Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  He hoped Richardson would send some reinforcements soon. His back was getting stiff from sitting and he needed to take a leak. He passed a few moments ignoring his increasing need to relieve himself but finally surrendered, casting a baleful gaze at the empty Super Big Gulp in his cup holder. No man could withstand the urgent call of forty ounces of Mountain Dew needing to exit his body, he reasoned.

  He left the ignition running, stepped out of the Expedition, and trotted over to the nearest tree. As he jiggled himself dry and zipped up, keeping his eyes trained on the camp down the road the entire time, bright lights flared on the drive and a car engine roared to life.

  He raced back to the truck, his shoes sliding on the icy road, and skidded to a stop as he careened off his open driver’s side door. The car backed down the gravel road while he fumbled with his cell phone.

  “Richardson, it’s Trooper Royerson, sir. I’m sitting on the location as instructed,” he shouted, breathless from running, “and a vehicle is leaving the compound.”

  “Good,” Richardson answered in a voice that held no hint of panic or excitement.

  “Sir?”

  Richardson continued, “I just received a report that a group of six unarmed minors is attempting to leave the camp. They’re gonna be scared. And the driver is unlicensed, so he may be driving erratically. They’ve been told to stop when they see you. Tell them their mom is going to be okay and then get them the hell out of the area.”

  “Roger that. But, sir?”

  “What?”

  “What about watching the camp?”

  “I have a team on its way. You worry about the kids.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tanner jammed the vehicle into gear and jerked it to the right side of the road to enable the driver to maneuver around him. He wanted to give him plenty of room. Although the main roads were clear, the side roads were still messy. An inexperienced driver and icy conditions didn’t make for the best combination.

  The car fishtailed as it bounced off the access drive and onto the road. Tanner squinted. He figured the kid had to drive about a mile and a half.

  “C’mon, kid,” he whispered.

  He threw the switch to turn on the light bar on the truck’s roof. Six kids. He was glad he’d signed out the Expedition instead of taking one of the Crown Vic’s from the pool.

  Eight long minutes later, the car came to a jerky stop in front of him.

  He walked over to the vehicle and shined his flashlight into the car. The boy behind the wheel sat pale-faced and shaking. Beside him a girl held a squirming toddler in her lap. Three more tear-streaked faces looked up at him from the backseat.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said loudly, so they could hear him through the window. He hoped he was right.

  CHAPTER 43

  When Leo called Anna to report that her children were enjoying hot chocolate and smiley cookies at the Eat’n Park in Deerton, she burst into relieved tears.

  Gavin patted her arm awkwardly.

  “Thank you,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Thank you for helping me get them out of here.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, let’s go see about getting my gun.”

  She’d told him Lydia had confiscated it from his car, but she’d searched her husband’s office and had found no sign of it. The only other place it was likely to be, according to her, was the munitions shed.

  If he had a weapon, he figured he might stand a chance, despite the fact that his leg muscles quivered every time he stood. He figured the munitions stores would serve his purposes whether he located his own gun or stole one of theirs.

  He pushed himself up off the bed and coughed.

  The room tilted, with the floor rising to meet the walls at an angle, and he threw out an arm to brace himself against the log wall. He tried to control his breathing.

  Anna examined his face.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she told him.

  He tried to protest, but she gave him a gentle push and he landed on the bed with a thud.

  “I’ll check the shed,” she said.

  He struggled to a semi-upright position.

  “Anna?”

  She turned back and looked at him while she zippered her jacket. “Yeah?”

  “Bring me a gun. Any gun.”

  He fell back against the pillow and tried to catch his breath.

  Anna nodded and pulled the door open.

  Bricker, Rollins, and Lydia stood just outside the cabin. Rollins and Lydia had their rifles drawn and aimed at Anna’s gut.

  “Going somewhere, honey?” Bricker said in an unnatural high, strangled voice.

  Anna said nothing.

  Gavin sat up, ignoring the spinning room.

  Bricker stood just inside the doorway and smiled at him, wild-eyed.

  This is going to end badly, Gavin thought. Then he collapsed.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  He regained consciousness to find that his hands were cuffed together. He turned his head. Anna sat on the ground near the bed, her hands also cuffed.

  “Where are they?” he said.

  She looked up at him, and he winced.

  Her lip was split and swollen. One eye was also puffy—a faint purple bruise already forming around the socket.

  “Jeffrey’s trying us in absentia. He has my phone, with the log of the calls we made. And he knows we helped the kids leave. The group is going to vote on the punishment for my treason and your aggression against the movement, but there’s only one choice,” she said in a defeated, flat voice.

  “What’s the choice?”

  “Firing squad.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Leo and Sasha sat in the SUV, drinking gas station coffee in silence. They’d taken up the vigil in the spot that the state trooper had recently vacated, judging by the tire tracks in the snow.

  It was a good location, Leo decided. Slightly elevated, with a clear sight line to the camp. He was confident they would see lights or moving vehicles, but they were far enough away to avoid being discovered by foot patrols on the campgrounds, thanks to the elevation.

  When he’d called to tell Anna that her children were safe, he’d asked her to check in with them in an hour. They had another twenty minutes to wait.

  He glanced over at Sasha. She was staring intently at the tan swirl patterned on her Styrofoam cup.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She flicked her eyes away from the cup and met his gaze.

  “Just thinking?”

  “About?”

  “About the mess I got Gavin into. That you lost your job. The end of civilized society. My pregnant sisters-in-law wandering around a city that’s been targeted for a biochemical attack.”

  “Cheery. You forgot to add that Celia Gerig is dead,” he said.

  He saw the hint of a smile start to spread across her mouth and leaned over to cover it with a kiss, but she jolted upright.

  “That’s it!”

  “What?” He pulled back and watched her face.

  She nodded her head, and he could see her marshaling her argument, checking off the points to make.

  “Tate’s involved with the preppers.”

  “Oliver Tate?” He nearly snorted in derision.

  “Hear me out. Last night, when I was working in his office, I knocked his desk blotter off the desk. Underneath it, there was a sticky note with Celia Gerig’s name written on it,” she said.

  “You were snooping in Oliver’s desk?

  He was surprised at the sneakiness—Sasha’s style was usually straightforward to a fault—but he didn’t really care that she’d done it. After all, the man had just fired him for the sake of appearance. But, the notion that Oliver was mixed up with the preppers was ludicrous.

  “No. I told you, I bumped the blotter.” She shot him an offended look and then continued, “I didn’t think anything of the note last night. My mind was on the appeal, I guess. But, I realized today that he was already in Wyoming when Grace learned about
Celia Gerig. He had to have written the note beforehand.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Leo asked. Suspicion pricked at his nerves. If she was right about the note; something was definitely off.

  “I think if Grace interviews the human resources people, she’ll learn that somehow—either directly or indirectly—Tate got Celia that job.”

  Sasha stared across the car at him with placid, serious eyes.

  He nodded. “Maybe. I’ll call her—”

  “That’s not all,” Sasha interrupted. “When I tried to call him this morning, his housekeeper or property manager or whoever answered the phone said that he and the girls left Wyoming last night.”

  “No, that’s wrong. When he called to terminate me, he said he was between ski runs.”

  “I don’t care what he said. He cut his trip short. So where is he?”

  Leo stared at her. “I don’t know. Where do you think he is?”

  She jerked her chin forward, toward the distant campground. “There. With his daughters.”

  Anna’s words—the twins arrived late last night—echoed in his mind.

  “Tate’s a prepper?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Yes. I mean, I don’t know him at all. But if I’m right, it explains how Celia got the job and why she used her real social—he would have known that Human Resources would check that right away. Just say he believes a pandemic is coming and civilization is going to collapse—and, working at the company, I’m sure he’s heard about nothing but the killer flu day after day. So he starts to believe it. He’s a smart guy, but he knows he doesn’t have the skill set to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. He decided to find a way to make himself indispensable to Bricker’s merry band of lunatics. He used the resource he had: access to the vaccine.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that it sounded almost rational.

  “So, you think when Bricker put out the call for the preppers to bug out, Tate hightailed it here from Wyoming?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he bugged out when Judge Minella denied our temporary restraining order—that was a sure sign something bigger was going on. It could have spooked him. All I’m saying is you should prepare yourself in case I’m right, and your former general counsel is holed up in the woods purifying water or skinning a rabbit.”

  Or loading a rifle, Leo thought, trying to imagine Oliver shooting a gun. His imagination failed him.

  Flickering light caught his eye. He straightened and leaned forward, peering through the windshield.

  “Do you see that?” he asked Sasha, pointing toward the campground.

  She squinted. “It looks like fire.”

  “What the devil are they doing down there?”

  “Connelly, are those torches?”

  He blinked, clearing his vision, and then two shapes materialized in the darkness: shady figures holding the burning torches aloft.

  Sasha sat the coffee in the cup holder and reached to open her door.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “Getting a better look.”

  He grabbed her hand to stop her.

  “No, the interior lights will come on if you open the door. They’ll see us.”

  She released the door with a sheepish look.

  He removed his Glock from the center console. Then he loaded rounds into the magazine, one after another, until it was full, then he slid it into the shaft. The catch engaged, and he pulled the slide back until it sprung forward.

  Sasha watched him but didn’t speak.

  They had to leave the SUV at some point if they wanted to see what was going on. He considered their options: open the doors and risk the figures below noticing the flash of light or start the car and move it to the large brush off to their right and risk them hearing the engine.

  Sound didn’t travel nearly as far as most people thought. But it was a quiet night.

  Mind made up, he jabbed the key into the ignition and turned it to the ‘Accessory’ position. Then he pressed the button to lower the passenger window.

  “Go.”

  Sasha clambered through the open window and dropped silently to the ground. He followed, less gracefully he was sure, but noiselessly.

  They crept around to the front of the vehicle and stared down at the field. The flames danced wildly in the darkness.

  A crack sounded and then echoed off the mountainside. Only one thing in the world made that sound—the sharp report of a rifle being fired.

  A faint scream rose from below—a woman’s scream.

  Sasha scrambled down the hillside with Leo on her heels.

  CHAPTER 45

  Sasha stumbled over the rocks and frozen ground, the wind stinging her eyes, and came to a copse of trees about a hundred yards short of the clearing.

  Connelly came up behind her a few seconds later and leaned against a young pine tree.

  They peered over the top of a row of sparse shrubs. Sasha gasped involuntarily and pressed her hand against her mouth.

  The field was lit by the two torches, which were still burning and had been placed in two metal holders that stood twenty feet apart from one another. Between the posts, a young tree rose from the earth, straight and tall. The lower branches had been sawed off. A man’s body was tied to the narrow trunk, his head slumped forward.

  The flames flickered over his face, casting part of it in shadows, but even so, Sasha recognized Gavin. Dark liquid pooled in the snow at his feet, pouring from his forehead. He’d been shot between the eyes. Executed.

  Across from his corpse stood a man and a woman, each holding a rifle, and, between them, a taller, older man. Sasha could tell by his bearing it was Bricker. He had the authoritative air of a military leader.

  Bricker was not holding a firearm. Instead, he was holding a heaving, handcuffed woman. The woman had her head twisted to the side to avoid looking at Gavin’s dead body. Bricker put a hand on her neck and wrenched her forward to face Gavin.

  “Do you see what happens to those who cross us, Anna?” he said in a low, rough voice that carried on the wind.

  She sobbed.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Yes, Jeffrey. I see,” she said in a defeated voice. She slumped against him and said, “Just get it over with.”

  “You heard her, Lydia. Are you ready to see if you can match George’s marksmanship?” Bricker said to the woman to his right.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bricker thrust his wife toward the man. “Cut him down and line up the prisoner.”

  The man slid his rifle into a black nylon sling, slung it over his left shoulder, and began to drag Anna toward the tree between the torches.

  Sasha heaved. She kept her hand clamped over her mouth in case she vomited.

  Connelly leaned forward and whispered, “Once they’re clear of us, I’m going to shoot the woman. I need you to disarm and take down the guy who has Anna. He’s going to be distracted; it shouldn’t be too hard. Okay?”

  Sure. Piece of cake. In fact, she’d just taken a continuing legal education class on disarming murderous survivalists without harming their hostages. No problem.

  She realized Connelly was waiting for an answer, his breath hot against her ear.

  “Okay.”

  “Go when I say.”

  Anna and her captor passed in front of the shrubs. She was walking slowly and awkwardly, tripping over her feet. He dragged her forward, toward Gavin’s inert body.

  Sasha’s throat tightened, and adrenaline flooded her system.

  “Go!” Connelly said, giving her a small nudge.

  She tucked her chin into her chest and ran. Her mind clicked through her options to overpower a right-handed man who had his hands full.

  She settled on a tackle takedown. It was one of her least preferred moves because size and strength mattered when tackling.

  But she didn’t have time to engage him. Connelly was probably pulling the trigger already. So she ran hard and fast at the man, aiming her lowered shoulder at
his head. As she neared them, Anna gasped.

  The man turned toward Sasha and his eyes widened. He dropped Anna and groped over his shoulder for his gun.

  Sasha sank down, gathering her power and momentum from her hips and legs, and exploded toward him, pushing up from the ground and encircling his knees with both arms as she crashed into him.

  Behind her, she heard the report of Connelly’s gun. Loud and close. Then an agonized yelp from the woman who was waiting to execute Anna.

  The man tumbled backward and she held on. They landed with a thud on the hard earth. As they made impact, she scrambled to smash her right knee into his groin. As fast as she could, she crawled up and straddled his chest.

  He reared up at her, but he was out of shape and clumsy.

  She locked eyes with him, grabbed his hair with both hands, and snapped her neck back. She brought the crown of her head down hard on the bridge of his nose and heard the crunching of cartilage and bone. She released his hair and let his head bang down onto the ground.

  She stayed on his chest until she was sure he was going to remain motionless, then she climbed off him and joined Connelly and Anna.

  Lydia sat on the ground, one leg folded under her, the other extended. She cradled her shattered kneecap between her hands and rocked in pain.

  Connelly held the Glock in front of him, aimed at Bricker’s center mass, as he neared the man.

  “This magazine was fully loaded,” Connelly told him. “In case math’s not your strong suit, that means I have sixteen rounds left.”

  Bricker glared at him.

  “Where are your troops, Bricker? Cowering in their cabins?”

  He didn’t respond to Connelly. It was a question Sasha wanted to have answered, though. If they were about to be rushed by a mob of armed preppers, they were going to need more than sixteen rounds.

  Lydia retorted, “We aren’t cowards. Everyone’s just used to the sound of shots being fired. We abut state game lands.”

  Connelly turned his attention to her.