Stay on campus until you hear from me.
I looked up. “Things aren’t good with Steph.”
Cody’s face relaxed, but then his brows furrowed. “Nah, you guys? What, you leave the toilet seat up at movie night?”
“I just . . . I don’t know where she’s at right now.”
“’Bout applying? Taking it to the next level? What?”
“It’s complicated.”
“‘I love you, love your kids, want the best for us, let’s talk about a future together’?” Cody said, leaning back and shaking his head. “How complicated we talkin’? Listen, if you guys can’t make it, no one in this world will, not really—especially me. I need you to make it. Got it? That her texting?”
I nodded. I had to make sure she was safe, but it couldn’t be me checking in on her. “Listen, I need a favor.”
“Done.”
“Can you deliver flowers to her . . . now?”
“That’s,” Cody said, drawing out the word, “not what I expected.”
“I’d do it myself, but I’m trapped here.” With each second that passed without telling him the truth, I felt as though someone were heaping a pound of bricks onto my shoulders.
“Chief’s wrath?”
“Something like that,” I said. But I knew Chief Renfroe was preoccupied with calls about the explosion and security prep for the basketball game, and even more engrossed with placing dozens of bets on bizarre and improbable NCAA outcomes that would crush him under more debt. Any other day, the chief would jump all over an opportunity to reprimand me. But a defective grill would be the last thing on his mind amid prime-time gambling. That bought me time to compose myself before the conductor texted me whatever twisted instruction he was scheming.
“Consider those flowers Stevie Wondered: signed, sealed, and delivered,” Cody said. “By the time I’m done talking you up—”
“She hates your cockiness.”
Cody pursed his lips. “Right.”
I exhaled.
“It’s going to be fine.” Cody eased back into his more serious self. “You’re meant for each other. Doesn’t take a detective to tell you that.”
I forced a smile. “If she’s not home, give me a call, okay?”
“You got it. Let me give you a lift to HQ.”
We walked to Cody’s squad car and drove the primary road that connected one end of campus to the other. Outside the window, I glimpsed students packing up chairs, tables, and stereo equipment from the festivities. The transition from orientation to NCAA prep that evening was in full swing.
I felt as though I were having a conversation with Cody without even making eye contact with him: Why can’t I clue you in on my intentions? Why can’t you read me? It was exactly how I felt every time I tried to pray.
Cody dropped me off at the HQ parking lot. “I want you to be honest with me, Haas,” he said, leaning out the car’s window.
My chest tightened as I turned back to meet my friend’s eyes.
“If I deliver these and save your guys’ relationship,” Cody said, “will she kiss me?” And with that, he honked twice and drove off.
Cody had no idea about my situation’s gravity, I knew that. If he did, all his jokes and bravado would’ve shrunk to a pea while the real Cody, the one I’d grown to understand and admire throughout SWAT basic, would’ve sprung into action. I could only hope that the steady stream of mixed messages about to hit Cody would trigger his internal alarm.
I walked to headquarters’ back entrance and swiped my card. I wanted zero human contact, needed room to think.
I made my way through the hallway to my desk, which sat amid an open workspace that bordered Chief Renfroe’s office. The paneled lights above hummed a low murmur. Everyone else either had taken up positions for the incoming NCAA crowd or was on patrol. I reclined in my chair in what felt like slow motion and found myself staring at nothing on my desk. In the reflection of my black computer monitor, fear stared back.
I felt powerless.
Unable to protect the woman and girls I loved.
Trapped in a quiet office filled with nothing but my thoughts and a large clock on the wall, whose hands mercilessly ticked forward until Cody reached Steph’s house and dialed me out of either confusion or horrifying confirmation.
What had just happened? Was I really being held hostage by a theatrical white-faced demon on the other end of my phone—in the middle of the university police department? That’s exactly what was happening. The conductor had told me to stay, and I was staying.
But I wasn’t powerless. I could find and stop this man. I just needed to ensure Steph and the girls weren’t in danger first.
Much as I tried, I didn’t consider myself a praying man, but I had prayed earlier for the call redirect scenario—and now I prayed that the mysterious demon hadn’t made actual contact with the girls.
How had a psychopath like this ended up at Trenton University? My own words echoed through my mind like terrible karma: I’m trained to slay Goliaths at a job where bad guys are three feet tall. This conductor was looking like a ten-foot giant, and I didn’t have a single stone to fight back.
I shook my head. What was possible in this moment? How could I gain an advantage? The conductor was scheming a horrible plot, one of which I now was a part. But that didn’t mean I’d blindly play a part in it. I needed to study it, break it.
“OODA,” I muttered, closing my eyes to engage my checklist: observe, orient, decide, act.
Observe.
What had I seen? It had all started with that gift-wrapped package. The conductor could’ve placed it there himself but probably wouldn’t have risked being videoed by one of the parents, students, or ESPN crew shooting B-roll throughout the day. Someone had placed the tablet for him, another “knot” most likely, as the conductor called them. If I wanted to find who had dragged me into this sick game, there was a clear path to doing so—but it would take weeks of interviewing and combing through footage. Not an option.
The tablet itself might offer a clue via an IP address, but it wouldn’t even turn on, and the entire IT department was undoubtedly frantic about making sure ESPN’s live broadcast ran smoothly without any errors from the Trenton University side of the tech crew.
Besides, I believed the note the fireman had handed to me was in fact another member of the string trying to connect with me—perhaps the very person who had planted the tablet, maybe someone scared or ashamed, in need of reinforcements to challenge the conductor’s string. I would likely find out for sure sometime between tip-off and buzzer tonight.
Following the note was a risk, but ignoring it was the greater risk. I needed information if I were to outfox the conductor, and what better way to gain that information than from someone who’d been trapped in the string longer than me?
The basketball game would be packed, noisy, and a great place to meet someone without being noticed. The time and place made sense if the conductor were monitoring.
What else?
The conductor knew far too much about Steph, the girls, and my relationship with them. He was meticulous in his preparation and dug into not only his targets’ fears but also their hopes. How had he known, for instance, that I wasn’t satisfied in my work? Was that an amateur guess—or a surgical uncovering of my life? Just how much did he know about my past?
What was the so-called conductor’s obsession with music? There had to be a clue in there about his motivation, where he’d come from, who he was.
And the bigger question: What did the conductor want? If the string was a web of thread, then it wasn’t a leap to assume he was tying pieces together to trap and devour . . . something. The question was what, and I didn’t have a clue.
Orient.
The conductor was prepared—but was he a mass murderer? If I stood up to him a second time, would he really destroy his “symphony”? Or would he fire another warning shot across the bow? I couldn’t take that chance. Not without Steph, Isabella, and
Tilly safely by my side. What if everything about the string were true? I couldn’t risk breaking it at the expense of those trapped within it.
Decide.
The conductor could be a poser who’d collapse under pushback. But if he was unafraid to act . . . I couldn’t take that risk. Until I knew more, I would approach him, his crude bombs, and his theatrical makeup as an extension of a deeply troubled soul. I didn’t see any other choice.
But would that mean going along with whatever the conductor asked? What if my actions put others in danger? I bared my teeth. Hated every passing moment of my new reality.
My phone buzzed.
Almost time to act, naughty knot.
Excited?
6
SATURDAY, 4:17 P.M.
Alec McCullers inserted the digital card into its port and began uploading the photos to his desktop. His computer’s fan kicked into high gear, its whir filling the Trenton Telegraph office. He stared at the blue progress bar and found himself once again sinking into the unfathomable fact that he was living out the most significant story he’d ever report on.
But he wasn’t reporting.
He was a character in the plot.
Desks ran along the walls of the Trenton Telegraph’s newsroom, and four spacers in the middle of the room created four more workstations for reporters and editors. Every other reporter and editor had gone home or was at the game, covering the big NCAA matchup that evening. But the newsroom seemed so trite now. News stories were just things happening. Sports were just teams playing. Features were just people talking.
Alec had the lone office in the newsroom, little more than a closet but still adorned with an “Editor in Chief” plaque on the door. The fact that there was a door to close was the real perk. He could shut out the newsroom while designing tomorrow’s edition of the Telegraph, for instance, a big deal considering that if other reporters or an advisor caught a glimpse of it, he’d get grilled with a hundred questions and pried for details he couldn’t divulge, like, “Where are the A1 stories? Why haven’t you laid them out yet? What are you going to do? The deadline is 1:00 a.m.”
Alec had already decided that, should anyone ask, he’d simply tell them that the front page would be an all-NCAA basketball spread, ridiculous as that would be considering that Trenton hadn’t even qualified for the tournament.
The truth was, he didn’t know what story was going to lead. All Alec knew was that the conductor had told him to wait for the story and layout to arrive in his inbox. His hands were tied.
Nobody knew the conductor existed. There’d be no reinforcements coming. If Alec truly wanted to escape the conductor’s wrath, either he’d have to play along—which felt like serving as an accomplice to some forthcoming tragedy—or he could do what he did best: talk to people, find the facts, and somehow produce positive change. But he hadn’t been sure what that might look like.
Until the conductor had given him the assignment to photograph Trenton University police officer Markus Haas.
Haas had been a local hero around Trenton ever since he’d saved those girls from that horrific basement, and he was a member of SWAT now to boot. If there was anybody who could escape the string and put the conductor behind bars, he hoped it’d be Haas. Haas provided a path of resistance to the conductor. He had a reputation as the officer you liked even if he were citing you. He was real with students, never tried to shame them, and genuinely pushed them to be better human beings. From everything Alec had read about Haas, it seemed the officer knew who he was and what he stood for—not the type to cower in fear. So if the conductor pressed hard against him, Haas would push back.
Right?
No matter the plan, Alec knew the first thing he could do was try to warn Haas about the text he’d received from the conductor earlier that day:
Tomorrow’s the big day, Alec—we’re going to kill Markus Haas.
Janet understood a couple of things about twenty-something males. First, they were like every other human: self-preservation was of utmost importance. If this student journalist—Alec McCullers, editor in chief of the Trenton Telegraph, according to staff listings—was indeed caught in the string, he’d be scared, secretive, and wanting to come out the other end without anyone knowing he’d served as an accomplice in the conductor’s schemes.
She knocked and entered the newsroom. This was a binary situation, 1 or 0. Either Alec was a part of the string and she’d make him confess it, or he wasn’t and she could grab one of the papers and leave.
Bright overhead lights filled the space with a warm glow, and a refrigerator in a mini kitchen nook hummed. The place reeked of Doritos and gum. No one was at any of the desks along the rim of the main room.
“Hello?” she said.
A chair squeaked and a door around the corner creaked open. The young man she’d seen taking photos earlier peeked out, holding a coffee mug. He definitely recognized her from before. “May I help you?” He took a sip but was clearly attempting to hide his trembling mouth.
Janet wasn’t going to deal with any pleasantries. “Feeling tightly wound? Like someone’s dangling you on the end of their string?”
Alec choked on his coffee. Half of the java fell back onto him while the other half splattered on the floor. He yelped in pain and his eyes morphed into hellfire. “What’s wrong with you?”
“He’s got you, I know it.”
Alec strung several obscenities together and ended with, “Why not just ask?”
“Sorry.” She wiped down his collared shirt with the back of her hand. “I needed to know and there isn’t an easy way of asking.”
“Well, you know now. What do you want? You’re going to get us killed.” He glanced out the newsroom’s third-story windows overlooking campus. “Get in here.”
They stepped into his postage stamp office and shut the door.
Janet crossed her arms. “This necessary?”
Alec’s eyes grew large. “He’s crazy. We’re three stories up with maybe two vantage points that can even see into this office, and it feels like he’s crawling up my back. Are we talking about the same person?”
“You’re right.” Janet sat in the chair she’d wheeled in. “He’s everywhere. I’ve experienced that truth firsthand, unfortunately. But I don’t think he tracked me here. I’ve been as stealthy as possible.”
Alec pushed aside his chair and sat on the floor with his back to the wall. He rested his arms on his knees and looked as though he hadn’t breathed in a month.
She needed to remember that this kid had likely been through hell too. “I’m sorry. I know the power games he plays. I saw you snapping photos and my gut screamed, because you looked just like the face I’ve stared at in the mirror every day since that white-faced psychopath told me he’d kill my sister if I didn’t do what he said. You’re the first I’ve found that I wasn’t assigned to. Thought if I tracked you down . . .” She put her hands to her head, trying to find and say the right words. “Maybe we could do something to stop him.”
Alec looked up, but his eyes were absent. “I reached out to another too.”
“Who?”
“The guy you almost killed.”
“You talked with Haas?”
“Not really. I slipped the fire department guys a note to give to him. I’m shooting the game tonight, so I told him to come—that I’d find him. I gotta warn him. Conductor says he’s going to kill him.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“A bomb exploded in his truck—you think he won’t know he’s being targeted? What’s your plan after you meet him?”
Alec squinted. “A psycho is making me take blackmail photos, publish God only knows what, and creeping on my phone while I’m trying to pass classes. I’ve barely had time to think. This cop is a local hero and knows how to shoot guns. I figured he could take it from there.”
“He’s more than a university cop, he’s part of the city’s SWAT team.”
“I know.”
Concern filled Alec’s eyes.
“What?”
He showed her the conductor’s text. “What am I supposed to do with that? The conductor went from ‘photograph this’ to ‘we’re killing someone’ as if there was no great leap between those two things.”
Janet pursed her lips. “We have to warn him. Tonight. Then get him to contact law enforcement, something higher up.”
Alec suddenly looked uneasy. “I know. We have to. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t.” He leaned toward Janet. “But if we screw up, then it’ll be a nightmare. Everybody’s nightmare. If Haas contacts the FBI, CIA, whatever—what if they investigate? The conductor will do terrible things to us all and get away with it. He’s not going to sit around when he knows someone’s looking for him. But if we come up with a plan that keeps things contained, well . . . maybe he won’t see it coming. Maybe we can stop him.”
“So you do have a plan. Or at least the reasoning for one.”
“I guess so.”
She jutted her chin. “Then I’m in, at least until we contact Haas. If he has a way of getting authorities involved quietly, that’s what we do. Otherwise . . .” She stood. “I’m going to that game and will find Haas. He’ll be expecting someone to approach him, and better me than you. You have to wear your badge and take photos. I can blend in with the crowd, wear the colors, play the fangirl—whatever.” It wasn’t the most convincing argument, but she trusted herself far more than a student she’d just met to contact Haas.
He flicked one of his wrists. “What do I do then? How can I help?”
“Look for the conductor, strange things, people who could be members of the string, I don’t know. He’s been planning for this game. He’ll be there. So get your photos—but not of the game. Look for him and others in his string. I spotted you easily enough.”
Alec’s face scrunched. “ESPN is here tonight, so there’s more access points to place cameras. I might be able to get 360 shots—live, even.”
The String Page 4