They stared at each other for a moment in shared bewilderment. Then a memory popped into Sasha’s brain and she sprinted to the living room. She lifted Mocha’s dog bed from its spot on the hearth and, while Mocha watched, perplexed, unearthed two handfuls of cat toys and one shin guard.
She held it aloft, triumphant, as she returned to the kitchen.
“Where was it?”
“I saw Java dragging it around in his teeth the other day. Found it in his secret hiding place.”
“Under the dog bed?”
“Yep.”
Connelly turned toward the cat, who was sunning himself on the window ledge near the kitchen table. “You’re a weirdo,” he informed the feline.
Java opened one eye and gave Connelly a look that suggested his opinion didn’t merit much concern. Sasha coughed to cover her laugh.
“Cleats?” she said, in an effort to keep them on schedule.
“Check, check. Coffees?”
“Check, check.” She pointed toward the pair of travel mugs on the island. “I think that’s it then.”
He tilted his head and gave her a bemused look. “Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah. I mean, we are missing two Orange Squirts, but I can hear them pounding around upstairs getting their uniforms on. So, other than the soccer players, we have everything we need.”
He gestured toward her cell phone, plugged in and charging next to the coffee maker. “What about your lifeline to billable hours and social media?”
She felt a slow smile spread across her lips. “I don’t need it. I’m going to leave it here.”
“What if a client needs to reach you? Or Will or Naya?”
She shrugged. “It’s Saturday. And we’ll be back home in two hours. Anything that comes up between now and then can wait until after the game.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to the twins. “Hurry up, you monkeys, you don’t want to miss warm-ups and stretches.” She was pretty sure the stretches were their favorite part of the entire experience.
Finn and Fiona clattered down the stairs and raced past her.
“Grab your water bottles on your way through the kitchen,” she called.
She checked that the front door was locked, then headed back to the kitchen, where Connelly was still standing near the coffeemaker, staring down at her mobile phone.
“Seriously?” she asked, nudging his elbow.
He turned toward her “Sort of. What if there’s an emergency?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. When I was down in the NRQZ, the first day I was going out of my mind. I couldn’t bear to be out of touch, unable to communicate—especially because I really needed to. I mean, that was a true emergency, not a ‘what file name did you give the final draft of the brief’ emergency or a ‘don’t forget to pick up eggs’ emergency, right?”
“Right,” he agreed. He kept his eyes on her face even as he handed each of the twins a cinched knapsack containing shin guards, mouth guards, and cleats.
“And it was brutal. But by the morning of the second day, I felt so much calmer than I usually do. Quiet, centered. At peace.”
“And just to clarify, this blissed-out Zen state occurred after you’d been held captive for the better part of a day by a murderous terrorist and his henchman?”
“Don’t forget, I was being held in a shack straight out of a horror movie.”
“Right. And was the dead body of a small-time drug dealer festering in the backyard at that point?”
“Yes, that sounds about right.”
“Okay, got it. So, no need for a cell phone that day. What about the next day, when you believed you’d been cornered by a drug trafficker in the train station gift shop. Did you wish you had a signal then?”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and looked up into his soft gray eyes. “Listen, I’m not swearing off technology or anything. I just want to spend a few hours out of this gorgeous Saturday in the company of my three favorite people without being interrupted. I want to feel that blissed-out Zen state while I’m surrounded by the people I love.”
“Well, when you put it like that ….” He reached into his pocket, took out his cell phone, and placed it on the counter next to hers.
“There you go. Now, how do you feel?”
“Naked, actually.”
She knew what he meant. But she couldn’t resist teasing him: she stretched up onto her toes and whispered near his ear, “That’s a different kind of blissed-out state. Not appropriate for the developmental soccer field.”
He chuckled. “So, you’re saying that’s a rain check on the naked Zen?”
“Absolutely.”
He was about to cover her mouth with a kiss, she could tell. She pressed into him and parted her lips. Just then Finn came running back into the kitchen to see what was taking them so long.
He shrieked and ran back toward the garage, waving his hand and shouting for Fiona to come see how silly Mommy and Daddy were being.
Sasha took a step back from her husband and straightened the collar of his polo shirt. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. They interlaced their fingers and walked to the car holding hands, leaving their cell phones side by side on the counter to await their return.
Thank You!
Thanks for reading In Absentia! Sasha and Leo will be back in their next adventure soon. While you wait, you can always find an up-to-date list of the titles in this series, as well as my other books, on my website: My Books
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Critical Vulnerability (Aroostine Higgins Thriller No. 1):
Aroostine relies on her Native American traditions and her legal training to right wrongs and dispense justice. She’s charmingly relentless, always dots her i’s and crosses her t’s, and is an expert tracker.
Dark Path (Bodhi King Forensic Thriller No. 1):
Bodhi is a forensic pathologist and a practicing Buddhist who’s called upon to solve medical mysteries and unexplained deaths while adhering to his belief system. He’s thoughtful, unflinching, and always calm in an emergency.
Rosemary’s Gravy (We Sisters Three Humorous Romantic Mystery No. 1):
Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme are three twenty-something sisters searching for career success and love. Somehow, though, they keep finding murder and mayhem … and love.
Author’s Note
One of the challenges of writing a suspenseful thriller set in our current, hyper-connected world is that any protagonist worth her salt would just pull out her cell phone and call the authorities rather than go traipsing into danger. (Truly, it’s a constant struggle, my friends!) So, as soon as my sister told me about a camping trip she and her husband had taken in the National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), where there are no cell phone towers, my writing wheels started turning!
I began to research the NRQZ, and the more I learned the more intrigued I became. A trip to the heart of the NRQZ is akin to traveling back in time to a world before cell phones, Wi-Fi, microwaves, and automatic doors! This 13,000-square-mile zone exists to protect the sensitive equipment at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia.
If you’re interested in learning about the NRQZ, here’s some fascinating
background:
wired.com story
npr.com story
I had to experience the NRQZ firsthand, so David and I packed up the kids and the RV and camped in a teeny tiny town right outside Green Bank. Please note, it was not Tannerville (which is fictional). Unlike Tannerville, it was charming, peaceful, and absolutely delightful. Like Tannerville, it did boast a steam train depot and some telephone booths, which my children found fascinating.
We spent a day visiting the Observatory and went on a SETI tour where we learned about the history of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, visited the massive telescopes, and spoke to a radio astronomer currently working on the Breakthrough Listen Project. (Along with teaching us the Drake equation, the folks at the Observatory even served us sugar cookies!)
You can find loads of information about the Observatory here.
So, I knew Sasha was going to travel to the NRQZ to find her missing client. Then two other research trails crossed over this path and I had my plot twists.
I’ve mentioned how much I love to do research, right? Well, I love it so much that sometimes I’ll thoroughly research a topic without having a book in mind in which I plan to use that research.
That was the case with the opioid crisis in West Virginia. While the epidemic has affected every corner of the United States, and beyond, in many ways, West Virginia has been ground zero in this battle.
Some recommended background reading:
columnhealth.com story
vox.com story
washingtonpost.com story
I had noodled about Sasha becoming involved in the civil litigation against the pharmaceutical distributors, but once I noticed that the National Radio Quiet Zone overlapped with a DEA-designated High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, I went off in a different direction.
Which led me to my third area of research: bulk cash smuggling. This was something I’d already researched (I believe it was while I was writing Intentional Acts) but hadn’t incorporated into a book.
The harebrained scheme to smuggle money out of the country in teddy bears? Not so farfetched! Check out this article, which references an attempt to smuggle cash in a shipment of honey.
Astute readers will note that this article mentions the weight of bills as a limiting factor, but your faithful correspondent had forgotten those details when she sat down to write and reinvented the wheel—spending much time cursing at her calculator as she worked out the weights of teddy bears and cash (and then converting it all to metric because that’s the measurement freight forwarders use).
Believe me, I didn’t become a fiction writer so that I could do math for fun! ;-)
Here’s another article about terrorism financing, which oddly enough, also mentions honey. But in this case, it’s honey invoices that have been inflated.
This article also provides background, but it’s from 2006, so it’s fairly dated:
When all these ideas came together, In Absentia was born!
That’s it from me for now.
It’s time to get back to writing (and researching!).
Also by Melissa F. Miller
I’ve written loads of books! Click any of the series titles below to see a complete list of books in that series.
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The Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller Series
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The Aroostine Higgins Novels
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The Bodhi King Novels
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The We Sisters Three Romantic Comedic Mysteries
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Melissa F. Miller was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Although life and love led her to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and, ultimately, South Central Pennsylvania, she secretly still considers Pittsburgh home.
In college, she majored in English literature with concentrations in creative writing poetry and medieval literature and was stunned, upon graduation, to learn that there’s not exactly a job market for such a degree. After working as an editor for several years, she returned to school to earn a law degree. She was that annoying girl who loved class and always raised her hand. She practiced law for fifteen years, including a stint as a clerk for a federal judge, nearly a decade as an attorney at major international law firms, and several years running a two-person law firm with her lawyer husband.
Now, powered by coffee, she writes legal thrillers and homeschools her three children. When she’s not writing, and sometimes when she is, Melissa travels around the country in an RV with her husband, her kids, and her cat.
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Connect with me:
www.melissafmiller.com
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