If Alec wasn’t mistaken, the conductor had deployed a suicide driver—and if they didn’t move right now, they were dead.
He swung his head to Janet. “What do I do?”
Janet gripped the laptop and tablet in one hand and the door handle in the other. “Punch it or bail!”
He did the former, this time pressing his foot to the floor. The engine screamed with all the shrill power of a jumbo-sized teapot, whistling bloody murder into the night.
The oncoming vehicle veered off the road, thundering toward them like a derailed train.
What looked like a giant bat, silhouetted against tree branches and moonlight, fell from above and dropped on me like a sandbag.
I collapsed under the weight but rolled and spun on the snow, coming up with a fistful of the bat’s jacket and jamming my knee into his bony back, gun pointed at his head.
The attacker’s hat fell off as he turned his white face to me. “Please—I’m not him!” cried the man who I thought was the conductor. Though the attire was correct, the deep voice did not belong to the psychopath.
Just then another blur ran past me only a few yards away, dressed in the same garb as the stranger under my knee: black hat, coat, and a face that looked as though it had been coated in baking powder.
I swung my gun toward the mystery runner, but he was already fading into blackness. The conductor was toying with me.
“Where is he?” I twisted my knee into the man’s vertebrae.
He cried out. “I don’t know, it was an assignment.”
“What assignment?”
“Draw you into the woods—away from the house.”
In the distance, tires spun like a dragster off the block. Alec and Janet. That wasn’t the sound of Alec trying to get the car unstuck. Those tires screamed desperation.
I cursed and bolted back toward the road, bursting out of the tree line.
A black Sprinter van was barreling down the driveway, coming from the house. It smashed into Alec’s Civic, scaling it like a snowboard up a half-pipe. The momentum hurled the van sideways and its driver’s side rocketed across the terrain, scraping against snowy gravel.
I sprinted toward the wreckage, gun trained on the hostile vehicle. But I needed to check on Janet and Alec.
Snow stuck to the mangled Civic’s broken glass, creating a black-and-white mosaic impossible to see through.
Oh, God, are they in there? Please tell me you got them out.
My SWAT training kicked in, and reluctantly I turned to the van. Needed to take control of the hostiles. I ran to the front of the sideways van and swung the Smith & Wesson’s handle into its windshield. Glass shattered.
If anyone was still breathing in there, I needed to keep them overwhelmed. “Don’t move, don’t move!”
A lone man was sprawled across the cockpit, midforties, Mexican descent. Blood covered his face, but I recognized him. Serge. He was the head gardener at Trenton University. I’d seen him earlier today with Doug.
I crawled through the windshield and checked his pulse. Lowered my head.
Serge’s cell was in his pants pocket. I grabbed it and backed out of the van.
“Haas,” a voice said.
I turned to see Alec. What felt like invisible strings suddenly lifted the load I was carrying. He was holding his left shoulder but otherwise unharmed, from what I could tell.
“Where’s Janet?”
Alec looked back at what had been his car. “Didn’t she jump out?”
We both hustled back to his smashed hunk of metal and peered through the spiderweb glass. I turned my weapon to use its handle as a hammer.
“It’s fine, I’m fine.” The voice had come from the other side of the road.
We both turned to Janet, her laptop and tablet still connected by a cord and in her grasp.
“You okay?” I said.
“See any blood?” She crossed the roadway to meet us and nodded at the van, looking as though she might kill someone. “Driver?”
I shook my head and withdrew the cell phone I’d lifted from the van.
“Give it to me.” Janet grabbed it and navigated to the most recent text. “Conductor sent a message.” She read it aloud as I looked over her shoulder.
Oh shame, what a shame. Knots being naughty, so uncaring. Of you. Of my string. You know what this means.
Under that text, a collage of images had been shared: gruesome pictures of operating instruments cutting human flesh adjacent to the spine, then suturing it shut. I recognized them from when the conductor had sent them to my own phone.
There was a gap in time between the text Janet had just read and the next one on Serge’s phone. The conductor had let the gardener and the rest of the string digest fear.
Janet continued.
But what kind of conductor lets a few incompetent instruments destroy the orchestra?
NEW RULE: mend the string, receive reward. Take Janet Blevins and Alec McCullers from the stage, and wrath will not only be withheld—but riches will be extended.
The next text listed Stephanie’s address.
Save yourself and loved ones—then spend like mad.
That explained the fake conductors. But what had it taken for Serge to kill himself?
The conductor was using the string against the string. Janet, Alec, and I weren’t just up against a lunatic. We were up against the knots who together comprised an ecosystem of survivalism and extortion. Fear was driving normal people mad.
My phone buzzed and I read the text.
I get larger when I eat but shrink smaller when I drink.
I turned to Alec and Janet.
What am I?
Through the downpour of snowflakes, I gazed at Stephanie’s house. “Fire.”
My legs couldn’t be pumping any harder, but the road seemed to stretch farther away from me with every stride. I tried to think, to plan. Action without thought led to failure, and failure now might mean death for Steph, the girls, Cody.
Janet and Alec hadn’t liked being told to stay put, but they’d be more of a liability than a help if I were rushing into a combat situation. I needed to focus.
I slowed to a jog then veered off the driveway and into the woods. Needed to avoid being an easy target. My best shot was to approach the house from the back.
When the farmhouse finally came into view, my stomach lurched.
Bullet holes dotted the paint, and most of the windows were shattered. So many shots fired.
Classical music blared from inside. Mozart’s Requiem.
I ran to the house from an angle so that anyone looking to pick me off through a window wouldn’t get a clear line of sight. If even half of the shooters responsible for the bullet holes remained on the premises, then I was outnumbered and outgunned.
It didn’t matter. I needed to get to Steph, Cody, and the girls.
I pressed my back to the side of the house, checked my weaponry. Five rounds in the clip and what was left after the chief had confiscated my own gun: a single throwing knife tucked at my ankle, flashlight, and pepper spray.
I listened. No sound other than the music.
The conductor was far more dangerous and organized than I’d thought. How many knots was he orchestrating? Why hadn’t he used them to off me yet? Why sic the string on Alec and Janet and not me? A single bullet from the conductor imposters would have been so simple. It didn’t make sense.
Easing around the corner to the back of the house, I made it to the door. It stood wide open.
The house looked as though a forklift had done a dozen donuts inside. Glass scattered and spread across the dining room and kitchen. Broken dishes. Fallen lamps. Turned-over tables.
Several bottles hung from the ceiling, tied together by string and swaying as if touched moments ago, liquid swooshing inside. Accelerant? If so, the entire house could be engulfed in less than a minute.
Please don’t let the girls be inside.
I stepped inside and crouched, flashlight tucked unde
r my gun hand. “Cody, Steph?”
No response. No baby crying. No chattering Isabella. Just the awful music.
Moving forward and keeping low, I approached the living area and a cold sweat broke out.
“Haas,” a voice practically sang. “Mr. Markus Haas.”
I killed the flashlight.
“You think I don’t see you squatting around the corner, oh favored SWAT brute? Your appreciation of my capabilities is . . . underwhelming. I just want to chat.” Light suddenly flickered from the living room. “No iron fist or nasty smoke waiting for you around the corner, pinky promise.” He whistled. “The things I do for you, Markus. You fascinate me, this code you live by. Have I mentioned that? The star of the show, you are. Come in.”
If the conductor knew my position, why hadn’t he taken his shot? The wall between him and me would split like paper if peppered with bullets. What was his game?
It didn’t matter. I had to play it.
I stood and eased into the cathedral-style living area, where I’d played with Isabella and Tilly only a day ago. A candle licked the air from the mantel above the fireplace, illuminating half of the man standing there.
“Thank goodness you’re not the curtain man—everyone would leave the show before you swung open the drapes.” The conductor, the real one this time, caked with white makeup and hooded in darkness, stood but a few strides from me. Armed or unarmed, I couldn’t tell.
I tucked my firearm close, keeping my eyes on all possible areas of ambush. He had a calculated plan. The question was whether or not it had a hole in it. “Where are they?”
“It’s no wonder your colleagues hate you like a toneless chorus—so uptight, untrusting. Even I, with a view of self far superior to anything you’ve dared to dream, know that without trust, people are powerless.”
I wasn’t interested in his verbose diatribe. “Why shouldn’t I put a bullet in your head?”
“Now there’s your redeeming quality. Directness. Too bad it comes only when you’re desperate.” He linked his fingers in front of him, soft and sickly. “Let me tell you what I want. I want you, Markus. To play your part. Your gall amuses me, but I need you on key if you want your precious sweets to live. Otherwise you’ll never find them.” He flashed a crooked smile. “No one will.”
My trigger finger pulsed with hot blood.
“That’s it. I like that. The full attention of Markus Haas, the uncompromising cop who’s stopped analyzing and succumbed to feeling. Bravo.”
I couldn’t hold in my emotion any longer. What had gone so wrong for this man that he’d play dress-up and murder without a tinge of guilt? “I swear I’ll put you down.” My voice shook.
The conductor’s half-lit demeanor morphed into pure darkness. His unusual tenor dropped and flatlined.
Didn’t like that. A trigger.
He leaned toward me and spread his arms. “I’m your god now.” He scoffed. “Until you do what I say, when I say it, and however many times I say it, I will crush your soul. I’ll make you want to shove the barrel of that pistol into your own ear canal.” He smelled the air as if it were steak dinner. “It’s happening already, you feel it? Here I am, all you could want, mere steps away. But you can’t. You won’t. Feel it? Your soul’s caving inward like a doss-house in an earthquake. Your will’s under siege, Markus, and you’re the one left starving.”
What felt like lava was eating through my chest. I tried to see through the darkness that shaded the conductor’s face and actually see into his eyes, one question repeating in my mind over and over. Why?
Why was he doing this?
“Message received, I see.” The conductor resumed his high-pitched, arrogant tone. He pressed his fingers together and kissed them. “You’re not like the others, begging for mercy, blabbering about family, prostrating yourself before me. In that sense . . .” He looked away, deep in thought. “I understand why a devil exists. God must’ve found him just too captivating not to keep around.”
“Sacrilegious garbage,” I said. “Tell me where they are.”
“Do the assignment. Do it well and they may not be dead by the time you finish.”
I stopped breathing.
The conductor squeezed his hand into a fist. “Power, control.” Light from the candle waved across his face. He relaxed. “I want every weapon in your arsenal, every one.”
I cocked my head. “At headquarters?” Why did he want so many guns? “I don’t even have access to the building.”
“You should know better than to lie. Get the guns.” The conductor laughed. “If he’s still alive, you may even get help.”
“Cody,” I said.
The conductor knocked over the candle, which I now saw was attached to a thread. Bottles started crashing and shattering throughout the house, saturating the air with some sort of chemical.
The moment I turned the flashlight back on, it was no longer needed. Flames burst all over the house.
The conductor was gone.
I dodged pockets of fire and started yelling Cody’s name, flames spitting pops and hisses all around me. No one on the main floor, which meant Cody must be in the basement.
Heat burning my face and arms, I reached the door that would take me below into the level that served as a separate apartment. A splintered door frame met me at the bottom of the basement stairs. Fewer flames, but smoke had already started to plume.
In the far corner sat a barricade of furniture. Cody must have hidden the girls in the windowless closet while he took up the defensive position.
I climbed over the blockade. Cody was lying facedown on the floor. I dropped to my knees and rolled him over. A huge, purpling bruise covered his forehead.
I shook him and yelled his name.
My friend groaned and grasped for a gun that wasn’t on his hip anymore. He tried wiggling out of my grip, nostrils flaring.
“Cody, it’s me. We have to go.”
He sat up on his own, holding his head. I picked him up and dragged him out of the basement, up the stairs.
The house had grown into an inferno, flames devouring the floor, walls, and ceiling while emitting streams of dark smoke. More pops, more hisses.
In one swift motion, I flung Cody over my shoulder and sprinted toward the front door.
Flames licked their way into another bottle of accelerant from somewhere behind us, and the boom of the explosion thrust us forward.
Facedown on Stephanie’s front lawn, groaning, Cody and I coughed and hacked out the smoke in our lungs for several minutes.
A helicopter whipped the air from somewhere above, and water suddenly splashed over the house. I stared at the night sky, unsure of what to think other than this was the conductor’s way of subduing the attention a bright glow would cause.
Cody stared at me, solemn. “They gassed us, took them.” He tried to stand but fell back onto his side.
“Haas?” Alec called, jogging toward us from the long driveway.
“Is he okay?” Janet said, running alongside him.
Cody grabbed my hand and I helped him stand. They all stared at me. But I wasn’t ready to speak.
The conductor had taken the girls. I was going to save them. And I was going to kill him.
Finally, as a second chopper dropped more water on the house, creating an enormous splash and a whomp, I told them what had happened and what the conductor had assigned.
“There’s one option here,” Cody said. “FBI. Right now.”
Janet paced and wasn’t making eye contact. Alec glanced at his phone and looked as though he wanted to say something but was restraining himself.
“He’s got Steph and the girls,” I said.
“Exactly.” Cody stretched a hand out. “Agencies have the capacity to hunt this guy.”
“He has eyes everywhere,” I said. “He’ll know the moment we bring in help. But listen, it’s more than that. I know going along with a psychopath isn’t the right play. But the conductor has us playing a game—his game. W
hich involves variances, contingencies, opportunities. The moment we bring in help and he feels as though we’ve taken his control, those opportunities vanish.” I locked eyes with Cody. “I’m going to find him, I’m going to stop him. All in or all out right now.”
Cody put his hands on his hips, looked at the ground.
Alec held up a finger. “Agencies probably won’t be an option.” He held up his phone, which was zoomed in on a photo of the Trenton Telegraph. “It’s from Oscar, who works the press. They’re in production of today’s edition. I think I know what the conductor meant by me helping to kill you, Markus. This story’s about you—both of you.”
Cody’s brows furrowed.
I reached for Alec’s phone. A photo of me filled a sidebar of the paper with the headline, “Local Hero under Investigation amid Sex Ring Allegations: Trenton Sheriff’s Detective Also Involved in Probe.”
Thoughts raced through my head so fast I couldn’t process a single one. The conductor knew something about me that no friend or family knew, and he was leveraging it to discredit me before I even had the chance to reach out to the FBI.
“Aren’t you the editor?” Cody said. “Stop it.”
“The conductor sent proofs to the printer without me ever seeing them,” Alec said, suddenly looking unsure.
“What about you or you then?” Cody said, pointing at Janet and Alec. “You go to the FBI. Here.” He snatched Alec’s phone from my hand and gave it to Janet. “Call. Tell them everything. Get as high up the chain as you can.”
Janet’s lion within returned as she turned the cell toward Cody and me. “Any of this true?”
“Of course not,” Cody said.
“No,” I lied.
Janet stared at me, then Cody. “I can find the conductor. If you two can take it from there, that’s what we should do.”
“You’re not hearing me,” Cody said.
Janet turned to him. “No, you’re not listening. I’m not risking my sister, Markus isn’t risking his people, and no one here is calling the FBI. He’ll know. He’ll do something terrible. The cavalry isn’t coming. And if they do, our loved ones are dead. Got that? The conductor is working with new rules, and right now those rules are giving us a chance. I’ll take that and won’t risk changing it.”
The String Page 10