Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (15 page)

She stretched on her toes to
bring down two of her grandmother’s china teacups and saucers from the
cupboard. She shook the loose herbal tea, made from dried herbs picked from the
garden, into two metal balls and poured hot water over them. Then she carried
the sugar bowl and spoons over to the table. Jeffrey followed with the teacups.

Anna considered him as she
stirred a lump of sugar with her spoon, dissolving it in the water. He wasn’t
just tired; there was something else shadowed in his face. Tension, maybe? If
she didn’t know better, she might have thought it was fear. But, to her
knowledge, Jeffrey had never felt fear. He’d certainly never shown it. Not even
when she had hemorrhaged during Clara’s birth, nearly dying. He had remained
calm, implacable.

She placed a hand on his arm. “Is
everything okay?”

He met her gaze and smiled. “It
is now.” He raised the cup to his mouth and sipped the hot tea.

Anna pretended not to notice the
way his hand shook.

They drank their tea in
companionable silence, then Jeffrey said he needed to tend to some business and
disappeared into the basement.

Anna busied herself with washing
the dishes and wiping down the counters. She spotted the duffle bag on the
table.

Might as well get Jeffrey’s
laundry started now,
she thought. She could put his dirty clothes in the
washer and then switch them to the dryer while she guided the kids through
their weekend math lessons.

Anna lifted the bag and was
surprised by its weight. She hefted it over her shoulder and carried it into
the laundry room. Something inside made a clanking sound. When she unzipped the
bag to toss the clothes into the washer, she stared down at its contents,
unsure what she was seeing: jammed in among her husband’s dirty socks and
undershirts were dozens and dozens of tiny glass bottles.

Anna picked one up and squinted
at the tiny writing. The clear liquid rolled like syrup inside the vial. She
shoved it back into the bag and zippered it closed. Then she hurried across the
kitchen to return the bag to the table, dread settling in the pit of her
stomach with the knowledge that she had just seen something she wasn’t supposed
to see.

Colton ate an
early dinner alone with one eye on the flat-screen television mounted under a
bank of kitchen cabinets, the other on his iPad.

Nothing. He had flipped among all
the cable news channels and searched the newspaper homepages, and
nothing
.
Not a single reputable mention of the incredible danger currently facing the
American people.

It seemed impossible. And, yet,
it was true. No one knew that death waited around the corner for most of the
country—aside from some fringe lunatics and conspiracy theorists babbling amongst
themselves in the darkest corners of the Internet and the inbred preppers down
in Pennsylvania, of course.

He pushed his grilled salmon from
one side of his square black plate to the other, then let his fork clatter to
the table, his appetite deadened by disappointment. He took a long swallow of
the crisp Chenin blanc and pulled up a web browser. Another cycle through the
homepages of the major Western newspapers, magazines, and television stations
yielded no information about the situation in France or the potential for
destruction stateside.

Colton envisioned himself
smashing his Riedel Vinum glass against the fireplace on the other side of the
room. Then he inhaled, deeply and slowly. To what end? Thirty dollars’ worth of
pulverized glass he’d have to either sweep up or step around until the cleaning
service came at the end of the week?

“No,” he said aloud and loosened
his grip on the wineglass’s stem. He’d devise a way around this blasted news
blackout. Or force them to lift it by creating a story they dare not fail to
report on.

He drained his glass and slammed
it down onto the table, then pushed his chair back. He stalked across the open
floor plan to the foyer, where his briefcase sat on the gleaming marble
entryway floor. He crouched and retrieved his cell phone and one of the vials
that he’d wrapped in his cloth sunglasses pouch to protect and hide it.

He turned the vial in his hand,
watching the viscous liquid inside catch the light from the chandelier.
Take
control of the situation
, he told himself. He slipped the tube into his
pocket and punched a number into the phone.

Connelly paced
around Sasha’s condo while she tossed some clothes in a bag. Finally, he went
downstairs and made a phone call. She could hear his low voice, mumbled words,
and urgent tone. A few moments later, he came back into her bedroom and hustled
her out the door.

Instead of driving toward
Edgewood and the Monroeville entrance to the Turnpike, Connelly meandered
through the Oakland traffic and parked in a faculty lot behind one of the
research buildings for the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

Before Sasha could ask what was
going on, a slight Asian woman emerged from behind a pillar and trotted across
the lot to the SUV.

Connelly popped the lock, and she
hopped in the back seat.

He turned and shook her hand. “Thanks
for doing this, Dr. Yu.”

She nodded, her eyes serious
behind her square glasses. She leaned forward over the center console and
extended a hand to Sasha.

“Hi. I’m Ashleigh Yu.”

“Sasha McCandless.”

“Dr. Yu is a researcher at the
Infectious Disease Division. And a friend,” Connelly said. “So, I called in a
favor.”

Dr. Yu patted the seat next to
her and smiled at Sasha. “Why don’t you step into my office?”

She unzipped the bag and started removing
medical supplies. She laid out a syringe, a vial, and a bandage in a neat line
on the seat using quick, efficient motions.

Sasha turned to search Connelly’s
face. She watched him take a deep breath before he launched into an
explanation.

“Dr. Yu was on the team that
tested the vaccine. She happens to have a few doses from the trials. I was
vaccinated as part of the study. And, in light of—everything—you really need to
be, too. Please don’t argue with me, okay?” His voice contained the barest hint
of pleading.

Sasha realized that her instinct
was, in fact, to protest. For a number of reasons. Some legitimate, some less
so. But the stress was showing around Connelly’s eyes, so she simply nodded.

She slid out of the passenger
seat and joined Dr. Yu in the backseat.

The other woman rolled the vial
between her hands, gently reconstituting the liquid inside.

“Okay. I’m going to assume you
are currently healthy and not feeling any flu-like symptoms,” she said.

“That’s true,” Sasha confirmed,
shrugging out of her coat and placing it beside her on the leather seat.

“Roll up your sleeve, please. Use
your non-dominant arm. It might be sore for a while,” Dr. Yu told her.

Sasha paused. She was
left-handed. She wrote, threw, and used utensils and tools with her left hand.
But, her power was in her right. She considered writing with a sore arm versus
trying to land a jaw-breaking punch with a sore arm, and rolled up her left
sleeve.

Dr. Yu inserted the syringe into
the vial and took Sasha’s forearm in her own warm hand. As she drew the syringe
full of vaccine, she said, “So, in case you don’t know, you should achieve full
immunity within seventy-two hours. In the interim, you will be protected, but
there is a chance you could—if you were to somehow encounter the H17N10 virus
that is locked away in a Level Four facility—contract the Doomsday flu.”

The researcher’s voice dripped
with curiosity, but it wasn’t Sasha’s place to fill her in. She met Connelly’s
eyes in the rearview mirror.

He twisted in the seat and said, “Ashleigh.
Trust me. It’s better if you don’t know.”

Dr. Yu shrugged and plunged the
syringe into Sasha’s arm. “Okay. Here are the side effects you need to look out
for: fever, chills, a very sore red welt at the injection site, and general
flu-type symptoms.”

Sasha stared at her as she
removed the syringe and plastered a small bandage on Sasha’s arm.

“Wait. The side effect of this
flu vaccine is getting the flu?”

Dr. Yu pursed her lips. “Sort of.
Because the vaccine uses a weakened live virus similar, though not identical,
to the H17N10 virus, there is a chance you could come down with a very mild
case of the flu. That’s fairly typical when a live virus is used. The problem
in this case is that a very mild case of something that approximates the killer
flu—well, it could kill you.”

“What?!” Sasha couldn’t keep the
outrage out of her voice. She stared at the back of Connelly’s head, drilling a
hole in his skull with her red-hot fury.

“It’s a remote possibility,” Dr.
Yu continued in a mild voice as she reached into her medical bag. “And the
Doomsday virus itself is sufficiently horrible that the government weighed the
risk of side effects against the benefits of preventing a pandemic and decided
it was worth it. Honestly, you’re unlikely to die.”

“How comforting,” Sasha said in a
dry, tight voice.

Dr. Yu pressed several small,
square packets into the palm of Sasha’s hand. “Here. This is AviEx, ViraGene’s
antiviral. I don’t know how well it works against the true H17N10 virus, but I
can tell you that if you do start to experience flu symptoms, this will help.
It will lessen the severity and duration of your illness. You’ll still be
contagious, though.”

Sasha stared down at the foil
packages. “Thanks.”

Dr. Yu patted her arm. “You’re
welcome. And try not to worry. Leo was vaccinated, along with the entire board
of directors and the officers of his company. No one died, and, as far as I
know, no one experienced any side effects at all.”

She zippered her bag and leaned
forward. “Whatever you’re involved in, Leo, take care.”

He smiled at her and said, “We
will. Thanks again. I know you put yourself on the line to do this, and I won’t
forget it.”

She waved off his gratitude and
hopped out of the SUV. Sasha watched her run across the parking lot and
disappear into the boxy, white building across the way.

Sasha returned to the front seat
and placed the antiviral medicine in the inside zippered pocket of her bag. She
exhaled slowly and reminded herself that Connelly was under a considerable
amount of pressure and stress. She cleared her mind of her irritation and
smiled at him.

“Do you have any other surprises
in store or can we hit the road now?”

He reached out and caressed her
jaw. “Thank you. No more surprises,” he said in a soft voice. Then the engine
roared to life, and he backed out of the spot.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

By the time
Connelly barreled through the Easy-Pass toll lane and merged onto the Eastbound
Turnpike daylight was fading behind the mountains.

He stared down the miles of
patched and uneven road that unfolded in front of them, his hands gripping the
steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

Sasha sat in silence for a while,
letting him work through his worries on his own. Finally, she cleared her
throat and tried to decide how to phrase the suggestion that they stop for a
bite. A green and white mermaid flashed past as Connelly sped by a sign
advertising the amenities at the upcoming service plaza.

“Can we stop at Somerset? I think
it’s the last clear shot for Starbucks until Breezewood. I could really use a
cup of coffee,” she said.
And you could use to decompress and eat a snack or
something
, she added silently to herself.

“You don’t like Starbucks,” he
answered, accelerating.

“Come on, Connelly. I’m in the
mood for a gingerbread latte,” she lied.

He raised an eyebrow at her but
sighed, and eased the car into the right lane.

He followed a minivan into the
rest area. The parking lot was nearly deserted. He took a spot close to the
entrance, and they hurried out of the car and jogged toward the doors as the
wind whipped at their coats.

Inside, Sasha headed for the
Starbucks line and urged Connelly to get himself a slice of pizza. The peppy
holiday music that piped out from behind the counter was a poor fit for the
tired-looking, bored barista who took Sasha’s order.

“You said a skinny latte, right?”
the girl confirmed.

“Right.”

“Whipped cream?”

Sasha stopped herself from asking
who would order skim milk and whipped cream. “No thanks,” she said, forcing a
smile.

“Happy holidays,” the girl
intoned, dead-eyed and expressionless as she handed over the gargantuan drink.

Sasha headed to the tables near
the pizza joint and was pleased to see Connelly had taken her advice. He sat,
his long legs sprawled out under the small table, with a personal pizza and a
steaming black coffee in front of him.

“You didn’t have to wait for me,”
she said, eyeing his coffee with no small amount of jealousy.

“I wanted to.”

He smiled, but his eyes were
serious.

She slid into the seat across
from him and leaned over the table.

“Connelly, what’s wrong?”

“What’s
wrong
?” he echoed,
frowning at her.

She hurried to add, “I know this
is a serious situation. But, we’re doing everything we can. You have the
support of the board to talk to the government. We’ve filed a temporary restraining
order against ViraGene. There’s nothing else we can do right now, right?”

The tension didn’t leave his
face.

“That’s exactly it,” he said in a
voice barely above a whisper. “Somewhere out there, someone’s running around
with the deadliest weapon you could imagine, and there’s nothing I can do about
it.”

She stared at him.