Innocent Mistakes

by Melissa F. Miller

  He’s going to hear about it on the news tomorrow, so there’s no reason to leave him wondering. She glances at Connelly, who shrugs as if to say ‘go ahead.’

  “We got swatted. Everyone’s fine. The unit who responded broke down the door and forced Leo to the floor at gunpoint, but, thankfully, he was able to defuse the situation.”

  “You were swatted? Someone called 9-1-1 and impersonated you—and they sent out a SWAT team?” August’s voice rises.

  “Right,” Connelly confirms. “I got a feeling that something was about to go down—I don’t know how to explain it, but I hid the kids in a closet. The next thing I knew, all hell broke loose. It could have been so much worse.”

  “I can’t even imagine. Do you know who targeted you?”

  “Yes and no. I work in federal law enforcement. I’m in intelligence, actually. And as you no doubt know, Sasha’s had some high-profile criminal cases. We’ve more than our fair share of enemies.”

  Sasha’s surprised to see August shaking his head. “No—I mean, I’m sure there are lots of unsavory people nursing grudges against you, but swatting is … well, it’s really prevalent within the online gaming community.”

  He makes the declaration in a tone that suggests it should mean something to them. Sasha looks at Connelly, who shakes his head. He’s as lost as she is.

  “Okay? So?” she asks.

  “I mean, don’t you think it’s kind of coincidental that this kid is a hard-core gamer?”

  Connelly turns toward Sasha. “He is? I didn’t know Colin was a big gamer.”

  “He’s not, at least not as far as I know. He’s obsessed with baseball.”

  “Not him. His sister.”

  She gapes at August. “Siobhan? Are you sure?”

  “Here, I’ll show you.”

  She pushes the laptop over in front of him, and she and Connelly pull their chairs closer to see over his shoulder. August scans the file directory and clicks on a handful of links.

  “She played one game in particular a lot.”

  “From her phone?” Connelly asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s called Society. It’s a cooperative crafting game. See, here’s her play log.”

  Sasha gives him a blank look. He shoots Connelly a hopeful glance, but Connelly shakes his head. August takes a deep breath then blows it out.

  “Okay, in crafting games, the players are building something—a house, a city, whatever. They usually have to gather resources and work as a team—that’s the cooperative part. In Society, the players have been shipwrecked on a planet that has water and vegetation and, um, goats. They have to survive. Which means making fire, planting food, milking the goats, building shelters. You with me?”

  “So far,” Sasha tells him.

  “The twist in Society is that to advance in the game, you need to create a cohesive social structure, with like rules and social mores and stuff. Players who tend toward destruction don’t do well.”

  “But Siobhan does well?” Connelly asks.

  “Did well. She quit playing. But, yeah, she was good—as in technically proficient at building things. But she also had a knack for building community. You can see it if you look at her stats.”

  She’s going to have to take his word for it. “So what happened?”

  “She advanced to the governance level. It’s a pretty elite status. She was—okay, this will sound stupid—but within the world, she was a superstar.”

  “Until …?” Sasha can sense August is trying to stall.

  He sighs. “She was doxxed. She was playing with an androgynous gamer tag and avatar. A lot of girls do that—it cuts down some on the dick pics.”

  Sasha closes her eyes and shakes her head. What a freaking world.

  “Who doxxed her?”

  “A group of players. She was winning so much because she created a community that all worked together. They shared their resources and assigned themselves specialized jobs to keep the group running smoothly. Everyone had a role, everyone contributed. This other group was more of a Lord of the Flies type thing. They had a leader who ruled through violence and harsh punishment. Siobhan beat him in a tournament, and his crew was livid. Someone found out that she was a girl and then it really got out of hand.”

  He pauses, his finger hovering over the tracking pad for a second. “I’m going to show you something really ugly, but you have to understand these pictures aren’t real. Okay? This is not your niece. It’s a computer-generated deep fake.”

  Sasha’s not even sure what he’s talking about but her pulse is hammering like crazy. Connelly reaches over and squeezes her hand.

  “Okay, open it.”

  August clicks the pad, and a series of violent images fills the screen. It’s Siobhan. Siobhan being tortured … and worse. Siobhan in positions that Sasha will never be able to unsee.

  “It’s not her,” she says aloud. Her voice shakes.

  “It’s not her,” Connelly repeats. “Close them, please.”

  August does. With another click the images vanish. But they’re not gone. They race around Sasha’s brain and crawl down into the pit of her stomach. They fill her throat. She gasps and Connelly pushes his scotch toward her.

  “Take a sip.”

  She raises the glass to her lips with a trembling hand and lets the warm burning liquid wash away the pictures. After a moment, she takes a breath and hands the glass back to Connelly. “Thanks.”

  She turns to August, fire blazing in her belly. “Someone sent these to her?”

  He nods. “Yeah. Well, first, they shared her real name and address in-game, which is a big no-no. That was deleted almost instantly by the moderators. Then the same person direct messaged her through the game. They attached the pictures and a demand that she quit the game or they would leak them to everyone in her school.”

  “You keep saying they,” Leo points out.

  “I don’t know the person’s gender. I mean, it’s probably a dude, but it could be a girl, I suppose. But it’s only one player as far as I can tell.”

  “Blackmail,” she breathes.

  “Siobhan quit. Deleted her profile and the game, but I recovered them. The blackmailer used the name Castle Rock.”

  “From Lord of the Flies,” she mumbles.

  “I guess? Anyway, Castle Rock’s currently on the Society leader board but doesn’t seem to play much anymore either.”

  “How would a kid make those … those images?”

  “Honestly, they’re not even particularly good deep fakes. A kid could do it. Or pay someone on the dark web to make them. They wouldn’t hold up under even a cursory analysis.”

  “But they’re good enough to ruin a girl’s life,” Connelly observes in a soft, dangerous voice.

  “Yeah.”

  Sasha tries to imagine what went through Siobhan’s mind when she opened her DMs, and her heart squeezes. Oh, Vonnie.

  “Wait. So, does Siobhan think Hunter Dalton did this? Is that why Colin posted that message?” Connelly muses.

  “Colin definitely didn’t post that message,” August interjects. “At least not from his phone. It was posted from Siobhan’s phone. She—or someone—logged in using Colin’s school ID, posted the message, then deleted her history.”

  Sasha flashes back to Siobhan’s insistence that she didn’t post the message, and Colin’s conviction that she was telling the truth. “Okay, let’s leave that for now. What else did you find?”

  There’s another flurry of clicks, and then the image of their busted window fills the screen. “This was uploaded using an administrative login for the PTA account.”

  “Oh, good, so we can find out who that is pretty simply, right?” Sasha brightens a bit and tries to put aside the deep fake images.

  But August bursts her bubble with a sigh. “Yes and no. It looks like that’s a shared login. Posts using those credentials come from a handful of different IP addresses. The PTA officers probably share it. You could get a subpoena or
, you know, a court order to have the Internet provider tell you who posted it. But that doesn’t necessarily tell you who took the photograph. I made a list of all the posts that came from that same address, though. Maybe you’ll see a pattern.”

  “Thanks. Anything else?”

  “Nothing major. Oh, well, there’s some kind of weird back and forth between your nephew and a user called Science Grl. He uses the screen name Bolton. They’re on a social media app, and they send direct messages.”

  “Bolton? John, Michael?” Sasha asks.

  August shrugs. “No idea. Is he a fan of the mustachioed politician or the singer-songwriter?”

  Connelly snaps his fingers. “It could be an homage to Tom Bolton. Former Major League pitcher. And he’s a lefty, like Colin.”

  “That makes more sense.”

  “Anyway, the messages aren’t bad or anything. They just … it seems like they’re talking in coded language. I copied all of them—you’ll see what I mean,” August says. Then he drains his glass and pushes his chair back. “So that’s all I found.”

  “It’s a lot,” she tells him. “Thank you.”

  “Of course. Thanks for the drink. And good luck with all of … this.” He waves a hand around the room.

  They walk him to the door and wave to the officer stationed on the sidewalk, then Connelly bolts the door. Once August has negotiated the stairs, Connelly turns out the porch light. He leans against the wall and folds Sasha into his chest.

  “I’ll tell you one thing. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be in high school now.”

  You and me both, she thinks, listening to the beat of his heart as it rises and falls beneath her cheek. You and me both.

  24

  Saturday morning

  Early

  * * *

  Leo stands in the doorway to Finn’s room. The rising sun filters through the curtains and falls across his wife’s face, which is partially covered by a curtain of dark hair. She’s curled up like a ‘c’ in Finn’s beanbag chair, fast asleep. One arm dangles over the side of the chair, and a soft, child-sized blanket printed with boats and dolphins bobbing over waves covers most of her body. His neck hurts just from looking at her. She’s going to wake up stiff and sore.

  Mocha raises his head from the foot of the bed, and Leo pats his thigh. He jumps down, stretches, yawns loudly, waking both the cat and Sasha. The twins sleep through it. Java does his own stretching routine, followed by Sasha, whose joints pop and crack as she unfolds herself and arches her back.

  She pads over and stretches up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. “Morning.”

  He hands her a mug of fresh coffee. “Morning,” he whispers back.

  They sneak out into the hall with the dog and cat underfoot. He pulls the door closed.

  “You’ve already been downstairs?” She cups her hands around the mug and studies his face. “You never came up last night, did you?”

  “Nope. I slept on the couch so I could keep an eye on the kitchen door. Just in case. Did you sleep in that beanbag all night?”

  She nods and rolls her neck. “Yeah. I wanted to be in the same room with them. Just in case.”

  They walk downstairs and go through the motions of their weekend morning routine, both groggy and lost in thought. They feed the pets in silence, let Mocha outside in silence, drink their coffee. Finally, he says, “About Deep Creek—”

  She screws up her face and wrinkles her forehead, then interrupts him, “—I know last night I said I’d take them up to the lake, but—”

  “But it makes more sense for it to be me,” he finishes for her.

  She eyes him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Well … yeah.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?” She rests the cup on the counter. “You’re not going to insist on staying here to find out who swatted us?”

  “Oh, I will find out who did this. That’s not changing. But, those images, the deep fakes … they gave me literal nightmares last night.”

  “Me, too,” she says quietly.

  He pulls her into his chest and kisses the top of her head. “You need to stay here and talk to Siobhan.”

  She looks up at him, relief shining in her bright eyes. “I’m so glad I don’t have to convince you. I really do need to talk to her. And Colin, too. I read those DMs between Bolton and Science Grl last night, and August’s instincts are right: there’s something going on there.”

  “A secret relationship?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. They have a project or a mission or something. Whatever it is, they’re very secretive about it.”

  He frowns. “Even in messages that should be private?”

  “Weird, right? It’s almost like they think someone’s reading them.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah.”

  She reaches behind him for the coffee carafe. “You need a warm up?”

  He tilts his empty mug toward her. “What do you think?”

  She refills his coffee. “So, big family breakfast and then I’ll help you get the car packed up?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Big family breakfast is a necessity. He wants to—needs to—give the twins a sense of normalcy in their own home before he whisks them out of it for their safety. The thought that their house isn’t safe sends a jolt of white-hot rage coursing through his body. He slams his hand down on the counter in frustration.

  She raises one eyebrow.

  “Sorry. I’m …”

  “Thirsty for vengeance?”

  “I was going to say angry, but sure, thirsty for vengeance works.”

  She picks up his hand, still stinging from the contact with the stone counter, and kisses his palm lightly. “Whoever did this will pay.”

  “But you think it was a gamer? A kid?”

  She shakes her head. “I’m not sure. It’s not easy to find our address. Not to mention our phone number. Could some random gamer do that? I mean, they’d have to hack into Homeland Security files, right?”

  “At this point, yes. Every public reference to our home address has been thoroughly scrubbed from any publicly accessible source.”

  “You’re sure, right?”

  “I’m positive.”

  He spent a small fortune making it happen. And he stress-tests it regularly. Nobody’s Googling them or finding them through the property tax rolls.

  “Or it’s someone we know.”

  He blinks at her. “Like, a friend?”

  “Former friend under the circumstances. But, yeah. Or someone I worked with. People leave the firm from time to time, you know. Or a neighbor. I mean, we’re not actually anonymous.”

  He feels exposed, vulnerable. Gooseflesh rises on his arms. No. It can’t be someone in their life.

  He dismisses the idea, scoffing, “What? You think Clark Wright swatted me because we disagree about who’s responsible for weed-whacking around his scraggly trees, which I want to note are very clearly on his side of the property line?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Not the freaking trees again. But, yes, Clark. Or maybe Nicolette Gruber’s still mad at me for taking the twins off the peewee soccer team after she punched that ref in the jaw. I mean, they did have to forfeit the result of the U5 season because they didn’t have enough players. She knows where we live. I mean it could be anyone.”

  He inhales deeply, rests his hands on her shoulders, and searches her face. “I’m pretty sure that even at their pettiest none of our friends or neighbors would swat us. What’s this really about?”

  “I don’t want to believe a child did this to us, Connelly. Somebody’s kid.”

  Ah.

  He gets it, he thinks. “And if a child is capable of doing something like this, then what are our kids capable of?”

  Her shoulders sag under his hands. “Right. And don’t say Finn and Fiona aren’t going to do something like that.”

  “Well, they’re not.”

  “I know, but we can’t ever really know.
And once they’re teenagers … we’ll have no idea what’s going on in their lives.”

  He opens his mouth to protest, but she cuts him off. “Do you think Sean and Jordan know about those pictures of Siobhan? I mean, not Siobhan. But, you know.”

  “No,” he concedes. “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “And what about Matthew?”

  He blinks, confused. “Patrick’s kid?”

  “Yeah, do you think he tells his mom that he has Sunday dinner every week with the grandparents she never told him he has?”

  “Wait, he’s in college. He’s a young adult. And family dinner and torture porn are two very different things. Are you sure you’re not spiraling?”

  She sighs, a heavy, full-body sigh. “I might be. But I know that Siobhan and Colin aren’t telling me everything.”

  “You say clients never do.”

  “They aren’t clients, they’re my niece and nephew.” Her tone is hot, her eyes are fierce, and her face is inches from his.

  He’s not afraid of her, not really. But if he were asked to describe her at the moment, the words that come to mind are formidable, ferocious, and, well, feral.

  “Um … are we having pancakes or French toast?” A sweet voice squeaks from the doorway.

  Finn grins, rubbing his eyes with his fists. His hair is sticking straight up and one leg of his pajamas pants is pushed halfway up his calf.

  “Daddy’s Diner is open for business today,” Leo tells him.

  “So we can order whatever we want?” He bounces on his toes.

  “You know it. Why don’t you go brush your teeth and take your sister’s order? You can be the waiter today.”

  “Yes!” He pumps his tiny fist before turning to race back upstairs.

  Leo looks over at Sasha. Her previous intensity has melted away. She’s leaning against the counter, smiling at Finn’s excitement. He wishes he could bottle this mood of hers—relaxed, easy, happy—so she could access it when the dark press of what if? weighs down on her.

  She meets his eyes. “What?”