Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (16 page)

“It’s not your job to stop him
anymore. You’re the chief security officer for a pharmaceutical company, not a
government agent—or a superhero.”

She felt her own stress level
rising. They were not going to get involved in saving the world. At least she
wasn’t. She was going to meet with the task force to explain why the first
vaccine order had been shorted and then she was going to wait for the court to
grant her emergency temporary restraining order. And that was the extent of it.
She sincerely hoped Connelly didn’t plan to track down a virus-wielding
lunatic.

“I know,” he conceded, staring
down at his pizza. He lifted his eyes and searched her face. “But, you don’t
understand. That virus
can’t
get out.”

Sasha nodded but couldn’t speak
around the lump in her throat. She took a sip of her sweet coffee drink
instead. Over Connelly’s shoulder, she spotted a state trooper lounging by the
vending machines just inside the entrance. She hadn’t noticed him when they
rushed inside from the cold. On closer inspection, the casual pose was an act.
His hand rested just beside his weapon and his eyes swept the area in a
constant, careful arc.

“I thought you said the
government hasn’t released the news about the virus?” she said, nodding toward
the vigilant trooper stationed by the door.

Connelly nodded. “Trust me, they
haven’t. They can’t risk that level of panic and hysteria. They probably
alerted all the state governors to an unspecified, unconfirmed threat and asked
them to put boots on the ground to monitor for suspicious activity.”

“And the states would just do
that? With no real information or meaningful explanation?”

Sasha hoped her voice sounded
less judgmental than she felt. Given his current mental state, she wasn’t
looking to rehash their battles over the Patriot Act.

“Yes, they really would. But,
there’s only so long before some desk jockey in D.C. blurts out to his wife
that she should wear a mask to the grocery store , just in case. Then, she’ll
tell her mother and best friend that there’s something contagious and very bad
that the feds are worried about. Twenty minutes later, it’ll be all over
Facebook and twitter. So, the window to handle this under the radar is closing.
Quickly.”

Connelly balled up his napkin and
tossed it on top of his uneaten pizza.

Sasha plucked the napkin from his
plate and pushed the food toward him.

“Please eat. You’re the one who
always says sleep, food, and exercise are weapons available for everyone’s
arsenal; anyone who doesn’t take advantage of them is a fool.”  She smiled to
lessen the blow of scolding him with his own stupid maxim.

His mouth curved up at the
corners in the smallest of smiles, and he picked up a slice of pizza and
started to chew.

That hurdle cleared, Sasha
returned to her coffee and ruminated on how to get him to move off the idea
that he could swoop in and contain a deadly virus.

They finished their pitiful
excuse for dinner in silence and left, nodding goodbye to the trooper before
they bent their heads against the howling wind and ran back to the car. In her
pocket, Sasha’s phone vibrated and rang, but she didn’t notice.

Gavin paced
beside his car and willed Sasha to pick up her ringing phone. Instead, her
voicemail message filled his ear.

“Sasha, it’s Gavin. Call me as
soon as you get this. I found Celia. She’s up at this prepper compound out past
Firetown, and she’s really sick.”

He exhaled and dropped his phone
back into his pocket. He wished he’d caught her. But he didn’t have time to
worry about it now. He slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine.
Then, he leaned over and racked the passenger seat all the way back so Celia
could rest more comfortably while he found a doctor’s office or urgent care
center for her. He hoped he wouldn’t have to drive all the way to the hospital
in Springport. She was in bad shape; he needed to find someplace closer.

As he returned to a seated
position, the weight from the gun pressed into him. He didn’t really need it
now. There was no one up there other than him and Celia. He removed the gun and
holster and locked them in the glove compartment, then he turned the car around
and headed for the gravel drive.

When he reached the metal gate,
he exited the car and left the engine running. He bent down to examine the arm.
If he could raise it, he could drive the car right up to Celia’s cabin. He wasn’t
concerned about his ability to carry her—she was little more than a limp rag at
this point—but he assumed being out in the cold would be bad for her condition.

He crouched and pushed on the
rusted metal hinge. Behind him, footsteps crunched across the frozen snow.

“Sir! Turn around slowly, please,”
a voice barked near his ear.

Gavin rose to his feet and
pivoted to face the business end of a twelve-gauge Remington Magnum. Its owner
held it steady and pointed it at the center of Gavin’s chest.

The woman wore an orange parka
with the hood drawn tight around her face. Her eyes were unblinking.

He glanced back at his
still-running car, with the loaded gun safely locked away in the glove
compartment.
You idiot
, he thought to himself. He raised his hands above
his head, nice and slow.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The woman marched
him past the cluster of cabins to a long, low rectangular building.

“Open it,” she said when they
reached the double doors. Gavin pushed through the doors and stepped into a
mostly empty mess hall. A dozen and a half wooden picnic tables flanked by
scarred benches on each side formed six rows of three. Three men in fatigues
were unloading boxes at the far end of the room.

 “This way,” she said, aiming the
gun toward a doorway off to the right. The arrival of a prisoner at gunpoint either
went unnoticed or was unremarkable because no one even glanced up as they
walked through the mess room and into a small, dimly-lit hallway.

A single naked bulb dangled from
a fixture in the ceiling and a map of the grounds, a reminder about not feeding
the wildlife, and a calendar of events—relics from when the campsite had been
run by the Department of Natural Resources—-still hung from a corkboard nailed
into the log wall. Just past the corkboard, a door was set into the wall.
Hanging from the door was a laminated sheet of paper that identified the room
as “Captain Bricker’s Office.”

The woman rapped on the door.

“Come in,” a male voice rumbled
from the other side.

She nudged Gavin through the
doorway with the muzzle of her rifle.

The man who had been sitting
behind a metal desk jumped up guiltily. He didn’t look like any kind of captain
Gavin had ever seen. He was in his late thirties, a little soft around the
middle, with shaggy brown hair that touched the collar of his hunting jacket.

“You’re Captain Bricker? Are you
in charge here?” Gavin asked.

The man’s eyes opened wide. “No,
sir. I’m George—Sergeant Rollins. Lydia, what’s going on?” he turned to the
gun-toting woman for an explanation.

“Trespasser, sir. I found him
messing with the gate while I was on patrol.” She spoke in a clipped,
militaristic voice.

Gavin wondered where these people
had come from. The compound had been empty. Unless they’d been holed up in the
recreation center the entire time. But, then where was their vehicle?

While he asked himself questions
he couldn’t answer, Rollins watched him. Indecision was plain on the other man’s
face. Gavin decided to take charge of the encounter.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said,
addressing Rollins and studiously ignoring the woman named Lydia. She struck
him as the trigger-happy sort.

Rollins nodded, visibly relieved
that he was doing the talking.

Gavin continued, “There’s been
some sort of misunderstanding. I’m looking for  one of your members—Celia
Gerig?”

Beside him, he heard Lydia’s
sharp intake of breath. The color drained from Rollins’ face.

“What do you want with Celia?” he
demanded.

“I’m a family friend. Her mother
hasn’t heard from her in a while. She’s worried. She told me Celia belongs to
your, uh, organization, so I came up to see if she was here.”

Gavin delivered the half-truth
convincingly, judging by the way Rollins relaxed his shoulders.

“I see,” Rollins said slowly.

“Celia’s sick,” the woman
snapped.

Gavin turned to her. “In that
case, let me take her to get medical care.”

“I didn’t say she was here,”
Lydia responded, narrowing her eyes. “Anyway, I’m a nurse. I’m qualified to
care for her.”

“May I see her?” Gavin asked,
careful to be polite and nonthreatening.

Lydia cut her eyes toward
Rollins. Whatever his actual status was, the mild-mannered man was clearly her
superior in the prepper hierarchy.

“I’m sorry,” Rollins said slowly.
“You can’t. She might be contagious.”

Gavin would have plenty of time
to regret the next words that came from his mouth.

“Actually, I’ve already seen her.
I found her in that cabin. I just want to talk to her and make sure she’s okay
staying here. If she says she is, I’ll leave—I swear.”

A look passed between Lydia and
Rollins. A long moment ticked by. Then Rollins sighed.

“Quarantine him,” he said.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“We have a
problem,” a female voice said as soon as Anna picked up the ringing phone.

Anna waited for the woman on the
other end of the phone to identify both herself and her problem.

Anna wasn’t simply Jeffrey’s
wife; she was his lieutenant. He was the public face of Preppers PA, and he
shielded her from her his dealings with outsiders, but she was responsible for
the day-to-day operations within the organization. She shielded him from the
in-fighting, the minutiae, and the tedious work that any group of individuals,
no matter how united around a common cause, created. Jeffrey Bricker had the
vision, but Anna made the trains run on time.

“This is Lydia. We have a
problem,” the woman repeated, her voice shaking.

Lydia Markham. Anna called up a
mental picture of the woman. Mid-thirties, medium height, straight brown hair.
Pleasant, if unremarkable, in appearance. Physically strong. Single. Had
specialized training as a nurse, which made her valuable.

“What’s the problem, Lydia?” Anna
asked, tucking a stray tendril of hair behind her ear and peering through the
kitchen window to make sure the kids were all accounted for and occupied out
back while she waited for the nurse to gather her thoughts and tell her story.
She watched their nighttime snowball battle and wondered if Lydia’s romance
with her segment leader had soured. Anna had told George not to get involved
with a woman under his direct command.

“Well, you know how George—”

“Do you mean Sergeant Rollins?”
Anna interrupted, sending a clear message that she didn’t want to hear about
any relationship troubles.

“Uh, right, Sergeant Rollins.
Anyway, you know how Sergeant Rollins was charged with obtaining the
medicine
?”

“Of course,” Anna said, too
quickly.

She had no idea what Lydia was
referencing, but the odd emphasis the nurse placed on the word ‘medicine’ made
Anna think of the vials rolling around in Jeffrey’s duffel bag. Under the
existing structure, however, she was the only one who would have given Rollins
an assignment of any kind, and she hadn’t.

Unless Jeffrey had circumvented
her?  Her face burned hot, and her mouth went dry at the thought that he hadn’t
trusted her to carry out a mission—whatever it may have entailed. She forced
herself to focus on the nurse’s halting voice.

“Right, of course you do. Sorry.
So, Celia Gerig was put in place to acquire the items, and she did. She did
great. But…” Lydia trailed off.

“But what, Lydia? I don’t have
time for this,” Anna said, adding a hint of steel to her voice to prompt the
story along.

“Right, sorry.”  Lydia said
before letting the words spill out as fast as they came. “So, after the
leadership meeting, we all vaccinated each other—you know, like a first
responder team.”

A vaccine
. Anna exhaled in
relief. The vials were just a vaccine. Jeffrey’s failure to involve her in such
a routine acquisition was odd, and the fact that there’d been a leadership
meeting without her was undeniably troubling, but this was all a non-issue. The
vials were just a vaccine.

“It’s okay,” Anna assured the
younger woman.

“No, you don’t understand! It’s
not okay. Celia had a reaction or something. She’s dead.” Lydia’s voice
cracked, and she began to sob softly.

“She’s dead?” Anna repeated
stupidly. Her face went numb, and the window glass looked like it was
undulating. The dark shapes of her kids carried on their snowball fight through
the waves as her hands started to sweat.

“I don’t know what happened,”
Lydia wailed. “She started to feel shaky and queasy yesterday, about eighteen
hours after I inoculated her, so Geo—Sergeant Rollins and I took her up to camp
to rest. We figured it was better for her to be out sight for a while anyway. It
wasn’t going to take much effort to connect her to the missing vaccines. We took
her up Saturday night after the vaccine clinics. We came back up this evening with
a couple men from the unit to stock the munitions shed and unload the medical
supplies. Sergeant Rollins dropped us off and left to refill the gas tanks. I
figured I’d go check on her. She was in really bad shape, which she shouldn’t
have been. I mean, the textbook reaction to a flu vaccine is a mild fever,
maybe some achiness. There was nothing mild about this. She was burning up,
dehydrated, and delirious. She could barely stand. She was a ragdoll.”