Intentional Acts

by Melissa F. Miller

  But, he reflected tiredly, the past six months had been anything but ordinary. He grabbed the phone, plopped down in the nearest chair, and stretched his long legs out on the surface of the metal desk.

  “Hiya.”

  There was a pause while the caller tried to determine whether Fletcher Lee Holden was really answering the bunker phone in the middle of the night. Fletch went ahead and let him figure it out on his own.

  “Mr. Holden? Is that you?”

  “Yup.”

  “Sorry to be calling so late. To tell you the truth, I expected I’d be leavin’ a message for someone to pass on in the morning, sir.” The caller’s voice shook with nerves.

  “It must be your lucky night, son. Because you got me. And you are?”

  “Oh, sorry. It’s me … Marcus.”

  Fletch wasn’t even sure why he’d asked the man his name. It wasn’t like he knew all two hundred members of the brotherhood personally. Back in the day, his daddy had. But that was a different time, and a smaller group.

  “I assume you’re calling for a reason, Marcus. Or is this a social call?”

  “No, sir. I’m calling because I got a hit on Essiah Wheaton.”

  The voice still trembled, but Fletch could tell it was from excitement now, not nerves.

  “Wheaton?”

  “Yes, sir. My oldest boy, he’s in college up in Georgia. He was doing some recruiting, trying to get a new chapter going. He got to talking about his chapter back home and, well, I guess Wheaton was on his mind. He did a search on the Internet and found the sonofabitch.”

  Fletch shook his head from side to side. “Wait, now. Didn’t we have the webmaster do that back in the fall?”

  “Yeah, and he didn’t find nothing. I don’t know where Wheaton was hiding then, but he’s popped out of his hole now.”

  “Well, where is he?”

  “Mars.”

  Fletch fisted his hand and slammed it down on the desk. The nerves along the side of his hand sang with pain. He spat out from between clenched teeth. “Listen here, it’s late. And I’m tired. I don’t have time for games. Your son must be doing some pretty strong drugs if he thinks Essiah Wheaton’s on Mars.”

  “Mars, Pennsylvania. It’s a town near Pittsburgh, my kid says.”

  “Oh …. What’s the address?”

  “Haven’t found that yet. That’s why I’m callin’. Finding Wheaton was top priority last year. Is it still?”

  “Yes.”

  Marcus paused. Then, “You want me to go up there? See if I can find the guy?”

  Fletch weighed the decision for all of ten seconds. “Hell, yes.”

  “Consider it done, sir.”

  “Now, Marcus, first thing in the morning, you call Chuck Webster. He’s in charge of all security issues. Make arrangements to go up there together. And you two keep me in the loop, hear? Chuck has my cell phone number. Call me direct as soon as you find that weasel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You tell your boy good work. And if you help us bring Wheaton to justice, we won’t forget it, Marcus.”

  “No, sir. Good night,” Marcus sputtered.

  Fletch hung up the phone, wide awake and buzzing with adrenaline. He rolled out the bottom right desk drawer and removed a three-quarters full bottle of bourbon and a paper cup. He poured himself a small drink. Then he raised the cup in a silent toast.

  Essiah Wheaton. He’d thought the man was gone for good. If he could find Wheaton, he’d be able to tie up a whole pack of loose ends that had been weighing on his mind something awful.

  He tilted his head back and let the sweet burn of the liquid cascade down his throat in one long swallow.

  7

  Leo and Hank claimed their usual bench at the playground. It was set off some distance from the other benches clustered around the tot lot, which meant they could have their conversation out of earshot of the mommy groups enjoying organized play dates and the nannies and au pairs chatting while they tended their charges. Now that spring had finally sprung, the park was getting crowded enough that they’d need to be discreet.

  Hank’s kids, older and more self-sufficient than the twins, had scattered to all corners as soon as they’d arrived. Finn and Fiona had plopped down in the middle of the giant sandbox with an assortment of digging and building tools. Leo figured that would give him and Hank twenty minutes or so to talk before he needed to push Finn on the swings or spot Fiona while she scrambled over the monkey bars.

  “So, what’s going on?”

  Hank sipped his coffee from his World’s Best Dad to-go mug before answering. “I got a call from Ingrid this morning.”

  Leo shifted his gaze from the sandbox and studied the side of Hank’s face. His expression gave nothing away, but Leo could see the tension in Hank’s profile.

  “Already? About Storm Chaser?”

  “Yes. Or, at least, I suspect it is.”

  “You suspect? What’s that even mean, Hank?”

  He sighed heavily. “I don’t know. It was an unusual call. She asked me if I was in a secure location. I told her I was, and she gave me a name and an address and told me to have you check out the target. Then she hung up.”

  The target. Not the suspect, not the person of interest. A target could be one of two things. One was the target of an investigation; typically, a United States citizen suspected of being involved in some criminal activity. The other was an actual target. Someone who’d been marked for elimination.

  It would be rare, verging on unheard of, for Hank and him to have any involvement with the second type of target. That was the CIA’s area—foreign actors, mainly. But Ingrid’s demeanor, and the cryptic statements she’d made yesterday, certainly tilted the scales toward liquidation, not investigation. But why?

  “Who is this person?”

  Hank shifted his weight and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the bright morning sun. Leo followed his gaze to the broad-limbed oak tree, where Hank’s youngest girl, Calla, sat with her sneakers propped against the vee formed by two low branches and urged one of her brothers to join her.

  For a moment, Leo thought he wasn’t going to get an answer to the question.

  Then Hank spoke in a heavy voice, “I’m not sure exactly. I asked around some and I heard—not from Ingrid, of course—that a whole mess of names are being fed into the databases and flagged. Any and all hits are being forwarded to a top-secret, interagency effort being run by a joint terrorism task force.”

  “So this guy, or woman—”

  “It’s a guy. Essiah Wheaton. The address is some farmette out in Butler County.”

  “Okay, so Wheaton’s a suspected terrorist?”

  “Nobody’s said that straight out. But nobody’s said he isn’t.”

  “Hell, Hank. What am I supposed to do? Walk up to his door and shoot him on sight? Tail him? Interview him? I need something to go on.”

  They sat in mutual silence. Finn buried a small wooden horse under a mound of sand for Fiona to dig up. Then he did it again. Beside him, Leo could feel Hank seething with frustration.

  Finally, Hank spoke. “Don’t engage him. Just observe and report back to me. If nobody’s going to tell us what we’re wading into, we’ll have to do our own due diligence. Can Sasha’s folks watch the twins or do you want me to take them?”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but her mom’s all lined up for grandma duty this afternoon.”

  Hank clamped a heavy hand on Leo’s shoulder. “I’ll keep poking around. Wear a vest. Just in case.”

  8

  Leo crouched and peered out from among the Rose-of-Sharon bushes bordering the western edge of Wheaton’s property. The hibiscus shrubs were convenient for his purposes, but it was unclear to him what privacy purpose the dense screen of bushes served. The nearest neighbor’s home was nearly half a mile away. He’d seen it when he’d parked the SUV on a small dirt road out of sight from the main highway.

  Wheaton’s house was set back from the road near
the crest of a rolling hill that dominated the front yard. Leo looked up at the structure. Two stories plus an attic, brown shingles, and a wide brick chimney. Tidy and well kept. More flowering bushes had been planted on both sides of the house. The rows flanked the front porch, wrapped around the sides, and continued until they were out of Leo’s line of sight. The bushes obscured the first floor windows. Someone living inside was either a horticulture enthusiast or a privacy freak. Possibly both.

  He saw no signs of movement from within the house, and there were no cars or trucks parked in the long gravel driveway. The driveway continued past the house, circled behind it, and terminated at a detached wooden garage with a wide white door. Judging by the weathered red paint that matched the old barn at the southwest corner of the property, he surmised that it may have once stored farm equipment.

  He stood and cracked his back, stiff from the awkward position. He considered whether he was getting too old for surveillance and dismissed the thought. The dampness was just seeping into his bones from the light rain the night before, that was all. Maybe he’d have to join Sasha at her yoga class.

  Still trying to work the knots out of his shoulders and back, he skirted the edge of the property, careful to stay behind the bushes to conceal his movement from anyone who might be watching from inside the silent, closed-up house.

  He followed the privacy bushes along the perimeter until he was directly behind the garage. His suspicion that the structure had, at one time, been used to house a tractor or threshing equipment was confirmed by a wide doorway that opened to the back of the property. It had no door, but someone had boarded over the opening with two sheets of plywood that formed a crooked X. The loose plywood boards were sufficient to keep out would-be thieves—assuming they weren’t terribly motivated—but they provided no protection from prying eyes.

  He crept over to the opening, pressed himself against the outside wall, and squinted into the interior. His eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness quickly. A mostly clean, white pickup truck with a Texas license plate was parked on the right side of the garage. He noted the license plate number and continued his inspection. To the left of the truck, there was an empty space large enough to fit a second car—a mid-sized sedan, or possibly a small station wagon.

  The only other contents of the sparse garage were a cluster of gardening tools and lawn implements stacked in the far right corner and a riding lawnmower covered with a thin layer of dust. There was a long workbench with a peg board hanging over it. Both the board and bench were empty. There was no hint of any unsavory hobbies Wheaton might engage in—no bomb-making supplies, counterfeiting equipment, or weapons. There was nothing to suggest any savory hobbies, for that matter—not a baseball glove or a set of golf clubs.

  He stepped away from the structure with a rising mixture of frustration and puzzlement. As far as he could tell, this information-gathering mission had been a big, fat bust. Nothing about Wheaton’s set up said bad guy. The property was secluded and remote. But plenty of people lived rural lives—that didn’t make them terrorists. Privacy bushes might screen out nosy neighbors, but they would be useless against government agents. At a minimum, Leo would have expected a barbed-wire fence. Any half decent would-be criminal mastermind would supplement with a trip wire or maybe some vicious dogs. His own murdering father had dug punji stick pits to fortify his house, which was built on the edge of a rocky cliff outside a village that made the small town near Wheaton’s place look like a sprawling metropolis by comparison. In short, Leo hadn’t seen a single thing that might explain why the government cared so much about Essiah Wheaton. The scene felt wrong.

  His annoyance at being sent on a fool’s errand was tempered by his gratitude that the snug vest and Kevlar plates he wore under his loose sweater had been unnecessary. Every constricted breath he took was a reminder that he could have walked into something deadly.

  He continued past the garage to walk the rest of the perimeter before hiking back to his car. He suspected Ingrid and Hank would want him to come back at night. As he walked, he visualized how the property would look in the dark and scouted for a good vantage point to set up with night binoculars.

  He pushed through a dense cluster of trees. The copse sat on a small rise above the house. He stared down at the back of the house. With a good set of binoculars, he’d be able to look right in the second floor windows from here. This was the spot.

  He was halfway through the stand of trees on his way back to the property line when he heard the car engine. He froze and turned his head in the direction of the sound. It was approaching fast and from the south. That made sense. He’d passed a small commercial strip with a grocery store, a pharmacy, and a pizza joint about ten miles down the highway.

  He trained his eyes on the rise in the road and waited. A dark gray station wagon rumbled over the hill. He tracked the vehicle, expecting it to speed by Wheaton’s property and continue north. Instead, the driver slowed and turned into the driveway. The car drove up the hill and past the house but stopped shy of the garage.

  The driver killed the engine, and the wagon’s rear gate lifted open with a slow, automatic motion. A moment later, a tall, sturdy woman stepped out from behind the wheel. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a high ponytail. She wore a light purple t-shirt, faded jeans, and well-worn boots. She hurried around to the back of the car, pulled a pair of gardening gloves from her back pocket and put them on while she walked. Her movements were efficient and quick. She began to unload large bags of soil or mulch from the car, two at a time. She draped the bags across her forearms, carried them to the large garden plot behind the house and dropped them next to a potting bench. Without pausing, she went back for the next load.

  Once all the bags were stacked, she wiped her brow with the back of her hand, glanced up at the house, then resumed unloading the car. Leo watched as seedlings, plant food, stakes, a tray of plants, and a watering can piled up on the bench. The woman surveyed her purchase, hands on hips, with a satisfied smile then got back in the car and started the engine. She drove it up to the garage, hopped out, raised the bay door, then moved the station wagon inside. A moment later, she emerged from the structure with a leather purse slung over her shoulder, rolled down the garage bay door, and walked down the slight hill to the back of the house.

  She mounted the stairs to the wooden deck then let herself in through the back door—presumably into the kitchen. Leo listened hard enough to hear the door’s lock snick into place. He heard nothing else, no “honey, I’m home” or male voice calling out in greeting.

  He turned back to the garage, now holding one truck and one car. There wasn’t enough room for a third car. He shook his head. More mysteries. Who was the woman gardener? And, if Wheaton wasn’t home, where was he—and how’d he get there?

  He trudged the half mile back to his own vehicle, parked on the access road, lost in thought. He walked along the shoulder of the highway, following a berm that had been taken over by weeds and wildflowers. Not a single car or truck whizzed by him. When he was about two hundred yards from the rutted road where he’d parked, a single large red and black motorcycle roared toward him from the opposite direction. The bike’s highly polished chrome caught the sun like a flare. Leo raised a hand. The motorcyclist wore a black helmet with a tinted visor. He nodded his head to return the greeting and sped by, kicking up dust.

  Leo turned to watch the motorcycle shrink in the distance and caught a flash of a blue license plate with a large white star. Texas. One question answered.

  Essiah Wheaton followed the bend in the road and disappeared. Leo kept walking.

  9

  Sasha leaned back in her wrought-iron chair, glanced around the crêperie’s cute outdoor patio, and pulled her sweater around her shoulders. It was a bit early in the season for dining al fresco. But the winter had dragged on and on, and everybody was eager for some fresh air and sunshine, so here they were.

  She broke off another piece of the chocolate and fruit c
rêpe she, Will, and Naya were sharing for dessert and forked it into her mouth.

  She had to hand it to Will. His latest work-life balance suggestion was genius. He’d proposed a new format for their partners’ lunches. They chatted during their main meal without addressing any of the day-to-day concerns that faced their law firm and left the business matters to be handled over dessert and coffee.

  So far, the compromise seems to be working. Sasha had devoured her mushroom and goat cheese crêpe without once thinking of billable hours, accounts payable, receivables, or vendor issues. Talking about their families and current events instead made the actual meal seem like more of a break from work. And administrative minutiae was always more palatable when paired with sweets and good coffee. As a bonus, the discussions were shorter now and sometimes even focused on the substance of their work for clients.

  As if Will had read her thoughts and decided it was time to pay the piper, he dabbed an imaginary trace of stray melted chocolate and whipped cream from his lips, folded his linen napkin into a perfect square, and placed it on the table in front of him.

  “Shall we?”

  Naya nodded her agreement around a mouthful of the crêpe.

  Sasha took a sip of her hot, robust coffee and traced the rim of her mug with her index finger. “I’ll start us off. I assume Naya told you about my new matter for one of her clients?”

  “Yes. This would be the nonprofit fundraising organization that fell victim to a data hack?”

  “Actually—” Sasha and Naya began in unison.

  Naya laughed and waved her hand at Sasha. “You go ahead and tell it. I’ll take care of the rest of this crêpe.”

  “Nice division of labor. Anyway, they weren’t hacked, they were breached. The difference being the data wasn’t accessed by an outsider. Instead, a rogue employee posted it publicly just before quitting with no notice.”