Critical Vulnerability (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 1)

by Melissa F. Miller

“That’s good. And . . . ?”

  He plunged ahead, “And he has his claws in someone who works at your building. They’re watching for you. You can’t go home.”

  She raised an eyebrow and set her chin in a determined way but said nothing.

  “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “What’s the effect of a mistrial? I mean, can’t you just try these guys again?” He frowned in confusion.

  “Yep.”

  “Then why—?”

  “I have no idea what difference he thinks it’ll make. I mean, he can’t know this, but we probably won’t refile the charges. These guys are small potatoes, and it’d be a waste of resources now that the case against the company is settled. But that’s a political decision, not a legal issue.”

  “Unless he does know.”

  They stared at each other for a moment. He thought he saw her shiver.

  “I don’t even want to think about the possibility. Did he say anything else?”

  “He’s not going to release Joe and my mom until the trial is canceled or whatever.”

  “Of course he’s not. They’re his leverage.”

  She shook her head at his naïveté, and her black hair whirled around her face like a curtain.

  He stood there for a moment feeling stupid and useless, then asked, “Well, now what?”

  She tore a piece of paper from a legal pad and started scribbling a list with her chewed-up pencil. She handed it to him and said, “Can you read my handwriting?”

  He scanned it.

  Kitchen matches

  Compass

  Plastic poncho

  Hand warmers

  Small flashlight

  Swiss army knife

  Nuts

  Thermos

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a list.”

  “I know it’s a list. So, I’m your errand boy, now? And you’re going camping?”

  She fixed him with a look.

  “Do you really think I’m going camping?”

  “No?” he ventured, not sure if he really wanted her to fill him in.

  She seemed to sense his ambivalence.

  “Listen, you want to see your mom again, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Then, don’t ask any questions. Just do me a favor and get me this stuff. Pay cash.”

  “I know not to leave a trail.” He tried but failed to keep the petulance out of his tone.

  “Of course you do. Sorry. Listen, I know you probably don’t think this is an important thing to do, but I really need this stuff and I can’t risk being seen. Will you please go to the store and pick it up?”

  He had the distinct feeling that he was being handled, but he didn’t know what to do about it. So he simply agreed to the request.

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” She flashed a brilliant smile. “And while you’re gone, I’m going to take a shower and borrow some more appropriate clothes, okay?”

  She gestured toward the rumpled business suit she was wearing and the high heels she’d kicked off beside his couch.

  “Uh, sure. Make yourself at home.” He gave her the once-over. “You’re at least eight inches taller than my mom, though. So I’ll have to give you something of mine. Sweats?”

  “Sweats, a base layer, anything you’d wear skiing would be perfect. Black is preferable. And I’m going to need some thick socks and waterproof boots.”

  He bit his tongue to keep from asking if she was planning to do anything illegal because he decided he really didn’t want to know. Then he headed into his bedroom to find her some clothes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Joe and Mrs. Chang heard the man end his call and hurriedly abandoned their posts at the door to position themselves by the stove as he returned from the back bedroom. Their effort to eavesdrop had been futile, but it wasn’t like they had a better way to pass the time.

  The man banged into the room with a satisfied air. As always, he led with his shotgun. He noticed them huddling near the stove.

  “Are you cold? Do not worry, soon you will be quite warm, quite warm indeed.” He chuckled at some private joke and then nodded toward Joe.

  “I am going out. Make yourselves lunch in my absence.”

  As he shrugged into his coat, Mrs. Chang cleared her throat.

  “There’s only two cans of soup left. Can you bring some more back?” she asked politely.

  Joe had to admire how she’d maintained her dignity so far.

  “Or maybe you could get a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. You know, for a change of pace?” he suggested.

  The man pierced him with an aggrieved look. “I do not take orders, Mr. Jackman. You will eat what I provide or you will not eat.” He smiled charmlessly at the old woman. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Chang. If everything goes according to plan, tonight’s dinner will be your last meal here. Now, get back there.”

  He waved them toward the bedroom with the shotgun.

  Mrs. Chang crossed the room slowly, and Joe followed.

  “Faster.”

  They increased their pace as ordered and closed the bedroom door behind them.

  Joe waited until he heard the padlock bang against the outside door and the engine of the man’s car rev to life.

  Then he looked at his companion. Judging by her drawn expression and gray pallor, she’d had the same visceral reaction to the man’s statements as he had.

  But he shook off the feeling of imminent danger and said, “Sounds like we might be getting out of here soon.”

  She rewarded him with a withering look. “You’re not an idiot, Joe. You know as well as I do, we’ll never leave here alive.”

  Her words hung on the still air until he acknowledged them with a small nod of his head.

  “We’ve seen his face. Heard his voice. We may not know what the heck is going on, but we know too much about him.” He heard himself say the words in a flat, toneless voice.

  “A-yup,” she agreed.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  Then, not knowing what else to do, he opened the door and walked back into the kitchen area.

  “What’ll it be? Minestrone?” He tossed the question over his shoulder with feigned cheerfulness but kept his eyes fixed on the mostly empty cabinet so she wouldn’t see the despair that was eating at him.

  “Oh, screw lunch. Get the whiskey.”

  The previous night, they’d found a dusty bottle of cheap whiskey lodged behind the pipe under the sink and had rationed themselves a shot each.

  He considered protesting, but if they were right—and he knew in his bones they were—what was the point of pretense? He bent to retrieve the booze from its hiding place and plucked two mugs from the stack of clean dishes draining in the sink.

  He poured them each a drink with a generous hand.

  “Bottoms up,” he said, passing her the first drink.

  “Here’s to a life well lived,” she replied and clinked her stained porcelain mug against his.

  He took a long swallow and waited for the burn to travel down his throat to his stomach. His eyes watered from the alcohol, or at least that’s what he told himself.

  “I’m glad to have met you, Mrs. Chang.”

  “Eunice. I think we can dispense with formality at this point.”

  “Eunice.”

  She tossed back a swallow and grimaced.

  He cocked his head and watched as the weak winter sun streamed through the window and highlighted her face. A face that had seen horror and hope, feast and famine, and everything in between during her long life.

  He blurted, “What’s your biggest regret?”

  Her eyes registered surprise and he started to apologize, but she cut him off wi
th a wave of her hand.

  “Please. We might as well have a real conversation in the time we have left.”

  She considered the question silently and then said, “Overprotecting Franklin. I love him so much, maybe too much. I tried to shield him from pain, from want, from difficulty. I don’t think that’s served him very well. And, for that, I’m sorry.”

  Sadness hooded her eyes.

  His instinct was to reassure her that her son would be fine but he resisted the urge. She was right. There was no point in either of them pulling their punches now. So he simply nodded in understanding.

  She cleared her throat. “And yours?”

  He didn’t have to think about his answer, but saying the words pained him—it felt like a knife being plunged into his gut. “Aroostine.”

  “Your wife?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know how to love her the way she needs to be loved.”

  Her eyes crinkled. “Go on.”

  “She has these dreams and ambitions that I know she wants me to support. But I just want to be with her. I don’t want to live in a big city where she can have an important job with a fancy title. I just want her. Our dog. Our house. And I let that blind me to what she wants, I guess. I don’t know. All I know is I made a mess of things. And then I asked her for a divorce in the most cowardly way possible. And I’ll die in this cabin knowing I lost my wife because I wasn’t brave enough to be honest with her.”

  She pretended not to notice the tears that fell from his eyes to the dusty floor.

  They sat there in silence for several long moments, then she cleared her throat. “Well, I think another drink is in order. Don’t you?”

  He nodded numbly and poured the whiskey. He wished he had a piece of paper and a pen so he could at least write a note for Aroostine to try to explain what he’d done. The fact that he wouldn’t have the chance to tell her himself was becoming increasingly real to him.

  He raised his glass to Mrs. Chang and swallowed the drink in one gulp.

  “We should come up with a plan to get out of here,” he mumbled halfheartedly.

  She didn’t seem to hear him. She was staring at the inside of her mug. He supposed it didn’t matter. His only real plan now was to dull the pain that threatened to tear him in half.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Aroostine stood under Franklin’s shower for a long time, letting the hot water stream over her body, and reviewed what she knew.

  The cabin was somewhere in western Maryland, probably just outside Hagerstown, uphill from a stream. The woods would be remote, not a spot popular with hunters or fishing enthusiasts, and unlikely to be part of either the State or National Forest System.

  She’d pulled up a map of the area and referenced the woods against the locations of all the white oak structures listed on the state’s inventory of historic properties. She doubted anyone would be stupid enough to hold prisoners in a building that could be easily identified through public means, but she also knew from Joe that craftsman, and their materials, were decidedly local. That was particularly true more than two hundred years ago when travel was expensive and inconvenient.

  So once she found a cluster of white oak structures near Hagerstown—in an unincorporated town called Long’s Gap—she chose that as her starting point.

  Then she’d gone through a list of nearby state parks and crossed those woods off on her map. That left three possible locations, two of which showed waterways cutting through them.

  At that point, it was a coin toss. She chose the wooded area that was farther from town because that’s where she’d hide captives, if she were the captive-hiding type. She’d start there, and if she didn’t find the cabin, she’d hike to the other woods.

  The lawyer part of her thought this was an abysmally deficient plan. The tracker part of her liked it just fine.

  With great reluctance, she turned off the water, giving Franklin’s hot water tank high marks for supplying steady hot water for the duration of her shower.

  She wrapped one towel around her hair and used a second to dry herself. She held the towel tight around her body and crossed the short hall between the bathroom and Franklin’s bedroom.

  He’d left the clothes in a neat pile on the end of his bed. She pulled on the warm black pants and zip-necked sweater, surprised to see that they almost fit. The only other man’s clothes she’d ever worn had belonged to Joe, and he was tall and broad-shouldered. As a result, his button-downs had hung almost to her knees, and she’d swum in his sweatshirts.

  Stop thinking about Joe, she ordered herself as she wriggled her feet into the thick wool socks.

  She padded in the direction of Franklin’s mother’s bathroom in search of a hair dryer. As she passed the kitchen, her phone chirped from its spot near the computer. She checked the display. Mitchell. She grabbed the phone.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  “Hi? Hi, yourself. Aroostine, where are you?” Irritation seeped through the phone.

  “I e-mailed and told Sid’s secretary I was sick.”

  He lowered his voice and hissed, “I know what you told her. Everyone on the floor knows by now, the way Sid’s thundering around.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So what are you really doing? Are you going to the police?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She enunciated each word and kept her tone completely devoid of emotion, hoping he’d catch on.

  Franklin had sworn that her phone calls were the only ones being monitored, and she believed that was true—as far as he knew. But it wasn’t worth taking the risk to spell everything out for Mitch on the off chance that her adversary had redundant systems in place at the office. After all, he was paying someone to spy on her at her apartment building. Who knew what other eyes and ears he had in place?

  “What? Oh . . . right. Never mind.”

  She rolled her eyes. She wasn’t exactly a polished secret agent herself, but really. “Never mind” was the best he could do?

  “Anyway, I really am sick. I was hoping you could help Rosie out in my absence.”

  “Sure,” he said in a voice that was anything but sure.

  “Just be there to answer her questions. She’s never been to trial, you know.”

  “But, shouldn’t you tell her—”

  She cut him off before he could point out that she wouldn’t actually be going to trial now either.

  “Tell her I’ll take care of everything else. She just needs to focus on the jury voir dire.”

  The federal voir dire process was usually a morning-long event where the attorneys asked questions of prospective jurors and tried their best to seat a panel of citizens who would find in their client’s favor. Attorneys in private practice treated it as a critical part of the trial—maybe even the most critical part. After all, as her mentor used to say, if you seat twelve people who don’t want to buy what you’re selling, it hardly matters how good your case is.

  Sid, and most of the prosecutors in his division, had a different view. They believed that they walked into the courtroom with the benefit of every doubt. After all, if you can’t trust your government, who can you trust? Under this theory, every case was theirs to lose. Short of seating twelve anarchists or a foreperson who maintains that the post-Civil War government has been illegitimate all along, prosecutors almost always will encounter jurors who want to find in favor of the Department of Justice. As a result, voir dire preparation was nearly nonexistent in the Criminal Division.

  The reality was that, in this particular case, it didn’t matter, as they both knew, but she wanted to maintain the illusion that there would be a trial.

  “Voir dire? Really?”

  “Really. I happen to think it’s crucial to the case.”

  “What about openings? Witness examinations? Don’t you think it’ll seem weird that no one’s work
ing on that stuff?” His frustration zinged through the phone.

  “Just tell everyone I’m working from home and I said I’ve got it covered. Please help Rosie get ready for voir dire and tell her I said I’ll meet her at the courthouse tomorrow.”

  There was a pause, but she knew he’d agree.

  Finally, he did.

  “Okay. But, what about . . . the other thing?”

  “I’m working on that, too. It’s under control. Just please don’t forget what I need you to tell Rosie when she gets to work tomorrow morning. Everything hinges on that.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to tell her tonight?”

  “I’m positive. Just trust me, this will work.”

  Tomorrow morning, when it was too late for Rosie to do anything but comply, Mitch would tell her that Aroostine had already called in from the courthouse. He would tell her that Aroostine said to skip voir dire to draft an emergency motion for reconsideration asking Judge Hernandez to revisit his ruling to exclude the recordings. It would be a plausible request as far as Rosie was concerned, and it would guarantee that no one from the Department of Justice appeared in the courtroom when the jury selection was slated to begin. Aroostine was confident that, given the history of bad blood, Judge Hernandez would be enraged and act accordingly.

  Mitch’s voice was equal parts annoyed and concerned when he responded, “You know you don’t have to do everything the hard way, right?”

  Oh, but I do, she thought.

  “I know. Trust me, you’re going to be helping more than you can even imagine.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Okay. Then, will you please at least do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Please, whatever you’re doing”—his voice broke—“be careful.”

  “I will. And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For caring,” she said, surprised to hear the words come out of her mouth. She hurried to hit the button that ended the call before he could respond.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX