Irreparable Harm (22 page)

Naya had a point. Connelly had balked at calling the police when they found Warner’s body. And Sasha was sort of surprised that he hadn’t suggested reporting the attack at the courthouse. Was he a rogue agent, working outside his authority? And, if he was, then what?

Sasha massaged her temples. Pressed hard with both hands. Counter pressure for the pressure building inside her head. Filled her lungs with air and exhaled slowly.

Naya’s smooth forehead wrinkled in concern. “Know what, Mac? Forget I said anything. Really. I’m gonna get you a cup of coffee, okay? Then, I’m gonna call my mom’s aide and tell her to stay until midnight. That’s as late as she’ll go and I really can’t afford the overnight shift, but I’ll help you all evening, as long as it takes. Okay?’

She leaned over the desk and rubbed Sasha’s arm. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Sasha nodded. “Thank you. I don’t know what we’re getting into though, Naya. I’m not sure it’s safe to get involved.”

“Listen, your federal agent man does have a gun, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you have your karate moves or whatever the hell they are. And, I’m mean as a snake. No fear, baby.”

Sasha surprised herself by laughing.

“Really, Naya, thank you.”

“No problem. Let me get you that coffee. And maybe a sandwich. You look even worse than this morning. Which is saying something, sister.”

She left, and Sasha stared out the window. She had no plan, no direction. Just a vague goal: prevent another plane crash without getting killed in the process. What she needed was a list.

By the time Naya returned with two mugs of coffee and the news that she’d ordered up some lunch, Sasha had drafted a task chart, setting out their perceived next steps in order of priority. Next to each task, she had jotted a set of initials—hers, Naya’s, or Connelly’s—to indicate who was responsible for completing it.

Connelly followed Naya through the doorway, with a Prescott & Talbott mug of his own.

Naya put the coffee on Sasha’s desk. When she saw the chart in front of Sasha, she smiled. “A Sasha McCandless task chart. Now we’re in business.”

She tossed her head in Connelly’s direction, “And I ran into Agent Connelly. I asked reception to get him a visitor’s badge, so he can come and go.”

“The car’s still in the lot. I gave the valet fifty bucks not to have it towed and told him to call me if anyone gets in it.” Connelly said, raising the mug to his lips.

Sasha frowned. “Couldn’t you have someone from your office sit on the car?”

“I’m internal affairs, Sasha. People don’t trip over themselves to work with me. I’m working out of the local field office right now, but it’s just a base. A place to have a desk and a phone.”

Sasha met Naya’s eyes over his shoulder. She shrugged.

“Okay. I made a list of tasks.” She took a long swallow of coffee. “Let’s find an empty conference room, so we can spread out and eat lunch while we work.”

* * * * * * * * * *

They camped out in the Heinz Conference Room. Heinz was the smallest conference room, but it was Sasha’s favorite.

It had a view of the side of Mt. Washington. Sasha had passed the time in many meetings watching the Duquesne incline cars travel from Grandview Avenue atop Mt. Washington down to Station Square and back up again. Slow, unyielding, constant.

In addition to the view, the Heinz had the benefit of being warm. Probably because of its size, the small conference room was the only one that didn’t have the ambient temperature of a meat locker. Given that the thermostat boxes in the conference rooms were, as far as Sasha could tell, decorative and not functional, this was no small point in the Heinz’s favor.

But, there was no denying, it was a tight work space. Naya and Sasha had fanned out diligence files going back a decade, and the small oval table was covered.

Connelly, who couldn’t help review the files without violating Hemisphere Air’s attorney-client privilege, was relegated to the corner. He sat with his long legs outstretched and resting on a second chair and Sasha’s laptop balanced on his thighs. His task was to query various government databases for information about RAGS.

They’d been working in near silence for about forty minutes when the star-shaped conference phone bleated. Sasha snatched a folder off the top of the thing and pressed the speaker button.

“Conference room.”

Anne at the reception desk said, “I have Bob Metz on the line for you, Sasha. And your lunch order is here. Should I send it in or hold it?”

“Thanks. Naya and our guest will come out to reception and pick it up.”

Sasha looked at Naya and tilted her head toward the door. Connelly couldn’t be in the room while she talked to her client.

“C’mon, agent man,” Naya said to Connelly.

He shot Sasha a look but put her laptop on the chair and followed Naya out the door.

“Go ahead and put him through,” Sasha said.

The connection was terrible. Metz sounded like he was trapped in a snare drum during a rainstorm.

“Sasha?”

“Bob, I’m here. Can you hear me?”

“Barely. Damned monsoon out here.”

She could hear the wind behind him. She looked out the window again. Calm and dry.

“Where are you?”

“At the cabstand at Sea-Tac.”

“You’re in Seattle?”

“Came out here on the first flight this morning. At least the jet stream was calm, gained some time. Miserable.”

She didn’t know if he meant the weather, the flight, or the connection. “What’s going on? Why are you in Seattle?”

“Some sexual harassment case. I don’t know why Viv is so worked up over it, but last night after she talked to Noah, she told me she’d take over the crash and sent me out here. Where is Noah, anyway? He hasn’t returned any of my calls.” Annoyance crept into Metz’s voice.

“Noah’s dead.” She figured she’d just say it.

“Dead?”

“There was a car accident last night. Noah spoke to Viv?”

“I guess so. Viv called me around eight o’clock last night to tell me she needed me to come out here. She said she’d talked to Noah. She agreed we needed to tell the feds about the RAGS link and said she’d take care of it. I can’t believe he’s dead. Was he … driving?” Metz’s tone said everything his words did not.

Sasha just said, “The cause of the accident isn’t known yet.”

“Well … I’m flummoxed, to be honest.” There was a long pause. “Has Viv been in touch with the partner who’s taking over?”

“Actually, Viv called the firm and asked that I run the defense without another layer of supervision.”

Silence.

“Bob, did I lose you?”

“I’m here. I’m … I have always liked you, Sasha. You have a great deal of promise, so please know I’m saying this out of genuine concern for your career—you should be careful. You don’t know Vivian.”

Sasha looked out the window, watching the incline’s red wooden cable cars climb and descend the hillside as they’d done for more than a hundred and thirty years, and considered her response.

“I appreciate that, Bob. More than you know. But, I worked very closely with Noah and I think I …”

He cut her off. “You’re not Noah. He’s the only outside counsel we have that she hasn’t fired at least once in a snit. And it’s not that she has any loyalty to her former firm, because she doesn’t. If it weren’t for Laura, she would have pulled the business a long time ago.”

“Laura?”

“Laura Peterson. She and Viv went to college together. They were in the same sorority at CMU.”

Hemisphere Air remained a Prescott & Talbott client because one of the partners’ wives had passed a candle around a circle in some bastardized Greek ceremony with the Vice President of Legal Affairs. Sasha thought the old boys’ club that still ran the firm would find that to be an appropriate sort of progress.

“Sasha?”

“Sorry, Bob. I was thinking. I understand, really.”

“Okay.” He sounded unsure. “Have you talked to Viv, then?”

“Not yet. I didn’t realize you weren’t running this on the inside anymore. I guess I should give her a call.”

“Do not call her.” He said each word as if it was its own sentence. “Do not. When she wants to talk to you, she’ll call you.”

“Got it.” Sasha felt her shoulders tensing. “Well, thanks for the call, Bob. Good luck out there.”

“Wait …”

“Yes?”

He said nothing. She could hear him breathing, trying to decide how to phrase something.

“Bob?”

“Um. If you can, will you find out if my return flight was modified with the RAGS link?” His voice dropped. “I didn’t want to ask Viv. But, I thought about it all the way across the country today. Waiting for someone to run the plane into a mountain or a skyscraper or to plunge it into a lake.” His voice was shaking. “I can’t do that again.”

Sasha closed her eyes and remembered the helplessness and panic that had flooded her when she’d had the same thought during the approach to Reagan National the night before. She’d held her breath as they’d swooped over the monuments and hadn’t exhaled until the wheels touched tarmac.

“I’ll try, Bob. What’s your flight number?”

“Uh,”  she heard him clawing through papers. “1480. The Friday night red eye.”

She wrote it on a legal pad. Circled it. “Okay. Hang in there, Bob.”

“Thank you, Sasha. You, too.”

She pressed the button to end the call.

She sat thinking about Metz’s cross-country flight until Naya and Connelly returned. He carried a tray of assorted wraps and a plastic bowl of pasta salad. She held the door with one hand and a plate of cookies with the other.

“Oh, good, you’re off.”  Naya put the cookies down on the window sill and stacked up the files on the end of the table to clear a space for the food.

Sasha picked out a vegetable sandwich in a spinach wrap and filled a glass with water from the pitcher on the credenza. She focused on chewing with the uninjured side of her mouth.

She wasn’t sure what to do about Metz’s news that the NTSB and TSA had known about the RAGS link since the night before.

The TSA and the Federal Air Marshal Service were both pieces of the Homeland Security monolith. The NTSB was independent, but it worked hand-in-hand with the TSA on crash investigations.

If any one of the three agencies knew about the RAGS link, it would have shared the information with the other two right away. Which meant Connelly had known all along and was trying to keep her in the dark, so his outburst when she told him had been staged. Or he really hadn’t known, which meant… what? His investigation wasn’t authorized? Someone at the government was in on the plan with Irwin and Mickey Collins?

She wasn’t sure. She
was
sure that they were both bad scenarios. Time to find out which was in play.

“Hey, Connelly?” she said. She thought she’d kept her tone neutral, but from the way Naya’s attention shifted from her plate of pasta salad to the air marshal, it looked like she hadn’t.