The Billionaire's Twin Fever (MANHATTAN BACHELORS Book 1)

by Susan Westwood

  Aleisha worked her way through the stack, one by one, reviewing each of the cases, double checking for anything that might be missing from the files, calling clients or companies for various forms or documents that she needed, and mailing out or faxing forms that needed signatures.

  She was halfway through the stack of files when she came to one that made her stop. She read it once and then frowned and went back through the entire file again more slowly, concentrating hard on everything that she saw.

  The case looked like an open and shut situation on the outside. It seemed simple. There were twenty-seven passengers on a bus owned by a private transportation company. The bus had gotten into an accident. All of the passengers had been seriously injured, and two of them had lost their lives in the wreck. The accident had happened because the brakes on the bus had given out. All of the families had agreed to settle with the private transportation company except one, and the bus driver had been fired after the incident.

  The notes on the file told her to contact the bus driver and the one family who hadn’t signed the settlement agreement and get them to sign it so that the case could be closed. Something in her told her that there was more to it than what she was looking at. It didn’t seem to all add up. She bit at her lower lip and thought to herself that she would contact the family and the bus driver and talk to them each a little more before she asked them to sign the settlement documents.

  She placed a call to the family first. The Hendersons agreed to meet with her that afternoon. She left a message for the bus driver, Jeremy Flanders, and asked him to call her back. Setting that file aside, she went through the rest of them and got them finished just before she needed to leave for her afternoon appointment. Grace gave her a smile and a wave as she left, wishing her good luck on her visit with the family.

  June and David Henderson were an older couple nearly in their sixties. They lived in a well-maintained, pretty-looking bungalow home on a quiet street in a gently aging suburban neighborhood. All of the houses were set back from the sidewalk, and the trees were tall with thick trunks, laden with countless leaves and arching their limbs over sidewalks, creating a canopy over the quiet street.

  Flower beds and close-cut green grass adorned the yard in front of the house, and Aleisha felt as if she could be going up the walk of an aunt or grandmother’s house. She only had to knock once, and June Henderson came to the door. She had once been slender, but time and life had added a roundness to her body and her face. Her clothes were neat and pressed, though they hadn’t been in fashion for a while. Her pageboy salt and pepper hair was curled at the ends, and her nails were unpolished and trimmed short.

  She had a pleasant but distant smile, and something in her eyes made Aleisha pause for a moment. There was an emptiness there: a hollow abyss that looked as if it might never be filled and as though part of June had sunk into it and would never return.

  Aleisha felt a sad tug at her heart; she knew the look and the feeling. She had felt it, too, when she’d lost her parents. They had both passed away in a car accident when she and Rainy were in high school. They’d lived with their grandmother Ella ever since, until Aleisha had moved out on her own. Rainy had stayed with Ella, and they now took care of each other. All three of them had that same look in their eyes and that same bottomless hole in their hearts. It was the loss of a precious loved one, a part of the heart that once broken can never be fully healed again.

  June invited her into the living room. It was spotless and pretty, though the furnishings and décor in it, like June’s clothing and hair style, were out of date. Aleisha almost felt as if she had stepped back in time just a little.

  “David,” June called out as she settled Aleisha into an armchair facing the sofa. “Miss Kingston is here from the law firm.”

  There was a slight pause of silence that was filled with the ticking of an old grandfather clock that was set against one far wall in the living room. Aleisha glanced around to take it all in. There was a book case that was mostly filled with old books and set about with little knick knacks here and there. A small piano stood in one corner, covered with a large lace cloth upon which stood a vase of faded silk roses. There were paintings of countrysides with fields and flowers on two walls, and on another wall was an arrangement of photographs.

  “I’ll be right in. Just give me a moment,” David’s deep voice called out from someplace down the hall. The sound of a toilet flushing followed his answer and then water running into a sink.

  Aleisha looked at the people in the photographs. They were a step back in time as well, and she could see back through the years as June and David looked younger and younger: their wedding photograph, images of them on a vacation in some tropical place that could be Hawaii, them side-by-side as June was obviously several months pregnant, and then images of a new baby. There were photographs of the baby as it grew up; though chunks of time were absent, it was clear that their daughter had been well cared for and loved.

  She was there on the wall as a child with missing teeth in her wide crooked smile, and then as a teen with braces and funny-looking hairstyles, and then as a high school cheerleader. She stood beside a handsome young man in her prom dress. She was there in a cap and gown between her parents on her graduation day, with her whole life before her and every possibility at her fingertips.

  “This must be Miss Kingston,” David said with a welcoming smile as he reached his hand out to Aleisha. “Pleasure to meet you.” Her attention snapped away from the wall of their lives, and she looked up into his old blue eyes. Reaching for his hand, she gave it a firm shake as she rose from her seat and waited until he and June were both sitting on the sofa before her.

  “Thank you for meeting with me.” Aleisha gave them a sincere smile as she set her hands on her lap. “I was given the file for the case with New York Tech, the transit company that owns the bus line and the bus which was involved in the wreck. I wondered if I could talk with you about it.”

  David furrowed his brow, and his mouth tightened to a thin line. “Our daughter Avery was killed in that bus crash.”

  Aleisha nodded. “Yes, I saw that in the file. It’s awful. I’m so sorry to learn about that. It must have been horrible for you both.”

  “It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to us,” June said quietly as she reached for David’s hand and lifted a tissue to her nose and her eyes.

  Aleisha was quiet a moment. “I know how you feel. I lost my parents in a car wreck when I was in high school. We were never the same again.”

  They both looked at her with sympathy and nodded silently. Aleisha looked up to the wall of photographs. “This is Avery, isn’t it?” she asked with a lightened tone.

  “That’s our girl,” David said softly as they all turned their eyes to the happy beautiful face that gazed back lifeless from the photographs.

  “She’s really lovely,” Aleisha replied with a little smile. After a breath and a moment, Aleisha turned her attention back to Avery’s parents.

  “I saw that there were twenty-seven people on the bus that day, all of them injured and two of them who lost their lives. New York Tech wants to offer a settlement to all twenty-seven people, or their families in your case, and the bus driver, but the way it works is that all of the people must accept the settlement or it doesn’t go through. I wondered if you could tell me why you aren’t accepting the settlement. What is it that’s holding you back?” She wanted to try to find a way forward without being disrespectful.

  David’s face hardened, and June looked as if she had been gut punched and was trying valiantly to disguise the suffering she was feeling. David shook his head. “We didn’t sign, and we won’t, because this wasn’t just some accident.”

  Aleisha blinked. “What do you mean?” she asked with a kind tone.

  He glanced at his wife, who gave him a nod, and then he looked back at Aleisha. “That bus crashed because that company doesn’t take care of its buses. It wasn’t just a random auto accident. S
ee, Avery was in an accident on another one of their buses last year, and she was only injured.

  “They bought her off then, and we thought it was just a one-time occurrence, but then she was in this wreck this year, and we knew… there isn’t any way that this is a coincidence. This is a maintenance issue. That company isn’t maintaining and caring for their buses, and they know it. They’re being negligent; it hurt our girl last year, and it took her life this year.”

  Her heart began to beat faster as she listened to him telling her his story. “How was Avery hurt?”

  June dabbed at her eyes and her nose again. “She was riding the bus, and the brakes gave out. The bus couldn’t stop, and it crashed into two other cars and then a guard railing. There were only nine people on the bus that time, and no one was killed, but they were all injured. She came away with a broken arm and leg, three fractured ribs, and a concussion.

  “We thought it was just a fluke last year when that happened. We thought that it was an accident, just like any other accident. Something unavoidable. Then when it happened again, we knew that something was wrong with the buses. I’m never going to forget the day that sheriff showed up on our doorstep with his hat in his hand to tell us we’d lost our baby girl.

  “I have never hurt so much in my whole life. I can’t let that company keep hurting people and killing them. They can’t be allowed to continue like they are. I can’t stand by and let them do that to anyone else.”

  David reached his hand up and rubbed her arm, and Aleisha’s mind went into hyperdrive as her thoughts sorted through all of the information that she was learning. “There was nothing about the prior accident in the file I have. I didn’t know about it at all. Was the other file sealed when the settlement was reached?”

  “I don’t know if it was sealed; I don’t think it was. I just know that when we settled, we were signing off saying that we wouldn’t come after them for more money and that they weren’t responsible for any future medical issues that Avery might have resulting from that wreck,” David answered in disgust.

  “She was just barely done healing from the last wreck she was in with them when this one happened. She kept riding on the bus line because we all thought that it was just an accident, and of course, it wouldn’t happen again. What kind of bus line would have more than one accident in such a short amount of time? We didn’t know then that they weren’t taking care of their vehicles, but now we do. It’s too little too late now, though.”

  Aleisha frowned slightly. “Are you sure about the lack of maintenance? Do you have any kind of proof or anything that you could give me that would substantiate that? It seems plausible, but we would have to have proof.”

  He shook his head. “We don’t have any real proof, but two wrecks on the same bus line in just over one year? That’s not a coincidence, like I said. That company is being neglectful, and they need to make it right.”

  She leaned forward and looked closely at them both. “What could they do that would make it right for you? Are you looking for more money?”

  June and David both shook their heads. “No,” she answered, “We lost our baby girl to them because they don’t take care of their buses. We want to ensure that no one else will ever lose a life to them or be hurt by them again. We want assurance that they will be forced to maintain their buses and keep them safe for everyone.

  “The money doesn’t give us our Avery back, but knowing that New York Tech has been made to maintain their buses to regulation safety would give us some peace of mind, and that’s what we want now. We want to be sure this will never happen again. It’s unnecessary death and injury. It can’t happen again.”

  Aleisha let out a long breath. “You’re right about that.”

  “If you can get them to show proof that they’ll fix their buses, then we’ll sign off on your case,” David said adamantly as he lifted his chin in determination. “Until then, we wait. It’s the only leverage we have, the only way that we can make sure it stops.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to make that happen for you,” Aleisha promised them as she rose from her chair, and they both stood up as well. “I’m so sorry for your loss, and I will work hard to make sure that this comes out right for you when it’s done.” She meant what she said. She didn’t know if New York Tech was actually maintaining their buses or not, but she was going to find out, and if they weren’t, she was definitely going to demand that any repairs that needed to be made were completed. “Perhaps when this is through, you’ll find some closure.”

  “We hope to,” June said with a weak smile as she and David walked Aleisha to the door. They bid her goodbye, and Aleisha left with more questions in her mind than she’d had when she had come to the door to begin with.

  Sitting in her parked car, she made several notes in the file and then set it on the seat beside her as she picked up her phone and called her voicemail at the office. She was hoping that Jeremy Flanders had called her back, but there was no message from him. She checked with Grace, and she was disappointed to hear that Grace had no messages from him either. She put the car in gear and drove back through the city to the office, wondering how much of what the Hendersons had told her might be right.

  It was unusual for two buses to have wrecks on the same line only one year apart, and they had told her that the wreck from the previous year had been because of brake failure. As she’d read back through the file, while sitting in her car after their visit, she’d double-checked the cause of the accident that had taken Avery Henderson’s life in the second wreck. She hadn’t been surprised when she’d seen that it was brake failure. She knew that the older couple may very well be on to something, and she was going to do everything she could to get to the bottom of it.

  If New York Tech wasn’t maintaining their bus line, she was going to have a very different case on her hands than the one that Kyle had given her, and the idea of what might possibly be coming ahead with it lit a fire of determination deep inside of her. This was why she had gone to law school and why she had become a lawyer. She was dedicating her life to protecting people and making sure that right and justice were served.

  It was possible that New York Tech just had two unlucky drivers on two unlucky days and both of them had been driving buses that had experienced brake failure. It was more likely that the Hendersons were right, though, and that the transportation company wasn’t doing what it had an obligation to do as far as safety measures. It was totally possible that they were hoping to get everyone to sign off on a case that wasn’t going to cost them much money because the insurance company would be paying out on the settlement, and the transit company wouldn’t have any kind of financial loss.

  Aleisha gripped the steering wheel of her car tighter as she ran all of the scenarios through her mind and tried to find every missing piece of the equation that she could think of. She would have to fit every puzzle piece into place to discover what was really going on, and the biggest of those pieces at that moment was finding the bus driver of the second wreck, Jeremy Flanders, and learning what he had to say about it all. Until she did that, there were too many questions left unanswered. Talking to him was her top priority, and she wasn’t going to back off until she knew exactly what was going on.

  Chapter5

  Aleisha’s heart was pounding by the time she stepped off of the elevator and headed for Kyle’s office. When she passed Grace’s desk, she looked over at the older woman and raised her eyebrows, slowing her step without actually stopping.

  “Do I have any messages?” she asked hopefully.

  Grace shook her head. “Not since you called me half an hour ago. I’ll let you know as soon as he calls.”

  “Thank you, Grace.” Aleisha gave her a half-smile and went straight to Kyle’s office door, which was standing open.

  She walked in and found him sitting at his desk, pen hovering over the lines on a document as he read it. She cleared her throat softly, and he didn’t look up.

  “What is it?” he as
ked in a serious tone.

  “It’s one of the files that you gave me to close. I think the whole case needs some further investigation. I think if we close it, we’ll be missing a much bigger problem and doing a great disservice to every one of the people up for a settlement now, as well as countless more in the future.”

  She closed her fingers tighter around the file in her hand. She knew that she hadn’t been asked to look too deeply into any of the files, she’d been asked to close them, but she had to take a chance that Kyle would want to work to do the right thing. If the Hendersons were right, there was a lot more at stake than just the settlement.

  Kyle looked up, and it felt to her as if his steely blue y eyes were piercing right through her, seeing everything about her. It took her breath away, but she steadied herself and waited for his reaction.