Chapter 15
T he inner office door flung open. and Heather strode out in a controlled fury, struggling to command her emotions as she faced her nemesis. “It’s not your company.” She smacked him hard across the face. “Not only is it not your company, you murderous little bastard,” she proclaimed, “but you killed my sister, and believe me that my lawyers will be all over you for this.”
“Now you see,” Faheed announced to the entourage behind him, his hand cupping his injured cheek, yet his eyes glinted with fury. “See what I mean? She’s obviously overwrought.”
“Yeah, I’ll overwrought you,” she warned.
Rick stepped forward. “We’ve already been discussing the lovely little mess you’ve got going on here with the people who betrayed her from within her own company, like Dan,” he told Faheed. “Despite your best efforts, you can’t do anything to get this company away from her.”
“A good share of it belonged to my dearly departed wife,” Faheed declared, “and I inherit everything that was hers. That’s how the law works.”
“Except in this case,” Heather snapped. “I don’t think you’ll bypass the law when it comes to my company.”
“Your company? You’re a woman,” he said, with a sneer. “You cannot own such a prize and no way can you run it.”
“I absolutely can, and I have for many years now.” She gave him a detached smile. “I obviously am very much still in control.”
Faheed glared at her. “You are not a normal woman. You should be at home, tending to a husband and his family. Don’t worry about business matters. The company is now mine. I’ve already taken care of the paperwork.”
She stared at him, struggling to hide her fear. What was he up too? Her cards started to agitate. She took a deep breath, glancing at Royce, who studied Faheed as if seeing a new bug. Something was off. Something was seriously wrong, but what? She turned to look around at as many people in the room as she could.
“If a normal woman means bending down for your bloody pleasure at your will,” she replied, “you’re damn right. I’m not that. Neither are you a normal man. You’re a tyrant, a bully, and a murderer.” She was spitting fire, but her tone was calm and controlled,… with a storm raging underneath it all. “Believe me when I say this. I am cooperating fully with MI6 on all counts.”
Anger flashed on his face, as Faheed clearly didn’t comprehend such resistance. “May I remind you that I enjoy diplomatic immunity?”
“Except for one thing,” Jonas declared, as he strode in behind Faheed, with another whole team of SCO19 behind him.
“What is that?” Faheed roared. “And who are you?”
“MI6,” Jonas replied, with a big smile.
At that, Faheed made a single motion to one of his own men beside him, as if to have Jonas removed from his presence, but Faheed wasn’t prepared for Jonas holding up his phone.
“Faheed, I have your Prime Minister on the phone right now,” Jonas shared to all gathered here. Then he spoke into the phone, “Go ahead with your message, sir.”
And to everybody’s amusement, the Prime Minister clearly stated, “Faheed, you are relieved of your duty as diplomat. You will not use diplomatic immunity to run amok in this world and certainly not while representing our country. You, your brother, and your entourage, will all report back here, if the British government sees fit to release you. At that time, we will talk about what happened with the various other incidents and complaints against you locally,” he noted, the fury in his tone clearly most evident. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much I want to talk to you, and, if you weren’t in the UK, soon to be under lock and key, I would be coming over there to deal with you myself.” Then came a click , and the Prime Minister of Iran ended the call.
Jonas stared at Faheed. “You do not have diplomatic immunity any longer, so you do not have any way of getting out of this right now,” he explained, as he ordered them all to be taken away.
Faheed cried out, “No, wait.” He turned to face Heather. “Your sister was nothing but a bitch.”
She strode up to Faheed, and he reared back. “What’s the matter?” she asked in a mocking tone. “Are you afraid this woman won’t cower before you? Are you afraid this woman will strike you first? Are you afraid this woman will have something to do with putting you and your brother away for life? I sure hope so.… I hope I’m responsible for making sure that, when somebody says jump in jail, it’s you they make do their bidding, and you will no longer sit there in all your false finery, acting as if the world is your oyster.” The storm within her raged on. “You deserve to be punished for what you did to my sister.”
“Your sister was nothing, just a pampered porcelain doll.”
“And that’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” she asked. “That’s how you wanted her, nothing but a completely acquiescent doll, which is why you kept her drugged without her knowledge. You are nothing but an arrogant asshole, Faheed, and you will not get away with this.”
“I already did,” he declared.
“No, you didn’t. You—” She stopped and frowned at him. “That’s why you had Dan send those armed men after us, wasn’t it?”
He stared at her in surprise.
“You were looking for the listening devices.”
For the first time, fear crossed his face. She crowed. “That’s what was wrong with it,” she exclaimed, as she turned to Rick. “That wasn’t the hair clip that Hannah gave me some two days before she died. That’s why I couldn’t figure out why I had that one. Remember, Rick? Yet the hair clip I have was the one Saheed gave me as a memento. You need to check what’s on that one.” She faced Faheed with a sneer. “Oh, Faheed, you should communicate better with your brother. And isn’t that a lovely little twist, Faheed? All those bugs that you kept on my poor sister, and she figured it out, and now it’ll be Hannah who puts you away after all,” she stated in delight. “That is Hannah claiming her own justice.” And Heather started to laugh.
Rick pulled the hair clip from his pocket, where he had shoved it earlier. He asked for permission to use one of the nearby computers. Heather nodded and pointed to the closest one. Once he plugged in the hidden USB connector within the hair clip, he started playing the recordings on it. Soon a conversation between her sister and Faheed filled the air.
Hannah’s voice was clear as she cried out, “Why are you doing this to me?”
“I’m not doing anything to you. You’re obviously overwrought,” he stated in a calm, determined tone. “Besides, it’s time, and I’ve had enough of this.”
“Then just let me go,” she whispered, tears choking her voice. “Let me go, Faheed.”
“No,” he snapped. “I will have that company for all my pain. Now drink this, dammit.”
Then there were sounds of a struggle, and Hannah screamed. Thereafter her voice was muffled, and she was choking, as he repeatedly told her to swallow, as if pouring something down her throat.
Heather, the shock and horror evident on her face, had her hand across her mouth, holding back her cries, as she listened to her sister struggle and die on the recording device. She stared at Faheed, his face going gray as he listened to his own words and actions on the recording.
Next, they all heard a scuffle, and then Faheed must have pulled out his cell and made a call. He spoke again. “Dammit, Saheed, where were you? You should have helped me earlier. Now we have to fix this.”
“If you would have let me do it my way,” Saheed replied, “she would have been taken care of already, the same as the others.”
“We can’t be killing them all the same way,” Faheed snapped. “At some point in time, someone’ll start suspecting.”
“Look at who you are. No one would dare come after you.” A note of patronizing admiration filled Saheed’s tone. “You, my brother, are untouchable.”
“Hardly,” he muttered.
At that, the recording ended. The room went silent for a moment, then Faheed turned to look at his brother, clearly livid. “How did she get that recording, Saheed?”
Saheed stared back at him and shook his head. “I have no idea. The bitch probably stole it.”
“You know exactly how I got it, Saheed,” Heather declared. “You gave the hairpin to me. You asked if I wanted something to remember my sister by, one last piece , you said. The other hairpin I have, she gave me herself,” she pointed out. “It will be interesting to see what is on that one. So, Saheed, did you not know that your brother was bugging Hannah with these hair clips? Did you just bug her clothes or her room or her purses? Or… maybe you’ve simply grown weary of doing your brother’s bidding and arranged for him to take the fall for her death?” She laughed when she saw his face reveal his guilt, for any or all of it. “Not because you were going down with him, but so you could take his place. But, as we all just heard, that won’t be happening either.”
“I didn’t kill her,” Saheed declared.
“No, but you just admitted to killing the others.”
He stared at the hair clip in fury. “It was supposed to stop. The device was supposed to stop before I entered the room.”
“It didn’t stop, and it caught absolutely everything we needed to convict you both,” she stated triumphantly. Looking at Jonas, she asked, “May I?”
He responded with a nod.
Heather figured Jonas was unsure if he could stop her from whatever she had in mind anyway. She took a deep cleansing breath. “Faheed, former diplomat, you are under arrest for the murder of my sister. And you, Saheed, who terrorized my sister every day of her life, you are under arrest as well as an accomplice to Hannah’s murder. I can only hope you will be put away for the murder of Faheed’s other wives too.”