Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  “Yes, sir. But, Mrs. Bricker, she’s your second-in-command.”

  Rollins said it as a statement, but Bricker seemed to understand the question.

  “This is delicate, George. Anna can’t know about the virus. Not because she can’t be trusted. She is, as you note, the second-in-command. But, we need to insulate her. To give her plausible deniability, just in case my mission fails or I’m apprehended. In addition, Anna has been busy helping your girlfriend care for Russell. She’ll welcome your assistance in my absence.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rollins said, his voice more confident now.

  The voices faded away.

  Gavin repeated the pertinent information over and over to sear it into his tired, feverish brain before he drifted back to sleep: Bricker was planning an attack. Lydia was Rollins’ girlfriend. The kind-eyed woman was married to Bricker.

  He didn’t yet know what he was going to do with this information, but he knew he couldn’t forget it.

  CHAPTER 30

  While Oliver Tate and his twins swooshed down the black diamond slopes under the bright Wyoming sky, Sasha covered his desk with printouts of cases, legal pads filled with scrawled notes, and cup after cup of coffee. Every few hours, she would stand, stretch, and stare out Tate’s window at the snow that continued to fall throughout the day. After the sun set, she could still see the flakes swirling under the security lights that lit the perimeter of the building.

  True to his word, Connelly had handled Tate. They’d called and reported the results of the disastrous ‘argument’ in front of Judge Minella, and Connelly had been adamant that there was nothing Sasha could have done to change the judge’s mind. To Sasha’s amusement, he also shared his sincerely held theory that the judge was bipolar.

  Tate took the news better than Sasha had hoped. He asked her to look into filing an appeal. He and she both knew it was a lost cause. With no record, a government agency stating that it was an indispensable party, and the specter of national security lurking in the background, they had less than the proverbial hell-dwelling snowball’s chance of success of convincing an appellate court that the judge had abused his discretion.

  But, Sasha understood that, to appease the board, Tate needed a thoroughly researched memorandum that laid out the dismal reality in minute detail. She needed the same memorandum for a very different reason—to appease her malpractice insurer. But, in the end, Serumceutical wouldn’t file an appeal. It would be an utter waste of money.

  She was reading a mind-numbing law review article on the misuse of Rule 19 when Connelly poked his head through the doorway and caught her eye. He tapped the face of his watch. Sasha checked the time. Almost eight o’clock.

  She shook her head. “I want to get this memo out to Tate tonight so I can catch an early flight back to Pittsburgh in the morning.”

  As competent and reliable as Naya was, Sasha knew it was a strain on her to run the office single-handedly.

  She expected Connelly would argue with her, but he reached in his pocket and pulled out his car key. He crossed the room and pressed the ring into her hand.

  “I had a feeling you’d say that. I’ll catch a ride home with Grace.”

  Sasha placed the key ring on Tate’s desk. “Thanks. I shouldn’t be much longer. Maybe two more hours tops.”

  Connelly kissed the top of her head. “I’ll wait for you to eat dinner, then.”

  Grace appeared outside the door.

  “Leo, are you ready?” she asked, buttoning a tawny leather trench coat.

  “I’ll see you in a bit,” Connelly said. Then he turned to Grace, “Let me just grab my coat.”

  They watched him leave, and then Grace turned to Sasha.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, I guess. Oliver wants to explore all avenues, but we’re really just spinning our wheels,” Sasha answered honestly.

  Grace nodded. She picked up a framed picture of a man and two dark-haired girls standing in front of a cabin, squinting into the sun and smiling, examined it for a moment, and then returned it to its spot on the desk.

  “I think he’s under a lot of pressure. When we caught that janitor stealing papers, the board instructed him to go hard after ViraGene, and he did. But as soon as the legal bills started rolling in, they lost their stomach for it and pulled back. It’s kind of unfair. They took away his weapons, and now they blame him for losing the battle.”

  Sasha considered the middle-aged man in the photograph. He looked perfectly pleasant—one arm thrown over the shoulder of each of his daughters—but not particularly driven. It could have been the setting. Even a formidable general counsel might not seem imposing while wearing a plaid flannel shirt and standing in front of a log cabin. Unless maybe he was wielding an axe.

  Connelly reappeared in the doorway, with his leather bag slung across his chest. Grace slid down from Tate’s desk and joined him at the door.

  “The roads might be icy,” Connelly warned Sasha before following Grace out the door.

  “I know how to drive in winter conditions,” Sasha told him.

  He turned. “I know you do, but you’re not in Pittsburgh. There’ll be a lot of nervous drivers out there. Just be careful, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She turned back to her research as Connelly and Grace disappeared down the hallway. She worked without pause for another forty-five minutes, her fingers flying over the keys. She summarized both the standard to appeal and the cases that established the effort would almost certainly be futile. She reviewed the memorandum for typos then, satisfied, sent an email message to Tate forwarding the document. She rolled her neck, cracked her back, and shut down her laptop.

  She tried to reach Gavin one final time, calling his home, office, and cell phone numbers one after the other. He didn’t answer any of the numbers. She left messages on all three of his voicemail systems asking him to call her then tossed her cell phone into her briefcase. She felt the beginnings of a headache developing. She was tired from the long day and worried about Gavin. It was time to go back to Connelly’s, curl up on his couch, and rest her head on his warm chest.

  She shrugged into her coat. As she picked up her bag, she knocked Tate’s desk blotter askew. She lunged to catch it before it shoved a pile of papers to the floor.

  As she was returning it to its original spot, a hot pink post-it note caught her eye.

  In precise block letters, someone—presumably Tate—had printed “CELIA GERIG. NEW KEN DC. $12.50/HR”

  Seeing Celia’s name served to heighten her concern about Gavin. She replaced the blotter, covering the sticky note, and wished she could bury her anxiety as easily.

  She turned out Tate’s office light and pulled the door shut behind her with a soft click.

  The corridors were quiet and lit only by the emergency lighting over the stairwells. The sprawling headquarters felt deserted. Sasha walked quickly through the lobby, her boots clicking against the marble. The security desk was unoccupied, although the blue glow of a computer monitor suggested that the guard on duty had just left to use the bathroom or get a drink. She scribbled her name on the visitor log and then hurried through the inner doors.

  As she crossed the foyer to exit the building, a Hispanic man on his way into the building jogged to hold the door open for her. He wore a navy blue uniform that identified him as a member of the cleaning crew. A knit cap was pulled down over his brow.

  “Thank you,” Sasha said as she walked through the door into the howling wind.

  “You’re welcome. Stay warm,” he said in a pleasant, accented voice.

  She smiled at him and turned her collar up, before she hustled through the parking lot to Connelly’s Lexus.

  CHAPTER 31

  Leo stirred the chicken stew simmering and bubbling in his tall stockpot. The sound of a car engine in the alley caught his attention.

  He glanced out the kitchen window and was surprised to see Sasha pulling his SUV into the garage almost a full hour earlier than sh
e said she’d be back. For the first year of their relationship, her estimates of when she’d be finished working had only ever been overly optimistic. The year had been strewn with canceled dinner reservations, missed movies, and vacations cut short.

  But she’d been trying to be more realistic and balanced about her working hours in recent months. The turning point had been the night she’d run out to handle a client matter while he was trying to propose to her. All the anger and hurt that Leo’d ignored for months had come to a head, and he’d accused her of valuing her work over her personal relationships.

  She’d worked hard since then to break her old patterns, and she’d gotten quite good at leaving work as promised. But, she’d never come home early before.

  He pulled two beer bottles from the refrigerator and twisted off the caps. He’d miss her tomorrow when she returned to Pittsburgh, so he was grateful for the extra time tonight. The more time they spent together, the more time he wanted to spend with her.

  She ran from the garage through the small yard and up the deck stairs to the kitchen door. As she stamped her feet to remove the snow, he pulled the door open to greet her. She rushed in, her cheeks red from the cold, and shivered. She dropped her briefcase on the floor and stretched up to plant an icy kiss on his lips.

  “It’s getting really cold out,” she announced as she pulled off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat.

  Leo rested the beers on the counter and helped her out of the coat.

  “I think I know how to warm you up,” he told her. He tossed her coat over the back of a chair and wrapped his arms around her. He thought he would never cease to be amazed by how tiny she actually was.

  She leaned into him and rested her head on his chest.

  He was just about to thank her for coming home early when his cell phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” she said.

  He had to. He didn’t want to. What he wanted to do was scoop her up and carry her into the bedroom, but he had to. He was the chief security officer of a company that just learned an employee had stolen over twenty-five hundred doses of a vaccine intended to prevent a horrific virus from decimating the American population. He couldn’t just let a phone call roll to voicemail because he wanted to ravish his girlfriend. Even if she did look particularly ravishing at the moment.

  The phone continued to ring. Insistent.

  “I’m sorry.” He gently removed her arms from around his waist and reached for the phone.

  She sighed and reached down to unzip her boots. As she stepped out of them, she immediately shrunk four inches.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Leo. It’s Hank.”

  “Hi, Hank. What’s up?” Leo asked as Sasha retrieved her beer from the counter and walked over to the stove to peek into the pot of stew.

  “I ran your name up the flagpole. You sure burned some bridges on your way out the door,” Hank said with a chuckle.

  Leo had a different view of his separation from the government, but he didn’t particularly feel like getting into it with Hank. He’d rather have dinner with his girlfriend.

  “I take it my involvement isn’t welcome?” he asked.

  He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached into the cabinet to the left of the stove and pulled down two bowls. Then he took two spoons from the utensil drawer.

  “Well, officially, that’s the case. But, I have a bit of a situation on my hands and I could use someone with your background and connections to the pharmaceutical industry, so I’m going to noodle on it for a day and see if I can’t come up with something,” Hank said.

  “Suit yourself, Hank. You know, I’m happy to help if I can.”

  Leo ended the call and turned to see Sasha frowning at him.

  “Come on, let’s eat while it’s hot,” he said.

  She took the seat across from him and searched his face through the plumes of steam that rose from their bowls.

  “What did Hank want?”

  “To tell me I’m persona non grata as far as the various governmental agencies are concerned,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

  “Good. You’re a private citizen. They can save the country without your help,” she said.

  “Sasha—” he began, but she cut him off.

  “Mmm, this is really good,” she said around a mouthful of stew.

  It was good, he had to admit. Nicely seasoned, and the sort of filling comfort food that a cold, snowy night demanded.

  “Thanks, but, listen. Hank may still come back to me. He said he’s going to see if he could work it out. And, if he does … I might want to do it.”

  He waited for her response.

  She looked at him for a long moment, then she relaxed her shoulders and took a sip of her beer. “You know what, Connelly, I don’t want to argue. You’re going to do what you want to do no matter what I say. I’d like to just have a nice dinner with you, since I’m going home tomorrow.”

  Yes, she was, he realized with a pang.

  It had taken some time to adjust to a day-to-day routine that didn’t include her. For the first several weeks, he’d awoken in a state of mild panic to find his bed empty. And the four-day stretch since Saturday had been the longest uninterrupted time they’d shared since he’d moved. Notwithstanding the constant threat of near-certain death from contracting a killer flu, it had been a very pleasant four days.

  He drained his beer and smiled at her. “In that case, why don’t we call it a night.”

  She checked the time. “At nine forty-five?”

  He just kept smiling until understanding dawned in her eyes. Her cheeks flushed and her bow mouth curved upward.

  “I guess I’m finished here,” she allowed in a soft voice.

  Tuesday

  CHAPTER 32

  Tuesday morning dawned gray and cold. Colton pressed the button on the wall beside his headboard. The heavy blackout curtains drew back and inched across the window. From his bed, he could see that the city below was covered in a thick blanket of snow.

  He yawned and then rose from the bed. Snow or not, he had to stay on schedule. His carefully placed phone call couldn’t come from a number traceable to him. He needed to be at the filthy corner bodega when it opened to buy a prepaid calling card—and a lottery ticket, so he would fit in with the other patrons. Even though he already had his lottery ticket; all that was left to do was cash it in.

  He calculated the figures as he walked into the master bathroom and adjusted the water temperature for his shower. If the government purchased the same number of doses of AviEx as it had committed to purchase of Serumceutical’s vaccine, ViraGene would gross in excess of two hundred and twenty-five million dollars, just on the contract.

  He stepped into the steamy shower and continued his musing. That sum didn’t even account for the inevitable skyrocketing stock price.

  The twenty-five million dollar bonus that the board had agreed to write into his contract—mainly because the small-minded fools believed he could never attain the profit target to unlock it—was within his grasp.

  All he had left to do was make one anonymous phone call to the authorities, reporting the shocking news that Serumceutical’s Chief Security Officer had, in his top desk drawer, a deadly biological weapon. Faced with the public relations disaster that the company chosen to provide the vaccines intended to protect the American people from a grim and certain death was harboring the very virus it was supposed to eradicate, the government would have no choice but to approve and then purchase AviEx. The public outcry would demand it in a panic and amid paranoid theories about Serumceutical’s true intentions.

  As the water pounded against his back, Colton grinned. And, as if all that weren’t enough, the survivalist brigade in Pennsylvania was probably this very moment whipping itself into a frenzy. He’d recognized the true believer fervor in Bricker’s eyes. He’d do whatever it took—including releasing the virus himself—to deliver the apocalypse he’d spent over a d
ecade predicting. By the end of the week, the American people would be dropping dead in droves, the survivors would be clamoring for an antiviral medication, and he was the only man who could deliver it.

  If he’d been the type, he’d have broken into song right there in the shower.

  CHAPTER 33

  Sasha was humming “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” as she and Leo pulled onto the private road that led to Serumceutical’s sprawling campus. She loved new snow, when it was still pristine. After one rush hour, it would be dirty and slushy and uninspiring, but right now, it made her feel like the frozen, crystalline world was full of possibility.

  Her almost-perfect mood was marred only by the fact that she was leaving Connelly behind when she returned to Pittsburgh. But she had too much work to do to stay in D.C. an extra day or two. She had discovery deadlines, filing due dates, a mediation to prepare for—the list was long.

  Connelly turned to her and said, “Feeling the Christmas spirit already?”

  She never got the chance to answer.

  They rounded a curve, and Connelly slowed. They were still several hundred yards from the main parking lot, but the road was lined with cars. Irritated-looking people milled around with their hands shoved in their pockets for warmth.

  Farther down the road, a wooden sawhorse sat in the center of the road. Behind it a cluster of black sedans, some with dashboard-mounted lights still flashing sat at various angles across the paved road. Three more sedans were strewn across the lawn that edged the road. At the mouth of the parking lot, an ambulance and an SUV marked Fire Chief sat nose to nose. And beyond them, two fire engines flanked the entrance to the main building.

  “What the devil?” Sasha murmured.

  Connelly braked and the car came to a stop. His face registered no reaction to the scene, but Sasha saw him clench and release his fists.

  He pulled his cell phone from his coat pocket and checked the display. “I don’t have any missed calls or messages.”