“What do you mean?”the president asked.
“It looks like a few of the Demons survived the explosion,” Pike said.
“What do you mean?”Raven demanded, looking back and forth between Hawkeye and Pike.“I was sure we got them all!”
“I was too, and I was foolish to stop keeping an eye out for them.”Hawkeye shook his head.“But there’s no point in wishes and what-ifs.We know they’re out there now, so we can address them now.”He turned back to his computer.
“How many and what do we know?”Raven opened a door and pulled a folding chair from a closet.He opened it and sat, as if he wanted to be prepared for whatever they told him.
“Two for sure, three more possible but we’re still looking.The one that’s most relevant now is Books,” Pike said, glancing in Smokey’s direction as if it was relevant to what was going on with him and Tania.
“Relevant how?”
“It looks like the Werners have a gambling problem,” Hawkeye said.
“All of them?”Raven interrupted.
“That’s not completely clear yet, but from what I can tell the father and son for sure, not sure about the mother yet,” Pike said.
“Okay.I don’t see why that matters,” Smokey watched all three men, not sure who would answer or they might say.
Hawkeye spun around and faced him again.
“What do you know about your woman and why she married Werner?”
“She said her father picked him out for her.”
“I get that, but why would she agree?”
Smokey looked up at the ceiling.He took a deep breath and held it for several seconds before speaking.
“Tania’s homelife wasn’t something that was ever discussed when we were growing up.I knew her, we spent a lot of time together, but most of it was either at school or away from either family’s home.What time I did spend around her parents, mine were always there too.”He tried to figure out how to say what he knew without implying that there was more.“When I found her this morning, I asked why she didn’t go to her parents.She said her dad would tell her she’d made vows and that her mother would try to talk her into going back.”He shook his head.“I never saw any abuse in their household but thinking back at how her mother behaved when we were kids, hell, even the way Tania acted around her dad, I think there may have been some.Verbal and emotional, if not physical.It was like she was afraid to act out or even say anything her father didn’t agree with.I’m suspecting if there was more to it than just her father pressuring her to marry him, then she may not even know about it.We can ask her when she’s done with the girls.”
“No need,” Pike said.“If that’s true, then we already know more than she may.”
“What do you mean?”Smokey asked.
“We’ll ask what she knows later but here’s what we know.She signed a prenup—”
Pike cleared his throat, then spoke.“Actually, they both did, just to be technical.”
Hawkeye rolled his eyes but continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted.“But the prenup wasn’t what you probably think.”He paused, reached for a legal pad from the desk behind him and brought it around.“Did you know your woman inherited three million dollars upon her marriage?And if she and Werner divorce, he gets a flat payment of one hundred thousand dollars per year they were married.”
“What?”Smokey’s eyes went wide.He had no clue the Bussard’s had that kind of money, much less that Tania would get any of it.Where had the money come from?He blinked several times as he tried to process what he’d been told.
“It’s complicated.Most of the bulk of her inheritance is tied up and will take some time to get liquid, but from what I can tell, she may not even know about it.There have been small withdrawals since the wedding last year but they’re not going to her account.”
“What do you mean?”
“The withdrawals are going into her parents’ accounts,” Pike put in.
“What happens to the money after that?”Raven asked.
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Hawkeye looked down at the paper in his hand.“It appears that roughly seventy five percent of what’s been pulled from the inheritance have been sent to the Werners, half to each the father and the son.From there, they send different amounts to Books.According to his records, they’re keeping up with the interest, but only making small dents in their debts.”
“Holy crap, how much do they owe?”Raven asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Pike said without turning around.“The good news is they’ve siphoned off less than ten percent of her inheritance, or at least this installment of it.”
