“Do you think they’ll be able to prove murder?”
“I doubt they’ll be able to prove anything there. I saw nothing, and Fayez would never talk. It could very well have been an accident. That he slipped.”
“Except the kidnapping,” she said. “That sort of negates that it was all innocent.” She tapped her fingers on the desktop again. “I pay you good money to keep him out of trouble. I don’t understand how things have gotten so out of hand.”
“Things were going fine, until Sam Fargo happened.”
“Exactly who is this Sam Fargo I keep hearing about?”
“I’ve made a few inquiries, but there isn’t much known.”
“Surely you’ve found something?” she asked.
“Other than he works in a California grocery store as a shelf stocker, no. I do have this, though.” He took out his phone and showed her a surveillance video from their olive oil processing facility.
Within a few short minutes, she watched as the man blew up the pallet load on the back of the truck, effecting their escape from the island after killing one guard and taking down the other two. “Show that to me again.”
He started it from the beginning, telling her, “Based on what a few of my men have said, he’s extremely competent in hand-to-hand combat. His skill set, the way he easily broke into your son’s office, and what you see him doing here in the video, suggests he’s a very competent adversary. Definitely a good shot. And he also managed to convince the two who came after him that they’d successfully killed him in a boat explosion.”
Her brows went up. “Do
you mean to tell me that this man”—she nodded at the screen—“has a job whose sole purpose is to put things on shelves in a grocery store? I find that hard to believe. He must be a spy. Or a government agent.”
“I suppose that possibility exists. But my source tells me otherwise.”
Frustrated, Minerva pushed back her chair, then rose, walking to the window to look out. Now that the weather was once again clear, Adrian’s latest flame, Phoebe, was in the pool, swimming. The girl was the last hope that the Heibert name might continue on. Perhaps young Phoebe’s genes might lend a better mix to the Kyril-Heibert line. “Has she heard about the charges?”
“Not yet. I didn’t think it my place to tell her.”
“I suppose I should sit down and have a chat with the poor girl.”
Ilya cleared his throat.
“What is it?” she asked without turning around.
“Are you actually planning to let your son take the blame?”
“He committed the crimes.”
“He did.”
Minerva looked back at him. “Would you rather it was you or I sitting in that jail cell?”
“No.”
“Then Adrian it is. For now.” She cocked her head to the window. “Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll have a granddaughter to carry on the bloodline.”
Ilya’s gaze flicked to the window, but he said nothing.
With a sigh, she returned to the desk, sitting. “Where were we?”
“Sam Fargo.”
“Yes. Do you think he found anything on our island?”
“No. There was no product there at the time. Containers only. As soon as Dimitris was discovered, they stopped the shipment.”
“And where is it?”