Like give the conductor money.
He unlocked Postma’s office door. He’d seen her return to her seat at the basketball game and knew he had enough time to pop in and out without anyone ever knowing. “Hello?” he said, peeking into the office.
No one responded. He stepped inside and closed the door.
After listening a moment to make sure no one was in the space’s private bathroom, Iseman walked past the secretary’s area and through a doorway to Postma’s desk. Everything about the décor was rich—the pelmet, the console, the davenport, the sconces and hassock. But the place smelled of her spoiled-rotten cat, the only attractive thing others probably found in Postma.
He deposited the letter on her keyboard, a note with a not-so-subtle request and directions to transfer a great deal of money so that “the conductor” could execute the rest of his plan.
But Iseman’s stomach still churned. He imagined word getting back to the conductor that someone was impersonating him. Would he suspect Iseman? Maybe.
But what were the odds that Postma would cry foul? A lot of things would have to break against Iseman for something terrible to happen.
Eyeing the envelope, he allowed a grin and exited Postma’s office.
That’s when he noticed the pet camera in the corner, green light dimly glowing.
Chief Renfroe closed the door to his press box, waving off media members and staff asking if he was all right. The paramedics had wanted to whisk him off to the hospital to check him out, but that was par for the course for first responders. He was fine—unlike Ivan, who had fainted and fallen nearly fifteen feet onto Renfroe’s shoulder, which now burned like fire.
But he wasn’t going to let a little pain ruin the perfect weekend.
Renfroe hobbled toward his chair. He didn’t feel good, especially his stomach. But that couldn’t be related to his shoulder pain. His belly was simply in knots over all that had occurred in less than an hour: dealing with that insubordinate Haas, being pulled onto the court for the spectacular honor, then experiencing a freak accident in which one of the most recognized people in music had skydived on top of him. That reminded Renfroe—he needed to check YouTube soon, because he was about to become the world’s most recognized chief. How about that?
Ivan had given the crowd the thumbs-up while being wheeled out of the gymnasium on a gurney, but Renfroe had his doubts. He’d heard an awful crack even though he’d helped break the man’s fall.
After a peek over his shoulder to make sure he’d locked the door, Renfroe sat and reached into the bag of crinkled cheddar chips. A sharp pain poked at his abdomen, so he loosened his belt buckle.
Finally. It was here. Four quarters of NCAA basketball to soak in and win a boatload of earnings from.
He moved his hands over the notes on his desk like a DJ, lightly tapping them to reposition them just so. A burning belch escaped him without warning, and he winced. Just experiencing pre–junk food backlash, a little too excited for tip-off, that’s all.
He twisted off the cap of a soda, which was now warmer than he liked, but this was hunker-down time. The medics had gone, the court was clear, and the players were lined up on the sideline as the national anthem started to play.
As he bumped his mouse to awaken his laptop, a strange webpage filled Renfroe’s screen. He cursed. “Pop-ups.” But he paused before closing the browser.
It was the URL to an archived article from the Trenton Telegraph, dated twenty years earlier. He recognized this edition. It was the grainy black-and-white photo accompanying the article that captured his attention. The photo was of Ivan Mikolaev during the Celestial Orchestra’s first performance all those years ago, a day Renfroe had tried to forget.
His stomach lurched again, but he held it down and turned toward the door. No one was around. Who had come in here—with a key, apparently—and brought this up on his computer?
He’d blocked out the memory of that night so well for so many years. He’d even come to the game tonight knowing the orchestra would be here and hadn’t really felt much of anything, as basketball and betting helped press down the terrible memories buried deep inside of him.
Renfroe’s cell pinged. He didn’t recognize the number.
Chief, Chief, Chief—here we are again, me and you. Waited a long time for this, you know?
He frowned and put on his glasses to see the screen. The mystery number was texting more.
Hadn’t planned on your coming-in party until tomorrow, but someone needed to pay and you just fit the bill—what with you having so little to live for.
Welcome to the string.
Who in the world was sending these texts?
A violent coughing fit attacked Renfroe. What felt like a thousand needles poked him from inside his gut.
He groaned and slid from his chair to the floor. He needed to call 911. His vision was dimming, and his arms suddenly felt heavy.
Something in the room moved. Noise from the boxes in the corner.
Now footsteps.
Coming his way.
The lights of his eyes were turning off. All Renfroe could see were sneakers planted right next to his head and gloved hands reaching down to lay a tablet on his chest.
A toolbox thudded onto the ground beside him.
10
SATURDAY, 7:25 P.M.
Snow began to fall as I stood there staring at my phone, waiting for whatever retribution was to come. But no other texts were coming in. Did the conductor know I’d met with Janet? How was he going to retaliate, knowing that I’d tried to tip off the chief? Or was Ivan’s fall in the gym the retaliation, a conductor putting down the conductor?
I shook my head. Had to get to the girls.
I hustled back to the squad car and couldn’t believe what I was seeing: a boot on the front tire. Even in the icy weather, anger warmed my face. The chief had sent his lackeys to lock down my car. I’d have to take an Uber or . . . something.
“Hey,” someone whispered.
A young man who had been in the shadows stepped into pale light. He was sharply dressed and showing me a Trenton Telegraph media badge hanging from his neck. This was Alec McCullers, the journalist Janet had confronted and recruited. He motioned for me to get into the car.
I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat. Unlocked the passenger door. Alec slid inside and closed us in silence.
This time I spared the pleasantries. “What’s he have on you—since when?” I said.
Alec raised his brows and demonstrated solid eye contact. “All right, honesty. Nice to know Janet found you. I saw you peek into the gymnasium during the chaos.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve been ambitious in my freelance pieces. Witnessed a bystander get killed reporting on an underground racing ring.” He glanced at the dashboard, then back to me. “I ditched with the rest of them, destroyed evidence.”
Involuntary manslaughter. That was no small thing to hold over someone’s head, let alone an ambitious student with his whole life ahead of him.
“At first he left me notes, just messing with my mind—telling me he was watching me, that he knew what I’d done, to wait for further instructions.” Alec rubbed his forehead. “Then he sent me a link to a live feed, and I’ve been doing chores for him ever since. It’s been weeks.” He nodded back toward the gymnasium. “Someone made me in there. Another member of the string trying to cover his butt, I think. Warned me about meeting with Janet—and you. Threatened, actually. So the second the commotion happened, I slipped out and hid out here where I could see your car, figured you’d have to walk this way. I take it Janet found you and told you about me. Did she tell you—”
“You’re going to kill me tomorrow,” I interjected.
He nodded. “The conductor has been using me to study you—digging up newspaper archives, video footage from news crews. He’s got you well documented, but today . . .” Alec waved a hand as if he didn’t have a clue in the world. “Texted me that we were going to kill you. We—he and I. Why’
d he escalate to that?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why he wants anything.” I rehashed the incident with sending Cody to check in on Steph and the girls, then my encounter with the chief. “Killing me would only make sense if it were done at the same time he finishes whatever he’s got planned.”
“So something big happens tomorrow?”
I checked the mirrors of the parked car as I thought on it. Looked down at my phone. “Could anyone have seen you waiting for me?”
Alec shifted his body, looking pained as if his limbs had all fallen asleep. “Everyone was in the gym. I don’t know. It’s impossible for him to watch all of us all the time. But I can’t be sure. You got a plan? I want to help. I’m great with cameras and fact finding. All we need is a lead, a description, anything. Just tell me how I can help you.”
How could I utilize his talents without putting him in greater danger? “Janet is trying to locate him using a tablet. How would you locate him?”
This question seemed to throw Alec off, if only a little. “I’d find other members of the string. The more I’d find, the more I’d learn, and the closer I’d be to ending this.”
I showed Alec the last “naughty knot” text. “He hasn’t been in touch since. I’ve got to go. Steph, Cody, the girls—he’s got them. I heard it in Cody’s voice.”
Alec lit up. “Can you get the boot off?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll take you. But we have to get to my car behind the comm building.”
“It won’t be safe. You okay with that—the conductor finding out you helped me?”
Alec lifted his car keys in front of his face, letting them dangle. “If he hasn’t found me out yet, it’s only a matter of time. Janet’s doing what she can; I might as well do damage while I can.”
A small amount of hope lifted in me. He was a good kid.
I reached behind me and unlatched the AR-15.
Just in case anyone was watching, I stepped outside and started fiddling with the boot, leaving the door open behind me. All the main vantage points could only see the front of the car, so Alec could sneak out my door and stay low, using the car as cover until he reached the university courtyard. From there, he could head toward the back of the buildings that ran parallel with the evergreen-filled hills on the west side of campus.
I waited a few minutes, then walked in shadows through the campus, which had transformed from mobs into an eerie emptiness. Ahead and to the right sat the comm building, where Janet was hopefully finding a way to track the conductor.
It would take twenty-five minutes to get to Steph’s house in the country, and that was with clear roads without snow on them.
I skirted around to the back of the communications building. Alec stepped out from behind a truck and clicked a key fob. The lights of a Honda Civic blinked twice, and we both hustled over to it.
Then I cocked my head.
On the sidewalk, about thirty feet away, lay a pair of shoes dotted with white snowflakes. Women’s shoes.
“Those . . .” Alec said. “Those are Janet’s.”
SEVEN MINUTES EARLIER
Janet opened her office window—it was about to get hot.
She placed the mangled tablet on her desk, opened her laptop, and fired up her desktop, then hooked up the attachments she’d need to get the tablet to talk to her about the conductor. She ran program after program, snippets of code flashing before her as all her processing power went to work. The conductor was hidden in this puzzle—the digital trail told all. But what would she do if she found him?
Giving the conductor’s location or last known whereabouts to Markus Haas seemed like the right thing to do. But a part of her wanted to scope out the conductor for herself. Wait for him to step into a glorious new morning, and then stick a knife so deeply inside him that he would think he’d swallowed it whole.
Her computer’s fans kicked into high gear as she tapped her fingernails on the desk repeatedly. A thought kept nagging at her: Had the conductor learned of the tablet handoff and surmised what she was doing?
Janet pulled a drawer open and grabbed a few items to try to relax. She walked to her sitting corner, turned on the lamp, and opened her book to the bookmark, which was a hot pink fidget spinner. Holding the spinner between two fingers, she felt as though her world was right again, even though it wasn’t. She gave it an aggressive spin and closed her eyes, the whir filling the office.
Something broke her thoughts—a sound, a creak. She looked up. Her computers and fidget spinner continued to whir.
As she stared at her office door, the thought of the conductor approaching her sank deep into her stomach. What if she wasn’t on the hunt but about to become the prey? She couldn’t think like this, not now. All she’d heard was a creak. She was on a mission and couldn’t let fear win.
But she couldn’t keep her eyes off the door handle. She wished the door had one of those tiny windows so she could see what lay on the other side.
Janet brushed a finger against the fidget spinner and it sputtered to a halt. She wanted to leap toward the door and lock it, but she also wanted to listen.
Nothing but silence.
Nothing but silence.
She exhaled.
Creak.
It could be the aged building yawning, it could be a branch outside her window stretching, but her door was getting locked now.
Janet stood as quietly as possible. She slipped off her heels and slid one foot forward, barely lifting it off the hardwood. She did the same with her other foot. Her heart thumped in her chest and pulsed in her ears. What felt like a bamboo shoot grew in her gut, wiggling this way and that, creating violent tremors with every turn.
The closer she got to the handle, the more aware she became of every sensory fiber in her being: the fleshy parts of her lips, the pressure of her glasses at the bridge of her nose, even the air filling the grooves of her fingerprints.
She gripped the door’s dead bolt and slowly turned—
A body slammed into the door.
The dead bolt, only half engaged, rattled.
Janet shrieked and fully engaged the bolt. Hustled to her desk, heart thrashing in her chest. Her face went numb.
Only a minute left before her programs finished running. But the door was the only way out. She was trapped. Unless . . .
She looked out the window. Unless she could make the leap from her second-floor office to the portico directly diagonal to her window.
“Jannnnnet,” a high-pitched voice said. “What am I ever going to do with you, sneaky woman?”
It was him. Here. Outside her office.
Something slipped under the door, a miniature tube no wider than a pencil. Its black head curved into Janet’s office like a snake. A valve twisted and a white, steam-like substance began emanating from just under her office door.
“When I’m in my kitchen, chopping vegetables, searing meat, caramelizing onions, I don’t move without pace or rhyme,” the conductor said. “I glide from station to station to the mastery of Beethoven, Bach, or Mozart, depending on my mood.”
The white gas was growing into a cloud. Janet closed her eyes, breaths coming fast, too fast. She needed to slow down, steady herself. She opened her eyes, snatched up the tablet, and tucked it into her pants, body shaking, eyes tingling. She couldn’t make the jump from her window. But he’d kill her if she stayed. Lucy too.
“The food was merely the activity, see. What whet my appetite was the overtaking, the closing of my eyes as each note danced up my vertebrae, cleansing me of stress and worry. And the very best part, Janet? The part I looked forward to most?” He took a long drag of air. “The deep breath that followed.”
Janet leaned over and gripped the windowsill, fingers burning from the pressure.
“The gas isn’t harmful, you know—I vape it every night before I sleep. Or, better phrased, I sleep after every time I vape it. It’s fantastically relaxing.”
Her office had turned complet
ely white, but she could now breathe fresh air. The conductor started doing something to the door again, working to get it open. Janet leaned out to take a deep breath. She couldn’t make that jump to the portico, she knew that. She’d fall and incapacitate herself, crush her ankles or break her knees. But she had to do something.
She took off her heels and tossed them out the window to see just how far she was about to fall. How much longer could she hold her breath inside?
Behind her, masked in the white cloud, her office door burst open.
Janet slipped to the left of the window, toward her desk area, lungs burning from lack of oxygen. She extended her shaking hands in search of the one item hard enough to deliver a massive blow. She couldn’t see the conductor, but she could hear his steps. He must have been wearing a gas mask because he was walking toward the window in no apparent hurry.
As he peeked outside, no doubt eyeing the high heels on the concrete below and wondering how she’d managed to spring out of sight, she raised the vase in which sat her bonsai plant.
“Clever gir—” he said, just as Janet swung the vase and smashed it into the back of him—his head, neck, or spine, she couldn’t tell.
Janet ran into the hallway, pulled the fire alarm, and sprinted down the hall, turning left toward the conference room, then right toward the stairwell. Running barefoot made her feel balanced and grounded, but the tendons and muscles in her feet were already screaming from slapping against the marble floors.
Racing down the stairs and spilling onto the first floor, she pulled out the tablet and tucked it under the last stair at the bottom, just in case he caught up to her. He obviously valued it and she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
The alarm continued screaming, but no help was in sight. Someone had to be on campus. Even just a student meandering. The fire department would be dispatched to her location, along with a campus officer. But five to ten minutes would be an eternity in this living nightmare. And unless her bonsai blow had done serious damage, the conductor couldn’t be far behind—
The String Page 8