Intentional Acts

by Melissa F. Miller

  Will frowned. “Rogue employee may be a bit mild. That’s reckless, bordering on criminal.”

  “I don’t disagree. I met with DoGiveThrive’s CEO and programmer yesterday. They seem to think this leaker, Asher Morgan, was motivated to disclose the information because he disagreed with a management decision not to respond to an information request from the government.”

  As she anticipated, Will’s white-collar criminal defense lawyer ears perked up at the mention of a governmental information request. “Who issued the subpoena? FBI? NSA? Wait—DoD, DHS? No, ICE?”

  “Hang on, did you have alphabet soup for lunch? I could’ve sworn you ordered the chicken and vegetable crêpe?” Naya cracked, eliciting a rueful chuckle from Will.

  “Point taken. I got a bit carried away. My apologies. Please, go on, Sasha.”

  “Apparently it was none of the above. The request—which was not a subpoena, but an informal request—came from a government contractor on behalf of the NCTC. Oh, and then, the leaker went to work for that very same contractor. The whole mess stinks like a dirty diaper.”

  She paused to check her partners’ expressions for signs of familiarity with the initials. Seeing none she continued, “The NCTC is the National Counterterrorism Center. I poked around on the internet. Apparently, the NCTC evolved after the 9/11 terror attacks. It’s an electronic information clearinghouse for all the agencies Will rattled off—and loads more. They work with the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and local JTTFs. They maintain an enormous database of information about terror suspects and upstanding citizens who just happened to have had an overlapping hotel stay or been on the same flight as someone who was flagged.”

  “Come on, now. Their powers can’t be that broad,” Naya protested.

  Will drew his eyebrows together in a worried vee. “I don’t know, Naya … matters of homeland security get a lot of deference …”

  Sasha plowed on. “I’m sure you both know my views on the matter. In any event, DoGiveThrive’s got a solid response plan in place. The CEO is calling every user personally to explain what happened, apologize, and hear their response. Transparency, apology, empathy. It’s the best they can do for now.”

  Naya nodded her approval. “Do you think they’ll be sued?”

  “Maybe. If they are, I think they get out through motions practice. I don’t see a trial in their future. But they might want to sue the contractor. They’ve got standing. I mean, no matter how well they handle the situation, their reputation will take a hit.”

  Now Naya’s frown matched Will’s. “I don’t know, Mac. That seems risky.”

  “Risky how?”

  She’d directed the question to Naya, but Will answered. “Risky in that a nonprofit charitable crowdfunding startup operating on a shoestring budget may not want to tangle with a vast government spying apparatus that will surely defend its actions by noting its compelling interest in protecting the country from a horrific terror attack, say?”

  She fixed him with a cool stare for a moment then turned to give Naya the same look. “Are you two serious? You’d have one of our clients roll over and play dead just because some puffed-up task force agent with an inflated sense of purpose decided getting his or her hands on a private list of American citizens’ charitable giving records outweighed our constitutional rights? Is that really what you’re saying here?”

  Naya and Will exchanged a look but neither of them spoke.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  Their cheerful waitress appeared with their bill and Sasha bit back the rest of her speech. Naya pulled out her corporate credit card to cover the tab. Sasha picked up her coffee to finish it even though caffeine was the last thing she needed. Her heart was racing and her hands were shaking as it was.

  The waitress returned with the receipt for Naya’s signature.

  Will, the consummate smoother of ruffled feathers, leaned toward Sasha. “We needn’t hash this out right now, you know. There’s no actual evidence the government contractor even accessed the data, is there?”

  She pursed her lips a second then conceded the point. “That’s true.”

  Naya looked up and aimed the pen at Sasha. “Just be careful, Mac. You don’t want to get in over your head.”

  “When am I not in over my head?” She waited until their laughter died and continued, “Seriously, though. I hear what you two are saying. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything that gets me arrested–”

  “Again.”

  She raised an eyebrow at Naya’s interjection. “Fine, again. But the idea that some shadowy task force with no apparent accountability or transparency is entitled to the personal information of law-abiding citizens has to stick in your craw, too.”

  Will piped up. “Of course it does. We’re simply suggesting there’s no requirement you slay every dragon in your path. Represent your client zealously? Sure. Pick a fight with someone who has the resources to destroy you? Maybe not.”

  She read the concern in both sets of eyes. “I get it. Promise.”

  Naya’s shoulders relaxed, and Will gave Sasha a relieved smile.

  She decided to change the subject to something less controversial. “Did you pick a new e-Discovery vendor?”

  “Do you really want to get him started?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have a candidate for the partnership to vote on. I’ve studied the proposals from the four leading contenders and created a spreadsheet comparing the—”

  “I move for a vote on Will’s proposed candidate,” Sasha said in a hurry before Naya sprained an eyeball rolling her eyes.

  “Seconded. All those in favor of giving the contract to the vendor Will likes say ‘Aye.’”

  “Aye,” Sasha and Naya chorused.

  He frowned. “You don’t even know the name.”

  “Two votes in favor, Will. Or is it three?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you want to see the chart?”

  “Why? We trust you. Besides, Naya or I would have just gone with whichever vendor was cheapest.”

  “Or offered us the best free snacks,” Naya added. “You didn’t do that, right? You picked a good one?”

  “Of course.”

  “Great. Meeting adjourned.” She closed the bill folder and picked up her purse.

  Will shook his head and pushed back his chair.

  They were walking across the cobblestone patio when Sasha’s mobile phone chirped to life. She plucked it out of her bag and glanced at the display.

  “That’s Gella calling with an update. I need to take this. Go ahead without me. I’ll see you back at the office.”

  They nodded their goodbyes and walked on. She deposited herself on the wrought-iron bench positioned near the outdoor hostess station. The lunch rush was over, and the spot would be relatively quiet and private.

  “Hi, Gella.”

  Gella’s voice had the distinctive echoing quality of someone talking into a speakerphone in a mostly empty conference room. “Sasha, I have Elizabelle with me.”

  “Hi Sasha,” Elizabelle chimed in.

  “How’s it going?”

  “We’ve got an update for you.”

  “Great. Before I forget, did you happen to review the proposed press release I sent over last night?”

  “I thought it was spot on. I signed off on it and forwarded it to our media team.”

  Sasha smiled. One of the treasures of the legal world was a proactive, responsive client. She could lawyer her stilettos off, but the inescapable fact was that successful management of any matter rested on a client’s willingness to execute on her advice.

  “Fantastic. So what’ve you got for me?”

  “I have now spoken to—or left telephone messages for—more than eighty percent of our tribe members. By the end of the day, I suspect I’ll have reached everyone. Most people have been remarkably understanding, although they’re understandably concerned about any potential fallout.”

  “We can revisit offering credit moni
toring if you like. But, again, it seems unlikely verging on impossible that anyone would be able to steal an identity or engage in credit card fraud based solely on a name and a zip code.”

  “I agree, of course. I’ve asked Josh, our finance director, to price out the cost of doing so, anyway. It may be worth providing monitoring as a gesture of goodwill.”

  “Sure. And there’s no harm in doing it. That’s a business decision you all should make internally. Elizabelle, do you have anything new?”

  “I heard back from Paul at the pastebin site. He confirmed the information was accessed and downloaded overnight on Sunday.”

  Sasha waited, but Elizabelle didn’t elaborate.

  “How many times?”

  The programmer sighed. “Six.”

  Sasha felt her shoulders sag slightly. Six was better than six thousand, but she’d been hoping Paul would report just one download and would helpfully identify the source as Sentinel Solution Systems. A girl could dream.

  “That’s not ideal, but it’s not that bad, right?” Gella interjected, eager for reassurance.

  “It could certainly be a whole lot worse,” Sasha agreed. “It’d be helpful to know who those six people are, of course. Even assuming one of the downloads was the work of Sentinel Solution Systems, that leaves five unknowns. They could be nothing—kids messing around or even bad guys trolling for information, but who looked at it and realized it’s worthless to them. Or, one of those hits could be an enraged ex-spouse, a bitter former business partner, an estranged sibling. It could be anyone unless Paul tells us. You two are more aware of the possible dangers than I am, I’m sure.”

  On the other end of the phone, Gella and Elizabelle murmured their understanding.

  She pressed on. “That’s why it’s so important to get the names from the site. Did this Paul seem amenable to sharing that without a subpoena or a formal document request?”

  “Not exactly, and I get it. He’s in a tricky spot. Just like we didn’t want to give up information about our tribe members voluntarily, he needs to protect his community members’ identities,” Elizabelle answered.

  “Sure.”

  Elizabelle continued, “So, while he wouldn’t tell me who downloaded the information, he did share the general locations of the internet service providers and devices tied to the downloads.”

  Sasha smiled to herself. Getting the locations of the ISPs was frankly more information than she’d hoped for at this juncture. “Nicely done. And?”

  “The first hit came from Crystal City, Virginia. That had to be Sentinel.”

  “How sure are you?”

  Elizabelle answered immediately, “I’m positive. But I can’t prove it.”

  “It might not satisfy a judge,” Sasha agreed, “but for our purposes, we’ll operate under the assumption that it was. What about the others?”

  “Right before we called you, I was explaining to Gella that two of the hits came from ISPs registered abroad. One in Argentina; one in Germany. This is pure speculation, but if I had to guess, I’d say they were just random surfers who stumbled on the names.”

  “Before we called you, Elizabelle and I searched our tribe database and confirmed that we have no tribe members in either of those countries. Because our charitable exemption only applies to U.S. taxpayers, we have exceedingly few foreign members. The handful we do have are American ex-patriots, mainly living in Canada and Mexico,” Gella explained.

  “Are there any international recipients?”

  “Again, given our charitable status and the size of our company, right now our footprint is domestic. We did work with some folks in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of hurricane Maria, but that’s the only time we’ve operated outside the continental United States. We simply don’t have the resources at this point to send our charity sherpas abroad to do their vetting. Even Puerto Rico was a strain on the budget, but the island was decimated. And we couldn’t just stand by and watch fellow Americans suffer.”

  Sasha cut her off before she got too far afield. “Okay, that all makes sense. So we’ve got two foreign hits that, for now, we’ll put in the ‘likely harmless’ category. We’ve got one hit that we’re tentatively identifying as being from Sentinel. What about the other three?”

  The sound of papers rustling preceded Elizabelle’s answer. “There were two hits from within the District of Columbia, and one hit from a university address in Athens, Georgia.”

  Sasha thought. “Did the hits from DC come after the one from Northern Virginia?”

  “Yes. Paul listed them in the order in which they happened. So it would’ve been Virginia, DC, DC, Argentina, Georgia, and finally Germany.”

  “Okay, it seems logical that Sentinel found the data and probably alerted … what, fellow contractors or government agencies?”

  “Or their own employees who may have accessed the information from their home computers. It was late on Sunday night,” Elizabelle pointed out.

  “Excellent point. For now, we’ll group those three hits together—they’re almost certainly connected somehow. We agree the international hits are likely not a high risk. What do we make of the one from Georgia?” Sasha mused.

  Elizabelle whispered something to Gella.

  After a moment, Gella said, “We’re not sure what to make of it. My instinct is it was probably just a college student hoping to stumble on something juicy like leaked military secrets or some politician’s personal emails. Elizabelle tells me that college students make up a significant portion of the non-programmer user base of sites like these.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “I was just telling Gella that my only hesitation is Georgia isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity. Most of the college students who are active in the programmer community tend be from math- and science-centered schools, particularly in California and the Northeast,” Elizabelle explained.

  “But it’s not unheard of for a student from the Midwest or the Southeast or wherever to pop up, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If we pressed him harder, do you think Paul would give us any additional details?”

  “He might,” Elizabelle allowed. “If a lawyer asked him. I think I’ve gotten as far as I’m going to get without agreeing to go on a date with him. Which … I love my job and all, but, sorry, not happening.”

  “Understood.”

  Sasha was adding ‘draft nastygram to Paul’ to her mental to-do list when Gella chimed in again and ruined her day. “There’s one more thing. Elizabelle decided to check the list of names Sentinel sent against our tribe membership.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a match.”

  10

  Leo returned to his vehicle and took out his phone to text Hank an update:

  Visual survey of residence yielded little.

  Following up on a hunch.

  Will call when back in Pgh.

  He pulled off his sweater and freed himself from the Kevlar vest. After stretching his arms over his head, he exhaled then filled his lungs again, enjoying the ability to breathe deeply. He stowed the body armor in the SUV’s storage compartment, under a quilted picnic blanket and the pool bag filled with life preservers, plastic toys, and beach towels. Apparently, Sasha’d used his car to take the twins to their most recent swimming lesson.

  He tugged the sweater down over his head and smoothed it along his torso. He was about to lower the gate and close up the rear when he caught a glimpse of his reflection and reconsidered.

  Just maybe, strolling into a biker bar wearing a button-down dress shirt, an argyle-patterned v-neck sweater, and khakis was a questionable decision. He took the sweater off again and draped it over the swim bag. He unbuttoned a few buttons, untucked his shirt, and rolled up his sleeves. He dug around the storage compartment and found a Steelers baseball cap. He put it on and pulled the bill low over his forehead. There wasn’t much more he could do about his appearance. With any luck, it no longer screamed ‘I’m a federal agent.�
� Or, at a minimum, it didn’t announce it quite so loudly.

  He started the engine and headed toward a building he’d noticed while canvassing the area. The long, squat metal-roofed building had caught his attention for three reasons. One, it was unusually large compared to the surrounding structures. Two, it had no windows. In his experience, the absence of windows in a bar meant the proprietors didn’t expect glass to withstand the impact from whatever brawls and scuffles that might flare up inside. And, three, there had been nine motorcycles parked in front of it—a surprise, given the early hour.

  His pulse ticked up a notch and he tamped down his anticipation. He had no real reason to believe Essiah Wheaton frequented Mugsy’s Bar and Grille. He believed the rider with the Texas plates had been Wheaton, but even that was a guess.

  Still, the vibration in his breastbone told him he’d learn something at the bar. Trusting in a vibration wasn’t the sort of thing he’d ever admit to publicly. But his instincts had kept him alive in the field this long, and he took them seriously.

  He kept a close eye on the speedometer, watchful so that his rising excitement didn’t result in a speeding ticket and a series of questions he’d need to evade. He passed only a few stray vehicles during the short drive. He slowed and turned into Mugsy’s parking lot. The cluster of the motorcycles near the entrance had shrunk, but there were more than a handful.

  He circled around to the back of the building and parked near a wide metal door. He didn’t expect to be making an emergency exit through the kitchen. But Leo always liked to have options.

  Speaking of options … he removed his Glock from his shoulder holster and turned it over in his right palm, weighing the wisdom of bringing it in with him. He rubbed his jaw with his left hand. Advantage: one never knew when a gun would prove useful in an unknown environment. Disadvantage: walking in with a weapon would inevitably put him in a mindset of scanning for threats, and a person looking for a threat was likely to see one. His mind made up, he unlocked the glove box, stored the handgun inside, and relocked the compartment.