So, if he’s been listening to it all these years, he won’t question it. He’ll just jump ship.”
“And take his entourage with him.”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t you? He’s gone to a lot of effort to do this repeatedly.”
“We also need to check with her company and see if she’s had any communications with them and if they’ve had any with Faheed.”
“We have to go about that indirectly, so I have Terk on that right now,” Rick shared. “We have some pretty good hackers on board.”
“You’ve got Sophia working for you, don’t you?”
He looked over at him and smiled. “Yep, we sure do. She’s Wade’s partner now.”
“Cranky Wade?” Royce couldn’t believe it.
Rick burst out laughing. “Man, it seems as if you have a bad impression of us all.”
“Antisocial, living on the edge of society, not terribly friendly with the outside world. Then there is the talk of energy-working miracles and all that shit. So, you tell me. How does that look to the average citizen?”
“Hey, we’re not that bad,” Rick protested. Then he shot him a look and grinned. “Okay, so maybe we were. And we were probably worse as we each made our way back after the attack, way worse,” he admitted in a flinty tone. “Nothing like an apocalyptic betrayal to make you paranoid and to cause you to pull back again.”
“Understood,” Royce muttered. “But obviously Wade must have something going for him, particularly if Sophia is with him.”
“Apparently they had a bit of a thing before, and then he was sent off on a job that was quite dangerous, so he ended it, didn’t want to get her involved.”
“I’m sure she didn’t appreciate that,” Royce noted, staring at Rick. “The little bit I remember about her is that she was a hell of a spitfire.”
He laughed. “Yep, she still is. She moved in to help him when he was down, so he couldn’t escape her this time. Plus, since he was still recovering, as we all were, he was vulnerable and needed any support he could get. You should see the two of them together.”
“I guess that’s probably about the only way she could have made it happen. Besides, you have to love a woman who goes after what she wants.”
“As long as they’re happy, I’m good with it,” Rick added. “God knows, mine didn’t happen any easier.”
“No, I can’t imagine that it would have, particularly if you two were dealing with that whole betrayal scene.”
“We all were,” he muttered. “No way we couldn’t be, and, trust me, we all had our struggles.”
Royce nodded.
Just as they headed back to the coffee shop again to grab some food, Rick’s phone rang. He looked down at it and smiled. “That’s Jonas.” Rick stepped into the hallway several feet away from everybody and answered it.
Royce quickly placed their order, then rejoined Rick. He couldn’t hear all of Jonas’s side of the conversation, as too many people were around for it to be on Speakerphone, but Royce got the gist of it. When his order was ready, he picked it up and returned to Rick. Together they walked out of the hotel.
When Rick disconnected the phone, he nodded to Royce. “One woman is here with the group, right now. There were two, but one just left.”
“Interesting, I wonder which one left. With our luck it’ll be the one we wanted,” he stated, with a half laugh.
“Maybe, but neither has been seen very much anyway. The one woman did show up for a meal last night, left early and was escorted back to her room. She was seen going to Faheed’s suite for a late breakfast. That could mean she’s the one we are looking for, considering she was escorted both ways and isn’t staying in his suite with him, yet still showed up for a meal. Thereafter, she went to her room.”
“We need that room number,” Royce muttered.
“The problem is that he’s rented an entire set of suites. So, the reality is that she could be in any number of the rooms.”
“Right, so back to the window-washing idea. That’s got to be the best we’ve got, but we’ll need to make it happen fast.”
“Jonas is on it now,” Rick assured him.
With that, Royce nodded. “Any news on her family business?”
“I haven’t heard back from Terk on that yet.”
“Okay, so moving on to the next problem we need to address,” Royce paused, looking around to ensure they were alone. “We’ll need an exit plan.”
“Yeah, and that could be a little bit more of a challenge,” Rick muttered.
“Do we have any contacts here?” Royce asked, carrying the to-go bag of food.
“I thought we would do a reconnaissance around this part of the city and see what we can come up with.”
“Any safe houses around? Does Jonas have anything? Because, as soon as we nab her, we’ll have to book it.”
“It won’t be quite that simple.”
“Nope, it won’t, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t pull it off,” he muttered.
Rick grinned. “You see? That’s why I knew you needed to come.” He smiled openly. “That confidence is hard to beat.”
“Sure, but I always think, if we don’t believe we can succeed, what are we doing here?”
They sat outside in the warm sun on a nearby bench and quickly ate their sandwiches, while they took a look at the area. “I’m not seeing any guards,” Rick murmured.
“No, neither am I, which means Faheed either has them traveling with him, which he likely does, or doesn’t think he’ll need more than what he currently has upstairs. Which is also interesting because that shows a certain level of confidence on his part.”
“Too much. Maybe it’s gone beyond confidence and into arrogance,” Rick pointed out.
“That’s possible too,” Royce muttered. “But then when it comes to any of these diplomats, particularly from some of these other countries, there is almost a requirement of arrogance,” he noted, with a snort.
“Maybe, but, when they cross the lines, they still need to pay the piper.”
“And yet diplomats don’t.”
By the time their sandwiches were gone, they had a good idea of the ebb and flow of traffic in the immediate area. The vehicle traffic coming and going was huge, and where Faheed and his entourage were staying was among the highest tier of hotels in the city. The hotel had what appeared to be a top-notch logistics system. Their clientele were extremely well protected from the masses, and there didn’t appear to be very much in the way of public traffic in that hotel. Not many people came in and out of the front entrance, and those who did were escorted into vehicles already waiting for them.
When he got a nudge and a whisper to check his three o’clock, Royce casually looked around to see the diplomat stepping out of the hotel, talking to somebody on the phone. At least that was the face that Royce recognized from the file. “He’s not alone, of course.”
“No, he has two men with him. Left one is obviously a guard, and the second one is the brother,” Rick shared, “at least according to the photo we have in our files. He travels with him all the time.”
“Interesting, and yet to be expected, I guess.”
“Sure, but then we’ll have to consider that he’s keeping an eye on Heather too, which won’t be an easy job, considering she wants out.”
Just then Rick’s phone rang. He looked down and muttered under his breath, “Terk.”
Again because they were outside with people passing by, Royce kept an eye on the vehicle as the diplomat got into it and quickly disappeared, taking his brother with him.
Rick disconnected the phone and nodded to Royce. “The window-washing idea is a go. Jonas came through, so we know now that it’s done on a biweekly basis, but they do different windows each visit, so all the windows get hit on a monthly or bimonthly basis,” he explained, looking up at the huge hotel. “A lot of windows are here.”
“Right,” Royce confirmed, “so what is the news?”
“Apparently they are currently working on the far side, near the penthouse floor.”
“Do we have any response from her company?”
Rick nodded. “Terk read through the energies of the employees. From Terk’s initial pass, he found that Heather is well-loved. Sophia made a test call, passing herself off as a journalist, asking for an in-person interview with Heather. Sophia got a runaround response. Nobody would confirm Heather was out of the office. Nobody would book a time and a day for the supposed interview.”
“Of course. We still must talk to them eventually, even by phone, to ensure that everything is above board and no one there is involved,” Royce noted. “Also, did Hannah have anything to do with the business? Why just Heather?”
“Waiting for more company info to come through,” Rick replied, “so we can get started on that soon.”
“I want to check out the window washers,” Royce said, “but better if I get a room number. With Faheed and Saheed both gone, that means we have a window of opportunity that I don’t want to lose.”
And, with that, they quickly retraced their steps to their rooms, where they sat down with the hotel schematics, sorted out the rooms, the placement of rooms on the entire floor where she most likely was. “She’s got to be somewhere along this side,” Royce suggested. “This area right here is secluded. This is the perfect vantage point for Faheed too.” He frowned. “Do you really think he paid for the entire floor below, or has he just got this entire penthouse level?”
“I don’t know. I’ve seen them do both in the past, and our intel could be wrong or no longer current. Maybe he has a standing invitation to stay at this hotel. We won’t know until we get a little more information.”
“I hate bad intel,” Royce declared, staring at him.
“You and me both,” his partner replied cheerfully.
“In that case, I think I’ll go see if I can get my own intel.” And, with that, Royce hopped to his feet.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Rick cried out. “Where are you going?”
“To find out what room she’s in, and, if I have a chance to see her because nobody else is around, I will talk to her.” And he quickly walked out of their hotel suite. Royce knew Rick thought this was a bad idea, but Royce wasn’t listening. He needed to move and now…