Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4)

by Miller, Melissa F.

  He neared the first cabin and pressed himself flush against the cold log wall to peer in through a bare window. He could make out the shapes of four single beds in the dark room. All four beds were made with gray wool blankets pulled taut across their tops. He crept past the window to the second cabin. A quick peek inside revealed an identical setup: four neatly made beds, no light, nobody inside.

  He moved quickly from cabin to cabin, glancing inside each and finding nothing but empty beds until he reached the last cabin in the back row. It was set apart slightly from the others. As he had with the others, he ran to it in a low crouch. He raised himself to look through the window so he could confirm there were four empty beds and get on with his day, having proved to himself he wasn’t a coward.

  Inside, three beds sat empty, but the fourth was occupied. Its occupant had kicked the wool blanket partially off the bed; it hung over the edge, trailing onto the floor. The sheets were twisted around a pair of legs. Gavin jammed his face against the frosty glass and stared hard into the gloomy interior, trying to make out the details of the person who lay face down in the bed. One pale arm was flung out over the edge of the bed. Gavin stared hard. He thought he saw a shape of a tattoo on the inner wrist. His pulse sped up.

  Celia had a flower tattoo on her right wrist.

  The shape in the bed reared up and rolled to the side.

  He saw a flash of a ghostly white, sweat-slicked face as the woman leaned over the side of the bed and vomited into a metal bucket that sat on the floor. Her head hung over the side for a moment. Gavin studied the knot of red curls that flopped over her face.

  It was definitely Celia.

  Gavin let out a long breath and watched as Celia wiped her mouth with a shaking hand and lowered herself back onto her pillow.

  There were no vehicles in sight. Someone had dropped her off and would probably be back to check on her. He told himself he’d just confirm Celia was here of her own free will and not in distress, then he’d drive back to town and let Sasha know he’d found her.

  He walked around to the front of the cabin, raised his hand to knock on the door, and stopped. Affixed to the door was a glowing yellow triangle, about the size of a stop sign, outlined in black. The international symbol for biological hazard filled the triangle.

  He rapped on the door and ignored his suddenly dry mouth. No answer.

  He knocked again, louder, and cleared his throat.

  “Celia, it’s Gavin Russell. Are you okay?” he called. His voice echoed then died in the wind.

  He pressed his ear against the oak door. No sounds from the other side.

  He ran around to the window and pressed his forehead against the glass. Celia was looking toward the door and struggling to push herself up from the bed. He raced back to the door and shouted again, “Celia?”

  Minutes passed. He heard a muffled moan and the shuffling of feet, then, the sound of a deadbolt sliding back.

  The door swung inward several inches, and Celia’s face appeared. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Her face was as white as a sheet of paper except for two bright red spots on her cheeks. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. She clung to the door frame, shaking from the effort of crossing the room.

  “Gavin? What are you doing here?” she croaked in a hoarse whisper. Confusion flooded her dull, cloudy eyes.

  Gavin glanced over his shoulder once then turned back to Celia.

  “I’m looking for you. May I come in?”

  She didn’t answer but shuffled to the side to make room for him. Her footing was unsteady, and her knees buckled. Gavin caught her under her armpits as she collapsed toward the floor.

  He pushed the door closed with one foot.

  “What’s wrong, Celia? Are you sick?”

  It was a stupid question. She was obviously sick. Her skin burned hot through the flannel pajamas she wore, and she smelled of sweat and vomit. Her body shook in his arms.

  She gave a weak nod in answer and leaned into him. He led her back to the bed and helped her into it. She curled herself into a ball, hugged her arms around her knees, and shivered. Gavin retrieved the blanket from the floor and covered her.

  He crouched by her bedside.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked. Her eyelids fluttered closed, then open.

  “Your mom’s worried about you,” he said.

  “Oh no, Mom,” Celia said. “I missed church.”

  Gavin looked around the room. Aside from the beds and the puke bucket, it held a rough-hewn wooden table at the head of each bed and a metal footlocker at each foot. An unlit pot-bellied stove sat off to the side of the room with a small stack of wood beside it. The room was chilly and damp. There was no bathroom, no kitchen. It was a not a place he’d have chosen for convalescing.

  Celia barked out a wet, phlegmy cough that racked her thin body. She opened her eyes, and they rolled back into her head as she coughed again.

  Gavin grabbed Celia’s fleece jacket from the footlocker. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  Celia opened her eyes wide, and terror filled her slack face. She struggled to her elbows. “No!” she shouted, triggering another coughing fit. She moaned and leaned over the side of the bed, heaving dark yellow bile into the bucket.

  Gavin ignored the irritation that flared in his chest and kept his voice soft. “Celia, you need to see a doctor.”

  Celia clamped her hand around his wrist, like a claw. “You don’t understand. I need to lay low.”

  The realization that he didn’t know why Sasha was looking for Celia hit Gavin. “Are you hiding from someone? Are you in trouble?”

  Celia stared up at him with watery eyes. “Gavin, please, go. You can’t get involved in this.”

  “Are the preppers keeping you here?”

  “They’re letting me stay here, is all. And they’ll be back soon to check on me. Please, you have to leave.”

  Celia sank back into the bed, out of breath from talking.

  “Well, they aren’t taking care of you. And I didn’t see your car anywhere. I’m not leaving you here as sick as you are with no way to get to a hospital, Celia.”

  “It’s just the flu,” she protested. Her hairline was slick with sweat.

  “Whatever it is, you’re too sick to be here. What are you doing for food? Water? Heat? This is insane. I’m going to get my car and come back for you.”

  Gavin placed her jacket beside her on the bed.

  “I’ll be back in less than five minutes. Put your coat on. I’ll pull as close as I can to the gate and come in and help you to the car.”

  Celia shook her head but didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed again.

  He headed for the door. If he had to carry her out against her will, then that’s what he’d do. She was in no shape to stop him.

  He looked back at her before he closed the door. She had turned on to her side and appeared to be asleep already. He stepped out of the cabin, sucked in a lungful of cold air, and jogged down the path.

  CHAPTER 15

  Anna heard the old Jeep’s rattling engine off in the distance and hurried to finish her thought. Then she capped her pen, closed her journal, and rose from the table. She hurried through the kitchen to the powder room and flicked on the light to assess herself in the mirror. She patted her hair, whisking a stray strand behind her ear, and smiled at the natural flush that stained her cheeks. Joy stirred in her chest: her husband was home.

  She was in the kitchen putting on the water for tea when Jeffrey eased open the door.

  “Welcome home,” she said, turning from the stove to greet him with a smile.

  He returned her smile and dropped the duffel bag on the old oak table then crossed the room to kiss her.

  “It’s quiet around here. Did you sell the kids while I was gone?” she heard him say, his voice muffled by her hair and their embrace.

  “No such luck. They had lunch then fed the chickens and did their chores in record time, so I told them they could run around for
a bit outside before we tackle math. How was your trip?” she laughed, pulling back to look up at him.

  He was tired. She could tell by the deep lines that creased his upper cheeks under his eyes.

  “Productive. How were things here?”

  “Productive,” she answered. “We wrapped all the gifts for the toy drive and the kids finished their science projects. I think Clay has a chance to take the home school division this year.”

  He nodded, proud but not surprised. They’d raised their children to work hard, set goals, and achieve those goals. She knew Jeffrey expected nothing less.

  The kettle steamed out a whistle, and she removed it from the heat. She was eager to sit quietly with her husband for a spell before the kids realized their father had returned and came bounding into the house to greet him.

  She stretched on her toes to bring down two of her grandmother’s china teacups and saucers from the cupboard. She shook the loose herbal tea, made from dried herbs picked from the garden, into two metal balls and poured hot water over them. Then she carried the sugar bowl and spoons over to the table. Jeffrey followed with the teacups.

  Anna considered him as she stirred a lump of sugar with her spoon, dissolving it in the water. He wasn’t just tired; there was something else shadowed in his face. Tension, maybe? If she didn’t know better, she might have thought it was fear. But, to her knowledge, Jeffrey had never felt fear. He’d certainly never shown it. Not even when she had hemorrhaged during Clara’s birth, nearly dying. He had remained calm, implacable.

  She placed a hand on his arm. “Is everything okay?”

  He met her gaze and smiled. “It is now.” He raised the cup to his mouth and sipped the hot tea.

  Anna pretended not to notice the way his hand shook.

  They drank their tea in companionable silence, then Jeffrey said he needed to tend to some business and disappeared into the basement.

  Anna busied herself with washing the dishes and wiping down the counters. She spotted the duffle bag on the table.

  Might as well get Jeffrey’s laundry started now, she thought. She could put his dirty clothes in the washer and then switch them to the dryer while she guided the kids through their weekend math lessons.

  Anna lifted the bag and was surprised by its weight. She hefted it over her shoulder and carried it into the laundry room. Something inside made a clanking sound. When she unzipped the bag to toss the clothes into the washer, she stared down at its contents, unsure what she was seeing: jammed in among her husband’s dirty socks and undershirts were dozens and dozens of tiny glass bottles.

  Anna picked one up and squinted at the tiny writing. The clear liquid rolled like syrup inside the vial. She shoved it back into the bag and zippered it closed. Then she hurried across the kitchen to return the bag to the table, dread settling in the pit of her stomach with the knowledge that she had just seen something she wasn’t supposed to see.

  CHAPTER 16

  Colton ate an early dinner alone with one eye on the flat-screen television mounted under a bank of kitchen cabinets, the other on his iPad.

  Nothing. He had flipped among all the cable news channels and searched the newspaper homepages, and nothing. Not a single reputable mention of the incredible danger currently facing the American people.

  It seemed impossible. And, yet, it was true. No one knew that death waited around the corner for most of the country—aside from some fringe lunatics and conspiracy theorists babbling amongst themselves in the darkest corners of the Internet and the inbred preppers down in Pennsylvania, of course.

  He pushed his grilled salmon from one side of his square black plate to the other, then let his fork clatter to the table, his appetite deadened by disappointment. He took a long swallow of the crisp Chenin blanc and pulled up a web browser. Another cycle through the homepages of the major Western newspapers, magazines, and television stations yielded no information about the situation in France or the potential for destruction stateside.

  Colton envisioned himself smashing his Riedel Vinum glass against the fireplace on the other side of the room. Then he inhaled, deeply and slowly. To what end? Thirty dollars’ worth of pulverized glass he’d have to either sweep up or step around until the cleaning service came at the end of the week?

  “No,” he said aloud and loosened his grip on the wineglass’s stem. He’d devise a way around this blasted news blackout. Or force them to lift it by creating a story they dare not fail to report on.

  He drained his glass and slammed it down onto the table, then pushed his chair back. He stalked across the open floor plan to the foyer, where his briefcase sat on the gleaming marble entryway floor. He crouched and retrieved his cell phone and one of the vials that he’d wrapped in his cloth sunglasses pouch to protect and hide it.

  He turned the vial in his hand, watching the viscous liquid inside catch the light from the chandelier. Take control of the situation, he told himself. He slipped the tube into his pocket and punched a number into the phone.

  CHAPTER 17

  Connelly paced around Sasha’s condo while she tossed some clothes in a bag. Finally, he went downstairs and made a phone call. She could hear his low voice, mumbled words, and urgent tone. A few moments later, he came back into her bedroom and hustled her out the door.

  Instead of driving toward Edgewood and the Monroeville entrance to the Turnpike, Connelly meandered through the Oakland traffic and parked in a faculty lot behind one of the research buildings for the University of Pittsburgh Medical School.

  Before Sasha could ask what was going on, a slight Asian woman emerged from behind a pillar and trotted across the lot to the SUV.

  Connelly popped the lock, and she hopped in the back seat.

  He turned and shook her hand. “Thanks for doing this, Dr. Yu.”

  She nodded, her eyes serious behind her square glasses. She leaned forward over the center console and extended a hand to Sasha.

  “Hi. I’m Ashleigh Yu.”

  “Sasha McCandless.”

  “Dr. Yu is a researcher at the Infectious Disease Division. And a friend,” Connelly said. “So, I called in a favor.”

  Dr. Yu patted the seat next to her and smiled at Sasha. “Why don’t you step into my office?”

  She unzipped the bag and started removing medical supplies. She laid out a syringe, a vial, and a bandage in a neat line on the seat using quick, efficient motions.

  Sasha turned to search Connelly’s face. She watched him take a deep breath before he launched into an explanation.

  “Dr. Yu was on the team that tested the vaccine. She happens to have a few doses from the trials. I was vaccinated as part of the study. And, in light of—everything—you really need to be, too. Please don’t argue with me, okay?” His voice contained the barest hint of pleading.

  Sasha realized that her instinct was, in fact, to protest. For a number of reasons. Some legitimate, some less so. But the stress was showing around Connelly’s eyes, so she simply nodded.

  She slid out of the passenger seat and joined Dr. Yu in the backseat.

  The other woman rolled the vial between her hands, gently reconstituting the liquid inside.

  “Okay. I’m going to assume you are currently healthy and not feeling any flu-like symptoms,” she said.

  “That’s true,” Sasha confirmed, shrugging out of her coat and placing it beside her on the leather seat.

  “Roll up your sleeve, please. Use your non-dominant arm. It might be sore for a while,” Dr. Yu told her.

  Sasha paused. She was left-handed. She wrote, threw, and used utensils and tools with her left hand. But, her power was in her right. She considered writing with a sore arm versus trying to land a jaw-breaking punch with a sore arm, and rolled up her left sleeve.

  Dr. Yu inserted the syringe into the vial and took Sasha’s forearm in her own warm hand. As she drew the syringe full of vaccine, she said, “So, in case you don’t know, you should achieve full immunity within seventy-two hours. In the interim,
you will be protected, but there is a chance you could—if you were to somehow encounter the H17N10 virus that is locked away in a Level Four facility—contract the Doomsday flu.”

  The researcher’s voice dripped with curiosity, but it wasn’t Sasha’s place to fill her in. She met Connelly’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  He twisted in the seat and said, “Ashleigh. Trust me. It’s better if you don’t know.”

  Dr. Yu shrugged and plunged the syringe into Sasha’s arm. “Okay. Here are the side effects you need to look out for: fever, chills, a very sore red welt at the injection site, and general flu-type symptoms.”

  Sasha stared at her as she removed the syringe and plastered a small bandage on Sasha’s arm.

  “Wait. The side effect of this flu vaccine is getting the flu?”

  Dr. Yu pursed her lips. “Sort of. Because the vaccine uses a weakened live virus similar, though not identical, to the H17N10 virus, there is a chance you could come down with a very mild case of the flu. That’s fairly typical when a live virus is used. The problem in this case is that a very mild case of something that approximates the killer flu—well, it could kill you.”

  “What?!” Sasha couldn’t keep the outrage out of her voice. She stared at the back of Connelly’s head, drilling a hole in his skull with her red-hot fury.

  “It’s a remote possibility,” Dr. Yu continued in a mild voice as she reached into her medical bag. “And the Doomsday virus itself is sufficiently horrible that the government weighed the risk of side effects against the benefits of preventing a pandemic and decided it was worth it. Honestly, you’re unlikely to die.”

  “How comforting,” Sasha said in a dry, tight voice.

  Dr. Yu pressed several small, square packets into the palm of Sasha’s hand. “Here. This is AviEx, ViraGene’s antiviral. I don’t know how well it works against the true H17N10 virus, but I can tell you that if you do start to experience flu symptoms, this will help. It will lessen the severity and duration of your illness. You’ll still be contagious, though.”