Irrevocable Trust (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller Book 6)

by Melissa F. Miller

  When he looked back at her, his face was serious. “Those odds suck.”

  “Agreed.”

  She tried to speak lightly but her stomach was clenching.

  “And assuming you successfully disarm him, you aren’t willing to use the gun against him, right?”

  She arched a brow but didn’t answer.

  “Just checking.”

  “That’s right.”

  He blew out an exasperated breath, ruffling his brown hair. “Okay. Put that down and let’s block it out.”

  She returned the knife to its sheath and joined him on the mats.

  “Your best, and as far as I can see, only advantage in gun versus knife is going to be speed.” As he warmed to the topic, he began to bounce lightly on the balls of his bare feet. “I think one of the police departments did a study and concluded that the average attacker could cover something like seven yards in a second and a half.”

  She grinned at his encyclopedic grasp of law-enforcement-related research. He shared her near-photographic memory. The only difference was that he used his to catalog combat and self-defense information, while she put hers to work filing away legal precedents and the facts central to various client disputes.

  “That’s fast.”

  “It is, but you have to be faster. Assuming your fake military leader has any training, he’ll be following the rule of thumb that his zone of danger is twenty-one feet. He’ll want to shoot you at about ten yards out, if he can.”

  She focused on the details of what he was saying to avoid reflecting on the chilling larger topic.”

  “Why ten yards?”

  “Even someone with a lot of firearms training will be hard-pressed to get two rounds off in less time than it takes to cover thirty feet. You should ask Leo how fast he can draw and shoot his weapon with reasonable accuracy. It takes longer than you’d think.”

  “I will. So let’s do this.” She rolled her shoulders and assumed a neutral position.

  He tilted his head. “No, actually. I think the highest and best use of your time would be to spend it working on your speed, especially your fast-twitch muscles.”

  “I’m pretty fast.”

  “You are. But you need to be blazingly fast. You know what that means?”

  “Not suicides.”

  “Yes, suicides.”

  He gave her a look that shut down any objections she might have raised.

  “Fine.” She huffed as she walked to the edge of the studio, not even bothering to keep the sullen note out of her voice.

  He ignored her pouting and focused on his stopwatch.

  She dropped into a runner’s stance. The fingertips of her right hand grazed the end of the mat.

  “And … Go!”

  She pushed off with an explosive motion and sprinted to the far edge of the mat, touched it, turned and raced back to where she’d begun. She brushed the mat and turned again, this time running to the far edge of the second mat, repeated the touch-and-turn sequence, and ran back to the starting position. Her lungs were already burning. She worked up some saliva in her mouth, and raced to the edge of the third mat and returned. As she ran to the fourth and final mat, Daniel shouted, “Turn it on!”

  Turn it on? Did he think she was jogging over here?

  She dug deeper and found a final burst of speed. She reached the edge of the mat and bent, her hand dangling loosely over the mat, then she turned and raced back to the start.

  Daniel stopped the timer.

  “Not bad.”

  “Not bad? How long?” she panted.

  “Doesn’t matter. You didn’t touch the mat that last time, so it doesn’t count. Do it again.”

  She stared at him as she sucked down great gulps of air. He was right, she had missed the mat. She’d hoped he hadn’t noticed. No such luck.

  “Get ready.”

  “Now? C’mon, give me a minute.”

  “No. Get on the line.”

  She bit her lip and dropped to a starting position. Her hair was heavy against her hot neck and she would have loved to take a sip of water, but she knew he was right. Shaving even half a second off her time could save her life.

  “Go!”

  She ran.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Sasha carried the last of her bags up the steep stairs leading into the rented Victorian. Leo reasoned it must have been the one filled with dozens of pairs of ridiculous high heels. She seemed to be struggling under its weight, but he knew better than to offer to help.

  She didn’t take kindly to any gesture that might be interpreted as questioning her strength. And, more relevant here, he’d made the mild observation when she was packing that she probably didn’t need to bring quite so many shoes. She hadn’t responded verbally, but he could still feel the sting of the death-ray that had shot from her eyes.

  No, this was not a time for chivalry; this was a time for self-preservation.

  She passed him on the stairs empty-handed, on her way back to the car for another armload.

  “Where’s Java?” he asked.

  “He’s under the couch. All the noise is scaring him. Naya’s going to try to lure him out with some milk. All that’s left is the coffee grinder.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  She turned and offered him a genuine smile. “I don’t think so. That’s my favorite wedding present. If you drop it, I’ll have to divorce you.”

  He laughed, more at the humor in her green eyes than at her lame joke.

  She stopped. “I know this kind of sucks, but we can make the best of it.”

  “I know. You’re like cheese.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Cheese. Everything’s better with cheese. And everything’s better with you.”

  She rolled her eyes and continued on her way. He thought her step seemed a little lighter.

  She was right. They could make the best of it. It might even be fun. They’d enjoyed babysitting her nieces and nephews.

  Living with six kids would be just like babysitting for a few hours. Or maybe not.

  He walked through the front door of his temporary new home with his arms full of bags and stopped just inside to survey the damage. The place looked like a Toys R Us had exploded.

  He exhaled slowly and caught Cole’s eye.

  “Can you give me a hand with this stuff? There’s more out on the porch.”

  Cole nodded and untangled himself from his youngest sister’s grasp. She was wrapped around his neck and back. He deposited her on the couch and trotted out of the room.

  “Good thing you’re here,” Cole said. “Naya seems to be at her limit.”

  Naya, her head under the couch, apparently still engaged in her cat-retrieval efforts, yelled, “I heard that.”

  “See?”

  Leo clasped the boy’s shoulder in solidarity. Sasha in a bad mood was like a storm. Naya in a bad mood was like a tropical superstorm.

  As soon as they stepped out on to the porch, the boy’s face grew serious.

  “It’s also a good thing you’re here because I need to talk to you. Both of you.” He jerked his head toward Sasha, who was approaching them with a two-hundred dollar burr grinder lovingly cradled in her arms.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, taking in the boy’s somber expression. “Is Java stuck?”

  “No. Listen. I didn’t want to worry Naya but while you were gone, she ran out real quick to get some groceries.”

  “You guys are out of food again already?” Sasha looked personally affronted that her provisions hadn’t lasted longer.

  “Yeah, anyway. She’d been gone a while and the doorbell rang. I figured her arms were full so I opened it and—”

  “You opened it?”

  The boy’s eyes widened at the note of squeaky outrage in Sasha’s voice, and he looked at Leo for support.

  “Um, yeah. I know I should have confirmed it was her first, but I didn’t. Okay? Anyway, it wasn’t Naya. It was some dude holding a clipboard and a package.”


  “A delivery person?”

  “No. I mean, not like UPS or Fed Ex. He wasn’t wearing any kind of uniform, so I got kind of nervous. I started to close the door on him and he reached out real fast and caught it. He knew my name—”

  “Which name?” Sasha asked. “Did he call you Cole or Clay?”

  “My name’s not Clay anymore.” He forced the words out between clenched teeth.

  “Okay, sorry. Go on.”

  “He asked if I was Cole Bennett. I said ‘who wants to know?’ He didn’t say who he was or what he wanted. He just asked if I was eighteen years old and I said no, then I grabbed the door and slammed it shut and locked it.”

  The boy’s face was white as he remembered the interaction.

  “You did good, Cole,” Leo assured him.

  He shook his head in disagreement. “No, I never should have opened the door. Who was it? It was the feds, right? They’re going to split us up or put us in a foster home, aren’t they?”

  Leo cleared his throat to buy time.

  “I don’t know, Cole. I doubt it. Hank didn’t tell anyone from Witness Protection your exact location—”

  “Where is Hank, anyway?” The kid rocked back on his heels.

  “He had a meeting. But I really doubt that whoever it was came from the government.”

  Leo could feel Sasha’s eyes on his back cautioning him not to say too much. He probably already had, but he wanted to ease the boy’s mind. He didn’t know who was trying to track down Cole Bennett, but he was fairly certain it wasn’t WITSEC.

  Now, who it was—that was the question.

  Cole’s breathing slowed. “Oh. Yeah, I guess they know I’m not eighteen, anyway.”

  “That’s true,” Leo agreed.

  “Well then who do you think it was?”

  “I have no idea. Could have been anyone—a pollster, a door-to-door marketer. I don’t know.”

  “I guess. Okay, sorry for overreacting.” The boy said the words slowly, as if he weren’t quite convinced that there was no reason to panic. But he couldn’t identify one, so it seemed as if he would let it go.

  “Don’t apologize. You’re smart to be cautious.”

  His mother’s murder hung in the air between them.

  Leo could tell they were both thinking that if Anna had been a little more careful, she might still be alive.

  “Uh … okay. Thanks.”

  The boy smiled weakly and walked back into the house.

  Leo started to follow him, but Sasha yanked him back onto the porch one-handed. She’d tucked the grinder into the crook of her elbow.

  “What?”

  She stared at him.

  “What? What do you think? You know who that was, right?”

  “At the door?”

  “Yes, at the door.”

  “No, like I told Cole, I have no idea …” He trailed off.

  He really didn’t know who it could be, but he didn’t think it was a federal agent. He shielded his eyes from the late afternoon sun and waited for her to tell him what she thought.

  She gave him a look of disbelief. “Connelly, I’m sure it was a process server.”

  He cocked his head.

  “Pulaski probably wants Cole to testify,” she explained.

  “He wants him to testify on behalf of Bricker? That’s insane.”

  “No.” She corrected him with a vigorous shake of her head. Her loose wavy hair fell over her face and she pushed it aside. “It’s not insane. It’s ballsy and inappropriate. In other words, it’s right out of Andy Pulaski’s play book.”

  “There’s no way Pulaski could have tracked down the kids, Sasha.”

  Even as he said it, he realized the fallacy of the statement. There was always a way to track someone down—unless the person you were tracking was in Witness Protection, of course. He swallowed a bitter laugh.

  “Believe what you want. I’m telling you. The process server asked if he was eighteen because service of a subpoena wouldn’t be valid if he gave it to a minor. Pulaski may not know how old Cole is, but he knows where he is. I know it.”

  Leo shivered. He looked up to see if a cloud had passed over the hot May sun. One hadn’t.

  Sasha looked at him, her green eyes deep pools of worry.

  “It’s going to be okay. And I know you don’t agree with this, but I’ve been thinking—I should be carrying.”

  She shook her head. “Please don’t bring your gun into the house with all these kids here.”

  He grabbed her wrist. “Sasha—”

  “Anyway, you don’t need it. I have a knife.”

  She squeezed his hand and crossed the threshold into the house, leaving him to stand in the doorway and blink in disbelief.

  Sasha had armed herself? She was more shaken than she’d let on.

  He stood on the porch for a long moment. Then he slowly took the steps back down to the street, his heart hammering in his chest. He unlocked the SUV’s passenger door and then unlocked the glove compartment.

  He took out his Glock and turned it over in his hands, then he glanced up at the house and holstered the gun.

  His wife had to trust her instincts, and he had to trust his.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Andy Pulaski rubbed his forehead. He’d wasted a hundred bucks hiring a private investigator to follow Sasha McCandless’ paralegal on a hunch that she’d lead him to the kids.

  The hunch had paid off, but the PI said the oldest kid wasn’t yet eighteen so he hadn’t served him.

  In retrospect, of course, he should have figured. The stupid irrevocable trust was for the benefit of the minor children, but it was worth sending up a flyer to see if maybe the oldest kid had turned eighteen since it had been drafted.

  Of course, he didn’t dare submit the expense to that old hag Perry-Brown for reimbursement. He could almost hear her crowing, ‘Do you know the meaning of minor, Mr. Pulaski?’

  Forget the benjamin, Big Gun, focus.

  After his initial annoyance at having been appointed to represent some in-the-wind, prepper freak, he’d calmed down and realized this pain-in-the-butt court appointment could be his golden goose.

  He just had to play it right.

  If he could get Judge Perry-Brown to rule that it was in the Bennett kids’ best interests to maintain contact with their father, it would be a stunning victory. A career maker. He’d solidify himself as the go-to guy for fathers with ugly stories but big bank accounts.

  But with no client around to tell his story, and no access to the kids, how exactly was he supposed to overcome the bias against Bricker?

  Not to mention the unfortunate fact that Bricker’s estranged wife had been brutally murdered while he was on the run.

  A lesser attorney than Sasha McCandless could spin this story into a nightmare, and, unfortunately, for all her deceptive cuteness, she was a nasty bulldog. She was going to pummel him. Unless he came up with something good. And fast.

  He drummed his fingers on his desk and reread his notes.

  How to make Bricker sympathetic?

  His mind was a perfect blank. He’d represented some unlikeable people, but this guy really took the cake.

  He balled up his notes and threw them in the wastebasket.

  He was sitting at his desk, staring at nothing, when the telephone rang. He ignored it.

  A moment later, Becca, his secretary, appeared in the doorway.

  “Andy?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. There’s a Mr. Bricker on the phone.”

  Andy’s head snapped back.

  “Did you say Bricker?”

  “That’s the name he gave. Isn’t that your absentee dad?”

  “Put him through.” He waved her away.

  “Sure.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

  He pressed his hands against the top of his desk and steadied his breathing.

  The transfer tone sounded and the red light on his telephone blinked up
at him.

  He exhaled and hit the speaker button.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Bricker?” he said with all the bravado he could muster.

  “It’s more a matter of what you will do for me, Big Gun.” Bricker’s voice crackled in his ear.

  Andy told himself the chill he felt was anticipation, not fear.

  “And what would that be?”

  Bricker was silent for a beat.

  Then he said, “I understand you’ve been appointed to represent me in a proceeding to terminate my parental rights. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. How did you—?”

  “That’s not your concern.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. But, regardless, I assume you object to any termination?”

  Andy swiveled his desk chair around and propped his feet up on his windowsill. He imagined his view was of something other than the strip mall’s dumpsters.

  “You assume wrong. I hardly think I’m in any position to take custody of my children, given my … circumstances.”

  “Oh.”

  Andy’s feet thudded to the floor, and his shoulders sagged.

  “So, you want to consent?”

  His golden goose was turning into a chicken.

  “With caveats. One, I want my children to be freed.”

  “Freed?”

  “The government is holding them hostage. That’s unconscionable, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  Great, just great. Bricker was sticking to his anti-government craziness.

  “Two, I do not consent to the appointment of Sasha McCandless as trustee. I don’t want her anywhere near my kids.”

  “Uh, so you want to contest the will but not the termination of your rights?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Kind of. I only represent you for the purposes of the rights termination hearing.”

  Silence on the line.

  “Can I retain you to contest the will?”

  “You could, but to be candid, you shouldn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “It’s not what I do.”

  “Are you a big gun or not?” Bricker barked.

  Despite himself, Andy snapped to attention.