Runaway Fate: Moonstone Cove Book One

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “So you were going to try to keep participants from building up resistance to current medications?” Baxter asked. “I imagine you asked study participants to remain on the same pharmaceutical dosage throughout the study.”

  “We did.”

  “Did you ask about participants’ greatest fears?” Katherine asked. “Was that part of the screening?”

  Anita narrowed her eyes and thought carefully. “Not in that many words but… in a sense. The visualization that we designed was based on identifying the root of a patient’s anxiety. So for some individuals, that might be considered their greatest fear.”

  “And you used the same visualization for all the students?”

  “We did.”

  “What was it?” Baxter asked.

  “It’s one I’ve used before in my practice. Imagine that the situation you fear—a public speaking event or an argument or whatever it might be—is in front of you, just beyond a threshold in your mind. The first step is to close the door to that threshold and then take a step back from it. Take another step back. Visualize all the steps that led you back to where you are in the present. And anytime you feel an anxiety attack coming on, you take those backward steps all over again.”

  “…the visualization wasn’t working. For some reason, instead of walking backward, I felt like someone was pushing me forward.” Sarah Jordan’s voice was clear in her mind. Someone had managed to take the positive visualization developed to conquer fear and turn it upside down.

  Katherine asked, “And how long was the study? How many participants?”

  “There were around seventy participants, almost all drawn from the student body, but not entirely. We had twelve sessions for each participant. One session a week. So around three months. Then each participant was given a set of exercises to practice on their own and log electronically on a daily basis. We checked at one month, then six months. We were scheduled to do the third follow-up next month.”

  “So Sarah Jordan’s incident happened soon after the first six-month check, and the next follow-up hasn’t happened yet,” Katherine said.

  “Correct.”

  Baxter said, “I’m assuming any abnormal behavior or outbursts would require reporting.”

  “Obviously. There’s quite an extensive questionnaire, and then if anything is out of the ordinary, a follow-up phone call would happen.”

  Baxter asked, “Who guided the biofeedback sessions? I’m assuming you had a fairly large team with that many people and that many sessions.”

  “Yes. We had ten graduate students who were each assigned seven individuals to meet with. So they were conducting around two hours a day of clinical work. Quite intense but overseen by all five of us in turn.”

  “And the biofeedback therapies were all the same?”

  “They all used the same program, yes. There was a period of introduction, use of feedback sensors to measure heart rate, body temperature, and muscle tension. We paired that with awareness exercises that led to breathing regulation, relaxation techniques, and eventually guided visualization.”

  “And did it show promise?”

  “Obviously we’re still collecting data, but overall, yes.”

  “Negative side effects presented?” Baxter asked.

  “Virtually none.” Anita was adamant. “We didn’t change any of their medications. No erratic behavior was reported. The only negative outcome was that for some participants, it simply didn’t work, but we expected that result.” She paused and tapped the edge of her cup. “This was not a groundbreaking study. It wasn’t going to change the world.”

  Katherine said, “I got the feeling from Ansel that he thought there was very real publishing potential. Maybe something even directed toward the general market.”

  She frowned. “It’s possible. I don’t know that it would garner that much interest from a nonacademic publisher. Honestly, the most innovative thing about the study would probably be the app.”

  Katherine blinked. “What app?”

  “The reporting app. That was how we required the study participants to log their exercises. Alice Kraft developed it along with one of Ansel’s students.”

  “An app?” Something buzzed in the back of Katherine’s mind. “I don’t suppose you have it on your phone, do you?”

  Anita shook her head. “The grad students would have all used it, I’m sure, but we didn’t. I don’t consider myself very technologically savvy. It was a very clever idea though. Everyone has a smartphone these days. The app was designed to prompt students at certain times of the day to do their biofeedback exercises; then they would log their results right away. The reports were automatically sent to the server, so there was no room for error or lost data.”

  “Fascinating,” Baxter said. “Have you alerted the rest of the students in the study yet?”

  “Not yet. We were going to send a message through the app to be on guard for unexpected reactions and to stop doing the prescribed biofeedback exercises immediately.” She shook her head. “I want to do everything right, but I know this is going to be hard for many of the students. There were dozens of reports given to my own grad students that the biofeedback had helped immensely, especially with sleep.”

  “That’s interesting,” Katherine said. “Do you have any idea which one of Ansel’s graduate students helped Alice Kraft design the app?”

  “I don’t.”

  “What would happen to that?” Baxter said. “If this hadn’t happened, would the app eventually have been deleted off the participants’ phones?”

  “I imagine so. I’m not familiar with how that would happen. That would have been Alice’s and Ansel’s areas of expertise.”

  “Alice Kraft.” Baxter tapped his chin. “She works in the computer engineering department as well as behavioral sciences, correct?”

  “She does. Much of Alice’s work has been related to studying cognitive reactions to technology, so she was a perfect addition to the team.”

  “I imagine.” Katherine thought back to her conversation with Greg weeks ago. He’d mentioned working with Alice Kraft. Was he the only one?

  “Anita,” Baxter said. “This app you used… Who would it have technically belonged to?”

  “All the data it collected would be strictly confidential, so—”

  “Not the data.” Katherine understood where Baxter’s mind was going. “But the app itself. The design of it.”

  “Well, you should know from the Fred lab. Anything designed on university time using university resources would belong to the university.” She looked between them. “But does a biofeedback phone application have any particular monetary value?”

  “Oh…” Baxter nodded. “I can imagine it might have some.”

  * * *

  An hour later, she was standing at the sink and doing breakfast dishes when Baxter walked in from a run to the grocery store. “I told you to stay off your feet.”

  “I need to move my knee too.” She pointed to it. “Look. Not the size of a grapefruit anymore. And my ankle feels much better. We should go for a walk later.”

  She could see he was tempted. “Beach walk?”

  “Just a little one.” She rinsed the coffee carafe. “To stretch.”

  “Fine, but you’re icing it afterward.” He sat down and watched her. “I think we know the motivation now.”

  Katherine had been turning over possibilities in her brain. “We don’t know for sure.”

  “Maybe not for sure, but…” Baxter cocked his head. “Think about how much people spend on meditation classes, wellness apps, that sort of thing. If a smart graduate student figured out how to create at-home biofeedback technology and pair that with an app that uses proven cognitive therapy techniques from PhDs in behavioral science?”

  “You’re saying it’s a grad student? Why not the professor who designed it?”

  “The grad students were the admins.”

  “The professor was the designer.”

  Baxter shrugged
. “Six of one, half dozen of the other, Professor Bassi. Either way, a mobile phone app could be far more profitable than a book deal.”

  “And easier to pull off,” Katherine said. “Provided no one caught on to how you created it in the first place.”

  “If the study is never published, then the only ones who’d really know about it would be the professors and grad students involved,” Baxter said. “The graduate students are all looking after their doctoral opportunities. And listen to Anita—she didn’t even know you could make serious money with an app. The majority of our colleagues probably fall in the same category unless they’re in technology.”

  Sarah Jordan and Tucker.

  Justin McCabe.

  Abby Chung and her partner, Mario.

  Kaylee Ivers.

  “Can you imagine, Baxter? All these bizarre and tragic events for the most boring motivation possible. Money.”

  “It’s a classic for a reason,” he said. “We need to figure out who designed the biofeedback app and what exactly was on that thing.”

  “We need to find out more than that,” Katherine said. “According to Anita, the app was the main vehicle for communication with study participants.”

  “Correct.”

  “I want to know if everyone got the same version.” She finished and turned to reach for the towel and dry her hands. “This didn’t happen to all seventy students. It happened to Sarah, Justin, Abby, and Kaylee. Did they all get the same app? Did they all get the same messages and prompts?”

  “That’s a good question. Do you think you could get Sarah’s phone? Or Justin’s? Maybe we can look at the history.”

  “Maybe not the phone itself, but possibly a record of the messages on it.”

  “I had another thought while I was at the grocery store,” Baxter said. “Everyone affected by this is largely out of commission. Sarah left school. Justin and Abby are either in jail or in the hospital. Everyone except Kaylee.”

  “Whatever he tried to do to Kaylee failed,” Katherine said. “You think she’s still in danger.”

  “I don’t think there’s any reason to think that whatever made her a target has changed. She probably knows something but isn’t aware that it’s dangerous. She may not realize it, but whatever it is, she’s still a threat to whoever is behind this.”

  Katherine sat down and picked up her phone. She tapped on Kaylee’s name and waited for the phone to pick up.

  It rang. And rang. And rang.

  “Hi! This is Kaylee. I’m not available right now, but please leave a message and your number so I can call you back.”

  Chapter 25

  Baxter and Katherine flew down the highway. It was Saturday, and the traffic around the university was a fraction of the usual bustle. Katherine was on the phone with Britt at the Fred lab.

  “Is there anyone working today? I’m sorry to bug you, I know you were going to take this weekend off, but I couldn’t get ahold of Job.”

  “Yeah, no problem. He should be there with a couple of his kids.”

  “You mean grad students?”

  “They’re all infants to me.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of grad students—”

  “Is Kaylee Ivers one of the students working today?”

  “Kaylee? Don’t think so. Shaver brought some other kid in last week to help out. Can’t remember the name. He said Kaylee was going to be busy with a new project he had going at the BS office.”

  “Right.” She put a hand over the phone. “Head to the social science quad.”

  “Right.”

  She spoke to Britt again. “Thanks.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “I think so, but I need to speak to her, and she’s not answering her phone.”

  “Huh.” He said something to someone on the other end of the phone. “Does this have anything to do with why she was on top of the architecture building the other day?”

  “You heard about that?”

  “Katherine, everyone heard about that. And about you tearing across campus and joining her. Is she doing okay? She’s a great kid.”

  “She is. And I think she’s fine. I can’t say anything more than that right now.”

  “Okay.” He fell silent. “Well, if she needs any help—”

  “I’ll let you know.” They’d arrived at the faculty lot nearest the social science complex. “I need to go, Britt. I’ll talk to you on Monday.”

  “See ya.”

  The School of Social Sciences occupied three squat, midcentury buildings at the end of a tree-lined cul-de-sac on the north end of the university.

  “Do you know which building behavioral sciences is in?”

  “Yes.” Baxter strode across the lawn. “I consulted with Anita, remember?”

  “Right.” They walked up the steps, and Katherine followed Baxter as he led them to the right.

  At the far end of the building was an office with Department of Behavioral Sciences written on a glass door. The office behind it was dark and obviously not staffed on weekends, but there was the relic of a computer lab right across from it, and there were lights on there.

  Baxter stuck his head in the door and barked at the three students parked in the corner. “Kaylee Ivers. Is she here?”

  The students looked up with wide eyes. “Uh…” One of them stammered. “W-we’re not in this department. We just use this old lab for… stuff. On weekends.”

  Katherine didn’t even want to guess. She nudged Baxter to the side. “Have you seen any older students come in this way? The one we’re looking for is short and thin. She’s white and has really long brown hair. Very cheerful.”

  “Oh.” The girl in the group piped up. “I saw her. Yeah, she came in with two other people. One of them was a professor, I think. They went up the stairs.”

  “Thank you.”

  Baxter couldn’t resist. “What are you doing in here?” None of the desktop computers were on. Backpacks spilled notebooks and folders onto the worktables and three laptops were open, but all three students were also on their phones.

  The girl stared at Baxter with wide eyes. “Political hacktivism.”

  “Right, carry on.” He pulled Katherine away from the lab and toward the stairs. “The elevator is broken in this building right now.”

  “Wait, did they say activism or hacktivism?”

  “Not sure. We should go find Kaylee.”

  “But—”

  “Kaylee.” He pushed her ahead of him on the stairs. “Priorities. Can you climb with your knee?”

  “Yes. I’m okay.” She stopped at the second floor landing and poked her head into the hallway. She heard nothing, not even papers shuffling. “Third floor.”

  They walked up to the third floor, which was the top of the building, and opened the door. The landing was in the exact center of the hallway, but there were only voices coming from the right.

  “This way.” Katherine walked toward the voices, two of which she recognized, Kaylee and a deeper male voice that sounded familiar. She had her suspicions, which were confirmed when she saw Greg Hammond sitting across the table from Kaylee and a professor that Katherine recognized as Alice Kraft, one of the newest tenured professors in the computer science department.

  Alice Kraft had very distinctive red hair, and she was young enough to be frequently mistaken for a student. All three were on laptops, and Kaylee had a clipboard and a printout next to her.

  When she heard them at the door, Kaylee looked up. “Katherine?”

  “Kaylee.” Katherine was breathing a little hard from climbing the stairs. “Hi.”

  Greg and Alice Kraft were staring at them.

  Professor Kraft frowned. “Professor Pang?”

  “Professor Kraft, how are you? Have you met my wife, Katherine Bassi?”

  “I haven’t. Physics, correct?”

  “Biophysics, yes. I work at the Neuroengineering and Marine Sciences lab with Kaylee.”

  “How interesting.” She frowned before
she glanced at Greg and Kaylee. “Is there something we can help you with?”

  Katherine and Baxter exchanged a look.

  “I needed to speak to Kaylee, and she wasn’t answering her phone.”

  “Yes, we turned all our devices off because we’re working on confidential study files,” Alice Kraft said. “I don’t want to offend you, but we’re quite busy and this is something that has to be done quickly, which is why we’re working on a Saturday.” She was clearly annoyed that they’d been interrupted.

  “If I could borrow Kaylee for a brief moment, I’d appreciate it,” Katherine said. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  Her mind flashed back to her brief conversation with Greg at the student center.

  “You’re a busy young man. Psychology and technology?”

  “I want to focus on how data from wearable devices could potentially transform how mental health professionals evaluate patients.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “Yeah. I mean… Everyone lies, right? But our bodies don’t.”

  Greg Hammond. Greg and Alice Kraft? Could Greg have been the student who helped her design the app? Katherine and Baxter guided Kaylee down the hall and into a small alcove near the stairwell.

  “Do you have your phone on you?” Katherine asked.

  Kaylee glanced at Baxter.

  “Professor Pang knows about what happened on the roof,” Katherine said. “He knows about what happened with Abby and Justin and Sarah. You can speak freely.”

  “I don’t have my phone.” Her voice was a near-whisper. “Professor Kraft’s, like, super strict about putting it away when we’re working. It’s in my backpack.”

  “As soon as you can take it out, you need to go on and delete the reporting app for the study.”

  Kaylee frowned. “The reporting app?”

  “We think it could be the key that links all the strange incidents. All the grad students and the study participants had the app, right?”