Imminent Peril (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller Book 10) Read online

  But Maisy cocked her head. “Your firm’s not handling the transaction, though, are you?”

  “Funny you should ask. Will and I always assumed Naya would want to be a litigator, too. I mean, she was a trial team paralegal before law school. She’s got loads of experience, but apparently her heart’s desire is to be a mergers and acquisitions attorney. To each her own, I guess.” She shrugged.

  “So Naya’s handling the deal?”

  “Yes. She brought in the client. She’s jazzed to have the chance to do what she loves. And, frankly, if she can build a practice, it would be great for the firm long-term as we grow.”

  “I don’t doubt for a second that Naya can make a name for herself as a transactional attorney. You’d better just hope she doesn’t angle for top billing when you make her a partner,” Maisy said with a giggle.

  “I don’t know. Andrews, McCandless, and Volmer doesn’t sound half bad.”

  Just then, Maisy’s pointy elbow jabbed in Sasha’s side, digging into the soft spot just above her ribs.

  “Ow!”

  Maisy jerked her head toward the front corner of the bar. “Check out that creep.”

  Sasha followed her gaze. The big guy was getting bolder. One hand was pressed on the small of the seated redhead’s back and the other caressed her neck. Even as drunk as she seemed to be, she wasn’t responding. She sat stiffly. Her sister—or whoever the second redhead was—yanked her hand and pulled her off the stool. The third woman shot the man a dirty look and moved to stand between him and his target.

  “You missed it. He tried to grab her butt a minute ago,” Maisy said in a low voice.

  “Doesn’t this place have bouncers?” Sasha asked. She turned her head to survey the room.

  It was sufficiently crowded and noisy that it was entirely possible that the drama playing out in the front corner had gone unnoticed by management. The bartender was at the far end of the bar, ringing up bills, opening beers, and mixing cocktails in a whirl of constant motion. The men in khakis were deep in a discussion about the Penguins’ new goalie and either oblivious to, or pretending to be oblivious to, the drama playing out just twenty feet away. Nobody was paying attention to the unfolding sexual assault.

  She exhaled and slid off her barstool.

  “Nooo,” Maisy breathed. “We should stay out of this.”

  “Would you want someone to help if it were you?”

  Maisy sighed. Her eyes slid around the room, desperately looking for someone else who might step into the role of Good Samaritan.

  “Her friends are there,” she pointed out halfheartedly.

  “I’m just going to nicely ask him to back off,” Sasha assured her. “You can wait here.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Maisy drained her glass and hopped to the ground beside her. “I’m coming with you.” As they snaked their way through the crowd, Sasha murmured to Maisy, "When we get there you talk to the girls and see if you can get them away from him. I'll take care of him."

  “You won’t get any argument from me about that division of labor."

  Sasha smiled to herself. Then she cleared her mind and concentrated on her surroundings until the man and the three women came into the foreground in rich, sharply drawn detail and all the noise and activity of the bar around her receded into a soft blur. Her Krav Maga instructor Daniel called this state laser focus.

  As she and Maisy drew closer to the small group, the more sober of the two redheads—the one who was not on the receiving end of the man's creepy attention—threw them a desperate look. Sasha smiled and nodded in an effort to reassure the woman that they were coming to help. The redhead nodded back, and relief flooded the dark-skinned brunette’s face. The change in their demeanor must have registered with the creep, because he swiveled around on his barstool and gave Sasha a hard, challenging look.

  Great. She would have liked to have done this the easy way, but one look at his steely expression made it clear that the hard way would have to do. Still, she hoped against hope that he’d choose to walk away.

  “Do you need something?” he said in a brusque tone.

  Maisy swooped in and hustled the three women out of the corner. The sober redhead and the brunette went eagerly; the drunk redhead asked loud, confused questions, but she allowed her friends to lead her away. Sasha waited until they'd rounded the corner to answer.

  “I do need something. I need you to leave those girls alone,” she said in a pleasant, businesslike voice.

  He pushed himself to standing and balled his fists. He stared down at her. He had nine, maybe ten, inches and seventy or eighty pounds on her.

  “Who the hell are you, the bar mom?”

  “That's right. I'm the bar mom. It's time for you to go.”

  He grabbed his beer, took a long swig, and slammed the empty bottle down on the bar. “Listen, lady, you need to mind your own business. I was just giving those gals some attention.”

  She smiled tightly. “Your attention isn’t welcome. Those women are trying to be polite and give you the brushoff without making a big scene. But since you don't seem to be getting the hint, I'm going to make it easy for you. Leave them alone.”

  “Or what?” he sneered.

  “You don't want to do this. Trust me.”

  He looked her up and down. Then he laughed. “Am I supposed to be afraid of you?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He nodded.

  She went on, “If you were smart, you would be. But you don't look very smart, so no, I don’t expect you are.”

  His face tightened as he stepped forward. From the angle of his arm, he was planning to push her back against the window. If he did, she’d be pinned—not a great fighting position. She planted her feet and waited for his shoulder to move forward. She shot out her left hand and grabbed his right wrist, bending it back. She used his momentum to twist herself so that they were standing side by side. Then she pulled his wrist close to her body and locked it against her right arm.

  If she were a regular-sized person, this was the part where she would've hissed in his ear. But her mouth was about level with his throat, so instead, she craned her neck up and looked over at him.

  “Now, listen carefully. I could break your wrist right now. It would take almost no effort.” She applied just a tiny bit of extra pressure to his wrist to drive home the point. He winced. She went on, talking through her clenched teeth, “But I'm not going to. I’m going to let go of your arm. And you’re going to get your stuff and get lost before I change my mind. Any questions?”

  The disbelief that had filled his eyes when she grabbed him faded, and a look of embarrassment took its place. “No, no questions.”

  “Good. Next time you’re inspired to chat up a woman at a bar, you should remember your manners. You never know when there's going to be a bar mom around.”

  She released his hand and stepped back but kept her eyes locked on his. He mumbled something she couldn’t make out and grabbed his overcoat from the back of his stool. He shrugged his arms into it and stood with a dejected slump in his shoulders, his arms hanging by his sides.

  She realized later, when she was reviewing where it had all gone wrong, that it was his posture of defeat that had lulled her into making her critical mistake. She turned her back on him, intending to join Maisy, who was now rubbing the shoulders of the drunk redhead.

  As she stepped away, her eyes drifted up to the long mirror that hung on the wall opposite the bar. Behind her, she saw movement. The man had reached back for his empty beer bottle and had his arm cocked, ready to bring the bottle down on the back of her skull.

  She whipped around and drove her open left hand into his nose in a single, fluid motion. He staggered and backed into the bar rail. She allowed her forward momentum to carry her toward him and landed a solid punch in the soft area just below his nose and above his upper lip. His nose was already gushing blood from the palm strike. He wiped it away with his left hand then covered his face. She kept her fis
ts up and watched his face.

  He emitted an animalistic howl and lowered his head, charging her as if he were a bull. When the distance was just right, she raised her leg, chambered her knee, and whipped her leg out and up, driving her heel into the underside of his chin. As his head snapped back, she lunged forward and grabbed two fistfuls of his jacket in her hands. He sagged against the bar, breathing hard and bleeding freely, and stared at her with a look of sheer hate.

  “Had enough?” she asked as she wondered where the hell the bouncers were. He didn’t answer but just kept glaring at her.

  Better safe than sorry, she decided. She pulled back her left fist and punched him in the solar plexus. He doubled over with a gasp-grunt.

  Suddenly, a cluster of bouncers rushed toward them. A clean-cut, college-age guy in a short-sleeved polo shirt separated them.

  He ushered Sasha to a nearby seat. “Are you okay, ma'am?” he asked in a soft, concerned voice.

  “I’ll be fine.” She examined her knuckles but saw no cuts. She’d probably have a few bruises in the morning. She glanced over at her attacker, who was flanked by two more polo-wearing bouncers who loomed over him. “But he’s probably going to need stitches,” she said in a steady voice.

  “You think?” he answered drily.

  The creep caught her eye and started shouting. “I want to press charges,” he sputtered, pointing at her. “That bitch is crazy.”

  She allowed the adrenaline to continue to drain from her body, refusing to let him to amp her back up. “I was defending myself,” she explained.

  The bouncer gave her a worried look. “I’m really sorry, lady, but it's establishment policy to call the cops whenever there's a bar fight. They’re already on their way. You’re gonna have to tell them your side of the story and let them sort it out. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m sure. I’m also sure the responding officer will understand what happened here once he or she takes our statements.” She smiled in an effort to reassure the poor guy. His distress was written all over his face.

  “Well, if you’re positive you’re not hurt. Can I get you anything? A glass of water?”

  “A glass of water would be great,” she said as she saw the police cruiser come to a stop just outside the door, lights flashing.

  4

  Prachi bit her lower lip and ran a finger along the row of values. They couldn’t possibly be right. She flipped the page to the summary of testing data and scanned the columns. There it was, the mercury content with the same impossible number. Beside it, the analysis: Outside accepted tolerances.

  She stared at the numbers until her eyes blurred and the numbers swam into one another. Then she rifled through the stack of reports piled almost as high as her cubicle’s half-wall and found the heavy metals test results from a previous batch of product. She paged through the report, sheet by sheet, until she found the same data from the earlier batch. The number was significantly lower. Within normal limits.

  That, frankly, was what she’d expected to find. When Playtime Toys had sponsored her for her H-1B skilled worker visa, they’d been desperate to find someone like her—someone with a dual background in chemistry, to understand and interpret the reams of third-party testing data they were required to obtain on their products, and proficiency in computer programming, to build and manage the database that would house the results, along with all the other information about the products.

  During the time it had taken for the government to process her visa, the testing results had simply piled up. Stacks and stacks of unread, in some cases, unopened, reports lined the walls of her office pending her arrival. After she finally arrived in Pennsylvania, the stacks grew higher still while she began the necessary work of coding the database. Then she had to sort the documents into a semblance of order; apparently, as the reports had come in, they’d been tossed aside. The company’s focus was on manufacturing the products and pushing them out the door. Nobody had cared about organization, documentation, or process. So now she was facing a mountainous backlog of reports that needed to be entered into the system she’d created.

  Even after her meeting with Mr. Merriman and Mr. Jefferson, where they’d been very clear that completing the database was a crucial priority, the human resources department still hadn’t responded to her request for help—even a temporary employee or an intern would be a blessing. But as it stood, she was tackling the mountain alone.

  Because she was doing all of the input herself, she was certain that none of the other samples entered into her database had been outside normal limits. The third-party testing company that handled the heavy metals testing performed tests weekly. Without fail, every Tuesday, she received a package of testing results. She’d been working backward, in reverse chronological order, to input the most recent tests first. She eyed her piles. The older heavy metals testing results were all grouped together waiting to be entered into the system. There looked to be three dozen or so.

  She sucked in a breath. Mr. Merriman and Mr. Jefferson had been crystal clear that clearing the backlog and getting the database up and running was her most critical task. But she couldn’t ignore the data. Best practices required her to stop the data entry and double-check the results internally before reaching out to the testing company. She didn’t even know where the on-site laboratories were located, let alone how to get the testing underway.

  She saved her work in the database, scooped up the testing results, and headed through the maze of cubicles toward the elevator. This problem, as the Americans liked to say, was above her pay grade.

  Prachi rapped on the door. Then she stood with her hands clasped in front of her, gripping the report, until she heard Mr. Jefferson’s voice.

  “Come in.”

  She pushed the door open and smiled hesitantly. “Sorry to bother you.”

  “Dr. Agarwal, can I help you with something?”

  She stepped all the way into the room. “Yes. I need to talk to you about some testing results.”

  He frowned. “Hasn’t personnel gotten back to you about your request? I’m afraid there's simply no room in the budget to give you an assistant. It’s futile to try to plead your case to me. Trust me, if I could’ve authorized the expense, I would have. But we’re under a ‘no new expenditures’ order until the sale of the company, direct from the Chief Financial Officer.”

  “That's not why I'm here.”

  “Oh?” He swiveled in his desk chair to face her.

  “The heavy metal testing results for the most recent batch of product AR462 are … well … they’re unusual.”

  “AR462,” he mumbled to himself as though he were searching a mental list. “In what way are they unusual?”

  “The sample exceeds the tolerances for organic mercury.”

  “Mercury?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed. “The other substances were all within normal limits. I went back to the results for the previous batch. That sample was completely within limits, including the mercury. Has the manufacturing process changed in some way?”

  “No.”

  “I thought not. So, obviously, we need to retest the samples in-house. How do I arrange for that?”

  He looked at her in disbelief for several seconds before managing a response. “Dr. Agarwal, did you not understand what Mr. Merriman and I told you? You focus on finishing the database. Pronto.”

  She tried not to react, but she bristled at his tone. Yes, she understood they needed to have a functioning database before the sale went through so that they could become multimillionaires instead of regular old millionaires, but this was a safety issue.

  Perhaps he hadn’t understood her. She tried again, “The mercury levels are dangerously high, and this product is coded as a children’s toy. You know, the tolerances for heavy metals in children’s toys aren’t—”

  “It's a clear mistake. That's an erroneous result. Someone hit the wrong key and typed an incorrect number. Or perhaps someone input the tolerances for a
different product. Or they miscoded the product. That happens all the time.” He waved his hands in two small, loopy circles. “It could be any one of a dozen innocent explanations.”

  “It could be, and it probably is,” she agreed. “But, as I understand the existing regulations, I need to retest the sample to confirm that.”

  “No, you need to focus on populating your database.”

  They looked at each other in silence. She could feel her pulse throbbing in her neck. Finally, she said, “Respectfully, Mr. Jefferson, I'm not going to sign off on this batch of product without retesting.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Luckily, Dr. Agarwal, you don't have to sign off on it. I will. Is that the report?”

  “Yes.” Her hands tightened reflexively around the papers.

  “Wonderful. Thank you for hand delivering it. You may leave it on my desk.”

  “Mr. Jefferson—”

  He drew his hand through the air in a short horizontal gesture as though he were a conductor and she were a member of his orchestra. “That'll be all. You need to get back to your project.” He turned away, tapped a key to wake up his computer monitor, and started typing rapidly.

  She stood there awkwardly, but he continued to pointedly ignore her. She took one last look at the report in her hand then placed it on the edge of his desk. Her legs shook as she turned and walked out of his office. As she left, she slammed the door behind her in a futile, livid gesture. She thought she heard a thud and a crash from inside the office but couldn't be sure over the angry pounding of her heart.

  5

  Through the living room window, Leo could see Maisy standing on the front porch, her finger hovering in the air a quarter of an inch away from the doorbell. He turned and did a quick sweep of the room. He grabbed Fiona’s avocado-stained leggings and the pile of dirty miniature socks that had never quite made it into the mudroom and the washing machine and shoved them under the coffee table. Finn, engrossed in a board book that he was holding upside down, ignored the whirlwind of activity as Leo straightened piles of books, plumped up pillows, and wrangled stray blocks. Fiona abandoned her shape-sorting puzzle and toddled around the room after him, babbling. Mocha, who evidently thought this was a game, chased her. The three of them circled the room like a tornado until Maisy finally pressed the bell.