A Marriage of True Minds: A Sasha McCandless Novella Read Online Free Page A

them good.
    “Here it is,”
Naya said, pulling a vanilla iPhone—no skin, no customization—from her handbag.
She handed it to Aroostine. “Hang on. Did you say you’re supposed to meet him
in the kitchen?”
    Aroostine
powered up the phone and painted Naya and Sasha with an apologetic look.
“Yeah.”
    “Why the
kitchen?” Naya pressed.
    Aroostine
cleared her throat. “Uh, a groomsman—one of your brothers, I think—paid a
waiter fifty dollars to arrange access to the Steelers’ game. Some of the men
in the party snuck out the minute you left.”
    “Patrick,” Sasha
guessed.
    “I’m not sure.
But, Leo and Manny are with the group checking the score. I assume Hank wants
them to be in the loop.”
    “Carl better not
be in that kitchen,” Naya muttered darkly.
    Aroostine
smiled. “Last I saw, he was teaching the little ones how to do the electric
slide.”
    “That man’s a
dinosaur,” Naya said, but she couldn’t hide her own smile.
    Aroostine
shifted her body slightly, angling away from them, and jammed her phone up to
her ear.
    Sasha tried to
listen to Aroostine’s end of the conversation and to read her expression and
posture for clues. But the younger attorney was already a seasoned litigator,
accustomed to acting for an audience, so her body language gave no hints. And
she kept her voice low.
    Sasha passed the
time worrying the diamond earring in her left ear, rubbing the stone between
her forefinger and thumb.
    She didn’t
realize she was doing it, until Naya reached out and stilled her hand.
    “I’m sure it’s
nothing,” Naya said in a voice that sounded entirely unsure.
    Sasha nodded,
unconvinced. She realized she was taking fast, shallow breaths and forced
herself to inhale and exhale in a slow rhythm.
    Aroostine
finally ended the call and turned back to Sasha and Naya. Her dark eyes were
wide with worry, and she motioned for them to move to the corner of the room,
further away from the others.
    “It’s bad,”
Sasha said.
    She nodded and
swallowed hard, but when she spoke, her voice was steady. “Hank got a call to
let him know Jeffrey Bricker escaped from prison. And, according to my boss,
the government believes he’s looking for you.”
     
     
    ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~
     
     
    Leo shook his head as if he had water in
his ears instead of the pounding sound of his heart. He stared at Hank, not
comprehending.
    “What do you
mean, Bricker’s escaped?”
    Hank guided him
by his elbow away from the knot of men clustered around the small television
set that sat on the long metal prep table.
    Once they were
out of earshot, jammed behind a rack holding large canisters of grains, flour,
and salt, Hank dipped his head close to Leo’s and repeated himself.
    “I received a
call to inform me that Jeffrey Bricker was missing at the four fifteen p.m.
head count. The prison was locked down and swept. He’s not there. Also missing
is a dental officer by the name of Ted Rumson. Although Rumson’s background is
clean, and he is assumed at this time to be a hostage, Homeland Security ran
Rumson’s known associates through the Guardian database.” Hank’s gravelly voice
stuttered to a stop as if his vocal chords had slammed on the brakes.
    “And?”
    Hank exhaled.
“And, he seems to have tight connections with Preppers Pennsylvania.”
    “You’ve got to
be kidding me.”
    Leo felt himself
getting ready to explode, so he clamped down on his temper and managed to spit
out the sentence in a semblance of a reasonable voice.
    “Leo, I know—”
    Leo waved off
the apology he knew was coming.
    He’d told them, the whole freaking multi-agency team that handled Bricker’s failed
attempt to bring the country to its knees through the release of a killer
superflu. He, and Sasha, and Aroostine Higgins, had argued and reasoned and
insisted that Bricker should be housed in a federal maximum-security
penitentiary far from Pennsylvania and Bricker’s army of deluded survivalists.
    Leo personally
thought