(9 of 9)
"Bipin Shah agitates me," Faye says. "Do you know why? Because when you throw a $2 million bounty on a woman and her two kids, there are crazies out there who aren't going to worry about her safety. He's not going to pay it anyway. He wouldn't pay $35 for ballet lessons."
But the bounty isn't what really agitates her. What really agitates her is this: if there's anyone as stubborn and passionate as Faye, it's Bipin. And he has got more money and more time than anybody who has come after her. He also has well-connected attorneys in both Philadelphia and Atlanta. Faye declared bankruptcy years ago, and by her own admission, she transfers all her property into her husband's name for protection from civil judgments against her. But Albert Momjian, Shah's Philadelphia attorney, says that won't save her.
"We think Howard Yager is complicit, and we have some things that would suggest that. Ultimately his deposition will be taken, and if it confirms our belief...we're going to sue him too." Howard's only comment, passed on by Faye: "He's told me to get out of this for years."
So Faye Yager is dug in and ready in Atlanta. The next visitor she expects is a U.S. marshal with that same subpoena that she and Will, her "mean-ass Dalmatian," turned away earlier.
Bipin Shah? He started a new company last April but doesn't go to the office at all. He spends 12 to 15 hours a day in the war room, working the phones. Sometimes, when he looks at photos of the girls, or at their finger paintings in the kitchen, he breaks down. Maybe he'll buy newspaper ads and billboard space around the world, he says. If he wasn't stalking Ellen before, he's stalking her now. That lead from France, by the way, evaporated, like thousands of others.
There is one question that Bipin has no good answer for. If he didn't beat Ellen, why did she give up everything and run?
He has three theories: she thought he'd win his custody fight; her alimony was scheduled to dry up soon; and we shouldn't try to understand the thinking of a delusional woman.
But everyone in this story is a little deluded. And the saddest part--the part Bipin and Ellen and, yes, Faye all have to answer for--is that the victims of those delusions, somewhere on the run with their mother, are those two little girls, who never asked for any of this.