The week following Lauren and Peter signing their prenups had been busy. First, that Wednesday night, Peter had brought around an architect and an eng...neer from his firm to discuss what was to be done. Lauren had been amazed to find that the architect had secured plans to her house from the county clerk’s office; she hadn’t even been aware they existed! That following Saturday morning, another pair of much younger and more junior architects had arrived with a laptop computer and a large tape. There was a transcript of the call Courtney made to the 911 center and their response. Courtney was transferred from the 911 center to the nonemergency duty officer at the State Police barracks. The duty officer simply said, "That because of her age Courtney had to wait 24 hours and then file a missing persons report before hanging up."The fact that Courtney had continued the investigation with out hesitation confirmed that I had made the right choice on choosing her for the Director's position. Who’d have thought a bunch of laborers could get the best of a merchant like Ferguson? Did you read that agreement in yesterday’s newspaper? He gave in to every demand those workers made. I tell you, that Cyning boy twisted the screws on a fellow who talks all the time about going to Buxton House.”“That’s as may be. Ferguson sure sounded happy in the interview he did. He seemed to think he’d won some fantastic victory. We aren’t on the inside of this. All you’re doing is making something up out. The needle, however, remained unmoving, lodged in the fabric. She thought back angrily to her meeting last night with her guardian. It was absolutely the last straw. Her life had changed unrecognizably in the last six months. She had been so happy when her parents had been alive. That had all ended when they had both been drowned in a boating accident. Suddenly at the age of 20 she found herself, with no rights, awarded as a ward of court to her father's business partner, Josiah.