Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (6 page)

“Okay,” he conceded. “After the
bird and swine flu scares, researchers realized that a flu pandemic would be,
for lack of a better word, devastating. The death toll would make historic
plagues look like a joke, and the quarantines and panic that would result could
cripple the global economy.”

Sasha tried not to let her
skepticism show on her face. It sounded like Y2K hysteria all over again.

But Connelly knew her too well. “It’s
a very real threat, Sasha. So real, in fact, that the government became
concerned about bioterrorism.”

“We’re worried someone will use
the flu as a weapon?” she asked.

“Right,” Grace confirmed. “So, we
decided to develop it first.”

“What?” Sasha cocked her head.

“The National Institutes of
Health funded a study to combine the three most severe naturally occurring flu
strains into a mutant superflu,” Grace said, her tone neutral.

Sasha gasped despite herself. “We
made it? On purpose?”

“We did. But, the resultant flu
wasn’t highly contagious. It was difficult to transmit,” Connelly explained.

“Oh, that’s good,” Sasha said.

Connelly continued, “So, the NIH
funded another study to see whether the new flu virus could be genetically
modified to make it more contagious.”

“What? Why?”

Connelly put down his coffee mug
and threw up his hands. “I don’t know why, Sasha. I guess it seemed like a good
idea at the time.”

“Did it work?” Sasha asked. She
was almost numb with disbelief.

“Oh, it worked all right. The new
strain, which is what the press is talking about when they refer to the killer
flu, is not only capable of airborne transmission, making it very easy to pass
among humans, it’s more virulent. Researchers have created an extremely
contagious, deadly flu virus,” Connelly said, reaching across the couch and
taking her free hand in his. “I guess I downplayed all this when I talked to
you about the vaccine, but it’s been all over the news.”

Sasha had been avoiding the news
in the aftermath of her own infamy but was too stunned to form a response for a
moment. Then, she said, “But you guys have a vaccine that will work against it?”

Grace smiled reassuringly at her.
“We do. It was quite a challenge, because after the researchers announced they’d
concocted the killer flu, the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity
forbid them from publishing their results, citing national security. That made
it virtually impossible to work on an effective vaccine until we hired away
some members of the research team. And, we had to take the unusual step of
using a small amount of a live virus that’s as close to the Doomsday virus as
we could manage instead of a killed virus to make the vaccine.”

“But it works?” Sasha asked.

“It works in ferrets,” Connelly
said, rubbing the skin between her right thumb and index finger with his. “Ferrets,
apparently, are close to humans in germ transmission.”

“Okay.” Sasha figured that fact
was no less believable than anything else she’d heard. “So, the government
wants to buy millions of doses of a vaccine that works in ferrets to protect us
from a deadly flu that it created.”

“Basically,” Connelly said.

“And you’re making it as fast as
you can and sending it to this distribution center in Pennsylvania to await
pick up by army reservists,” she continued, grateful for Connelly’s warm hand
in hers. She gave it a squeeze.

“You’re all caught up,” Grace
said. “Now, do you want to hear the problem?”

“Yes,” Connelly and Sasha said in
unison.

“ViraGene has a mole in the DC,”
Grace said. She leaned forward, and Sasha recognized excitement shining in the
woman’s brilliant blue eyes.

Connelly’s hand tightened over
Sasha’s as he said, “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Ben Davenport called me shortly
after six o’clock this evening. He said he’d had an unsettling encounter with
one of the clerks—a woman named Celia Gerig, who started working for us the
Monday before last. Her job responsibility is to check in the pallets when they
arrive at the warehouse, count them, and shrink wrap them to await pick up.”

“Ben is the distribution center
manager. He seems like a good guy and a straight shooter,” Connelly interjected
for Sasha’s benefit.

“Anyway, Ben ran into Celia in
the parking lot. Her car battery was dead, so he gave her a jump. As he
explained it, she seemed edgy or nervous. He didn’t go into detail except to
say that the conversation left him with the strong feeling that something was
wrong.”

Grace seemed apologetic about the
amorphous nature of Ben’s report, but Sasha just nodded. Intuition was real, as
far as Sasha was concerned, and had saved her life on more than one occasion.
Whenever her gut told her something was off, she listened. Her Krav Maga
instructor had a saying that the human brain has the remarkable ability to know
things it doesn’t know it knows.

“Tell me you didn’t drag me all
the way in here because Ben had a bad feeling,” Connelly said.

Grace briefly twisted her mouth
into the expression disbelieving underlings reserved for mildly insulting questions
from their neurotic bosses. Sasha recognized it well from her years at Prescott
& Talbott. She had given it to her share of partners in response to questions
confirming that she’d cite checked the cases in a brief or served all the
parties of record.

After a moment, she answered. “No,
Leo. Ben was concerned enough to go back into the office and pull her personnel
file. It looks like Human Resources confirmed her social security number
against the government database, and it checked out, but they hadn’t yet gotten
around to checking her references.”

Sasha saw Connelly’s eyes flash,
but his expression remained impassive.

Grace must have picked up on the
flicker of anger, too.

“I know. I called Jessica at home
to find out why. She said they’re backlogged with all the new hires to get the
warehouse open. They’re running the socials as they get them, but they can only
check so many references a day, and Gerig was a low priority.”

“She should have told us. We’d
have authorized overtime,” Connelly said in a flat tone.

“I told her that. I also told her
to get in here tomorrow and start doing them herself. I reminded her that the
government doesn’t play around with security on its contracts and that she
doesn’t want to be the one who loses this one for us. Trust me, she got it,”
Grace said.

Connelly nodded his approval.

Grace continued. “So, Ben picked
up the phone and started calling around. None of her references check out. Either
the telephone number is bad, no one answers, or the person who picks up the
phone has never heard of Celia Gerig.”

Connelly considered this news. “That’s
not good.”

“It gets worse. Ben called her
number she’d listed as her home phone and got a recorded message that the
number had been disconnected. Then he got really worried, so he drove over to
the address she’d provided as her residence. He said if she ever lived there,
she’s cleared out. It looks abandoned. He peeked in the front window, and there’s
no furniture. There’s a realtor’s sign stuck in the lawn saying the place is
for rent or sale. He called the realtor, but she hasn’t gotten back to him yet.
Celia Gerig’s gone.”

“Is anything missing?”

“Nothing obvious, according to
Ben. He’s still at the office, going through all the files, looking for
something out of place, but, so far, he hasn’t found anything. He had a weekend
shift scheduled to come in tomorrow anyway, so he’s going to go back in the
morning and take another look with fresh eyes.” Grace’s grim voice matched her
expression.

Connelly and Grace fell silent.

“And you’re convinced a
competitor is behind this? ViraGene?” Sasha asked.

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“How can you be so sure?”

“It’s them. Who else would it be?”
Grace said, echoing what Tate had said.

Connelly nodded. “Almost
certainly. Okay, call Ben and tell him Sasha and I will be there first thing in
the morning.”

“You don’t want me to come?”
Grace’s disappointment was splashed across her face.

“I need you here to ride herd
over the Human Resources folks.”

Connelly gave Grace one of his
most heartwarming smiles. It started at the right corner of his mouth and
tugged his lips into a grin. It seemed to ease the sting, and Grace smiled
back.

Michel was dying.
He could tell by the foamy, red bubbles of blood that escaped from his lips
with each breath he managed. The stranger had punctured his left lung.

The stabbing had been swift and
impersonal. A heavy knock at the thick, wooden door. Then, when Michel had
opened the door, in a flash, the man had forced him backward and into the
kitchen of the old stone farmhouse. Once inside, the attacker had produced from
his pocket a curved hunting knife and plunged it into Michel’s chest with no
comment, no fuss. Then he’d wiped his knife on the checkered tea towel hanging
near the sink and had walked out, pulling the door closed behind him.

Sweating and gasping, as pain
seared through his chest, Michel collapsed into a chair at the table where he’d
eaten breakfast just hours ago and considered his options. He was hours from
the nearest modern medical facility. He would die before he reached care.

He supposed he could stumble down
the hill to the village below and either die on the rocky path or, if he was
very lucky, on the couch in Docteur Bonnet’s parlor.

Mais non
, Michel decided,
exhaling and spraying blood across the table, he would die here, in the
farmhouse where his grandfather had been born.

His breaths were coming faster
now and with greater effort. He wished he had time to uncork a bottle of
Cabernet from Monsieur Girard’s vineyard, but he would have to settle for
turning his chair slightly, so he could see the cold, white sky through the
window. He paused to fix in his mind an image of the fields as they looked
during the summer, when the rows of sunflowers turned their faces upward to the
golden sun like a class full of schoolchildren watching their teacher at the
chalkboard.

As his pulse thudded toward the
finish line, Michel shivered. He stared out the window and considered the
actions that had brought him to this point. Although he didn’t know the man who
had stabbed him, he knew for a certainty why he’d been attacked and left for
dead: the Doomsday virus.

But, he had known from the beginning
that he was taking a risk by selling the virus to the American. The potential
rewards had made the risk worth taking. He could no sooner undo what he’d done
than will the sunflowers up from the frozen ground.

And now he would die without
bouncing his Malia on his knee one last time. Without feeling her warm arms
wrapped around his neck as she snuggled in for a hug, smelling of crayons, and
milk, and sunshine.

Regret is just wasted energy
,
he told himself, drawing a last, shaky breath as the sun and the dormant fields
faded, first to gray, then to black.

Leo glanced
across the front seat of the Passat at Sasha. Her hands gripped the steering
wheel tightly, and her eyes were fixed on the stretch of Route 28 that unrolled
in front of them. She wore sunglasses to combat the early morning glare of the
sun off the snow banked along the sides of the highway. But he knew that,
behind the lenses, her eyes would be dull and tired.

He was worried about her. After
their meeting with Grace, they’d driven back to the lake house just long enough
to pack up, shut off the water, and pick up her car. Then, they’d caravanned to
Pittsburgh, gliding into the city on quiet streets in the dead of night.

By the time they fell into bed it
was nearly three o’clock.

Leo hadn’t spent the night at
Sasha’s condo in over a month, and he’d been surprised how out of place he’d
felt there.

He’d had trouble falling asleep, and
Sasha’s restlessness hadn’t helped. For most of the night, she’d flailed,
tossing and turning, and mumbled about killers and killer flus in her sleep.

If he hadn’t been worried she’d
misinterpret his action, he’d have gone out and slept on the couch. But, he
didn’t want to introduce any more distance between them.

I shouldn’t have convinced her to
take the case, he chastised himself.

But it was too late now.

Earlier, over bowls of baked
oatmeal with dried fruit, he’d tried to suggest they find a labor and
employment lawyer to handle the investigation into Celia Gerig’s background.
She’d waved him off and changed the subject to the recipe for her oatmeal,
proudly gesturing to the slow cooker where the steel-cut oats had cooked while
they’d slept—or tried to, at any rate.

Leo knew one thing for sure: if Sasha
was changing the subject
to
her cooking, she was uncomfortable with the
topic at hand.

He’d been selfish to ask her to
take the case. So what if Tate were inconvenienced? Shouldn’t Sasha’s happiness
come before some random corporate big shot’s?

He cleared his throat. “So, what’s
in this town? Old boyfriend?”

Sasha had insisted on driving to
their meeting in New Kensington, saying she was familiar with the town.

She took her eyes from the road
to look at him, and he smiled to let her know he was kidding.

“Hardly,” she said, smiling back
at him for a moment.

Her smile stirred a feeling of
tenderness, a lump in his throat.

“Then what’s the connection?”

She turned her attention back to
the road and said, “During law school, I did a clinical placement with a
community economic development organization, helping small businesses
incorporate in depressed former steel towns. I had clients in New Ken, Oil
City, Montour, all over. I spent a lot of time driving this stretch of road a
decade ago.”