Intentional Consequences

by Charles Harris

  As the door opened, Ward saw a white Ford Transit van pulling into the driveway, blocking her exit. Blinded by the headlights, Ward barely made out a large man and a small woman who got out of the van. As the man shut off the engine and killed the headlights, she could hear him talking rapidly to the woman. God, it’s Mandarin, Ward realized.

  Standing next to the front passenger door to her rental car, Ward grabbed her purse and turned to run into the house. As she glanced back, she saw the man pull a pistol from his pants. Ward slammed the door to the garage and ran through the house, across the yard and onto the pitch-dark beach. The man followed, yelling something in Mandarin and “Stop, lady!” in English. When she hit the sand, she turned right, weaving near the grass line, where she hoped she’d be harder to see. She prayed the man wouldn’t risk the noise of a gunshot.

  The rental house was in a seaside neighborhood of about 40 houses, with a dozen of them beachfront. The beach stretched 1,500 feet before rocks and ocean cut it off at both ends. Ward had 700 feet to run before she’d hit the rocks and an undeveloped rocky area of oceanfront beyond them. Climbing across the rocks wasn’t practical. She was desperate for help, desperate for a place to hide, desperate for anything or anyone who might save her. With the end of the beach approaching, she cut onto the grass and angled sharply to a covered free-standing lanai behind an old two-story beachfront house. As she crouched behind the lanai deck to look back, she saw the man standing down the beach well behind her, his face illuminated by the screen on his phone. As she watched, the man turned and began walking down the beach in her direction.

  Ward pulled her phone out of her waistband to call 911, but stopped, frozen with fear and indecision. She was in serious trouble. She needed help. She had no idea whether Zhang was dead or alive. She was convinced Zhang was trying to kill her, just as she or some colleague of hers had killed David Bernbach. Thoughts swirled in Ward’s head. What happens if I call the police? What if Xiu Ying is dead? How will I explain that? What if the Chinese have bribed the police? I can’t call the FBI. I can’t risk having them link me to China. Should I ask for help at this house? But how do I know they’re safe? I just need to get off this island. I need to hide out until my plane leaves tomorrow. She started shaking.

  Ward crawled around the lanai to assess the house and the yard. Lights illuminated a few of the windows. She hid behind the lanai as the man walked past the house on the beach and disappeared. Panicked, she moved around the front of the house to try to see him. She spotted him ten minutes later and he walked off the beach toward the back yard where she had been hiding. Peering around the corner of the house, she watched as he checked the lanai and a large wooden storage locker on the deck.

  She moved to a thicket of tall butterfly ginger plants on the other side of the house and looked across the side yard to the street in front. As she watched, the white Ford van she’d seen at the rental house drove slowly down the street. A large sign on the side of the van read “Kauai House Cleaning.” A couple of minutes later, it repeated the trip from the other direction. This time it stopped at the house next door and the man from the beach got into the passenger seat. The van slowly circled the route again, then didn’t return.

  After another ten minutes, the lights in the house went out. Ward crept onto the lanai to explore. The wooden locker was filled with towels and chair cushions. A cooler with a few warm soft drinks and bottles of water sat nearby. Ward decided to stay put until morning. The man had already checked the locker, which at least meant she’d be safe until daylight returned. She took a pee in the bushes by the lanai, put some of the drinks in the musty locker and climbed in, too exhausted to worry about spiders or roaches. She wrapped up in two towels and lowered the top, using a rolled-up towel to provide a gap for fresh air. Seconds after she stretched out, her energy left her, and she fell deep asleep.

  Chapter 67

  The next morning, Ward woke up to a sudden flash of light, followed by screams, a loud bang and then darkness. As her mind caught up to the action, she realized two children had opened the top of the locker, screamed and slammed the top shut. The girl and boy, about 8 and 10, were as surprised to see Ward as she was to see them. Still shrieking, they ran to their mother, who was sitting on the lanai having coffee. “Mom, there’s a dead woman in the towels,” the little girl cried.

  Ward pushed the locker top open and sat up, proving she wasn’t dead, but unsure of what else to do or say other than “I’m sorry to scare the children. I was chased by a man with a gun last night. I was hiding. I need help. Please help me.”

  Thirty minutes later, the woman and her husband were sitting with Ward in the dining room of the house, eating breakfast while Ward explained the redacted version of her story. She told the couple she was Sally Wilson, a business executive with a California company. The couple was from Seattle and spent a month at the house every year.

  Ward explained she was afraid to call the police because it might tip off her attacker on where to find her before she could fly home, which she was supposed to do that afternoon. She told them she needed to get her rental car, but she was terrified to go back to her rental house alone. She didn’t mention Zhang. The wife seemed skeptical, particularly when Ward seemed sketchy about who the man with the gun was. The husband volunteered to help.

  “Sam Bell across the street is a retired guy from San Diego,” the husband said. “Lives here full time with his wife. Used to be in the Marines. Has a lot of guns. He’s usually home in the mornings, puttering around gardening or making things. I’m sure he’d be glad to provide some muscle. We can drive to your rental house with him, look around, grab your things and get you off to the airport.” The wife objected, but the husband was already out the door to get Bell.

  Bell proved worthy of his past, bringing a Glock 19, a Sig Sauer P226 and a Mossberg 500 shotgun in his Jeep. Ward jumped into the passenger seat. The husband sat in the back. The rental house driveway was empty. The garage door was down. At the house, Bell stuffed the Glock in his belt and carried the shotgun. The husband carried the other pistol. The front door was locked. When no one responded to the doorbell, they walked around the outside of the house together. The lounge chairs were by the pool. One back door was unlocked. They went in, calling out, “Anybody home?” No one answered.

  Bell checked and cleared each room. The house looked like no one had been there for days. No clothes or luggage. No food in the refrigerator. Clean dishes and linens. No sign of Zhang. Even the beach sand had been raked. The house cleaners, or whoever they were, had done their job well.

  Ward’s rental car was in the garage, but her bag was gone.

  Bell said, “Was the house cleaned up like this when you left?”

  “No,” said Ward. “Not at all. And my roller bag was in the back seat of my car.”

  The husband said, “Guess whoever did it wasn’t concerned you’d call the police.”

  Bell said, “It looks like somebody wiped down the whole house. What time’s your flight?”

  “A little after 5:00 p.m. Non-stop, Kauai to San Francisco.”

  “Let’s go back to my house and figure out how to get you out of here safely,” Bell said. “Before we go, open the garage door and back your car into the driveway. I’ll close the door after you’re out. You don’t want to be the person who returns that rental car. It’s the first place I’d be watching for you. Call the car rental agency and say the car won’t start and you don’t have time to deal with it. Tell them the keys will be under the driver’s mat.”

  Back at his house, Bell let the husband out and pulled the Jeep into his garage. He and Ward sat on the lanai behind his house and talked.

  Bell said, “I don’t think you should take that 5:00 flight. Safest bet would be to book another flight out of Honolulu. More flights, more passengers, easier to blend into the crowd.”

  “How do I get to Honolulu?”

  “You can charter a private plane. Flight just takes 30 minutes or so. One of my
neighbors has a Cirrus SR22. Check the Honolulu flights to the mainland and I’ll go call him. He’s a great guy. Loves to fly. If he can do it, you’ll probably just need to pay him for gas.”

  Bell’s plan worked. After lunch, his neighbor flew Ward to Honolulu for a late afternoon nonstop to San Francisco. Thanks to Bell’s wife, who took Ward shopping at a thrift store before she left Kauai, Ward was wearing a loose-fitting Hawaiian print Mumu dress with blue slip on tennis shoes and a dark blue scarf over her hair. Tortoise shell sunglasses with huge lenses completed her frumpy outfit.

  ◆◆◆

  Before boarding her Honolulu flight, Ward called Hastings to give him a heads’ up. After listening to her story, he immediately patched in PaprW8’s head of security to work up 24/7 protection. When the flight touched down at SFO, Ward was met by a security detail of two men and a woman. One of the men drove Ward home, while the other guards followed in a separate car.

  Ward was terrified and confused, but she was alive—and back in San Francisco.

  Chapter 68

  After a treadmill run and a shower in PaprW8’s on-site gym the next morning, Ward met with Hastings in his office to replay her story in more detail. As they talked, Hastings said, “Do you have any idea what happened to your friend Zhang?”

  “No. She could have died on the beach from whatever was in the wine. The Chinese could have killed her for allowing me to escape. Or she could have flown back to China to face whatever there. It’s hard to think about.”

  “Is there any chance you misread the situation? Are you sure the wine she drank was drugged? Is it possible she thought you both got drunk and you left her, so she just flew home as planned?”

  “That would be better than the other alternatives. But I didn’t make up the ampule in the pocket of her coverup, or the man and woman with the van and the gun. All that was very real. And there were no text messages or calls on my iPhone. If she was looking for me, why not text or call?”

  “If your friend was going to kill you, why didn’t she do it once she thought you’d passed out?”

  “I don’t know. Grace of God, I guess. I was counting on the meds in the wine I swapped knocking her out before she finished the job. Maybe she just wanted to do it later so she wouldn’t have me lying around dead all night before she left in the morning.”

  “Could the house cleaners really have been house cleaners, who pulled a gun when they didn’t expect to see you in the house?”

  “You’re reaching, Mike. Let it go. I was there. Xiu Ying and the housecleaner guy both tried to kill me. I’m grateful to be alive.”

  “I’m concerned about you, Susan, both personally and professionally. We’ll keep you under 24/7 security here and at home. If you’d rather live in a different city for a while, we can deal with that. In the meantime, we really need your mind back here. With the CnEyeco software out of the picture, we’ve got to find some other ways to drive revenue. If you stay in town, I don’t want you working from home. It’s safer here and you need to get back to focusing on the things you do best.”

  Chapter 69

  Susan Ward struggled to get back into her rhythm at PaprW8. If Bernbach’s death had shaken her, Zhang’s betrayal had shattered her. However hard she tried to focus on business, she was distracted by daydreams of Bernbach and Zhang and fears the Chinese would come after her. Even with sleeping pills, she tossed and turned at night. When she did sleep, she’d often wake up in a cold sweat, terrorized by being chased around the PaprW8 campus by some Chinese assassin.

  While her 24/7 security team provided reassurance at home and on her commute, it couldn’t trail her everywhere she went at work. Wherever she looked at PaprW8, she saw Chinese—in their cubes, next to her in the gym, in the cafeteria, in her meetings. All perfectly normal for any Bay Area tech company. But Ward couldn’t handle it. She kept staring at them, worrying about them.

  By Friday night, Ward decided she had to do something. Go somewhere, anywhere. She wasn’t naïve enough to think she’d be able to disappear and hide forever, but she had to break through the fear that was tearing her apart. She had to get out of San Francisco on her own, without her security watchdogs. She packed her BMW X5 with bags for a week. If she was gone longer, she’d deal with that. If she just had a good weekend, she’d be grateful. She needed some confidence. She needed a reset.

  Against the advice of her security guards, on Saturday morning she pulled out alone in the X5 and headed south on the 101 toward San Jose, where she cut across the low mountains toward Santa Cruz and Monterey on the coast. She ignored the texts and calls from her security chief and Hastings, finally texting she was OK and turning her phone off when she pulled into Fort Ord Beach State Park. She spent the night at the Tickle Pink Inn in Carmel.

  On Sunday, she drove south on Highway 1 through Big Sur. The scenery was majestic. She sailed across the arching Bixby Creek Bridge with the ocean on her right and the mountains on the left. She stopped at overlooks. She drove into parks and campgrounds, wondering whether she could ever become a camper if it would help her escape. She decided not. She stopped at the Big Sur Lodge and the Ventana Big Sur looking for a room but finding none.

  She finally nabbed a cancellation at the Post Ranch Inn—her favorite resort in Big Sur. She lucked into one of the Ocean House cottages nestled into the cliff top. With a curved beamed roof covered with grass and wildflowers, the cottage had a private deck overlooking the Pacific Ocean 1,200 feet below. Best view in California, she thought. Not a place for people with Vertigo.

  Arriving in time for a hike before dinner at the Inn, she drove north to a turn off that led through the sandy forest to the cliff face. Parking her X5 on the side of the dirt road, she hiked along a pathway high above the glittering ocean. This is what it means to be free, she thought. This is where I need to be. She sat on a rock for almost 30 minutes, watching the seabirds soaring over the water below her.

  As she stood and walked back toward her SUV, she was surprised to see another car parked behind hers. A man and a woman were following the trail along the cliff edge. The man was huge and muscular, the woman petite. Both were wearing black ball caps. As they passed, they nodded and said hello. Ward did the same, smiling. As Ward passed, her fears returned. They’re both Asian, she thought. The man looks familiar. He’s the housecleaner from Kauai. No, can’t be. Hardly really saw him. Have to get over this. Still, she picked up her pace to the car.

  She never got there.

  Seconds after nodding, the man spun and grabbed Ward from behind, knocking her out with a single blow to the back of her head. Dragging her by the shoulders a few feet to the edge of the cliff, he flung her down the steep slope. As Ward hit the ground, she rolled and bounced across the grass and rocks, picking up speed as she plummeted toward the ocean below. With luck, she died before she regained consciousness.

  Dropping to one knee, the man removed the cellular tracking device from Ward’s car. It was the same unit he had installed in the X5 at Ward’s house the night Bernbach died. The companion device remained in Ward’s Tesla. Their job done, the man and the woman climbed back into their vehicle for their scenic drive back to San Francisco.

  A hiker found Ward’s car and her bruised and battered body the following day. The Medical Examiner ruled Ward’s death was accidental. Based on the forensic evidence, he was unable to determine whether suicide or foul play might have been involved.

  PaprW8 released news of Ward’s accidental death on Business Wire late Monday. PaprW8 stock promptly fell 8.8%.

  Andy saw the news through online alerts he had set for PaprW8 and Ward. He called Eva immediately.

  “Did you see the news? Susan Ward’s dead! She fell off a cliff in Big Sur! Supposedly an accident. She was traveling by herself. A hiker found her car, then they located her body.”

  Eva said, “Oh, my God! Not another one! Are they sure it was an accident?”

  “Not much in the way of details yet. I hope the Chinese weren’t involved, but
I don’t know. Damn. This thing just won’t end. How do we make it stop?”

  Chapter 70

  The day after Ward’s death was announced, the Sentinel Observer’s print and online editions ran Andy’s story on Rakesh Jain and his project to reunite America. The piece was a huge success, quickly trending. The online version had the highest readership and forwarding results of any story the Sentinel Observer’s sites had run all year.

  Rakesh’s project had hit a chord. The initial reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Readers recognized the problem and understood what Rakesh was trying to do. People liked Andy’s portrayal of Rakesh as a naturalized U.S. citizen who had lived the American dream, building two successful businesses, creating thousands of jobs and earning his way to a spot well up the Forbes 400 list.

  By nightfall, the negative tweets and posts began flowing, mostly from progressives taking shots at Rakesh’s wealth and suggesting he was out of touch with the need for change in America. The loudest criticism came from some of the presidential candidates. Although the negative comments started as a fraction of the traffic, they quickly multiplied as the activists and liberal media piled on. Most claimed Rakesh was just another billionaire trying to protect his fortune from progressive policies that were long overdue. A few used the opportunity to make their case for structural change in American democracy. Some claimed Rakesh was a front for Joe Biden or the Democratic National Committee. A few even claimed President Trump was involved. Conservative websites and cable news fired back, fueling the controversy but doing little to dampen the opposition. The centrist candidates for president all remained quiet. For once, Trump stayed off Twitter.