Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  Anna appraised her husband. Despite his serious expression, she recognized the excitement building within him—his eagerness to appease her and get on with his mission.

  “Are you planning a terrorist attack?” she asked.

  Just like that. The words rang in her ears, and a dizzy heat flooded her body, but she stared coolly at him until he answered.

  “I take issue with the phrase ‘terrorist attack.’ That implies there’s a legitimate government that’s been targeted,” he finally said.

  It was true.

  Anna forced herself to breathe. “Jeffrey, you can’t attack the United States government—a legitimate, functioning sovereign—just because we have some vaccines and have amassed a few hundred followers. That’s madness.”

  He shook his head, rejecting her words.

  “The government has broken down, it just doesn’t know it yet,” he insisted. His eyes shone.

  Anna shivered at the zealotry in his voice but persisted. “Listen to yourself. You’re playing word games, not addressing the issue. What do you have planned?”

  “I didn’t mention this to you, because I didn’t want to worry you, but I was able to get a small sample of the Doomsday virus.”

  He rocked back on his heels and watched her face as she processed what he’d just said.

  She blurted out a flurry of questions. “You have the virus? Where is it? Did you bring it into our home? What in God’s name do you plan to do with it?”

  He raised a hand and made a slow down motion.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in. The French network contacted me and told me an American had been sniffing around certain parties, looking to hire someone for wet work.”

  She looked at him blankly.

  “Murder, Anna. The American had found a source who could obtain the virus, but he wanted to kill him afterward—to remove the risk he would talk. Claude put him in touch with … someone capable of doing the task. And then Claude put me in touch with the American after he had the virus.”

  Even with notions of murder and deadly viruses crowding out rational thought, the chain of events made sense to Anna so far. Claude—Claude Pierre Bonet—was the former Clyde Peter Bonner from Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Jeffrey had known Clyde since high school—Clyde was a survivalist before being a survivalist was a thing. It wasn’t terribly surprising that he’d be in the middle of theft, murder, and conspiracy—he was often mixed up in unsavory business. In fact, the circumstances of his move abroad were clouded by some legal issues that Jeffrey had never fully explained to her.

  “But, why?”

  “Originally, as an insurance policy of sorts. Knowing that the virus was going to be out there somewhere, in private hands, it seemed prudent to have the same weapon. Mutually assured destruction has always been an effective defense.”

  She just stared at him, taking in the fevered gleam in his eyes.

  “Once I met Mr. X, I realized he didn’t plan to release the virus. But, it’s important that the American public understand the danger they live in. The only way to do that is to bring it into their homes. When their children get sick, and there’s no medicine, no drinkable water, no fresh food, and no help, then they’ll grasp their situation.”

  The way he said it, so determined and committed to his own narrative, frightened her. He was making decisions out of ideological fervor now. Having decided the possibility of a pandemic was a real and present danger and having rallied his followers, he couldn’t back away and admit that, at least for now, the government was in control of the situation.

  “People are going to die.”

  “Not our people. Most of our followers have already been vaccinated and will have full immunity by the time the virus starts spreading. They’ve left their homes, their jobs in anticipation of the pandemic. It’s too late to stand down.”

  “No, it isn’t. The organization did its job—we got everyone to a safe place. If the threat’s over, we can return to our regular lives.”

  “Don’t you see, Anna? Our safety is an illusion. We need to send the government a message to prepare itself.”

  “What kind of message?” Anna asked. She was afraid of the answer, afraid of her husband, afraid of the emptiness she felt looking at him.

  “Late tonight—well, actually, just after midnight—so early tomorrow morning, Bud and I are going to drive to Pittsburgh. He’ll stay in the vehicle while I take the virus to Steel Plaza and release it at the crèche display. Then, we’ll return here. We should be back for morning exercises, but George is standing ready to help you in case we are delayed. Or apprehended.”

  “You’re going to infect people who come to view the nativity scene?” Anna asked. Her tongue felt thick, and the words sounded slow and slurred to her own ears.

  “It’s a very effective plan. There will be school choirs singing. And children and the elderly have weakened immune systems. It should spread rapidly.” He gave her a satisfied look.

  Her stomach turned.

  “That’s murder.”

  “You may think so—” he began.

  “I do think so. And the government will think so, too.”

  He waved a hand at the idea.

  “Jeffrey, you’re going to kill innocent children.”

  She watched to see if that reality sunk in, but nothing seemed to penetrate his madness.

  “Not me, Anna. Society will be responsible for their deaths.”

  She shifted gears and tried a new tack. “You’ll go to jail. We both will. What about our kids?”

  He shot her a disgusted look. “First of all, you’re not going jail—that’s exactly why I kept you out of this. Second, I’m not going to jail. An illegitimate government will never be able to seize me, not alive, at any rate. And third, the kids will be fine. We’re raised them to be self-sufficient.”

  “Clara is three years old!”

  “I know how old my daughter is. The community we’ve built will help. Surely you aren’t ready to abandon all the people who count on us?” Bricker asked.

  “They count on us? I thought we were teaching them to count on themselves?” Anna countered.

  “They still need leaders. Everyone does. It’s the natural order.”

  He was blind to the inconsistency—his followers needed leaders, but his three-year-old daughter didn’t need parents? There was no reasoning with him.

  But she tried anyway. “I’m not saying we should abandon anything or anyone. But, I have no interest in martyring myself or our family. You can’t be serious.”

  Anna searched her husband’s face for almost a full minute and saw no trace of the man she knew—the man she’d built a life with. Her chest tightened with sorrow.

  She walked out of the office, blinking away hot tears.

  CHAPTER 38

  Colton waved to the federal agent slouching against the lamppost across the street from his penthouse and turned away from the window. The man ducked his head and pretended to check his watch.

  Idiots. As if by following him around they were going to stumble onto a hidden cache of the virus or find a cancelled check made out to Michel Joubert.

  Did they suppose he’d gotten as far as he had in business and life by being incompetent and careless? He nearly laughed, but then his eyes fell on the Trader Joe’s tote bag sitting under his desk.

  He had to get rid of the silver. It wasn’t contraband, of course, but when—not if—law enforcement officers came knocking on his door, he would prefer not to have to explain away a bag full of silver ingots.

  He supposed he could store it in his personal safe or in his safety deposit box, but both of those plans had flaws. A search warrant, presumably, would be worded in such a way as to include the contents of his safe; and a safety deposit box wouldn’t be immediately accessible if he did, in fact, ever need to flee to avoid prosecution—although given the clumsy surveillance techniques on display down on Connecticut Avenue, he assumed he’d have ample warning if the feds were closing a
net around him.

  All the same, he decided, the silver was best stored off the premises but where he could get his hands on it as needed. He’d put it with the remaining vial.

  He reached into the middle drawer on the right side of his desk and removed a thin stack of mail. He took the top envelope and slid the rest back into the drawer. Clutching the pastel pink envelope, with its glittery sticker over the envelope flap and the looping, childish script that addressed it to “Aunt Marla,” he left the apartment and crossed the hall to the Brandts’ door.

  He raised the knocker and let it fall against the door then straightened the knot in his tie with his free hand as he rehearsed the conversation about misdirected mail that he’d have to suffer through if one of the Brandts happened to be home.

  No footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. He knocked again, louder this time, and waited another minute. No one came to the door, so he returned to his apartment.

  After returning the envelope to its drawer in the desk, he crouched on his heels and lifted the heavy cloth bag filled with silver. Then he stood and carried it into his master closet.

  When Colton had remodeled the walk-in closet shortly after he’d moved in, his carpenter had called him in a mild panic. As he’d been installing the cedar, the man had accidentally broken through the wall.

  That was how Colton had discovered that, in their efforts to carve out two separate three thousand square foot penthouse suites, the building management had backed his closet up to the Brandts’ identical closet, which met his in a U-shaped space blocked off from the main concourse. Colton had resisted his initial impulse to complain to the condo board and assured his carpenter he’d take care of the damage with the neighbors across the hall.

  Instead, he’d spent a weekend chatting with the helpful employees of a suburban hardware store and creating two false panels.

  He dropped the bag to the cherry hardwood floor with a thud then crouched and ran his hands along the cedar wall near the baseboard. When his fingers touched the small notch in the wall, he pried the panel off and set it aside.

  He quickly located the identical notch in the panel he’d affixed to the Brandts’ side of the closet. He eased off the length of wood and placed it on the floor of his closet alongside its mate.

  Then he poked his head through the opening to survey the inside of the Brandts’ closet. The light that filtered through the gap from his own closet was sufficient to confirm that the small box holding his virus ampule sat undisturbed behind Marla Brandt’s boot collection. He turtled back into the hole and grabbed the heavy bag. He heaved it two-handed through the opening and lowered it as quietly as he could to the floor beside the virus. Several pashmina shawls hanging from a bar swung gently as he brushed them with his forearm.

  The space between the closets was narrow and best suited for hiding papers and drugs—perhaps a firearm, if Colton had been a gun enthusiast. The bag fit in the cache, but just barely. He folded the bag’s excess cloth down tightly over the bricks of silver and gently slid the panel over the items to hide them from view on the Brandt’s side of the closet. He crawled backward through the gap to his own side and replaced his panel.

  Then he stood and brushed his hands on his slacks, satisfied and unaware that just days earlier the Brandts had mounted a discreet security camera high on the opposite wall of their closet. The small camera was aimed directly at the large jewelry armoire that sat beside the boot racks. Its electronic eye blinked red and recorded Colton’s every movement.

  CHAPTER 39

  Leo spotted Sasha waiting at the security gate when he arrived in the middle of a wave of chattering travelers. She stretched up on her toes, smiled her megawatt smile, and waved at him over the crowd.

  He nodded to the vaguely familiar TSA agent who sat perched on a stool near the entrance to the security lines and hurried toward her. His bag bumped out a rhythm against his thigh with each stride.

  “Long time, no see,” she said, as he swung her into his arms and inhaled the familiar, faint, spicy scent of her body lotion.

  They walked hand-in-hand through the short-term parking garage to her car.

  “Have you heard from Gavin?” he asked. He’d forgotten about Gavin’s efforts to locate the missing Serumceutical worker in all the chaos surrounding his arrest.

  She shook her head. “No, not since he left that message Sunday night. I’m getting worried, Connelly.”

  So was he.

  “I’ll talk to Hank. Maybe he can reach out to local law enforcement and have them send a car out to the preppers’ campsite, just to check it out.”

  She popped the trunk of her Passat so he could toss his bag inside.

  “I don’t know if you should be asking Hank for any favors,” she said uncertainly, “but, we have to do something. It’s not like Gavin to go dark.”

  Her green eyes met his, and he could tell that grim scenes were unfolding in her imagination.

  “Hey, we’ll track him down.”

  As she pulled out of the compact parking spot and circled past the airport, he reached across the console and turned on the car radio.

  “Do you mind if we listen to the news? ‘All Things Considered’ should be starting,” he said.

  She pressed the pre-set button for the NPR station and they listened in silence to a report about the impact the storm was having on the Eastern seaboard.

  Leo looked out his window as she merged onto the highway. Judging by the piles of snow stacked along the roadside, Pittsburgh had gotten at least half a foot. But the roads had been cleared and salted. It was a stark contrast to the slushy mess his cab driver had navigated through D.C. on the way to Reagan National.

  Sasha kept her eyes on the van in front of them, which was weaving in and out of its lane. “My dad called. The kids are all sledding at the park near my folks’ house, so my mom’s got a few pans of lasagna in the oven, if you’re up for dinner with the clan tonight,” she said without looking away from the road.

  Leo was the only child of a single mother whose job required them to move around. Sasha seemed to think that his background meant that he found her noisy, extended family overwhelming when, in reality, he loved the laughter, the squabbling, the frenetic energy of the kids, and the meals shared crowded around her parents’ too-small dining room table.

  “Sounds like fun,” he said.

  She glanced over and smiled at him. “Good. But, you’ll call Hank first, right?”

  He nodded.

  Sasha dutifully slowed the car, as the van in front of them braked and decelerated. They were nearing the mouth of the tunnel that led to downtown. For reasons Leo had not yet grasped, all Pittsburgh drivers seemed to slow to a crawl before entering tunnels, as if a road with a roof posed some threat to their safety.

  After inching their way through the tunnel, they emerged and crossed the bridge to town. Leo turned his attention to the pop-up book skyline. He loved this approach to the city. As he gazed out the window at the gray, frozen river, he realized with a jolt that he felt like he was home.

  He’d moved around so much as a boy, going from place to place for his mother’s job as a traveling nurse, that he’d never considered anywhere home. It was a routine that he’d continued after college, moving from one government assignment to the next, always willing to relocate.

  How had Pittsburgh crept into his blood and made itself his home?

  The answer to that question shifted in her seat beside him. “Listen,” she said, turning up the volume on the radio.

  A French correspondent was reporting that research that could be misused with disastrous consequences was reportedly missing from a Level Four laboratory at the Pasteur Institute. Neither the Institute nor the French government had returned calls for comment. The reporter cautioned that the report was unsubstantiated.

  The report didn’t mention the Doomsday virus by name. Leo was impressed by how effectively the task force seemed to have suppressed the details of the theft. Th
e host tied the story back to an ongoing series about the ethical issues surrounding “dual-use” research into deadly pathogens and then moved on to the next news item.

  Sasha weaved through the early rush hour traffic with a furrowed brow but said nothing.

  It was time to call Hank, Leo thought to himself.

  He pulled out his phone to make the call, but Sasha’s phone rang before he had the chance.

  “Could you get that?” she asked, chewing on her lip and inching past a PAT bus that was picking up passengers who had to navigate a mountain of snow to board.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  “Sasha McCandless’s phone,” a male voice answered.

  Gavin couldn’t be sure, because the voice was distorted by the tinny speakerphone, but it sounded like Leo.

  He glanced away from the iPhone and met Anna’s troubled gaze. “It’s okay,” he stage whispered, “It’s her boyfriend.”

  Anna nodded and made a frantic motion with her hand to indicate he should hurry up.

  She’d said hardly anything since she’d returned to the cabin. He could tell from her red, puffy eyes that she’d been crying. But, she hadn’t confided in him—she’d just thrust the phone at him and said, “Make the call.”

  Gavin cleared his sore throat. “Leo, it’s Gavin Russell. I really need to talk to Sasha.”

  “Hang on, I’m going to put you on speaker. She’s driving.”

  A moment later, Sasha’s clear but distant voice came through the speaker.

  “Gavin? Are you okay? I’ve been worried about you.”

  “Sasha, I don’t have much time. Just listen carefully: Celia is dead, I’m sick with the flu and being held in quarantine by the preppers. They’re planning to attack Pittsburgh.”

  He waited a moment for her to process the information.

  Sasha pelted him with questions. “What kind of attack? When? Do you know the precise location?”

  “I don’t, but Anna might. She’s married to the head guy.”

  “Can we trust her?”