Tweet Storm
This is Chapter 24 of The Inheritance, a serial fiction novel on FITK
Monday afternoon, July 20th, 2020, Seattle
Mary was sitting in the kitchen monitoring the flurry of social media feeds that mentioned her and Jo and Sean.
A link to the sermon by the preacher from Arizona had been retweeted numerous times and its number of YouTube views were already over 100,000. Also trending were tweets from Barbara Merrit. Mary found those to be more troubling in that Merrit had made insinuations that Mary and Sean were involved in the deaths of numerous people. KWAH’s feed said that people should tune in at ten for an exclusive story on Seattle’s romantic ‘Tech Triad’. Mary was just about to set her phone down (as the updates were starting to recycle) when she received a notification from Jo:
Hi mary m on my way back be home by six.
Sean walked into the kitchen holding his phone. He had a grim look on his face.
“You’ve been following this?” he said, “I just got a call from Agent Marchal, wondering if we knew what was going on. I told him no, and he said that we should call him if there were any developments.”
“I’m going to get an update soon from the old ADR crew about that preacher,” said Mary, “As far as Barbara Merrit is concerned, the lawyers are preparing a C&D against her if these attacks continue.”
In the studios of KWAH, William Preston was puzzled. He had already committed to running an exposé of the relationship between Mary and Sean an Jo. There wasn’t much new in it—just the picture of Sean and Jo at the riot—but the tweets from Barbara Merrit’s account were, if true, something altogether different. He pulled up the picture of Barbara Merrit from her website and while he was looking at it, something clicked. Merrit had been at the riot, clearly visible in the footage the station had shot. Looking at the footage again, Preston realized that she was a provocateur, not an observer. He called the story desk and ordered a rewrite.
Jo Sanford had just pulled into a Union 76 station on the outskirts of Ellensburg, about halfway between Spokane and Seattle. As she filled up her car with gas she noticed a small deli behind the station. When she had finished pumping she drove over to the shop and went inside. She ordered a sandwich and then sat down and took out her phone. She made a short text to Mary, and then started to look for any of the Twitter feeds that her attorney had mentioned that morning.
She didn’t have to search long.
Stepping out of the back door of his Phoenix strip-mall chapel, Andrew Stevenson was feeling good about himself. His latest sermon had just gone viral and, if the experience of the previous few days were an indication, he would be getting a lot more cash donations within the next few days. He opened the door of his brand-new Mercedes GLS 450 and got in. “It’s a nice SUV,” he said to himself, “and worthy of one who practices the Lord’s work.” As he settled in he noticed an odd odor, “Probably some out-gassing from the upholstery,” he thought.
Then Stevenson’s world began spinning around and, after one final gasp, Andrew thought no more.
Next Chapter: Lost and Found
