“Yes, sir.”
“Then act like it. I want Sasha McCandless and the federal government out of my children’s lives. Period.”
“Who do you want to take care of them?” Andy asked, mainly out of curiosity.
“I don’t care. Just as long as it’s not the feds or that whore lawyer.”
“Ooooo-kay. Well, I should get you a retainer agreement, and we need to discuss my fee—”
“I don’t care about the minutiae. Do what I say and you’ll be compensated.”
Andy wasn’t inclined to argue. He glanced down at his phone’s display. Private caller.
“How do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t.”
More silence.
Andy listened to his watch ticking and the building’s rattling HVAC system for half a minute, then he said, “Are you going to want to know what’s going on in the case?”
“When did the judge set the hearing for the rights termination?”
“Day after tomorrow. Ten a.m.”
“Friday? That’s awfully short notice, isn’t it?”
Andy barked out a bitter laugh. “I’ll say. But since you’re in the wind, the judge used her discretion to determine that making McCandless comply with the notice provision would be futile.”
“Can she do that?”
“The judge? She can do anything she wants.”
Bricker grunted. “I’ll call you at noon after the hearing.”
Before he could respond, a loud click sounded in his ear.
Andy dropped the earpiece back into its cradle, wheeled his chair around, and contemplated his non-view once more. A slow smile spread across his face.
If this went well, his next window would look out on the city skyline not the trash bins.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“What’s she doing?” Brianna asked, threading her fingers through the wire diamond pattern covering the fence that enclosed the basketball court, separating it from the playground. She nodded toward the court.
“Who? Sasha?” Leo asked.
“Duh.”
What she was trying to do was tire out the Bennett family so they’d sleep soundly.
After a dinner of tacos that had left a mess on the floor that really called for a wet/dry vac rather than a broom, she’d suggested they all walk down to the neighborhood playground. The Bennetts, however, appeared to be indefatigable.
He turned his attention away from Mark, who was trying to give him a heart attack by racing Hal and Calla around on an old metal merry-go-round with all his might. As the little ones swung wildly, they shrieked with joy. Leo’s reflexive shout of ‘hold on!’ with every orbit they made only increased their enjoyment.
He followed the girl’s gaze to the blacktop, where Leah and Cole had been playing one-on-one the last time he’d looked. Now they were standing on the midcourt line watching Sasha gesture from one end of the court to the other. Leah balanced the basketball on her hip and wore a skeptical look. Cole was grinning broadly.
“I’m not sure,” Leo admitted.
Sasha crouched and touched the line with her fingertips then resumed her vigorous pointing.
“Oh. Wait, I know. She’s teaching them how to do suicides.”
The girl turned and faced him full-on, her eyes enormous in her freckled face. “Suicides?”
“Suicide sprints,” he assured her. “It’s a conditioning drill for runners.”
“Why are they called suicides?”
“I guess because you feel like you’re dying when you’re done. Some people also call them ladders or blood and guts. But suicides is pretty accurate.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Then why do them?”
“They help you build speed. It looks like your brother and sister are going to give it a try. Wanna join them?”
“No. Way.” She stretched her two-word response into two sentences.
Sasha jogged to the far out of bounds line, trailed by Cole and Leah. The three dropped into a runner’s stance and toed the line.
“She’s going to run, too?” Brianna asked.
“Looks like it.”
“Weird.”
“Bet she wins.”
“No. Chance.” Briana bugged her eyes out at him as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
“Sasha’s pretty fast.”
“Cole is super fast. Plus, she’s old … and a girl.”
Leo sent a silent message of gratitude up to the heavens that Sasha hadn’t been close enough to hear the comment. He wasn’t sure which part would irritate her more—the knock on her age or the one on her gender—but he was certain the remark would not have passed unnoticed.
“Yeah? I think she’s faster.”
The girl gaped at him. “You’re banana cakes.”
He assumed banana cakes meant crazy.
“Want to wager?”
“Like bet on them?”
“Exactly. If Cole wins, I’ll take you all out for ice cream.”
“What if Sasha wins?”
He flashed her a grin. “She’ll take you all out for ice cream. You in?”
“Well, duh!”
On the court, Sasha held up her hand to indicate they were about to start. The instant she dropped her hand, brother and sister burst off the line, running at full speed. Cole quickly pulled ahead by a stride, and Sasha trailed Leah by an equal measure.
“See?” Brianna gloated.
“Just wait.”
The kids were running flat out. They would have nothing left in reserve when Sasha poured it on. They hit the first line, and Sasha caught up with Cole. At the second line, she was a half-step ahead of him. Before the third, Leah was flagging well behind and panting hard.
Mark abandoned the merry-go-round. He and the youngest two joined Leo and Brianna at the fence.
“Run, Cole! You can catch her!” Brianna shouted.
“Go, Cole, go!” Hal and Calla chanted, bouncing up and down in their excitement.
The commotion caught Sasha’s attention. She glanced over and winked.
Then Leo watched as she dug in and found a final pocket of speed somewhere within. She rocketed forward. Her long hair streamed behind her. Her arms and legs were a blur of motion.
Cole didn’t let up, but there was no catching her.
She hit the final line and touched it two-handed then waited for Cole and Leah to cross it. She high-fived each of them.
They headed toward the fence. Sasha had her arms over her head, trying to catch her breath.
“I feel like I’m gonna barf,” Leah announced as they approached.
Leo shot Brianna a look that said ‘see?’
Brianna nodded sagely. “Suicides.”
“Your wife is tough,” Cole informed him.
You don’t know the half of it, Leo thought.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
Sasha beamed. “I had some stiff competition.”
“And you get to buy us all ice cream now!” Brianna exclaimed.
“I do?”
“You do,” Leo confirmed. “I won a bet.”
“Well lucky you. Tell you what, since I’m paying, we’ll get frozen yogurt.”
A series of muffled groans sounded among the siblings. Sasha waved them off.
“Trust me. You’re going to love it. There’s a topping bar the length of the store. You can get every kind of candy imaginable to put on top.”
“Even gummi worms?” Calla asked, narrowing her eyes.
“Especially gummi worms,” Sasha promised.
“Yay!”
The girl leapt at Sasha, who just managed to catch her.
Over the top of Calla’s mop of hair, Sasha caught Leo’s eyes and grinned.
She looked so happy and so natural holding the small girl in her arms that his breath caught in his throat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thursday
Sasha moaned and tried to turn onto her side, shielding her eyes from the sunlight that s
treamed through the slatted blinds.
“Youch.”
“Are you okay?” Connelly whispered.
She uncovered one eye to look at him. “No.”
She raised her head to plump up her pillow, but every part of her body was stiff. She collapsed back onto the bed and her unplumped pillow.
“What’s wrong? Are you sore from your race last night?” he teased.
“Something like that.”
Sore from the race and the twelve sets of suicides Daniel had made her run earlier in the day.
“Well it was worth it. You have a whole fan club now.”
He reached across the bed and pulled her close.
“I think that’s due more to the eighty-seven pounds of frozen yogurt than my sprinting prowess.”
“I think it’s both.”
She grinned into his chest.
She’d had a lot of fun with him and the kids the night before. More fun than she’d had in a long time, her screaming muscles notwithstanding.
She snuggled in closer for an early morning cuddle and felt his body yielding to hers. And then cabinet doors banged downstairs.
She hauled her aching body to an upright position.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, switching from languid to alert in an instant.
“We have to go down there and parent—or at least supervise,” she informed him, pulling on a sweatshirt over her thin t-shirt and shorts.
“What? They’re fine.”
He tried to pull her back into bed, but she shook him off.
“You don’t know that. Hal could be trying to cook eggs. Or Leah could be standing on top of the island again trying to reach the granola bars. Come on.”
He groaned but swung his legs over the edge of the bed and raised his arms in a stretch.
“Fine.”
She stopped in the doorway and looked back.
“Hey, before we walk into the circus, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Yeah? I wanted to ask you something, too,” he said.
“Oh. Okay. You first,” she said. She leaned against the door frame.
Connelly sat up straighter and pierced her with his almond-shaped eyes, which were suddenly alert and devoid of any sleepiness.
“Come here.” He patted the bed.
She walked over uncertainly.
“What’s up?” she asked as she perched beside him.
“What are your current thoughts about having kids?”
She blinked.
“Um…”
Before she could formulate an answer, he pressed on. “Not a baby. Kids. Those kids downstairs tearing the kitchen apart.”
Her head felt cloudy, full of cotton. “You mean adopt them?”
“Yes.” His voice was clear and strong, full of conviction.
“Uh—” she cast around for a response. “To be completely honest, Connelly, the thought never crossed my mind.”
“That’s okay. Will you think about it, though?” He smiled widely at her, his eyes shining with excitement at the idea.
“Sure. Yes. I’ll give it a lot of thought.”
He kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you. Now what did you want to talk about?”
“What? Oh. Nothing really. I was just wondering …”
“Yeah?”
She winced at the sharp change in subjects as she posed her question. “I was just wondering how long it would take you to get off two accurate shots with your Glock.”
He blinked.
“Why?”
A crash sounded from the kitchen.
“That sounded like glass breaking. We can talk about it later.”
She sprinted out of the room and down the stairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Sasha looked around the cramped breakfast nook, which Hank had commandeered as a conference room. Will was sitting ramrod straight with his hands suspended inches above the table, as though he were a marionette awaiting his puppet master.
She swiped one of the napkins from the Jake’s takeout tray that Naya had balanced on top of a half-constructed Lego village and moped up the sticky puddle of orange juice pooling in front of him.
He smiled gratefully.
“Sorry for the ambiance, guys, but Hank insisted we meet here and not at the office. So it’s your party,” Sasha said, turning the meeting over to Hank, who was squeezed into a kid-sized chair that Connelly had dragged in from the playroom.
She sipped her to-go coffee and waited.
“Right. In light of yesterday’s visitor, it’s time to go to the mattresses.” Hank imbued the sentence with a grave undertone.
Naya caught her eye and threw her a quizzical look.
Sasha shrugged. No idea, she mouthed.
Connelly watched the exchange with a grin.
He leaned forward and stage whispered, “You two are pathetic. Pick up some Godfather DVDs already. It means we’re at war. When mafia families are about to start a war, they send their foot soldiers to safe houses. They sleep on mattresses on the floor.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. Hank and Connelly and their love for Godfather quotes would never cease to baffle her.
Naya seemed similarly unimpressed. “How dramatic. Aren’t we already in a safe house?”
“No. If Sasha’s right, Bricker’s lawyer managed to find this place without much difficulty. We have to assume anyone who’s been properly motivated could do the same. Not to mention, I still don’t know how Bricker found them down in North Carolina. I was as careful as possible in making this move, but there’s no guarantee one of my men isn’t a leaker.”
Connelly’s eyebrow nearly shot off his forehead.
“I doubt that very much, Hank.”
“I doubt it, too. But I’m not willing to gamble six lives on being right. Are you?”
Hank looked around the table. No one else spoke for a long moment.
Finally, Will cleared his throat. “Surely you can get WITSEC to assign around-the-clock protection. If you hand-pick the team and the five of us take turns supervising the marshals, we can be fairly certain that there are no more leaks and the children are safe. It seems like it would be an unnecessary stressor to uproot them again.”
Sasha kept her face a neutral mask. She never would have expected Will to volunteer for babysitting duty. He was just full of surprises.
“It may be a stressor,” Hank agreed, “but I’m afraid it’s very necessary. My meeting here and the follow-up session in D.C. did not go well.”
Will sat up straighter. “Oh? How so?”
Hank squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose for several seconds before answering. “To make a very long and infuriating story short, the Bennett children have been terminated from the witness protection program, effective immediately. In fact, in reliance on a legal opinion provided by counsel to Homeland Security, their termination is retroactively backdated to the day Allison died.”
“What?” Will sputtered. “That’s outrageous.”
“Agreed,” Hank said flatly.
Connelly frowned. “Why was Homeland Security weighing in? Isn’t this a Justice issue?”
“One would think. The Department of Justice attorneys shared your view—until some middle manager realized that letting ICE and Homeland Security take the lead would make Allison Bennett’s death a national security issue. As a result, the investigation would be shrouded in secrecy and the results never made public.”
“So?” Naya asked.
“So WITSEC can continue to claim they’ve never lost a witness who followed the rules.”
Sasha felt her neck snap back in surprise. “They’re saying Allison Bennett broke the rules?”
Hank answered in a mechanical voice. “There is currently no evidence that Allison Bennett’s killer knew her or, more important, knew that she was the former Anna Bricker. The official viewpoint is that she was the unfortunate victim of a home invasion.”
“A home invasion in Sunnyvale, N
orth Carolina?”
“Correct.” Hank either didn’t notice or had no answer for the disbelief dripping from Naya’s voice. “And, given the fact that her minor children were not themselves witnesses in the federal case against their father, said minor children are neither entitled nor required to remain in the program after her untimely death. To compound the situation, WITSEC is viewing their contact with me—and our subsequent involvement in their care—as evidence that the children have failed to abide by the rules.”
Sasha suddenly felt cold. The outcome was no surprise, given Connelly’s report of their initial meeting with WITSEC, but the government’s dispassionate ability to throw six innocent children out on their ears was chilling all the same.
“And Homeland Security figures into this how, exactly?” Will wanted to know.
Hank managed a bitter laugh. “Although there’s no evidence Jeffrey Bricker played a role in his estranged wife’s death, he is a would-be terrorist, a convicted murderer, and an escaped felon. Any battle involving custody of his children would obviously be viewed through the lens on its impact on national security.”
“Obviously,” Sasha echoed, even though that convoluted reasoning was anything but obvious.
“And if Bricker finds his kids and murders them?” Connelly whispered furiously.
“Officially not WITSEC’s problem.”
She could tell from the expressions on the faces around the table that this turn of events was making everyone feel the way she felt—unsettled, slightly nauseous, and jittery.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “Hank’s right. We’ve got to move them.”
“No way,” said a firm voice from the doorway.
Five heads turned toward the sound. And there stood Cole, red-faced, his hands balled into fists, and his back ramrod straight.
“We’re not going anywhere,” he said.
Great.
They’d been so focused on Hank’s news, no one had noticed the boy creep into the room.
Sasha and Connelly exchanged a look. Someone had to diffuse the situation. Judging by the encouraging nod Connelly gave her, she was that someone.
Even better.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.
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