Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (5 page)

“Easy. I had company. Grace
Roberts, this is Sasha McCandless,” Connelly said, gesturing toward Sasha.

Sasha stood and tugged down the
hem of the oversized sweater she wore as a dress.

Grace followed Connelly’s arm and
met Sasha’s eyes with a surprised look.

“Oh. Hello, there,” she said,
crossing the room with a long, loping stride. She smiled broadly and stuck out
her hand.

Sasha stepped forward to shake
her hand and found herself eye-level with Grace’s breasts. A hint of smoke-gray
lace peeked out from the neckline of her dress.

“Nice to meet you,” Sasha managed,
ignoring the clutch of emotion in her stomach.

Grace turned back to Connelly and
lowered her voice as if Sasha couldn’t hear her. “Um, I don’t think this is a
conversation that your girlfriend should sit in on. Do you want me to set her
up in one of the lounges with a magazine or something?”

Connelly laughed. “It’s okay.
Sasha’s going to represent the company on this issue if it ends up in court.
She can stay.”

Grace’s eyebrows shot up her
forehead. “Really? Tate approved that?”

“It was his idea, actually,”
Connelly said, giving her a confused look.

Grace was silent for a moment.
Sasha could see her calculating what this news might mean.

Finally, the other woman said, “Oh,
great. In that case, let’s get started. Welcome to the team, Sasha.”

Sasha smiled and hoped it looked
more sincere than it felt. “Thanks.”

It suddenly seemed perfectly
appropriate for Grace to be a coffee-fetcher.

She turned to Connelly, “Before
we start, I think I would like that coffee, after all.”

Connelly shut his almond eyes for
an instant, then exhaled slowly, and said, “I could probably use a cup, too. I’ll
get it. Grace, can I bring you anything?”

“No, thanks,” the other woman
said in a bright voice, “I’m all set. I did just make some, though. I thought
you might need something to pick you up after your drive. The fresh stuff is in
the kitchenette near the library.”

“Thanks,” Connelly said. He shot
Sasha an unreadable look before he left his office.

Sasha and Grace sat in silence.
Sasha on the leather couch; Grace draped across a chair, her legs crossed, the
top leg swinging back and forth.

They looked at each other.

“So,” Grace said, “what do you
think of the building?”

“It’s impressive,” Sasha said. “I
haven’t seen much of it, but I was surprised by how spread out it is.”

Grace nodded. “We have more than
one hundred employees working on-site, as well as a gym, a child care center,
and a cafeteria. But, the majority of our employees are stationed at our
various research and development centers, located throughout the world.” She
spoke with the soothing, practiced tone of a tour guide.

“How many R & D centers are
there?” Sasha asked.

Grace ticked them off on her
fingers. “Four state side, and three foreign centers in England, France, and
Switzerland. We also have manufacturing plants in Asia and South America.” 

“Can you give me an overview of
how security is handled at each facility?” Sasha asked.

“That’s a complicated question. I’m
not sure where to start,” Grace said.

“Okay, for instance, I noticed
Connelly’s ID card is keyed to his office door. That seems like a piece of a
pretty sophisticated, multi-layered system. I just wondered how it fit into the
bigger picture.”

 “Well, as you recognized, it is
a multi-layered system; and security is tailored to the needs and weaknesses of
each part of the corporation. Here at headquarters each employee has an ID card
that provides access to the building, the common areas, and the employee’s
department. Accounting personnel cannot access human resources; HR can’t access
security; and so on. But, with the exception of Leo’s office, the individual
offices within a department are not secured.”

“Why is his?” Sasha asked. She
spotted a fresh legal pad on Connelly’s desk and grabbed it to jot down some
notes.

“The decision predates us. The
system was in place when he was hired. Apparently, the Board of Directors
thought it was important that the Chief Security Officer’s office be unbreachable.”
Grace leaned in and said in a conspiratorial tone, “He thinks it’s overkill.”

Sasha was sure he did. Connelly
despised security theater—dramatic displays intended to create the impression
of security without actually improving safety or security.

“What about the research centers
and the manufacturing plants?”

“It depends. The R & D
buildings are locked down pretty tightly; that’s where the patented information
resides, after all. The manufacturing plants probably
should
be, to
prevent theft, but the focus there is more on sterility and cleanliness,” Grace
said.

Sasha thought for a moment, then
she asked, “What about your computer systems? Are they centralized?”

“Yes.” Grace nodded and was about
to continue, when they heard a bump against the door.

Sasha looked up to see Connelly’s
silhouette through the frosted glass door. He was turned to his side, juggling
two mugs and his key card. She stood and started for the door, but Grace strode
past her and pulled it open for him.

“That freaking card reader . . .”
he trailed off, shaking his head at the unnecessary security, and smiled his
thanks to Grace.

Sasha stood halfway between the
door and the couch, feeling about as useful as the card reader.

“Here you go. Strong and dark,
like you like it,” Connelly said with a grin as he handed off one of the mugs
to her.

“Thanks.” She trailed him back to
the couch and sat next to him.

Grace waited for them to get
situated with their mugs. Sasha took a long sip of coffee. Hot, and, as
promised, strong and dark.

She took another swallow then
placed the mug on the side table to her right and picked up the notepad she’d
stolen from Connelly’s desk.

Grace looked at Connelly. “So, I
was filling Sasha in on the security at the various locations. She had just
asked about the computer systems. Should I continue or do you want to hear what
happened?”

Connelly combed a hand through
his thick, ink-black hair, making it stand up in short spikes. “I’m awfully
curious, but walk Sasha through the computer security first. She might need the
background.”

Sasha could tell Grace was bursting
to tell them about the espionage, but she nodded and turned to Sasha.

“So, all of our data is
centralized on one intranet, which we run out of this building. All the various
programs and databases for orders, purchases, shipments, everything resides on
the intranet. We can tell who’s accessed what and when. An individual employee’s
password only enables him or her to open or view documents that are required to
perform the functions of his or her job. So, for instance, a billing clerk
couldn’t open the marketing plan for one of our drugs.”

“What about remote access to the
systems? Can employees log in from home?” Sasha asked.

“They can, but it’s discouraged.
In addition, in order to do it, an employee would need to use a secure fob to
log in, which provides a series of random, frequently changing numbers. Once
logged in, access is terminated after four minutes of inactivity. So, if you
log in, start working, then step away to go to the bathroom or get a snack, you
would likely need to go through the sign in process again. It’s designed to
keep the data secure and to disincentivize people from accessing files
remotely.”

Sasha nodded. It made sense.
Protecting the company’s sensitive data probably outweighed efficiency
concerns.

Connelly and Grace shared a look.

“What?” Sasha asked.

Grace continued to stare at
Connelly but didn’t speak.

Connelly turned toward Sasha. “Grace
has strong feelings about the security of our electronic data. Despite all
these safeguards, we are, in many ways, leaving our information wide open.”

“How so?” Sasha asked.

Grace piped up. “Many of our
research scientists—most of them, in fact—have come to us from academia. They
are in the habit of collaborating with colleagues all over the world by loading
information to the cloud. They seem to think no one other than their fellow
researchers would be interested enough to try to access it.” She shook her head
at the naivety.

“You mean they use Dropbox or
something?” Sasha asked.

“Dropbox, Boxy, Google Drive,”
Connelly confirmed. “We’ve tried to explain to them that those sites are not
sufficiently secure to house proprietary research and development material, but
they don’t seem to believe us. They argue that at their universities, they were
working in level four secure facilities and throwing this stuff up in the cloud,
and no one objected.”

Grace’s eyes took on a glint of
steel. “And they continue to do it, even though it’s against corporate policy.
I monitor those uploads myself. They just do whatever they want.”

Sasha addressed Connelly. “That’s
fairly serious. To claim that information is trade secret and entitled to legal
protection, you guys have to take steps to actually protect it.”

“I know,” he said. “Tate and I
have argued with the head of R & D until our voices are hoarse. Those
scientists are the company’s bread and butter. No one is going to make them do
anything
.
So, right now, the best we can do is have Grace monitor their activity and hope
none of their accounts get hacked.” He shrugged, helpless and frustrated, then
said to Grace, “Please tell me that’s not what happened?”

“No, it’s not. There’s a problem
at the Pennsylvania DC.” Grace said.

“DC, as in distribution center?”
Sasha asked.

“Right. I guess I didn’t mention
it, did I?” Grace answered. “In addition to research and development centers
and manufacturing facilities, we used to have regional distribution centers—one
on the West Coast, one in the South, one in the upper Midwest, and one in New
Kensington, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, which served the Northeast
and Mid-Atlantic. They were nothing more than warehouses. In recent years, the
company moved to just in time production and closed the DCs.”

“Just in time production?” Sasha
asked again, scribbling as fast as she could.

The learning curve for a client’s
new business was always steep. But she’d found it was important to gather as
much information at this stage as she could. Once litigation was underway,
clients tended to assume their lawyers understood their business operations.
Sasha had seen more than one instance of a case going south because an attorney
misunderstood or never fully knew how a client ran its business. It hadn’t yet
happened to her. And she wasn’t about to let Connelly’s company be the first.

“Right. Instead of housing
inventory, which gets costly, we’ve honed our systems so that we manufacture
just enough of each of our drugs to fill the immediate demand. And as soon as
they’re produced, we send them directly to the customer. It’s more efficient
and less expensive than having pallets of drugs sitting around, potentially
going out of date, while we wait for someone to place an order,” Connelly
explained.

“Okay, so if you closed all the
distribution centers, how is there a problem at the Pennsylvania DC?” Sasha
said, asking the obvious question.

“We just reopened it for a
special project. We have a government contract for a minimum of twenty-five
million doses of a vaccine. Obviously, we can’t produce that amount instantly.
And the government, being the government, can’t pay for it all at once either.
So, as doses are manufactured, we’re going to ship them to the Pennsylvania DC
and hold them. Each time we reach a million doses, we’re to invoice the feds,
then they’ll send reservists from Fort Meade in Maryland to come pick up the
vaccines,” Connelly explained.

“The government’s going to
stockpile vaccines at Fort Meade?” Sasha asked.

“It’s a national security issue.
We’re not talking about just any vaccine; this one provides immunity to the
killer flu,” Grace explained.

  Sasha had reached the awkward
part of an initial client meeting, where she had to admit she had no idea what
the business people were talking about. Usually, the confession was well
received, and the business people tripped all over themselves to be helpful and
educate her. This time, she had a vague suspicion that Connelly might have told
her all of this during one of their telephone conversations and she simply hadn’t
focused on the details.

She’d been busy the past several weeks.
In her efforts to adjust to living alone again and to block out her disastrous
foray into criminal defense work, she had taken on four complicated new cases
and had been working hours that were long, even by her standards. On top of
that, she’d been trying to fit everything into a four-day workweek so she could
spend long weekends at the lake with Connelly. On the weekends that they hadn’t
met up, she’d made it a point to get together with friends or spend time with
her extended family. All that activity, on top of her workout routine, had kept
her mind off Connelly’s absence and the outcome of her Lady Lawyer Killer case,
but it left her somewhat absentminded. Now she was going to have to explain she
had no idea what Connelly and Grace were talking about.

“Let’s step back. The federal
government has decided the flu is a matter of national security?” she said.

Another look passed between
Connelly and Grace.

“It’s not just the flu, it’s the
Doomsday virus—the killer flu. I know I told you about this,” Connelly said.

“You did,” Sasha agreed quickly. “I
just need a better understanding as your corporate attorney than I had as your
girlfriend. Tell me everything you know about the Doomsday virus, okay? Pretend
I don’t know anything.”