Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) by Melissa F Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

vaccine.”
    “But it works?” Sasha asked.
    “It works in ferrets,” Connelly
said, rubbing the skin between her right thumb and index finger with his. “Ferrets,
apparently, are close to humans in germ transmission.”
    “Okay.” Sasha figured that fact
was no less believable than anything else she’d heard. “So, the government
wants to buy millions of doses of a vaccine that works in ferrets to protect us
from a deadly flu that it created.”
    “Basically,” Connelly said.
    “And you’re making it as fast as
you can and sending it to this distribution center in Pennsylvania to await
pick up by army reservists,” she continued, grateful for Connelly’s warm hand
in hers. She gave it a squeeze.
    “You’re all caught up,” Grace
said. “Now, do you want to hear the problem?”
    “Yes,” Connelly and Sasha said in
unison.
    “ViraGene has a mole in the DC,”
Grace said. She leaned forward, and Sasha recognized excitement shining in the
woman’s brilliant blue eyes.
    Connelly’s hand tightened over
Sasha’s as he said, “You’re sure?”
    “I’m sure.”
    “Ben Davenport called me shortly
after six o’clock this evening. He said he’d had an unsettling encounter with
one of the clerks—a woman named Celia Gerig, who started working for us the
Monday before last. Her job responsibility is to check in the pallets when they
arrive at the warehouse, count them, and shrink wrap them to await pick up.”
    “Ben is the distribution center
manager. He seems like a good guy and a straight shooter,” Connelly interjected
for Sasha’s benefit.
    “Anyway, Ben ran into Celia in
the parking lot. Her car battery was dead, so he gave her a jump. As he
explained it, she seemed edgy or nervous. He didn’t go into detail except to
say that the conversation left him with the strong feeling that something was
wrong.”
    Grace seemed apologetic about the
amorphous nature of Ben’s report, but Sasha just nodded. Intuition was real, as
far as Sasha was concerned, and had saved her life on more than one occasion.
Whenever her gut told her something was off, she listened. Her Krav Maga
instructor had a saying that the human brain has the remarkable ability to know
things it doesn’t know it knows.
    “Tell me you didn’t drag me all
the way in here because Ben had a bad feeling,” Connelly said.
    Grace briefly twisted her mouth
into the expression disbelieving underlings reserved for mildly insulting questions
from their neurotic bosses. Sasha recognized it well from her years at Prescott
& Talbott. She had given it to her share of partners in response to questions
confirming that she’d cite checked the cases in a brief or served all the
parties of record.
    After a moment, she answered. “No,
Leo. Ben was concerned enough to go back into the office and pull her personnel
file. It looks like Human Resources confirmed her social security number
against the government database, and it checked out, but they hadn’t yet gotten
around to checking her references.”
    Sasha saw Connelly’s eyes flash,
but his expression remained impassive.
    Grace must have picked up on the
flicker of anger, too.
    “I know. I called Jessica at home
to find out why. She said they’re backlogged with all the new hires to get the
warehouse open. They’re running the socials as they get them, but they can only
check so many references a day, and Gerig was a low priority.”
    “She should have told us. We’d
have authorized overtime,” Connelly said in a flat tone.
    “I told her that. I also told her
to get in here tomorrow and start doing them herself. I reminded her that the
government doesn’t play around with security on its contracts and that she
doesn’t want to be the one who loses this one for us. Trust me, she got it,”
Grace said.
    Connelly nodded his approval.
    Grace continued. “So, Ben picked
up the phone and started calling around. None of her references check out. Either
the telephone number is bad, no one