Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (32 page)

“That’s it!”

“What?” He pulled back and
watched her face.

She nodded her head, and he could
see her marshaling her argument, checking off the points to make.

“Tate’s involved with the
preppers.”

“Oliver Tate?” He nearly snorted
in derision.

“Hear me out. Last night, when I
was working in his office, I knocked his desk blotter off the desk. Underneath
it, there was a sticky note with Celia Gerig’s name written on it,” she said.

“You were snooping in Oliver’s
desk?

He was surprised at the
sneakiness—Sasha’s style was usually straightforward to a fault—but he didn’t
really care that she’d done it. After all, the man had just fired him for the
sake of appearance. But, the notion that Oliver was mixed up with the preppers
was ludicrous.

“No. I told you, I bumped the
blotter.” She shot him an offended look and then continued, “I didn’t think
anything of the note last night. My mind was on the appeal, I guess. But, I
realized today that he was already in Wyoming when Grace learned about Celia
Gerig. He had to have written the note beforehand.”

“What are you suggesting?” Leo
asked. Suspicion pricked at his nerves. If she was right about the note;
something was definitely off.

“I think if Grace interviews the
human resources people, she’ll learn that somehow—either directly or
indirectly—Tate got Celia that job.”

Sasha stared across the car at
him with placid, serious eyes.

He nodded. “Maybe. I’ll call her—”

“That’s not all,” Sasha
interrupted. “When I tried to call him this morning, his housekeeper or
property manager or whoever answered the phone said that he and the girls left
Wyoming last night.”

“No, that’s wrong. When he called
to terminate me, he said he was between ski runs.”

“I don’t care what he said. He
cut his trip short. So where is he?”

Leo stared at her. “I don’t know.
Where do you think he is?”

She jerked her chin forward,
toward the distant campground. “There. With his daughters.”

Anna’s words—
the twins arrived
late last night
—echoed in his mind.

“Tate’s a prepper?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Yes. I mean, I don’t
know him at all. But if I’m right, it explains how Celia got the job and why
she used her real social—he would have known that Human Resources would check
that right away. Just say he believes a pandemic is coming and civilization is
going to collapse—and, working at the company, I’m sure he’s heard about
nothing but the killer flu day after day. So he starts to believe it. He’s a
smart guy, but he knows he doesn’t have the skill set to survive in a
post-apocalyptic world. He decided to find a way to make himself indispensable
to Bricker’s merry band of lunatics. He used the resource he had: access to the
vaccine.”

She said it so matter-of-factly
that it sounded almost rational.

“So, you think when Bricker put
out the call for the preppers to bug out, Tate hightailed it here from Wyoming?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he bugged out
when Judge Minella denied our temporary restraining order—that was a sure sign something
bigger was going on. It could have spooked him. All I’m saying is you should
prepare yourself in case I’m right, and your former general counsel is holed up
in the woods purifying water or skinning a rabbit.”

Or loading a rifle
, Leo
thought, trying to imagine Oliver shooting a gun. His imagination failed him.

Flickering light caught his eye.
He straightened and leaned forward, peering through the windshield.

“Do you see that?” he asked
Sasha, pointing toward the campground.

She squinted. “It looks like
fire.”

“What the devil are they doing
down there?”

“Connelly, are those
torches
?”

He blinked, clearing his vision,
and then two shapes materialized in the darkness: shady figures holding the
burning torches aloft.

Sasha sat the coffee in the cup
holder and reached to open her door.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“Getting a better look.”

He grabbed her hand to stop her.

“No, the interior lights will
come on if you open the door. They’ll see us.”

She released the door with a
sheepish look.

He removed his Glock from the
center console. Then he loaded rounds into the magazine, one after another,
until it was full, then he slid it into the shaft. The catch engaged, and he
pulled the slide back until it sprung forward.

Sasha watched him but didn’t
speak.

They had to leave the SUV at some
point if they wanted to see what was going on. He considered their options:
open the doors and risk the figures below noticing the flash of light or start
the car and move it to the large brush off to their right and risk them hearing
the engine.

Sound didn’t travel nearly as far
as most people thought. But it was a quiet night.

Mind made up, he jabbed the key
into the ignition and turned it to the ‘Accessory’ position. Then he pressed
the button to lower the passenger window.

“Go.”

Sasha clambered through the open
window and dropped silently to the ground. He followed, less gracefully he was
sure, but noiselessly.

They crept around to the front of
the vehicle and stared down at the field. The flames danced wildly in the
darkness.

A
crack
sounded and then
echoed off the mountainside. Only one thing in the world made that sound—the
sharp report of a rifle being fired.

A faint scream rose from below—a
woman’s scream.

Sasha scrambled down the hillside
with Leo on her heels.

Sasha stumbled
over the rocks and frozen ground, the wind stinging her eyes, and came to a
copse of trees about a hundred yards short of the clearing.

Connelly came up behind her a few
seconds later and leaned against a young pine tree.

They peered over the top of a row
of sparse shrubs. Sasha gasped involuntarily and pressed her hand against her
mouth.

The field was lit by the two
torches, which were still burning and had been placed in two metal holders that
stood twenty feet apart from one another. Between the posts, a young tree rose
from the earth, straight and tall. The lower branches had been sawed off. A man’s
body was tied to the narrow trunk, his head slumped forward.

The flames flickered over his
face, casting part of it in shadows, but even so, Sasha recognized Gavin. Dark
liquid pooled in the snow at his feet, pouring from his forehead. He’d been
shot between the eyes. Executed.

Across from his corpse stood a
man and a woman, each holding a rifle, and, between them, a taller, older man.
Sasha could tell by his bearing it was Bricker. He had the authoritative air of
a military leader.

Bricker was not holding a
firearm. Instead, he was holding a heaving, handcuffed woman. The woman had her
head twisted to the side to avoid looking at Gavin’s dead body. Bricker put a
hand on her neck and wrenched her forward to face Gavin.

“Do you see what happens to those
who cross us, Anna?” he said in a low, rough voice that carried on the wind.

She sobbed.

“I asked you a question.”

“Yes, Jeffrey. I see,” she said
in a defeated voice. She slumped against him and said, “Just get it over with.”

“You heard her, Lydia. Are you
ready to see if you can match George’s marksmanship?” Bricker said to the woman
to his right.

“Yes, sir.”

Bricker thrust his wife toward
the man. “Cut him down and line up the prisoner.”

The man slid his rifle into a
black nylon sling, slung it over his left shoulder, and began to drag Anna
toward the tree between the torches.

Sasha heaved. She kept her hand
clamped over her mouth in case she vomited.

Connelly leaned forward and
whispered, “Once they’re clear of us, I’m going to shoot the woman. I need you
to disarm and take down the guy who has Anna. He’s going to be distracted; it
shouldn’t be too hard. Okay?”

Sure. Piece of cake. In fact,
she’d just taken a continuing legal education class on disarming murderous
survivalists without harming their hostages. No problem.

She realized Connelly was waiting
for an answer, his breath hot against her ear.

“Okay.”

“Go when I say.”

Anna and her captor passed in
front of the shrubs. She was walking slowly and awkwardly, tripping over her
feet. He dragged her forward, toward Gavin’s inert body.

Sasha’s throat tightened, and
adrenaline flooded her system.

“Go!” Connelly said, giving her a
small nudge.

She tucked her chin into her
chest and ran. Her mind clicked through her options to overpower a right-handed
man who had his hands full.

She settled on a tackle takedown.
It was one of her least preferred moves because size and strength mattered when
tackling.

But she didn’t have time to
engage him. Connelly was probably pulling the trigger already. So she ran hard
and fast at the man, aiming her lowered shoulder at his head. As she neared
them, Anna gasped.

The man turned toward Sasha and
his eyes widened. He dropped Anna and groped over his shoulder for his gun.

Sasha sank down, gathering her
power and momentum from her hips and legs, and exploded toward him, pushing up
from the ground and encircling his knees with both arms as she crashed into
him.

Behind her, she heard the report
of Connelly’s gun. Loud and close. Then an agonized yelp from the woman who was
waiting to execute Anna.

The man tumbled backward and she
held on. They landed with a thud on the hard earth. As they made impact, she
scrambled to smash her right knee into his groin. As fast as she could, she
crawled up and straddled his chest.

He reared up at her, but he was
out of shape and clumsy.

She locked eyes with him, grabbed
his hair with both hands, and snapped her neck back. She brought the crown of
her head down hard on the bridge of his nose and heard the crunching of
cartilage and bone. She released his hair and let his head bang down onto the
ground.

She stayed on his chest until she
was sure he was going to remain motionless, then she climbed off him and joined
Connelly and Anna.

Lydia sat on the ground, one leg
folded under her, the other extended. She cradled her shattered kneecap between
her hands and rocked in pain.

Connelly held the Glock in front
of him, aimed at Bricker’s center mass, as he neared the man.

“This magazine was fully loaded,”
Connelly told him. “In case math’s not your strong suit, that means I have
sixteen rounds left.”

Bricker glared at him.

“Where are your troops, Bricker?
Cowering in their cabins?”

He didn’t respond to Connelly. It
was a question Sasha wanted to have answered, though. If they were about to be
rushed by a mob of armed preppers, they were going to need more than sixteen
rounds.

Lydia retorted, “We aren’t
cowards. Everyone’s just used to the sound of shots being fired. We abut state game
lands.”

Connelly turned his attention to her.

“Slide your weapon away from your
body.”

She released her knee cap and did
as he ordered. She used both hands to push the rifle forward on the ground. It
skidded to a stop about ten feet from Sasha.

“Cover your boy with that, Sasha.”
Connelly jerked his head toward the long-gun.

“He’s not going anywhere. Trust
me.”

“Sasha, please,” Connelly said.

She huffed out a breath and bent
to retrieve the rifle. The wood felt cold even through her gloves.

She aimed it in the general
vicinity of the prone man, who rolled from side to side, moaning. Air whistled
through his busted nose.

She turned her head to see that
Anna had taken the fallen man’s rifle and was stalking across the field toward
her husband.

“Connelly,” Sasha said, her voice
sharp with warning.

He looked back.

“Anna, don’t,” he said in a calm,
low-key voice.

His words didn’t seem to
register. She just kept walking, the gun in front of her, straight at Bricker.

“Anna,” he said in a firmer
voice.

“He killed Gavin. He was going to
kill me. My
husband
was going to execute me so I wouldn’t interfere with
his plan to infect hundreds of thousands of people with a deadly virus,” she
said, her voice shaking with anger and emotion.

Bricker stared at her. A slow
smile spread across his face.

“You won’t do it, Anna. You don’t
have it in you,” he said.

He wants his wife to shoot him
,
Sasha thought.

Anna raised the rifle, pointing
it at his head.

“Anna, wait,” Sasha said.

The armed woman didn’t turn to
look at her, but Sasha kept talking. “Look at him smiling. He wants you to do
it. Why do you think that is?”

Anna didn’t respond immediately,
but Sasha thought her shoulders relaxed.

“The kids. If I kill him, I’ll go
to prison and won’t be able to be with my babies. He wants me to lose the kids,”
she said after a long pause.

“That’s right,” Connelly agreed.

Anna stepped closer to her
husband.

Sasha held her breath and waited
for the gun to fire.

Instead, Anna spat. Her saliva
dribbled down his face.

She dropped the gun to the
ground.

Sasha took her by the arm and guided
her away from her husband, the battered preppers, and Gavin’s corpse.

Anna buried her head in Sasha’s
shoulder and cried—great gulping sobs.

“I’m so sorry about your friend,”
Anna wailed.

Sasha closed her eyes. So was
she.

By the time the
SWAT team arrived at the compound the pre-dawn sky was a light gray.