Irrevocable Trust (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller Book 6) Read online

  “Maybe later, during the trial?”

  “No,” she repeated, clearing her throat.

  Connelly and Cole watched her, waiting.

  “I didn’t give this card to your mother,” she told the boy.

  “Sure you did. She must have thought you’d help us if something happened,” he insisted.

  “I hope she thought that,” Sasha said slowly. “And I hope I can. But this card is new. We had them printed after Will left Prescott last summer,” she continued, addressing Connelly more than the kid now. “The first orders didn’t even have this orange bar.” She pointed at the design.

  “When did you add that?” Connelly asked.

  She searched her memory. “Right before we left for the wedding. There was a full box waiting on my desk when we got back from the honeymoon. I don’t know how she got this.”

  “Who cares how she got it?” Cole snapped. “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Of course I am,” she soothed. She turned the card in her fingers. “What do you need.”

  Cole floundered. “I don’t know. Here. This is my mom’s ICE envelope.” He pulled a thick manila envelope from his back pocket. It had been rolled lengthwise into a tube.

  “Ice?”

  “In Case of Emergency,” Connelly explained.

  She took the envelope and smoothed it out to examine the front. ‘Open ICE” was printed across the front in thick black marker. The printing was neat, sure—the hand of a mother planning for contingencies, keeping order in her home.

  “Your card was attached right there on the corner,” Connelly said.

  “And this was in the freezer?”

  “Freezer’s better than a safe. Secure in the event of a fire. Not attractive to roving bands of thieves. Easily accessible. Hide it in the open, or at least in among the frozen peas,” Cole recited.

  “Did your dad teach you that?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  Cole barked out a short laugh. “Him? No. He was all about safes. The bigger and stronger the better. Titanium, retina scans, whatever. No, the freezer thing was all Mom.”

  It was a clever spot to use. She gave him a wan smile.

  “May I open it?”

  “That’s the idea. It’s full of papers, but they’re all legal mumbo-jumbo,” Cole said.

  She worked the clasp and slid out a sheaf of documents. She flipped through them, Last Will and Testament of Allison Bennett, Financial Power of Attorney, Health Care Power of Attorney, Irrevocable Trust for the Benefit of the Bennett Children, Appointment of Trustee.

  She looked up at Connelly. “This is a lot of reading material. Let me make a copy of all this stuff and start working through it. Why don’t you rescue Hank? I’m sure the kids are hungry and bored. Go get something to eat. I’ll call your cell.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  He stood, and Cole followed suit.

  “Thank you, Ms. McCandless. I mean, Mrs. Connelly?”

  “Call me Sasha.”

  Connelly walked over and kissed her softly. “Mrs. Connelly sounds better, you know.”

  She arched a brow at that.

  “Go on. Get out of here and let me do my thing.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Bricker made it from Sunnyvale all the way up to Weirton, West Virginia along the network, handed off from one conductor to another. But at a rundown McDonald’s just south of Weirton, the system broke down.

  Pete, the red-hatted truck driver who’d picked him up in Norfolk, shrugged apologetically and kicked at the gravel with the toe of his boot as he broke the news. “Looks like your next conductor’s a no-show, Captain.”

  “Did something happen?” he demanded, worried that the government had somehow gotten wind of the railroad system or, worse yet, his movements.

  “Uh-yup.” Pete aimed a stream of chewing tobacco at the weeds growing alongside the parking lot. “He got his self picked up on a drug charge, according to the local contact. They’re looking for a replacement now, sir. I’m sorry I can’t take you further down the road. I’ve got to get back. I’m driving a long haul run. I head out to Iowa tomorrow.”

  Bricker realized he’d been holding his breath. He exhaled in relief and offered Pete a firm handshake.

  “Of course, of course. No apologies necessary. Thank you for your service.”

  Although he no longer held an official leadership position as the head of Preppers PA, he remained a legend within the movement. The men who risked their security to help him deserved his respect.

  Pete bobbed his head and jerked a thumb around toward the back of the McDonald’s.

  “Don’t mention it, sir. Guy in the kitchen is going to help you out. Knock on the back door and ask for T-Bone.”

  “T-Bone?”

  “Yup. ‘Fraid so.”

  “We trust this man?” Bricker asked.

  Pete cleared his throat and answered slowly. “I don’t know him myself. Can’t vouch for him, but the local guys say he’s been coming around and seems eager and able.”

  Bricker kept his face a neutral mask. “I see. Thanks again for the lift.”

  Pete nodded and headed back to his pickup while Bricker squared his shoulders and trudged past the Dumpsters to the back of the restaurant. He rapped on the windowless steel door. While he waited, he swiveled his head from side to side, constantly scanning for passersby.

  After a moment, a scrawny guy pushed the door open and looked around the parking lot, wild-eyed. He had a shaved head, and blue-inked tattoos peeked out from the neck of his polyester uniform shirt.

  “Are you T-Bone?” Bricker asked, ignoring his misgivings.

  Young men like this were punks, dancing on the fringes of neo-Nazism, incarceration, and drug abuse. They were attention-seekers and, as far as he was concerned, they represented a weak link within the larger movement.

  But at the moment, T-Bone was his lifeline.

  “That’s me. Here you go, Captain Bricker, I’m sure you’re hungry.” He shoved a grease-stained bag of food into Bricker’s hands.

  “Thank you, son.”

  The young man smiled and his pronounced Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “I can’t let you in the back but when my shift ends, I can drive you as far as Bridgeville,” he whispered.

  His eyes shifted from Bricker’s face to the scraggly trees at the edge of the lot behind him. “Maybe you can wait in the woods?”

  Bricker raised an eyebrow at the classification of the patch of dirt as woods. The sad trees lining the lot provided no cover.

  “I’ll find a spot to hunker down. When does your shift end?”

  “About two more hours. If things slow down and the manager asks for volunteers to punch out early, I’ll jump on it.”

  “Two hours is fine.” Bricker turned toward the brush then turned back. “Wait. Where exactly is Bridgeville?”

  “Uh, just south of Pittsburgh?” The kid answered with a question in his own voice. “Maybe thirty minutes or so outside the city.”

  Bricker nodded a goodbye.

  He walked into the trees clutching his bag of fried food. He didn’t bother to hide his smile.

  Just outside the city? He’d be within striking distance of Sasha McCandless by morning. He’d have to scout a suitable hiding spot to use as a base and then get a handle on the lawyer’s routines. He was eager to strike, but he had to proceed with maximum caution, especially in light of the government agents and other law enforcement types who apparently followed McCandless around like puppy dogs. According to the team he’d hired to storm her wedding, they hadn’t been prepared for guests who would resist and fight back. Well, he didn’t intend to make that mistake.

  Killing Anna had fueled him to wrap up the rest of the loose ends faster. He had to take care of the lawyer and her husband and, if he got in the way, their good pal Richardson. Once he’d evened the score with them, he could turn to the final piece of business—getting his children out o
f the clutches of the federal government.

  Anger flared in his belly and a red mist clouded his vision. The idea of the corrupt, inept government enslaving his children was what had fueled him during his imprisonment. Their mother’s shameful complicity aside, he hadn’t raised his children to submit to the will of a bunch of craven bureaucrats.

  His last attempt to force the government to its knees had failed because he’d had to rely on others. This time, he was going to do it alone. A single man, driven to free his children from their government yoke. No holds would be barred. If he went down in a blaze of gunfire, like the true patriots who’d gone before him at places like Ruby Ridge, then so be it.

  He plowed through the jagged brush at the edge of the lot and pushed his way through the long weeds. He had to sacrifice quiet for speed in order to put some distance between himself and the row of fast food restaurants.

  Once he could no longer hear the rush of traffic on the highway, he slowed his pace and began to search for an adequate spot to stop. He crouched under a canopy of vines, tore open the bag, and wolfed down the burger. Then he crumpled the bag into a ball and shoved it in his pocket. Leave no trace.

  He sat under the vines and waited for time to pass, jittering his leg to release his pent up energy.

  First, McCandless.

  Then his children.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “I gave it to her,” Naya said.

  She closed her outline and set her highlighter on her desk then looked up at Sasha with a stricken look.

  Sasha pocketed the business card.

  “It’s okay.”

  “I didn’t know it was her, Mac.” Her voice shook.

  “Well, of course you didn’t. It’s okay.”

  “A woman called the office right after New Year’s Day. She said her resolution was to get her affairs in order. We got a bunch of calls like that in early January, actually.”

  “Sure.”

  It made sense. Procrastinating about having a will prepared was a national pastime, but overcoming inertia was relatively easy: Call a lawyer and get the ball rolling and then turn to more painful pursuits like giving up sugar or training for a marathon.

  “I told her—I tell all of them that we don’t do that. I explain that you and Will are trial lawyers, but I offer to give them referrals.”

  “Allison Bennett took down the name I gave her but she asked me to send her your card, just in case she needed it for something else. I remember because she gave me her address. I told her you’re not admitted to practice in North Carolina and that she should get a local attorney for her estate work, anyway.”

  Sasha nodded. “Good answer.”

  “But she said she had ties to Pennsylvania and needed an attorney up here, too. Anyway, I sent her a set of the marketing materials Will had printed up and one of your cards.” Naya placed her palms flat on the desk as if she were bracing herself. “Did I lead Bricker to her?”

  The truth, of course, was Sasha had no idea. But the notion that Bricker had access to the firm’s mailing list database sent a shiver up her spine. And Naya looked sick, like she might vomit all over her exam preparation materials. So Sasha did the only thing she could do. She lied.

  “Absolutely not. The feds are working all the angles. Don’t you think they’d be crawling all over this place and pissing you off while you try to study if they thought for a minute Bricker found her through us?”

  The color returned to Naya’s face. “But seriously, get back to work. I have what I need.”

  She was glad to have closed the loop on how her business card had gotten into Allison’s hands, but she had to get back to work herself. Her eyes had started to glaze over about two paragraphs into her reading of Allison’s will. She’d gone hunting for answers on the card in an effort to wake herself up as much as to find an answer.

  “Thanks for talking me down, Mac.”

  “It’s what I do.” She turned to leave and then had a thought. “Hey, did you give her a recommendation for an estates and trust lawyer?”

  Naya narrowed her eyes for a moment and thought. “I sure did.”

  Sasha waited.

  “Marshall Alverson.”

  Sasha blinked. “You sent her to Prescott?”

  Naya had the decency to look sheepish. “Listen, I usually refer people to Kevin Williams, over in the Lawyers’ Building, for simple wills. But she said she had some complicated issues. Complicated issues, large amounts of money—those things call for a specialist. And where are you gonna find a specialist? It’s either P&T or WC&C.” She raised an eyebrow. “And say what you will about our former employer, but they’re less dodgy than Whitmore, Clay, & Charles.”

  Sasha matched her with a raised brow of her own. “The less dodgy of the two dodgiest, stodgiest firms in town? That’s quite an endorsement. Did he take her on as a client, do you know?”

  “How would I know? Those fools don’t even bother to say ‘thanks.’ They assume a steady flow of clients is a God-given right. Meanwhile, Kevin sends me a gift card every time I send him a client.”

  Sasha left her stewing in her annoyance with Prescott & Talbott’s entitlement attitude.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Sasha added the Health Care Power of Attorney to the growing pile of documents to her left and stifled a yawn.

  She glanced at the dwindling pile to her right. All she had left was Allison’s Irrevocable Trust and the Appointment of Trustee and then she could claim her treat.

  Espresso. She could almost taste it.

  And not a quick run to Jake’s for his pitiful excuse for espresso. As her reward for numbing her eyeballs, not to mention her brain, with page after page of stilted, convoluted language that no lawyer had spoken since the eighteen hundreds, she’d earned the real deal.

  She was going to take a trip to the intimidating, fancy espresso bar downtown. She might even get one of their dense dark chocolate, caramel, and sea salt bars, known to the rest of the world by the less esoteric name of ‘brownie.’ She wasn’t a sweets lover, but she made an exception for those bars.

  The promise of the nirvana that awaited her propelled her forward. She plucked the trust document from the table and started reading. She made it almost all the way through the first sentence before she had her first question. The document was styled an “irrevocable testamentary trust for the benefit of the minor children of Allison Bennett.”

  She dialed Will’s extension.

  “Yes? Is Naya rampaging?”

  She chuckled. “Not to my knowledge. Do you have a minute?”

  “Always.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  She ended the call and swept her documents into her arms. She trotted down the short hallway to Will’s office. His door was open, so she walked right in and plopped herself into his guest chair.

  “Aren’t all testamentary trusts, by definition, irrevocable?” she asked without preamble.

  Will made a contemplative noise. She recognized it as his professorial warm up.

  “Well, with the caveat that this obviously is not my area of expertise, I’d say that’s correct. The difference between a revocable trust and an irrevocable trust is that the latter cannot be changed by the grantor once it takes effect.”

  “And a testamentary trust doesn’t take effect until the grantor dies, right?”

  “Correct. And, obviously, unless there’ve been some advances in science that I don’t know about, a dead grantor can’t make any changes.”

  That all squared with what she thought.

  “Then can you think of any reason why an attorney would draft a testamentary trust to specify that it’s irrevocable?”

  He scratched his chin.

  “Hmm. Possibly just out of an abundance of caution. Maybe the drafter is a belt and suspenders type.”

  Of course.

  If there was one hallmark of Prescott & Talbott’s transactional attorneys, it was their insistence on building redundancies into their
documents. It used to drive her nuts when she’d have to go to trial over a document that had been inelegantly drafted to provide the ultimate in butt-covering for the attorney, invariably at the expense of clarity and unambiguity. The trial lawyers all rolled their eyes at the belts-and-suspenders approach their colleagues favored when everyone knew that either/or would keep your pants up.

  “Right. That makes sense. Hey, if you had a thorny estate issue, who would you refer it out to?”

  “Marsh Alverson, without a doubt.” Will answered confidently and without hesitation.

  “Great. Thanks.”

  “Wait. Are you doing a will? I don’t know if our malpractice carrier would approve. Not that you aren’t competent, of course. It’s just somewhat far afield of your expertise, don’t you think?”

  Behind his glasses, his eyes flashed with concern.

  “No, don’t worry. The estate I’m asking about has already been farmed out—to your pal at Prescott, as it happens.”

  “Oh? Is it in dispute now?”

  She hesitated, chewing on her lower lip while she thought. Finally she decided she owed her law partner an explanation. After all, she’d agreed to represent the Bennett children’s interests. Her representation affected the firm and, hence, Will. He needed to be in the loop. Connelly and Hank didn’t have to like it, but they’d just have to deal with it.

  “Not exactly. The decedent’s heirs asked me to represent them, though. It looks like it could get hairy. Our clients are the six minor children of a woman who was just murdered.”

  He rocked back in his seat.

  “Good Lord. Do the authorities have a suspect?”

  “I’m not sure about the authorities, but Hank and Connelly seem to think Bricker killed her.”

  “Jeffrey Bricker? The prepper Bricker?”

  “That’s the one. It’s his wife, Will. Anna Bricker’s dead. And she left my contact information for her kids with her estate papers.”

  Complete silence stretched across his office.

  She waited a long minute. Then she said, “Will?”

  “This is a serious development.” Will’s voice lacked its usual reassuring timbre. He sounded squeaky and unsure. In truth, he sounded scared.