“Now” turned out to be twenty minutes later, the shortest time it took Fareed to dress and to take his leave of Gwen.
He strode into his office, displeasure roiling inside him. “You’d better have some unprecedented reason for this, Emad…”
Suddenly, Fareed’s blood froze in his arteries. The look on Emad’s face. This was momentous.
This was about Hesham’s family.
A lead had finally led somewhere. He could think of nothing else that would make Emad ask his presence so imperatively, or look so…so…
“You found them?” he rasped.
Emad gave a difficult nod.
Fareed’s heart crashed. “Something happened to them?”
Emad leveled grim eyes on him. “No, but it’s not much less terrible than if something had.”
“B’Ellahi, Emad, just tell me,” he roared.
Emad winced at his loss of control.
Then with regret heavy in his voice, he said, “I’ve found proof that Hesham’s woman is…Gwen.”
Chapter Ten
“You’re insane.”
That was all Fareed could say, could think. That was the only explanation for what Emad had just uttered.
“Her given name was Gwendolyn. She changed it to Gwen in official documents since her college days.”
A dizzying mixture of relief and rage churned inside Fareed’s chest. “That’s your ‘proof’?”
Regret deepened in Emad’s eyes. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The doubts that made me investigate Gwen began when I became convinced she knew Arabic. She responded appropriately to things said in Arabic too many times, if only in that inimitable glint of understanding in her eyes, that I thought it strange she wouldn’t mention it. So I tested my theory by speaking Arabic on purpose when she was within earshot and observing her reaction. She was careful not to show that she understood, but I could see that she did. I became absolutely certain when I once calmly told a servant to walk out of the room naturally, then run like the wind to investigate the silent alarm I received from the southern guard post. Her alarm was unmistakable, and she tried to indirectly find out if anything was wrong. Because I spoke fast and idiomatically, I became certain she has knowledge of not only Arabic but our specific dialect.”
Fareed rejected Emad’s words as they exited his lips.
But another voice rose inside his mind, borne of the observations he’d never heeded. How she’d never asked what the things he said in Arabic meant, especially the endearments he deluged her in, how she seemed to respond appropriately…
No. She’d only understood his tone. He wasn’t letting Emad poison his mind with his crazy theory.
Emad continued. “I couldn’t find a reason why she’d hide her knowledge, but because I don’t believe in inexplicable, yet innocent, behavior, I tried to get more information from Rose.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing with Rose?” Fareed growled. “Leading her on so she’d supply you with possible dirt on Gwen? You went too far in your efforts to ‘protect’ me this time, Emad.”
“I was getting close to Rose for real, and I hope to get closer. Although I don’t know how I will, with the truth revealed…”
“This is not the truth. All you have to support this insane theory is circumstantial evidence.”
Pain etched deeper on Emad’s face. “I have new evidence that the places where Gwen lived are also where Hesham lived, at the same time, that she now lives in the same town he did when he died. She seemed to be living alone in all these places, but then so did Hesham. They must have kept separate residences in Hesham’s obsession to keep their relationship a secret. She became a freelance researcher for the past four years so she wouldn’t have a base. Then she left the job scene around the time she would have been in her last months of pregnancy and during Ryan’s first months. She went back to work only when Rose became Ryan’s nanny.
“And I didn’t get any of that from Rose. She might be shockingly open, but only with her own opinions. She wouldn’t have shared anything about Gwen. But she doesn’t know much anyway because she lived across the continent with her late ex-husband for the last five years. They divorced years ago, but when he had a stroke that paralyzed him, Rose went back to take care of him. He died two months before Gwen contacted her and asked her to become Ryan’s live-in nanny. Two weeks after Hesham died.”
Fareed shook his head, repeated what looped in his mind under the barrage of information. “Circumstantial evidence, all of it.”
Emad closed yet another escape route. “The one thing Rose mentioned was that a tragedy befell Gwen around the same time her ex-husband died. She wouldn’t elaborate and I couldn’t probe more than I did and have her suspect my motives.”
“Good thing you couldn’t afford to alienate the first woman to move your heart since your late wife.”
“I couldn’t afford to alert her to my suspicions and have her relay them to Gwen. If Gwen felt danger, we might lose Ryan.”
“Now I know you’re insane.”
“I would give anything to be wrong, but with you being who you are, with what’s at stake, I have to consider the worst possible explanation for her actions, until proven otherwise.”
Fareed gritted his teeth. “Just to see what kind of twisted ideas you can come up with, what would said explanation be?”
“The ideas I have are courtesy of the twisted fortune hunters who’ve pursued you since you turned eighteen.”
Outrage, on Gwen’s behalf, boiled his blood. “And you somehow suspect Gwen is one of those, among everything else?”
“It’s a theory, but it answers every question. She met Hesham in that conference…” At Fareed’s stunned glance, Emad grunted. “Yes, I realized why I felt inclined to give her a chance. Seemed I recognized her but failed to place her. Until I remembered that you spent a whole evening staring at her across that ballroom.”
So Emad had seen Gwen’s effect on him that day. And Hesham had come to see him during the end-of-conference party.
He still refused to sanction any of the accumulating evidence. “So they were in the same place once…”
“And my theory goes that she realized you were related. Once you left, she might have approached him to ask about you and their relationship began.”
Fareed groped for air. “That’s preposterous.”