Intentional Acts

by Melissa F. Miller

  She thumbed out a response.

  Where are you? What’s going on?

  The phone vibrated in her hand. A new text had arrived.

  On the ground now. Just running an errand for Hank. Go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow. XOXO.

  She gritted her teeth at the non-answer. She considered calling him, but she knew if he answered the call, he wouldn’t tell her anything more than he already had. Which was nothing.

  Be careful. Love you, too.

  She sent the text, switched off the lamp, powered down the phone, and flopped back on the mattress and planned out her morning.

  She jabbed at Hank’s doorbell and depressed the button longer than was strictly necessary.

  A moment later, a bleary-eyed Hank pulled the door open and eyed her with sleepy concern.

  “Sasha, it’s six o’clock. Is something wrong?”

  “Uncle Hank!” Beside her, Finn grinned at him. Fiona yawned.

  “Nope, nothing’s wrong,” Sasha chirped. She wriggled out of the backpack filled with food, books, toys, and changes of clothes and shoved it toward Hank one-handed.

  He reached for the straps slowly, still processing. She took a sip of coffee from her travel mug and bent to kiss each of the twins in turn.

  “Okay, love bugs, be good for Uncle Hank today.”

  “Okay,” Fiona mumbled, still half-asleep.

  “We will!” Finn, the morning bird, promised.

  She straightened to standing and locked eyes with Hank.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, drawing his eyebrows into a vee.

  “You tell me.”

  “I don’t—”

  “My husband left the house last night to do something for you. He didn’t tell me where he was going, what he was doing, or when he’d be back. I woke up in the middle of the night to a text telling me that he was on a plane going I don’t know where to do I don’t know what. He won’t give me any answers, so I’m not even going to bother to ask you. But, I have a business to attend to. So I’m going for my morning run, then I’m going to shower and go into the office. You want to send my husband God-knows-where, you can watch my kids.” She was shaking with anger but she kept her voice light, pleasant even. She knew the twins were listening to every word.

  Hank’s littlest one peeked out from behind Hank’s bathrobe and clapped her hands with excitement when she saw the twins.

  “Finn! Fiona!” Calla raced out onto the porch, took each of them by a hand, and dragged them inside. From within the whirlwind of squeals and laughter, the twins shouted their goodbyes to Sasha.

  She smiled at the kids and returned her eyes to Hank’s face and let the smile fade.

  “Sasha …”

  “What?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know where Leo is.”

  She pursed her lips and maintained eye contact.

  “I mean. I didn’t specifically send him out of town. He’s working a very sensitive matter. It’s—”

  “Save it. It’s top secret, confidential, need to know. Everything’s secret with you two. Whatever. I have things to do.”

  She turned to leave.

  “Sasha.”

  She iced him with a look over her shoulder. “What?”

  “I’m happy to have the kids for the day. And I’m sorry he left you in a lurch. But you know him better than anyone. He wouldn’t do that to you unless he really really had to. And you’re right, I can’t tell you what’s going on. But I can tell you this: He really had to do what he did. You have to have a little faith.” His eyes were serious and more than a little sad.

  “Do I, Hank? Do I really?” she shot back.

  Then she pushed her hand through the air, dismissing the entire conversation. It wouldn’t get her anywhere. She placed her travel mug on the ledge by Hank’s stairs to retrieve when she came back for the kids and raced down to the sidewalk.

  As she ran, Hank’s voice looped through her head, repeating one sentence, the cadence matching the strike of her feet against the pavement:

  You know him better than anyone.

  Did she, though?

  She powered up Forbes Avenue—the steep hill that was Pittsburgh’s answer to the Boston Marathon’s Heartbreak Hill—and had to focus all her attention on pushing herself forward. Her worries about Connelly were pushed out of her mind as she gutted her way up the incline.

  When she crested the hill, she took a triumphant breath as endorphins flooded her nervous system with something akin to joy.

  But, as she ran on, her worries returned, chasing her along her route, threatening to overtake her.

  Did she really know her husband? Did anyone?

  She ran faster, but she couldn’t outpace the thoughts that dogged her every step.

  19

  By seven-thirty, Sasha was ensconced in her office, her third coffee of the morning at her elbow, drafting correspondence. Letters that required responses had piled up for several of her cases. Sometimes it seemed lawyers liked nothing better than exchanging snippy letters. As luck would have it, she was feeling very snippy.

  So she plowed through the stack, dashing off terse responses pointing out how incompetent, misguided, or plain old wrong her adversary’s position was. And, as was her custom, instead of the typical lawyer closing of ‘Regards’ or ‘Very Truly Yours,’ she ended each letter with her favorite valediction, ‘All Best.’ It made her smile, and that was reason enough to do it. Although she’d once substituted ‘Warmest Wishes’ in response to a letter whose drafter had warned her in her closing to ‘Please Govern Yourself Accordingly,’ under the theory that that dude needed all the warmth he could get.

  She was about three-quarters through her mountain of overdue letters when Naya appeared in her doorway.

  “Got a minute?”

  She saved her file and nodded. “Sure. Come on in.”

  Naya pulled the door shut behind her. She gave Sasha a close look. “Everything okay? Caroline said you got in before she did this morning.”

  “I wanted to get an early start. I needed to catch up on a few things.” She waved a hand at the letters on her desk.

  Naya narrowed her eyes. “You look tired.”

  “The storms kept me up last night.”

  She rarely hid personal stuff from Naya. She was, after all, Sasha’s closest friend. Plus, it was a pointless exercise. Naya was as good at reading people as Sasha was. Her friend and partner would know she was lying. But she just wasn’t up for a discussion about Connelly’s secrecy. Not now.

  Naya gave her a skeptical hmm but let the subject go—for now. Sasha had no doubt she’d return to it at some point.

  “Anyway, you were right about that list from Sentinel Solution Systems. Every single one of those names is a non-entity as far as the Internet is concerned.”

  “All of them?”

  “All of them. Most of them had a fairly typical digital footprint until sometime last year when they just—poof—vanished.”

  Sasha bit down on her lower lip for a second. “How is that even possible?”

  “It’s beyond weird. And it can’t be a coincidence. But here’s the other thing, that fact—that they’ve gone dark—is the only thing that seems to connect these folks. They’re from all over the country, every possible age, gender, race, and ethnicity. I mean, they have nothing else in common.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Naya cocked her head. “Well, maybe it does. It explains why the NCTC is so interested in these people. I mean, they must be hiding for a reason.”

  “What? If they aren’t guilty of this, they must be guilty of something else? Spoken like a true prosecutor.”

  Naya bristled.

  Before they could debate the issue, Sasha’s phone rang. She jabbed the intercom button with her index finger.

  “Yes?”

  “Gella Pinkney’s on the line,” Caroline told her.

  “Put her through.”

  She hit the speakerphone button. “Hi,
Gella. I’ve got you on speaker because Naya’s here. We were just talking about your matter.”

  “Hello, Naya,” Gella greeted her corporate attorney warmly.

  “Gella,” Naya responded.

  The niceties out of the way, Gella got right to business. “I have a list of Essiah Wheaton’s donations. He donated to every single fundraiser we posted for hurricane relief in the wake of Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Every one. And, as you might imagine, there were quite a few.”

  “How many are we talking about?” Naya asked.

  “Over three dozen. And he donated between five hundred and a thousand dollars to each one. That’s on the very high end for our donors. For a sense of scale, the average donation is thirty dollars.”

  Sasha had been scribbling notes on the pad she kept by her phone. She put down her pen. “So this guy donated, what, twenty thousand dollars or so? Since when, last fall?”

  “That’s right. To be precise, he donated twenty-eight thousand dollars. All but a thousand of it to hurricane victims.”

  Naya and Sasha locked eyes. Sasha knew they were having the same thought. The donation that broke the pattern would tell them the most about this guy.

  “What about the other thousand?”

  “Oh, that was to an anti-racism group. He made it right after that … um … white separatist march that turned violent back in January.”

  The march had been billed as a unity rally on a college campus. It had devolved into a riot, leaving two dead and more than a dozen severely injured.

  “What was the name of the organization?” Naya asked.

  Gella hesitated.

  “We need all the information we can get,” Sasha urged.

  “I know. I just….” She sighed. “It’s complicated. This particular group, Standing United, was threatened with a lawsuit by the rally organizers, who claimed their campaign was defamatory. Our charity sherpas stand behind every word of the fundraising request, but Standing United didn’t want to feed that narrative, so they removed their fundraising project and credited back the donations. There’s a notation in the file that Mr. Wheaton refused the credit.”

  “That’s interesting,” Naya offered.

  “It is. But it doesn’t explain why the counter-terrorism center was so interested in him. He donated to a bunch of hurricane relief projects and an anti-racism campaign. He hardly sounds like a terrorist,” Sasha mused.

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Gella weighed in.

  “Well, this settles it. I recommend we file a complaint against Asher Morgan and Sentinel Solution Systems. Once they get counsel and reach out, we tell them we plan to add the NCTC as a defendant. I trust they’ll settle quickly. They obviously were using a bad list.”

  Naya’s lips thinned, a clear sign of her displeasure. Sasha pretended not to notice.

  Gella spoke haltingly, “I’ll have to talk to my board. But before we even get to that point, there’s a complicating factor.”

  Of course there was. There was always a complicating factor.

  “Which is?”

  “There are only four people I haven’t been able to reach by phone. Mr. Wheaton is one of them.”

  “So he doesn’t know about the breach?”

  “He may, but he hasn’t heard it from me. He’s on my list of follow-up calls to make today. Should I still talk to him?”

  ‘Good question,’ Naya mouthed.

  It was a good question. And, unfortunately, Sasha didn’t have a good answer.

  From a legal standpoint, she was inclined to advise Gella not to call him. Of the fifty people on the NCTC contractor’s list, he was the only hit. Which meant that of all the names that Asher leaked, Essiah Wheaton had the best claim against DoGiveThrive. Her instinct was to tell her client to lawyer up.

  But, from a public relations/crisis management perspective, Essiah Wheaton was a big donor, someone the company needed to keep as a satisfied tribe member. If Gella lost his trust, it would be a blow.

  Sasha clinked her pen against her teeth, weighing the two bad options.

  Finally, she said, “Definitely call him. Be forthcoming about the leak, but stick to your prepared remarks. We don’t know why his name was on that list from Sentinel Solution Systems and you can’t speculate, so don’t mention that part at this point.”

  Gella made a noise that sounded like a protest, but Sasha went on, “Once we know what the NCTC was looking for, maybe we can share that with him. But we don’t know anything concrete right now. And you never take a problem to a client without having a proposed solution ready.”

  It was Lawyering 101. She figured it would apply equally to online crowdfunding.

  “I guess you’re right.” Gella sounded unconvinced.

  “I know I am,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Make it a priority to get ahold of Wheaton today, and then, please call me once you’ve talked to him.”

  “Okay. Thank you, ladies.”

  Sasha ended the call and met Naya’s eyes. “What?”

  “Are you sure about this, Mac?”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  Naya shook her head. “No.”

  Sasha tried to ignore the way her stomach was flip-flopping. “Well, there you have it. I’m going downstairs for more coffee. You want anything?”

  “No, I’m good.” Naya trailed her to the door. “Are you going to tell Will that you plan to sue the NCTC?”

  “Correction: I plan to threaten to sue the NCTC. And I will tell him. But the issue isn’t ripe. There’s no reason to even bring it up if Gella can’t convince her board.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing, Mac.”

  As Sasha headed down the hallway in search of a fresh jolt of caffeine, Naya’s words rang in her ears like a warning.

  I hope so, too, she thought. I really do.

  20

  Bendville, Texas

  * * *

  Leo guided the rental car along the buckled, torn-up road. Large sections of the rural route had been destroyed by flooding in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The condition of the road had made for a slow trip from Houston to the Gulf Coast town where Essiah Wheaton had once lived.

  He was stiff, tired, and hungry. But taking a break to stretch his legs and fill his belly was the furthest thing from his mind. He needed to gather some intelligence about Wheaton and get on an airplane headed back home, and fast. He knew Sasha would be furious with him, and the longer he was gone, the madder she’d be.

  Apparently, she’d shown up at Hank’s house at the crack of dawn, metaphorical guns blazing, and told him he was her new babysitter. Leo lifted one corner of his mouth in a half-grin at the memory of the picture Hank had texted him: Fiona and his youngest girl had given him a makeover. Complete with sparkly purple nail polish.

  His smile faded instantly. Hank hadn’t asked any questions about where he was or what he was doing. Plausible deniability was an occupational requirement. But more than that, he suspected Hank didn’t want to be put in the position of knowing where Leo was but keeping that information from Sasha.

  He needed to focus and make this trip worth the rift that it would cause in his marriage. And the only way to do that was to come back with information that would prove to Hank and Ingrid that Wheaton didn’t need to be dealt with through extrajudicial murder.

  He took a gulp of water from the bottle provided by the rental car company and frowned at the pile of debris that blocked the road ahead. He cursed and pulled over to what had once been the shoulder of the road. Now it was just a deep rut.

  He stepped out of the car to examine the broken concrete and twisted metal that lay in his path. As he stared at it, he realized it had once been a bridge. The rental car agent’s disbelief when he’d told the man his destination was Bendville suddenly made sense.

  The man had said, “Bendville’s gone. You must be headed to one of the nearby towns.”

  Hank had said the place had been abandoned in the aftermath of the hurricane, but
Leo never imagined it would be completely inaccessible. Just what he needed. A wild goose chase.

  He returned to the car and dug out the map he’d taken from the rental counter. He unfolded it and spread it out on the hood of the sub-compact.

  He traced a finger along the road he’d taken from the airport. Bendville was about thirty miles ahead. A long walk—too long. Especially if he’d reach a ghost town at the end of his journey.

  He tapped his ring finger against the map. His wedding ring made a clinking noise as it hit the hood. There were two nearby towns.

  He’d passed the exit for the first about fifteen minutes earlier. From the highway, Sugar Crest had appeared to be a typical, affluent ex-burb. Large white mansions with lush green, manicured lawns rose up on both sides of the ramp from within gated communities. Equally well-maintained golf courses and a large high school complex with a professional-sized football stadium, a cluster of upscale open air malls, and a gleaming hospital were interspersed between and among the developments.

  He shook his head. The answers he needed wouldn’t be found in a place like Sugar Crest. He felt it in his bones.

  He admonished himself, already sure what Hank would say to such a sentiment: Your bones are no better than your gut.

  He moved his finger and brought it down on the smaller, closer dot. Hyacinth lay just to the east of his current location. He surveyed the flat landscape. In the distance, beyond acres and acres of scrub grass, he spotted a long low brick church with a white obtuse triangle-shaped roof topped by a tall white steeple. Assuming the small town was like most, the church would be on one of the main thoroughfares.

  The cross road to Hyacinth was on the far side of the collapsed bridge. The only other option on the map would require a detour back toward the airport, even further than Sugar Crest.

  But as he stood here, the church was far fewer than thirty miles away. Definitely walkable.

  But he’d spent enough time in the southwest to know there had to be an access road somewhere along this road that would cut through those fields. He refolded the map and returned to the car. He executed a smooth U-turn and crept along the deserted, condemned road for two miles until he found a hard-packed dirt road. He barreled along the road as it snaked through the tall prairie grass, bumping his way toward Hyacinth and answers. A town with a church ought to have a library. Or barring that, a bored cop with a long memory.