Chapter 13
A t Royce’s and Rick’s insistence, Heather went in through one of the rear exits to her apartment building. It was mostly a fire escape and not a common entrance or exit. Thus, if they wanted to keep her arrival secret, this was the better option. Not that she cared at this point. So much had been going on that she just wanted to get home, which was tantalizingly close, yet seemed so very far away.
Rick and Royce were being ultra-cautious, and she appreciated that. Still, by the time she was finally inside her apartment building, then stepping into her own residence, she felt the tears threatening. “God, you can’t imagine how many times I wondered if I would ever get back here.”
Immediately Royce placed an arm around her shoulders and held her close. She wanted to sob and also to rail against the injustice of it all. She had had no time to process everything that Jonas had revealed about her sister, and Heather acknowledged that she needed that processing time. However, just to know in this moment that Royce was here for her meant so much. She didn’t want to build up any expectation that he would be here for her forever by any means, but it was so damn nice that he was here for her right now.
When she finally stepped back, she looked up at him with a gentle smile. “Thanks. Sorry for being such a wet sponge.”
He shook his head. “After what you’ve been through, this is nothing. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I keep thinking about Hannah. Even this place reminds me of her too,” she began, as she turned to look around. “We spent a lot of time here, before she married him.”
“Is it your place or your sister’s?”
“Essentially they’re the same thing now,” she replied. “It was mine beforehand anyway. Anytime she came into town alone—which obviously wasn’t a thing after her marriage, but, before that—she stayed with me all the time. She had a boyfriend prior to Faheed, and it looked as if they might have gotten married for the longest time. Then she caught him cheating. He laughed at her and called her all kinds of horrible names and said he wouldn’t get stuck with that for the rest of his life. I wanted to go punch him out, but she dissuaded me against it by telling me how he wasn’t worth it. In a way, she’d been right. He wasn’t. But, boy, it sure makes you question everything and everyone around you.”
“Which is too bad,” Royce noted, “because all the world is not always so shitty. It’s not full of only shitty men.”
“I know that.” She sighed, leaning back to look up at him. “You and Rick are the exception to the rule, aren’t you?” she teased.
Rick smiled, as if acknowledging her mention of him in this otherwise very personal discussion with Royce.
Royce raised his eyebrows. “I hope it’s not so bad out there that we need an exception,” he clarified, “but I do understand why people would look at it that way.”
She didn’t say a whole lot to that, but he was right. She still had this sense of things being so off in so much of the world. She could only hope it wouldn’t end up being quite that way in reality. Yet her recent experience hadn’t been very positive. She stepped away from the guys and took a moment to look around her apartment. Suddenly she let out a whoop .
Royce laughed. “I gather you’re happy to be home.”
“Yes,” she declared, as if, for the first time, finally realizing that she was here. She walked around, turned on her desktop computer, opened up her blinds, and stared out of the window to the city below. “I have such a feeling of relief,” she shared, as she turned to look at both men, her gaze going misty. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Rick just nodded, as he walked toward the kitchen. “You got any coffee?”
She laughed. “I often wondered if you were eating anything or just surviving on coffee.”
“Coffee will keep me alive when a lot of other things won’t,” he said, tossing her grin.
“Coffee should be in there. Help yourself.” Within minutes she heard cupboard doors opening and closing, and she laughed. “He really makes himself at home, doesn’t he?” she asked Royce.
“It would seem so.” Royce laughed. “You did tell him to.”
“I know, and I hadn’t really thought it through, but yeah. He’s fine.”
At that, Rick poked his head into the main living space and asked, “A pot for everybody?”
She nodded. “I may or may not have enough, but, yeah, go ahead and make a full pot, even though I’m exhausted.”
“So?” he asked. “What’s that got to do with it?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re not all invincible like you.”
“Meaning?” he asked.
Hopefully he was only feigning confusion. She sighed. “Meaning that I’m likely to stay awake if I drink coffee.”
Rick shrugged. “It won’t keep me awake.” Then he disappeared into the kitchen.
She heard the fridge opening moments later and shook her head, then called out to him. “There won’t be any edible food. I haven’t been here for too many months.”
“That just means we’ll have to order in then,” he called back.
She looked around, then walked into her bedroom. “Do you know what this means?”
Royce walked in behind her. “What does it mean?”
“It means I have clothes,” she exclaimed, turning to look at him, a big grin on her face. “I can have a shower whenever I want, and I can dress in clean clothes.”
“That you can.” He chuckled. “Apparently that’s important too.”
She rolled her eyes. “Absolutely everything about having and living with true freedom is important. How can you guys get anywhere if these things are not important to you?”
He just smiled, understanding that her question was rhetorical.
“Would you mind if I have a shower now?”
“No, go for it.” He looked around at her bedroom. “Nice room. It’s really pretty but not in an overpowering sugary way.”
She stared at him, as he viewed her home but from his perspective. In a way this was his first indication as to who she was like here in her own personal space. The room was elegant, decorated in cream-colored tones, but had a touch of a royal purple accent all over the place. The bed was a queen size because she couldn’t stand small beds, and it faced the beautiful view outdoors. “It’s not very fancy,” she muttered, suddenly doubting herself.
“Fancy?” he asked, looking at her. “Why do you need fancy?”
She shook her head. “Right. Somehow you always say the right thing and make me feel like an idiot.” She laughed at her earlier remark. Then she pushed him out of her bedroom. “Go, so I can get a shower. Then I’ll be out in a few minutes for coffee.”
“It should be ready by then,” he said, with a big grin.
She rolled her eyes at that. “Figure out what you want for food, and we’ll order in,” she suggested.
As he turned and walked out, she was already tossing her dirty clothes into the hamper, absolutely ecstatic and overwhelmed to just be home again. So many times she hadn’t been so sure that she would accomplish this. She stepped in under the steaming hot water and cried out mentally to her sister. I made it, Hannah. I made it. And I’m so sorry that you didn’t too.
Immediately her tears started to flow because her sister wasn’t here with her. Hannah had obviously had some inkling of something being very wrong with Faheed. Otherwise she had no reason to contact Jonas. To even think that Hannah knew how to do that boggled Heather’s mind. Her sister wasn’t stupid. She just never had any interest in the family business, never had any interest in that side of things.
It had always been Heather’s thing, not her sister’s. That didn’t make it right or wrong. It just made it what it was. Now as Heather cried, listening to her sobs coming from her heart, she felt the full weight that her sister was truly gone, as was the rest of her family. Heather was now the last one left alive. It was a sobering thought, particularly when everybody had done so much to build up the business all these years, expecting a long-lasting legacy. Yet to see herself now all alone, carrying that ultimate level of responsibility, representing her family? Well, it was pretty… daunting. She wasn’t even sure she was up for the task, although she was pretty darn sure that her father would tell her off immediately for even having such a negative thought process. Still, it was hard to think of anything else right now.
She let the hot water wash away her tears. By the time she was done, she felt a whole lot better. She would miss her sister every day of her life, but nothing could be done about that now. Heather would have to think hard and long about why her sister hadn’t shared anything with her, especially when it was obvious that Hannah needed help herself.
Maybe Hannah truly didn’t want to believe that this would be the end result? Heather just didn’t know. It seemed to be such foolishness on Hannah’s part to leave her own life up to chance. Faheed had many, many things going on in his world, but none of them were terribly nice, particularly if you considered that he’d kept both Hannah and Heather as prisoners. But, even considering that, Heather refused to let it bring her down right now.
As she stepped out, exhausted through and through, she dressed in comfortable loungewear. With a towel wrapped around her head, she stepped out into her living room. Both men looked up, and almost identical grins crossed their faces at her getup. She pointed a finger at them. “Don’t say one word,” she muttered. “After all I’ve been through, you’re lucky I’ve got clothes on.” Realizing what she’d said, she groaned. “I suppose you can’t just forget I said that, right?”
“Hell no, feel free to do whatever you need to do. That’s all right with me. I’m here to help.” Royce teased, laughing.
She shook her head. “Very funny. I’m just so tired right now and still so emotional. It all keeps hitting me in these never-ending waves.”
“And it will for a while,” Rick noted, looking over at her. “Just when you think you’ve dealt with it, something will remind you of her, and it’ll come back all over again.”
“That’s already what happens with my parents as it is, and it’s one of the reasons my sister and I stayed so close, as there was just the two of us,” she shared. “It was a sobering realization while I was in the shower just now that it’s just me now. I’m the last one in my family.”
“What about aunts, uncles, extended family?”
She shook her head. “No, none of that either.”
“I’m sorry,” Royce muttered. “It is hard when you’re the only one left.”
“It is,” she whispered. “I know I’ll get through it, and everything will turn out okay, but it’s,… it’s daunting.”
He didn’t say anything more, just nodded, and she really did believe that he understood. He didn’t always say a whole lot, but he seemed to get it, and that was worth more than she could say because not everybody else would. It seemed as if fewer people in her world ever truly got it. They were always more about themselves than anything else.
She sniffed the air, smiled brightly, and looked at Rick. “All right, so how’s the coffee?”
“It’s not bad,” Royce replied, with a chuckle, “considering it’s Rick’s first time using your coffee machine setup.”
She winced at that. “Good point. Sometimes getting the right balance can be a little tricky. Yet, when we really need coffee, none of that actually matters, does it?”
“It’s all good,” Rick said, looking up from his laptop.
She stared at his laptop and nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I need to do. Please don’t try to stop me from contacting my company now. I need to send out emails and check up on lots and lots of stuff.”
“I won’t,” Royce claimed cheerfully. “As a matter of fact, you need to let everybody know that you’re back at the helm, in case some issues are going on behind your back.”
“Oh, I’m sure there have been,” she declared, gritting her teeth. “I’ve been thinking about those guys who caught Jonas. The only way they would have known that I came back into town was if Faheed mentioned something to those gunmen, or if they found out through a leak in Jonas’s world. Yet the gunman stated Englishman so…”
“It could have come through Faheed’s middleman to your company. We’re still trying to track that down now, and frankly it’s a bit of a mystery. If Jonas has a leak, he won’t be a happy camper. He already couldn’t do anything to save your sister, but don’t think for one second that it’s not eating away at him all the time.”
She winced. “I never did let him off the hook on that, did I?”
“You don’t have to. Hannah contacted him, or at least it landed on his desk. He’s the one who kept up a relationship and had to deal with the letters coming in, but knowing that she was at the other end of that was hard on him.”
“Of course,” Heather acknowledged. “I didn’t even think of that.”
“You don’t have to think of everything, you know,” Royce pointed out once more, as he stared at her. “Sit down and dry your hair. I’ll get you a coffee.”
And he was up off the couch before she even had a chance to argue. What could she say? He was already here, helping in so many ways, and it was easy to let him continue. She thought about her sister and how Hannah would probably have agreed with that. Still, Heather wanted to run into the kitchen and take the coffee away from him, just to ensure that she didn’t become too accustomed to being waited on. That brought back the memories of the gilded cage with Faheed.
Yet refusing Royce’s friendly help was certain to make her look foolish in this context. Not something she particularly wanted right now. When he returned, she smiled and thanked him.
“Problems?” he asked, studying her when she took the cup from him.
“No, just more of a realization of the lifestyle my sister accepted. She was very happy and content with it. And she let it be that way. It didn’t work out too well for her, did it?”
He stopped and held up a hand. “Okay, I missed something, and I don’t know what triggered what you’re saying.”
She groaned. “I’m not making very much sense right now, and I get that. I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s just that my sister wanted to be waited on hand and foot. That was the life she wanted. She didn’t run her own bath. She didn’t brush her own hair. She didn’t do anything along that line, and to even consider that she could be responsible for cleaning up her room or scrubbing a toilet was laughable. That was something she absolutely adored, the lifestyle I mean.”
“I can imagine it’s something that might be easy to get used to.”
“And that’s what I’m saying.… When you said that I should sit down and that you would get me coffee, I realized just how easy it is to get used to that. As Hannah’s sister, visiting her, I was in a way treated as a revered guest, almost doled out like, Hey, you too could have this life , you know?”
“Did she dole it out though?”
She pondered that. “She extolled the virtues of it early on, but I can’t say that she ever forced me to accept it.”
“I would think not,” Royce agreed, “especially not once she became aware of the underbelly to that very lifestyle.”
She nodded. “An underbelly that I don’t think she fully wanted to see.”
“Would you?” Rick asked. “Hannah had made all these adjustments and found herself sitting in this beautiful life, servants at her beck and call, yet her beloved husband, the person who makes it all happen, is also the most likely to blow it all up. Would Hannah really want to see the truth of that? Would you?”
She winced and shook her head. “No, and I’m not sure that Hannah really believed Faheed would ever go this far,” she replied. “That’s what I want to think anyway.”
Rick nodded. “I’m pretty sure she believed that he loved her and that whatever marital problems they had toward the end could just as easily have been the fact that she realized this wasn’t quite the paradise she had hoped it would be.”
Sipping her coffee, Heather deliberately didn’t go any further with the discussion. It was the only way to stop the tears from pouring down her face. It would be months—if not years—before she could finally see her sister’s actions for what they really were, an attempt to save Heather’s life, after having already accepted that her own life would be forfeited. That acceptance of her sister’s self-sacrifice made it so hard because surely there must have been some way to have helped her too.
Heather knew that these men would have helped, although she had no idea how. Hannah was legally married to Faheed and had been very happy up until that point in time. So what could anyone else have even done? Heather was at a loss on the whole thing.
With a sigh, she added, “I think that’s a really good topic to just leave until later.” The men agreed, after seeing her resolve and hearing the finality in her tone. She then put a hopefully sincere smile on her face and asked them, “You’re still here, and I’m not sure what’s happening at this point. Can you fill me in?”
“We’re waiting to hear from Jonas and Terk.”
“Why?” she asked bluntly.
“You still haven’t answered any questions for Jonas, and he did expend an awful lot of effort to get you back again.”
She winced. “Right, so I still need to talk to him. I was kind of hoping that maybe I could avoid that part.” Both men just stared at her, and she had the grace to look ashamed at least. “Fine, apparently that’s not in the cards.”
“No, it’s not, but it doesn’t have to be as horribly traumatic as you’re imagining it to be.”
She just stared at Rick. “You did not just say that.”
He burst out laughing, then shrugged. “Okay, I did not just say that.”
She sighed. “Fine, so after Jonas, then what? Am I just free to pick up my life and carry on?”
“Do you think you’ll really be free to carry on?” Royce asked her. “That’s the question.”
She winced. “So you really think Faheed will come over here and get me?”
“He already is here. Remember? Once you have your legal protections in place, then it would make no monetary difference to him if you’re alive or dead. Then you should consider whether he wants to get back at you for having outsmarted him.”
Frowning, she sighed. “He really doesn’t like losing. That’s for sure. But I also can’t see him thinking I’m a big-enough fish to be bothered with. In a way, I think he saw the writing on the wall when he realized he couldn’t get to the company through my sister’s half.”
“Do you think he would have let you run the company?”
“He certainly might have for the first little bit, that grooming bit you mentioned before, but then I would have had nothing but trouble with him,” she murmured. “Even though he wouldn’t have had any voting rights, I don’t think it would have taken him very long to make some arrangement so I wasn’t around or able to do it.”
“I don’t think so either,” Rick agreed. “I think he would have cheerfully arranged an accident or something else that rendered you incapable.”
She nodded. “So, another thanks to you for saving me from whatever that end would have been. It still sends chills down my spine.”
Rick shook his head and tossed a whole pile of restaurant menus on the coffee table. “I found these in your kitchen.”
“Right.” She stared at the menus. “I do cook, you know?” They just stared at her, and she smiled. “Okay, so not very often, and I don’t have any food here anyway, but I do know how.”
“ Uh-huh .” Rick chuckled. “Let’s just say that I don’t want to trust it tonight.”
She wanted to take offense, but there was really no point, considering he was correct, so she smiled at him. “That’s probably a smart idea. You guys pick whatever you want, and just make sure there’s lots of it.”
“Are you going to eat?” Rick asked her.
“I will, and I’ll probably get up and refill my plate several times and eat some more,” she muttered. “Even if it’s only out of relief.”
“You’ll eat what you need to eat,” Royce noted comfortably. “I trust in my body to eat what it needs.”
“Yeah, we women have a tendency to eat our emotions,” she pointed out, with half a laugh. “So that’s not necessarily something I would care to trust, since right now my emotions are all over the place.”
*
After the pizza had been consumed, she curled up on the couch, yawning.
Royce walked over, sat beside her, and asked, “Why aren’t you going to bed?”
She stared up at him and shrugged. “It feels wrong in a way, you know?”
He stared at her, not sure he understood what could be wrong about it. “Are you afraid they’ll get you here?” he asked, looking to Rick and back at her. “Because we’re staying.”
“I understand that. I just—”
His gaze narrowed. “Are we talking about tarot card stuff again?”
“No, I haven’t checked my tarot cards.” She pulled them from her pocket.
“Do you feel as if you have to check them?” It wasn’t likely the best time to broach this but… “I’m pretty sure that they are more of a comfort to have around you than a tool. The answers you’re looking for come on a psychic level, not from the cards. The cards are more like props.”
She frowned, staring down at the cards. “I can sense things much better if they’re on me,” she muttered. “So, I generally keep them with me all the time. The good news is”—she held them up—“they’re not triggering anything.”
“That’s good, I guess. I’m still not exactly sure how that works,” Rick admitted. “They send you signals?”
“Not so much. I feel or sense signals in a way, when something is going on, but I just don’t know how to say it out loud or even how it works. I feel heat, vibration, et cetera. I haven’t tried to explain it before. I generally don’t talk about it at all. Most people aren’t open to the concept.”
“Got it,” Rick murmured. “It doesn’t really matter, as long as something is happening, and we’re moving forward.”
Heather felt he was obviously trying to assess her without making it look like it.
Royce added, “Go and get some rest. We’ll let you know if there’s any trouble—and your own cards will alert you too.”
She hesitated, then nodded. “I need to. I’m tired.”
“Of course you are,” Royce agreed, walking with her to her bedroom and waiting until she got into bed. “Will you be okay?” he asked, unable to shake the worry in his tone as he stared at her. She’d gotten very, very quiet earlier. He didn’t know if it was because of the memories of her sister, memories of how close Heather had come to not getting free, or what, but it worried him.
She smiled. “I’ll be fine.”
“I know you’ll be fine,” he replied. “That’s not the problem.”
“What then? You’re worried about me?” she teased.
“Yeah, I am,” he stated. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve decided you’re pretty special.”
“That’s nice to know,” she muttered, with a smile. “On the other hand, when this is over, that’s a different story.”
“You don’t feel it’s over, do you?” He glommed onto that instantly.
She stared up at him surprise and then slowly sat up. “I guess that’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t feel it’s over.”
Hearing part of the discussion, Rick walked to the bedroom doorway. “What do you think isn’t over?”
She frowned. “Whoever hired those gunmen who attacked Jonas,” she began, looking intensely between the two of them, “that part isn’t over. And the fact that Faheed is in town.… That means that’s not over either.”
They both nodded. “Good enough. We’ll keep watch as we have been, just in case somebody decides they should come to visit.”
She stared at him. “Of course Faheed would know where I live.”
“Of course he does,” they said in unison, with a joint nod. “We did expect that.”
“I didn’t even think of it,” she muttered, staring at them.
Royce grinned. “You don’t need to. That’s our job. Now go get some sleep, and we’ll be ready if he does come.”
She thought about it and added, “You know that he won’t come in person.”
“That’s okay too. Now get some rest, just in case… we have to run,” Rick shared, with a wry smile.
She groaned. “That’s not even funny anymore.”
“Sure it is,” Rick proclaimed. “Besides, it is a joke this time.”
And, with that, they turned out the lights in her bedroom and walked away. Royce looked over at Rick as they headed into the kitchen, but Rick held up a finger. Royce nodded, sat back down again, and waited. It didn’t take too long, about ten minutes, before slow, steady snores came from her bedroom.
“What do you think?” Royce asked.
“I don’t know anything about those tarot cards,” Rick admitted, “but they give me the heebie-jeebies.”
Royce snorted. “You? With the kind of work you do, you’ve got the heebie-jeebies? That is hilarious.”
“I know, but this is different and not something I have any experience with,” he conceded, with a boyish grin. “Believe me that it caught me by surprise, and I’m not that happy about admitting it.”
“Fair enough. So, what are we thinking about Faheed at this point?”
“Oh, I expect he’s going after her company, probably wants some showdown, and that’ll be interesting. I don’t know whether he’ll attempt to talk her into going back or will do something else entirely, like try to convince her that he’ll break the wills and get access to the company that way.”
Royce stared at him. “That wouldn’t be good and not impossible if he’s got a good lawyer—or a sneaky one.”
“No, it wouldn’t be, but, with a fortune at stake, it could be tied up in the courts for years.”
He nodded at that. “Plus, you’re not allowed to benefit from a will if you had something to do with the death of the deceased.”
“Which means we need to get as much evidence as we can, just in case Faheed tries something like that. I know Heather believes it’s locked down, and he can’t touch the company, but—”
“Lots of things can be bought with enough money and power, so that’s a definite concern,” he muttered.
“What are we thinking about her staff?”
“I think she’s right in that this isn’t over with, and I hate to say it, but we still don’t know how anybody knew we were in town. Some information was flowing, and whoever passed that information along is in this up to their necks. I’ll start doing some more research into her company and her employees and even her board, plus contact the father’s lawyer who drew up her father’s will.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Rick asked. “Contacting the lawyer, I mean.”
“Yes, because, if he’s into anything illegal on this, he needs to know that we’re on his ass, and it won’t fly.”
Rick thought about it for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, you’ve got a point there. If he has any intention of getting out of this alive, he needs to ensure he’s on the right side of this. Let’s hope he’s not some shady lawyer.”
“And yet her father’s will was set up a long time ago,” Royce noted. “So, it should be something that will hold.”
“What we don’t know is if it’s ever been challenged. And I have a hunch a challenge from a guy like Faheed would be quite a bit different than what these estate planning lawyers usually deal with. And, if Faheed’s coming over here to challenge her personally, that’s a totally different story too.”
Royce nodded at that. It was late, and he wouldn’t get through to too many people, but surprisingly the father’s lawyer answered. When Royce quickly identified himself, the lawyer was astonished.
“Where is she?” he asked suspiciously.
“Sleeping at the moment, having just dealt with a rather unpleasant afternoon, including an attack by several armed people when we were in a meeting with the British government,” he shared.
The lawyer sounded genuinely shocked.
“We suspect there will be some challenge to both Hannah’s will and her father’s will in an effort to bring Hannah’s holdings under Faheed’s control.”
The lawyer paused. “That shouldn’t be possible. It was intentionally set up to be ironclad to keep the business in the immediate family.”
“Faheed has an awful lot of clout,” Royce explained, “so I’m just giving you a heads-up. We also know that somebody on this side has been helping him.”
After a moment of shocked silence, he burst out, “Surely you don’t suspect me.”
“We’re hoping it’s not you,” Royce declared, his tone hard, “because we have very little tolerance for that kind of thing. This woman desperately needs somebody she can count on in her corner.”
“I have known those sisters their whole lives,” he protested stiffly. “I would never do anything to hurt them.”
“No, but Faheed is very big on influence, including kidnapping family members or using other forms of blackmail to compel people to do what he wants, when he wants, and how he wants,” Royce stated equally stiffly. “So, protestations aside, we are perfectly aware that everybody can be compromised.”
“That may be, but, rest assured, I haven’t been,” the lawyer snapped. “I’ll definitely be on my guard, and now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go reread those wills.”
“Can you file any kind of injunctions or anything to stop him?”
“I’ll take a look,” he muttered. “It never occurred to me that there would be any kind of argument. It was a very well-known fact that Hannah’s share went directly to Heather. And she signed over control to Heather ages ago.”
“As far we’ve gathered, both of those points are things that Faheed either didn’t know of or thought he could overcome right from the beginning.”
“I don’t think he knew beforehand because he didn’t ask me for any of the paperwork until recently.”
“And you gave it to him?” Royce cried out in shock.
“Of course. But only what he was legally allowed access to, which were copies of Hannah’s will. As Hannah’s husband, he has the standing, so I had no choice but to provide it.” At that, the lawyer hesitated. “God, he really will try to challenge it, won’t he?” His tone took on various shades of concern, worry, even fear.
“Sure he is, and this is his fourth dead wife,” Royce added, his voice harsh. “And every time he’s received one hell of an inheritance. Do everything you can to ensure this asshole doesn’t get Heather’s family business.” And, with that, he ended the call.
Still steaming, he explained to Rick about Faheed contacting Hannah’s lawyer, looking for documentation on Hannah’s will and likely more, although the lawyer hadn’t confirmed anything.
“It would be expected that a surviving spouse would be calling, requesting legal documents,” Rick pointed out. “That is pretty standard for anybody.”
“Maybe so, yet it just adds more fuel to the fire.”
“Since Hannah was Faheed’s fourth wife, I would say that Faheed’s lawyer probably was on it early, even before they met and married, just to confirm the wealth of the family estate. Maybe they found out early on that the father’s will was unbreakable. Since then, with all that money tempting him, Faheed and his lawyer have been probably working their way in, trying to get that stopped. Maybe they only needed Heather to go missing for a few days for some loophole to open to make that happen.”
At that, Royce bolted to his feet. “Do you think that’s why he kidnapped her?” He quickly phoned the lawyer back. “Is there anything in there about if one of the owners, operators, is not seen or heard from in however long, it brings up something about mental competency?”
“Of course,” the lawyer replied, “although I don’t know about going missing for a short while. I think that’s quite a bit longer than however long Heather was missing or at least out of commission. Everybody at the company was well aware that her sister had passed away.”
“Was there ever any suggestion that Heather might have taken her own life out of grief?”
The lawyer sucked in his breath. “God, I hope not. You’ve got me absolutely paranoid now.”
“So you should be because Faheed’s already in England, and you can bet that whatever the hell’s happening, he’ll try it soon.” And, with that, Royce disconnected again.
“This is game time.”