“Well, I kind of am.”
“Yeah, but for a crime you were supposed to commit,” Hank pointed out.
“Details.”
“I don’t even want to think about the paperwork I’m going to have to do.”
Leo’d had enough years of government service under his belt to know that there was more than a seed of truth in Hank’s gallows humor. He hurried to change the subject.
“Did you try Naya?”
“Yeah. She said Sasha had a meeting outside the office and that your in-laws have the kids. Maybe you should call them?”
“That’s a dead end. She wouldn’t tell them anything that might make them worry.”
They shared a heavy silence.
Finally, Hank said, “I’ll reach out to Ingrid. I already have a rush on the Sheila Anne Johnson search. I guess all we can do is hope your wife doesn’t do anything rash.”
“Sasha? Rash? Is the sky blue?”
Leo hung up to the sound of Hank’s resigned chuckling and put his unpredictable, unstoppable wife out of his mind. He had to focus. He pushed the door open.
He didn’t notice the two men in the rental car who were watching from the parking lot of the gas station next door.
32
Fletcher was nailing his wife in the pool house when the call came in. He heard it. But he had other priorities, like reminding Melody Lynn that she was married to a virile, successful white man. He was marking his territory, so he just had to hope that Chuck and Marcus would figure out their situation on their own.
When he was sated, and Melly was snuggled into the crook of his arm snoring softly, he reached for the phone with his free hand and played the message Chuck had left him:
Fletch, he’s going into a biker bar. You know, Wheaton used to ride. I’m not sure this is the right call, but I don’t wanna lose him, and I can’t send Marcus in alone, so we’re going to give it a couple minutes, then we’re both going in. With any luck, he’ll nurse a brew, and we can call the cops to come pick him up here. For the Brotherhood, For Purity and Glory!”
It was the Heritage Brotherhood’s rallying cry that would haunt him afterward. It would make him wonder what would have happened if he would’ve rolled off Melody long enough to take the call and give Chuck some direction.
33
Sasha was dead-eyed, drained, and dehydrated from crying and barfing when she reached the short commercial drag that led to the on-ramp to the highway.
She almost missed the turn for the gas station, which would have been a problem, since her fuel light had been on ever since she’d left Sheila Johnson’s place. She swerved hard and yanked the wheel when she realized she was passing the entrance to the gas station. She bumped up over the curb and winced as metal rubbed up against concrete.
Connelly loved to tease her about the battle scars her station wagon sported.
Then she thought of Connelly and winced even harder. What if he wasn’t around to laugh at the yellow racing stripes her car seemed to acquire whenever she had to park near a pole in a tight garage?
She hopped out and swiped her credit card through the reader. As she filled the tank, cursing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its astronomical fuel prices, she noted the two dudes in the silver Celica that screamed ‘rental car.’
It was their lack of attention that caught hers. She was the only other person in the lot, but the guys didn’t seem to register her presence. They sat motionless, staring hard at the biker bar next door as if it were their job. She glanced over to see what had them so transfixed.
That’s when she spotted her husband’s SUV in the parking lot.
Her heart jumped out of her chest and landed in her throat. Connelly was in that bar. She almost hurtled herself over the cement barrier that separated the two businesses.
She stopped herself, got into the car, and started the engine. She eased out into the travel lane for a few dozen feet then turned into the bar’s parking lot.
She parked in the spot to the left of Connelly’s SUV, shoved the envelope into her bag, and pasted a smile on face. She flipped her sunshade down and checked her nonexistent makeup in the lighted mirror on the reverse of the shade.
She looked exactly how she’d expect a single mother of three-year-old twins who hadn’t slept in two nights and recently puked on the side of the road to look.
Perhaps charming her way into the bar was out of the question, she thought as she snapped the shade up. She peeked inside her wallet and counted six twenties. If nothing else, she ought to be able to buy her way in.
She shrugged out of her suit jacket, slung her bag over her shoulder, and marched toward the door, resisting the urge to shoot the bird at the guys watching from the gas station lot.
She rapped on the metal door and tried to still her pulse. It was fluttering so quickly that she could feel it under her right eyelid—a condition she’d last experienced during the bar exam fifteen years ago.
“This is bananas,” she told herself.
She agreed wholeheartedly with her own assessment, yet here she was.
A handwritten note affixed to the door read ‘CLOSED FOR PRIVATE WAKE.’
Wake?
So she banged her fist against the door again. She kept pounding until the side of her hand ached.
The door creaked open an inch. A bloodshot eye appeared in the opening.
“What?”
“Uh, I’m a friend of Sheila Anne’s?” She said the words as a question, but they functioned as a password.
The door swung inward and she hurried inside.
The bar was crowded, smoky, and loud. In other words, it was everything she’d been avoiding for more than a decade.
She squared her shoulders and plunged into the crowd.
“Hey, I know you,” a willowy brunette hollered before throwing back a shot.
She registered that she knew the woman, too. Dana. The waitress from the diner.
“Pete grew a heart and let me leave—he’s covering my shift himself,” Dana explained.
Sasha assumed Pete must be the woman’s manager. She nodded distractedly and scanned the room. Where the devil was Connelly?
“You looking for Sheila Anne?” Dana asked. “I’m not sure she’s coming. This isn’t really her crowd.”
“Sure,” she said absently.
Through the sea of people, she spotted Connelly shouldering his way toward the back of the room. She pushed through the bodies, making a beeline for him.
He glanced around, eased open a metal door, and slipped inside.
Where was he going?
34
Sasha hesitated just outside the windowless door, unsure if she should follow her husband inside. She turned to check if anyone was paying attention to her. Just then two men walked into the bar. She narrowed her eyes. They were the guys from the gas station. And they were scanning the room intently. Searching for someone. Quite possibly the same someone she was here to see.
She yanked the door open and hurried into the back room.
Six men wearing black leather jackets turned to look at her. Based on their attire, she figured them for the motorcycle buddies Sheila Anne had mentioned. The seventh man wasn’t wearing a motorcycle jacket, but he was wearing a shocked expression.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk. Now.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. C.J., is there somewhere quiet where we can talk?”
The guy called C.J. pointed his thumb toward the back of the room. “The locker room is through that door. Who’s the girl?”
Sasha folded her arms across her chest and waited to hear how he’d answer.
“She’s my wife.”
“In that case, good luck, pal. Because she looks madder than a bag full of hornets.”
She flashed Connelly a tight smile as she walked through the cluster of men. The guy closest to the locker room held the door open for her. Connelly followed behind her and the guy holding the door gave him a sy
mpathetic pat on the shoulder.
“You seem to have made friends quickly,” she observed as the door clicked shut behind him.
“They’re an interesting group of guys.” He crossed the room and stood close, gazing down at her with an unreadable expression. “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you … and the kids … so much.”
“Could’ve fooled me. Did you lose your phone?”
“Sasha, I’m sorry.” He cupped her chin with one hand and tilted her face up so she was staring into his eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”
She turned her head to the side to dislodge his hand. “We can talk about this later. Right now, you have a bigger problem.”
“I didn’t kill Essiah Wheaton.” He searched her face. “Do you believe me?”
“Yeah, I do.”
He exhaled. “Thank you.”
“But someone’s trying to pin his murder on you.” She dug the envelope out of her bag and handed it to him. “Go ahead, take a look.”
She watched his face as he read the brief letter then slowly flipped through the photos, examining each one closely before turning to the next.
“All these pictures show was that I was at Wheaton’s place two nights ago. But he was killed yesterday while I was sitting in the Houston airport waiting for my flight.”
“Hang on. You went to Texas? What’s going on, Connelly? Why did the NCTC send you to spy on Essiah and Sheila in the first place?”
He blinked. “I have a couple questions for you, too, you know. What are you doing here? How do you know Wheaton and Sheila Anne Johnson?”
She made a low, irritated noise in her throat. “Remember my client with the data leak? The NCTC had a contractor send an information request?”
“Sure, I remember. And you had some theory that the leak was related to the request.”
She didn’t particularly care for his dismissive tone, but she forced herself not to get snappish. As betrayed and confused as she felt, she realized they really needed to work together if they were going to clear his name.
“Well, my theory is borne out by the fact that one of the names on the list Sentinel Solution Systems sent was Essiah Wheaton’s. And his name and zip code were included in the leaked data. He was an extremely generous donor—mainly to causes related to the three big hurricanes that hit last year. My client was trying to call him to let him know his name had been published on the internet, but she never had the opportunity to talk to him. Last night, she spoke to Sheila Anne, who told her he’d been murdered.”
He frowned at her, tugging on his right ear. “What’s going on here? None of this makes any sense.”
“Look, I shared what I know with you. If you tell me why you’re so interested in Essiah Wheaton, maybe we can figure out who did kill him—together.”
“It’s not that easy. My information is classified.”
“I’m really mad at you. Furious, actually. But I’m making an effort here. If you’re just going to hide behind your national security BS, then I’m not sure why I’m bothering.” She dug her fingernails into her palms and focused on the sting to keep her temper from boiling over.
“It’s not BS. Wheaton was the subject of an active Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation. And, I’m sorry, but that’s literally all I can tell you.”
It was plenty.
“Well, your task force got it wrong. Essiah Wheaton wasn’t a terrorist.”
To her surprise, he nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right. That’s why I was in Texas—I was trying to get some better background on him. But the man was an enigma.”
“That squares with what his wife said. His town was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey; so was hers. It sounded like he lost everything, and he didn’t have any family. They were both staying at the same emergency shelter and fell in love. With nothing left in Texas, he found the farmette for sale in Mars and they moved up here. On a whim, basically.”
“Or he was running from someone.”
“I thought we just established that he wasn’t a terrorist. Why would he be on the run from the government?”
“Not the government. Somehow he got mixed up with a group called the Heritage Brotherhood.”
“White supremacists?”
“Yeah, of the violent variety.”
“That name’s familiar.” She searched her memory. “Hmm, interesting …”
He raised an eyebrow. “Care to share?”
“You know how I said Mr. Wheaton made several generous donations to hurricane victims?”
“Yeah, so?”
“He only ever made one donation that wasn’t hurricane-related. It was to a group called Standing United. He gave them a thousand dollars for an anti-racism campaign after that campus riot in Georgia.”
“Okay. So?”
“So the riot was supposed to be a unity rally organized by none other than the Heritage Brotherhood, who ended up suing Standing United. Coincidence?”
He snorted. She smiled. They shared the same opinion about coincidences—-mainly, that they didn’t exist.
“Wheaton had a history with the Heritage Brotherhood, for sure. But there’s no way he was a member.”
“Right.”
“It’s good to have confirmation but that doesn’t change the fact that somebody strangled him and there’s probably an all-points bulletin advising local law enforcement to be on the lookout for me.”
She shook her head. “I let Sheila Anne think I would give the pictures to the police. Obviously, I haven’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t kill anybody.”
He exhaled. “It’s good to be on the same side. Now we just have to figure out who did kill him.”
She thought of the two men who’d been watching the bar. “I might have a couple suspects for you.”
“You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
He closed the small distance between them and gazed at her with an expression she knew well. He was about to kiss her. She saw it in the tilt of his chin, the softness in his eyes.
Her body was already responding, arching toward him. Her hands ready to come together behind his head while her fingers danced through his thick hair.
Really? After that stunt, you’re just going to fall into his arms?
She froze as the voice in her head scolded her.
He must have noticed her sudden stiffness, because his eyebrows came together in a question.
“What’s—?”
The door banged open and hit the wall.
They leapt apart.
Sasha whirled around, fists raised, heart thumping, ready for a fight. She cursed herself for not paying closer attention to her bad feeling about those guys from the parking lot.
“Oh, gosh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was in here!” Dana, the waitress, ducked her head and gave them a sheepish smile.
Leo turned to glare at the interloper. He’d been this close to kissing his wife. And now Sasha was in a fighting stance. Mood ruined.
“Oops.” The woman tripped over her own feet. Her arm flew out and she braced herself against the wall.
“Dana?” She was the waitress from the diner.
“Hey, it’s you.” She turned from him to Sasha. “And you. ‘Member I told you I had another customer with three-year-old twins? This is him! How weird is that? You guys know each other or something?”
“We’re married,” Sasha told her in a tone that suggested she wasn’t entirely thrilled about it at the moment.
“Ooooh. That makes sense. Listen, sorry to interrupt. I need to grab something from Essiah’s locker and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Essiah Wheaton has a locker here?”
“A bunch of the guys do. Bill, the owner, lets them keep their games here so they don’t have to lug them around in their saddlebags,” Leo explained.
Sasha stared at him. “How much time have you spent here?”
He laughed sadly. “Too much.”
&nbs
p; She held his eyes for a moment then turned back to the waitress.
“So you’re cleaning out Essiah’s locker for Sheila Anne?”
“Not exactly. Essiah made C.J. promise that if anything ever happened to him, he’d take his Battleship game and give it to the police. Isn’t that super weird?”
He had to agree that it was an odd last request.
“C.J.’s your boyfriend, right?” he confirmed.
“Yeah.” She swayed and ended up propping herself against the wall.
Sasha narrowed her eyes. “How many shots have you done?”
Dana shook her head. “Just the one. I’m not drunk.”
“But you worked all night. Have you slept?”
“Nah. I’ll take a nap after I drop the game off for C.J. Now he’s in no condition to drive. He was up all night drinking with your husband and some of the guys.”
Sasha arched a brow and gave Leo a look.
He smiled innocently.
She shook her head and turned back to Dana, “Have you eaten anything?”
“Uh … I can’t remember. Maybe some fries last night.”
Sasha took the waitress by the arm and led her to a metal folding chair in the corner. “Sit.”
Dana sat.
“Listen, you’re not in any shape to drive either. Yeah, I heard you, you only did one shot.”
She kept talking as the woman opened her mouth to protest. “But a fast influx of alcohol on no sleep and no food is going to hit you harder than you think. And the sleep deprivation alone makes it dangerous for you to drive. You just sit here and rest. We’ll make sure Essiah’s Battleship game gets into the proper hands.”
Like hell we will, he thought. Then the words she’d actually said registered and he focused on keeping his expression neutral. His tricky lawyer wife had no intention of handing over whatever was in that box to the local police.
“She’s right,” he weighed in.
His opinion turned out to be unnecessary because the waitress was already slumped over in the chair, sleeping.
“That was fast.”
“I hope she doesn’t fall out of the chair and hit her head,” Sasha fretted.
Intentional Acts Page 17