Intentional Acts

by Melissa F. Miller

  “This is more than I could find.”

  Naya set her mouth in a skeptical frown. “I should’ve found a lot more than one stinking picture, and we both know it. What’s this guy hiding?”

  Sasha stared down at the photograph for a moment while Naya’s question bumped up against a vague thought that had been floating around her brain. As the two collided, an idea crystallized.

  She looked up and tilted her head. “Can you do me a favor and search the rest of the names that were on Sentinel Solution Systems’ list?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Maybe all these people fell off the face of the earth. Maybe that’s why the government’s so interested in them.”

  Naya’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead. “Maybe if the government’s so interested in them, we shouldn’t go poking around.”

  “Please. Since when do we mind our own business?”

  Naya bobbed her head from side to side, acknowledging that she had a valid point. Then she blew out a long breath. “All right. Sure, why not? Email me the list of names.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Too bad you can’t just log into Leo’s laptop tonight and run the names through his system. You’d have your answer in ten seconds.”

  Sasha laughed. “Yeah, too bad.”

  Naya left, pulling the door closed behind her. Sasha picked up her phone and dialed Gella’s number.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Sasha. Would Elizabelle be able to tell me which project or projects Essiah Wheaton was involved with—as a donor or a recipient?”

  “No, she doesn’t have that access. But I do. I’ll find out which sherpa was assigned to him and get the details. Do you need this tonight?”

  “Tomorrow’s fine, thanks.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Sasha ended the call and picked up the picture of Wheaton. What were you up to? And what are you hiding from?

  14

  Finn and Fiona were still filling Leo in on their day with Grandma Valentina when the doorbell rang. Leo pressed his forehead against the glass and saw Hank’s familiar face peering back at him.

  He pulled the door open. “That was fast. I haven’t been home but ten minutes.”

  “I know. I passed your mother-in-law’s car at the corner.” He stepped inside and grinned at the twins. “Hi, double trouble.”

  After the cries of ‘Uncle Hank’ died down, Leo set the kids up with paints and paper at their craft table and ushered Hank into the small sitting room off the dining room.

  “I’ll be able to see them from here in case they get the bright idea to paint Mocha again. But we should be able to talk in peace,” he explained.

  As if the dog had overheard him and remembered his last encounter with primary colors, the chocolate lab came trotting into the room and wedged himself safely between the chairs. Hank chuckled and reached down to scratch Mocha behind the ears.

  His laughter faded and his expression grew serious. “Don’t ask how I came to know this, because I can’t tell you. Got it?”

  Leo nodded. “Got it.”

  “Essiah Wheaton was living in Bendville, Texas, an unincorporated community located about a half an hour east of Houston near the Gulf Coast.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Yeah, it’s a speck on the map. The only reason anyone’s heard of it is that it was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey.”

  “How badly?” A lot of Texas towns had been decimated by the hurricane. The images had dominated the news.

  “No, actually destroyed. Apparently, the town, such as it was, is a total loss. The place has been abandoned. The couple hundred people who lived there—Essiah Wheaton, included—scattered.”

  “Last time I checked, being displaced by a storm isn’t a federal crime.”

  “No. But hunting down and killing Mexican immigrants is.”

  “Wheaton did that?”

  Hank threw up his hands. “Maybe?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Bendville didn’t have a lot going on. No real industry or tourism. It was mainly family farms, a couple small businesses that served the oil companies on the coast.”

  “Okay.”

  “What Bendville did have was an active, militant white nationalist group. They were sufficiently noisy that they made an internal list of domestic terror organizations.”

  Leo’s gut clenched. “And Wheaton was a member?”

  “His name’s in the system, Leo. That’s all I know.”

  “What about the woman?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know who she is. But I do know this—The Heritage Brotherhood is—or was—no joke. It’s not clear if they’re still active, but the leader is a dude named Fletcher Lee Holden. Holden’s been a suspect in at least four murders. But he’s a slippery son-of-a …”

  Leo coughed and jerked his head toward the kitchen, where Fiona was watching them with wide eyes.

  Hank lowered his voice a notch and went on, “We’ve never gotten anything solid on him. If Wheaton was involved with Holden, he was mixed up with some bad people. Can you go back out to his place tonight and poke around some more?”

  Leo nodded heavily. “Yeah, after dinner.”

  Hank held his gaze for a moment. “If he’s a murderous nationalist….”

  “I know.”

  Leo looked away. Hank didn’t have to tell him. He’d sworn an oath to protect the country from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

  15

  Fiona and Finn were playing a game on the kitchen floor that involved two empty boxes, an empty oatmeal canister, and, for reasons that Sasha couldn’t fathom, a toothbrush. As long as it wasn’t hers (and she’d checked, it wasn’t) and they were occupied, she figured she’d leave well enough alone. She was washing the big roasting pan when Connelly and Mocha thundered through the kitchen door, both shaking water out of their hair.

  “Hey,” she yelped as cold droplets of rain hit her bare neck.

  “Sorry,” Connelly said as he unleashed Mocha’s collar, grabbed the old towel they kept by the door for times like these, and rubbed the dog’s fur vigorously. “It started drizzling when we were down on Walnut Street.”

  “Did he go?”

  Mocha was a fair weather walker. He hated to be rained on.

  “Yeah, thank goodness. He should be good until morning.”

  From his spot curled up on the hearth, Java opened one eye. Sasha could’ve sworn he smirked at the wet dog.

  “I’m almost finished up here. Want to help me give the kids their baths in a few?”

  Connelly grimaced. “I actually have to go out for a while—it’s for … a job.”

  “Oh.” She turned off the water and dried her hands on a tea towel. “At this hour?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. It’s important. You know Hank wouldn’t ask if it weren’t.” He raised his shoulders and gave her an apologetic smile.

  She studied his face. He often stayed up late working on his encrypted laptop for Hank, but he generally didn’t go out in the field at night. And he never sprang field work on her with no notice.

  “Sure. Of course.”

  She held his gaze for a beat, wondering what would happen if she pressed him on his nighttime task. She dismissed the thought.

  He dipped his head and pressed his lips against her neck. She softened her spine and leaned into him. His arms encircled her waist, and she rested her head on his chest. She almost asked him not to go.

  The moment passed.

  He pulled back and locked eyes with her. “I’ll owe you one. I’ll do baths solo on Thursday and you can call one of the girls and go get a glass of wine or two. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  He crouched on the floor and admired the twins’ cardboard creation then kissed the tops of their heads. “Hey, guys, Daddy has to go work. Be extra good for Mommy tonight, okay?”

  “Okay,” Fiona chirped.

  “‘Kay, Dada,” Finn echoed.

  Conn
elly smiled at them. “I love you, monkey one and monkey two.”

  “We’re not monkeys,” Fiona giggled.

  “Love you more,” Finn asserted.

  “Impossible! Wait—is that my toothbrush?”

  Sasha buried her face in her hands to hide her laughter.

  Connelly reached for the toothbrush then thought better of it. “I’ll get a new one.”

  “Good call.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t wait up. I’ll probably be late.”

  “Drive carefully. The temperature’s dropping. The roads might be slick.”

  “Love you, monkey three.”

  “Love you more,” she called to his back as he hurried out of the room.

  He jogged up the stairs and banged around in their bedroom and his office for a few minutes. When he came back downstairs, he headed straight for the door and yelled a goodbye over his shoulder.

  Sasha wiped down the counters and set up the coffee for the morning’s first pot. Then she clicked off the lights, scooped a twin up in each arm, and balanced them on her hips.

  “Bath time,” she sang as she marched up the stairs with Mocha on her heels.

  The next thirty minutes were a blur. She stripped off the kids’ dirty clothes; filled the tub with warm water and all-natural bubble bath; lathered, rinsed, and repeated; then handed over the basket of bath toys and squirters. Mocha gave her a baleful look and trotted out of the bathroom.

  He’d learned the hard way that he was an almost irresistible target for their dueling streams of water. Sasha’d learned the hard way that she was, too. Some nights, she entertained the idea of putting on her bathing suit for the water games.

  Long after the water had turned cold and the twins’ hands and feet had grown pruney and wrinkled, Sasha drained the tub. She bundled Finn and Fiona into the matching hooded towels inscribed with ‘Monkey 1’ and ‘Monkey 2,’ then carried them, shrieking with laughter, into their bedroom, carrying on a monologue over ever-louder giggles.

  “I’ll just put these two piles of laundry in the twins’ room and fold it tomorrow,” she said to no one before dropping them onto their mattresses.

  Fiona’s head popped out from under her hood. “We’re not laundry!”

  Finn emerged, cackling, “Momma, you’re silly!”

  She fake-gasped. “Oh my goodness, how did you two get into my laundry?”

  After another round of giggles, she got them into their pajamas, guided their chubby hands as they brushed their teeth, then tucked them in. After reading two bedtime stories and telling the next installment in the story she and Connelly had been making up on a nightly basis for months, she saw their eyelids fluttering. She switched off the lamp and the glow-in-the dark stars on the ceiling began to give off their gentle light. She kissed their foreheads and smoothed back their hair.

  Fiona was asleep before Sasha reached the doorway. Finn, as he always did, would stare up at the stars and sing to himself for a few minutes before joining his sister in slumber.

  Sasha dragged herself across the hall and collapsed horizontally across the bed, arms outstretched, and closed her eyes. After a long moment, she groaned and sat up to tend to her own bedtime routine. She rustled around in her dresser, searching for clean running clothes to sleep in. Eliminating the extra step of actually getting dressed in the morning was just about the only way to guarantee she made it out the door for a run.

  Connelly’s government-issued laptop sat atop the dresser. She furrowed her brow. He never left that thing sitting out. She shut the lid and carried the computer across the hall to his office. As she placed it on his desk, she spotted the security fob he used to log in sitting on his blotter. Her hand hovered over the desk for a millisecond as she remembered Naya’s joke.

  She shook her head and pulled her hand back. She must’ve been more tired than she realized to even entertain the idea. She pivoted on her heel to leave the room, shaken by the thought that she’d considered trying to access Connelly’s private, not to mention top-secret and confidential, files.

  As she passed the closet, the door swayed slightly. She frowned. She made it a point to keep the closet doors securely closed. In part, because Java loved slinking into dark spaces when the doors were left ajar—he had a habit of curling up for a cat nap and getting himself trapped in the pantry, the basement, and various closets. But this closet, of all the closets, shouldn’t have been left ajar. This was where Connelly stored his gun safe.

  She pushed the door shut with a click then pressed her palm flat against it and paused while an icy finger of worry crawled along her scalp.

  Don’t snoop.

  She brushed away her inner voice’s advice, hit the light switch on the wall, and pulled the door open. The gun safe was stowed high on the top shelf. She stretched onto her toes and wiggled her fingers fruitlessly in the air. She came nowhere near reaching the shelf—which, in truth was no surprise. It was at least a foot over her head.

  She dragged Connelly’s wheeled desk chair across the room and stood on the seat. Her first year torts professor’s words rang in her ears as the chair wobbled: ‘Did you ever use a shoe as a hammer? A desk chair as a stepstool? Before you judge a plaintiff’s contributory negligence, stop and think, who among us hasn’t used an everyday item for an unintended purpose? Necessity may be the mother of invention. But invention is the mother of the avoidable accident.’

  She smiled at the memory and steadied herself, bracing her right hand against the shelf as she scooted the safe toward her with her left. She nudged the slim mini-vault to the edge of the shelf, tipped it forward and caught it two-handed as it fell. She hugged the steel box against her chest as she clambered down from the chair with an ungainly, off-balance hop.

  She placed it on the floor and knelt beside it. It was small for a gun safe, designed to be portable. It was also keyless. She pressed her index finger down on the biometric pad to be scanned. Connelly had insisted, over her repeated objections, that both their fingerprints be preprogrammed into the security panel. She couldn’t imagine what scenario he’d envisioned when he’d dug in his heels, but she suspected it wasn’t this one.

  Within seconds, a green light flashed, a beep chirruped its approval, and the spring-loaded door opened. She peered inside, and her breath caught in her diaphragm. Connelly’s heavy Sig Sauer, the gun she’d used to break his nose the night they met, lay nestled in the foam interior. His Glock, however, was missing. She rocked back on her heels and stared out the window into the dark night as the driving rain lashed against the glass.

  16

  Fletch was at his weekly poker game when the call from Pennsylvania came through.

  “Excuse me, fellas. Imma have to take this.” He placed his cards face down on the felt, pushed away from the table, and dropped his gold money clip on top of his cards. A couple of guys started bitchin’ under their breath, but he paid them no mind.

  Business came first, and everybody in his regular game knew it.

  “Is it him?” he asked as soon as he stepped out into the hallway near the restrooms and answered the call.

  “Oh, it’s him all right,” Chuck drawled. “And he’s shacked up with Karen Leander. At least, that who his gal looks like. It’s kinda hard to see through the trees. But, yeah, we found the yellow dog.”

  Fletch rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Y’all haven’t confronted him. Right?”

  He briefly closed his eyes while he waited for Chuck’s answer. He didn’t know Marcus from a hole in the ground, but surely, in the name of all that was good, Chuck hadn’t done anything plumb stupid.

  “Course not. Jeez, give a guy some credit, Fletch.”

  “Right. So, what’s Wheaton’s story? Besides the girl, I mean.”

  He listened as Chuck and Marcus conferred in low voices on the other end of the phone. After a few moments, Chuck cleared his throat. “He’s got a house out in the country. Nothing fancy. A couple acres. It’s not fortified or anything like that; it’s a good p
lace for a security-minded guy. Up on a hill. Good lines of sight from the house. He’d be hard to sneak up on, if someone had a mind to.”

  Fletch smiled at the hypothetical. “I hear you. He got a job or anything?”

  “Not sure. He’s not working at the bank in town. That much I can tell you. We got into town right when it was closing up for the day and watched everyone leave.”

  In the background, Marcus spoke, urging Chuck to mention some point.

  “What’s Marcus going on about?”

  “He wants me to tell you Wheaton’s still got his hog. We saw it in his shed.”

  It took a moment to realize they were talking about a motorcycle, not a porcine animal.

  “You think he’s got riding buddies up there?”

  “Might have. Haven’t seen ‘em, if so.”

  Something about the cadence of Chuck’s sentence was off. Fletch didn’t know what it was, but he could tell Chuck was holding back information.

  Fletcher Lee Holden hadn’t clawed his way to his position as Elder Brother of the Heritage Brotherhood by ignoring his gut … or by shying away from a scuffle.

  “Let me talk to Marcus.”

  “Now, Fletch—”

  “Put him on the phone. Now.” Fletch lowered his voice to a rough growl.

  “Right. Sorry. Hang on.”

  The card room door swung open, and Denny’s head popped out into the hall.

  “Fletch, you comin’ back or what?”

  He didn’t answer. Just gave Denny a stone cold stare until he retracted his head like a turtle and yanked the door closed like it was his shell.

  “Mr. Holden, sir, it’s me, Marcus.”

  Fletch waited until the man stopped stammering to take a breath, then he said in a measured voice, “What is Chuck forgetting to tell me?”

  “Uh … sir?”