I shoved the table up and ran it forward like a ginormous shield.
It slammed into the mystery officer’s body—Dominguez, I could now see—producing a loud crack. He collapsed to the ground.
I burst even harder forward, past the fallen officer, heading straight for the one backing him up. It was Adams. The tabletop connected with him, but barely, because he’d dived out of the way.
I threw the table and transferred my momentum into a slide that I quickly popped up from, Fox pepper spray in hand. Normally I’d shoot in bursts, as the formula wreaked havoc not only on the assailants but oftentimes the sprayer. But this time I kept my finger pressed against the discharge button, dousing my two colleagues and rendering them incapacitated.
I needed to get to Mitchell.
Two prongs stuck in my back like fishhooks, and my body went rigid and started shaking uncontrollably. The Taser’s voltage didn’t relent.
Mitchell was retaliating to the extra pepper with extra shockage.
“Get the clown his guns,” Mitchell said into his radio while Dominguez and Adams groaned on the floor.
“Making . . . mistake,” I said, but my words were slurred. I clamped my eyes shut then opened them wide, trying to shift my mind from the pain to a plan.
I loathed Mitchell, but he was a law-abiding citizen.
Enjoyed putting bad guys behind bars.
Dominguez and Adams weren’t corrupt men either.
Each had morals and had sworn oaths.
And we were all here, in this moment, armed and at the very location of the perpetrator wreaking havoc on our lives. Why couldn’t they see that? Why couldn’t I communicate that?
“Hate the circumstances, Haas, but it just feels right tasing you.” Mitchell grabbed the back of my collar and dragged my convulsing body out the door.
Outside, dawn was just beginning to announce her arrival with an orange glow.
“Hello?” a deep voice called out from the parking area in front of the armory. Someone new had arrived.
“Who are you?” Mitchell said.
“Doug, maintenance crew—saw the door was open. What’s going on?”
“Making an arrest, Doug, and he’s dangerous. Get out of here.”
“Need my tools in there. I’ll wait.” There was sarcasm to his words. To strangers, Doug was a mean old gruff who never took an order from someone he didn’t respect.
“Have it your way.” Mitchell continued dragging me. “Man up, Haas. It was a few thousand volts.”
“What’d he do?” Doug asked.
“See me asking why you reek of gasoline?” Mitchell said. “Mind your business.”
“Fine, but I’m getting my tools.” Doug disappeared into the armory behind us.
Mitchell kicked me in the stomach, and I writhed in pain. He dragged me for another fifteen feet and leaned me against his Ford F-150. “Move an inch and I’ll tase you again.” He jogged back into the armory and reemerged with Adams and Dominguez, both red-faced and staggering. “Want to get even with Haas—now’s your chance. A swift kick sure felt good.”
“Shut up and drive. University guy is here,” Dominguez said.
Adams felt around for the door handle and, upon finding it, got in the passenger seat without saying a word. Dominguez got in the back of the truck. They’d both be practically blind for a while longer, depending on how much pepper spray had hit its mark.
Mitchell, arms crossed, towered over me and spit on my chest. “Get in the back seat.”
I pushed myself up and leaned my head on the driver’s side door, limbs still twitchy and weak. I let my eyes linger on Mitchell. “Think of those guns. He’s got something horrible planned and he’s using you to make it happen.”
“Deed’s already done, Haas. Not going to ask you again.” Mitchell flicked the Taser toward the back seat.
That was fine with me. I’d stalled him long enough.
Doug swung the blunt end of his gardening shovel, smacking Mitchell in the back of the head. He dropped to the ground, knocked unconscious. Doug then slammed the shovel’s backside straight into the truck’s windshield, exploding the glass. Dominguez and Adams reared back in defensive postures, blinking rapidly with watery, red eyes, neither attempting to pull their weapon.
I picked up Mitchell’s firearm and leaned over the broken windshield. “Where are the guns?” I boomed. “Where’d you take the guns?”
Dominguez shook his head while Adams just sat still. They both kept trying to open their eyes to look at me but were not successful.
“If you give him the weapons, hundreds will die. Got it?” I paused for a moment, then cursed at their silence.
“Doesn’t work like that,” Dominguez said. “We gave them to one of the conductor’s runners. They’re gone. He’s got them.”
I punched the truck and they flinched. “Give me your weapons. Get out of the car.”
They both did so.
I nodded at Doug.
He nodded back. “What can I do?”
I pointed the barrel of my gun at Mitchell. “Take this one to the hospital, make sure he’s okay. Tell them you came across him like this.” I found myself at a loss for words, trying to give Doug some context.
He waved me off. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” I glanced at the armory, then back at Adams and Dominguez. “You two are ending this with me.”
15
SUNDAY, 6:54 A.M.
After helping Doug load Mitchell into his rig, giving him a brief rundown of why three Trenton police officers had gotten the drop on me, and sending him off to the hospital, I approached Dominguez and Adams, both of whom could finally look me in the eyes without blinking a dozen times.
“You both just served as accomplices in delivering a small army’s munitions to a madman.” I hit my chest. “This is your chance to save your families. To stop him before he does something worse. Cody’s already here, the back is covered. All we have to do is flush him out. Are you in?”
Dominguez eyed the armory. “You sure the conductor’s in there?”
“Yes or no?” I said.
Adams turned to me, then to Dominguez. He nodded.
“Fine.” Dominguez extended his hand, eyeing the weapon he’d handed over, which I’d tucked into my pants. “I’ll need that back.”
I hesitated but gave them back their firearms and forced them to take the lead, making them walk with their backs to me. They both knew full well which one of us had the quickest draw. More importantly, I believed this was their moment to overcome fear and find their freedom again.
We approached the door back into the armory. The conductor would soon have to face not one or two SWAT-trained officers, but four.
Somehow even four versus one felt lopsided in the conductor’s favor.
We walked through the main storage area where we’d had our scuffle, then stepped into the unknown of the building, experiencing its strangeness and complexities in silence for several minutes.
Graffiti artists, vagrants, and pot smokers had made little additions to the horror house over the years, it seemed—mounds of charred wood from fires, butts, needles—but then I spotted an addition that had to have been left by the conductor himself: a security camera, far too new and high-tech to have been installed by anyone but the white-faced demon.
He was here—and that meant Steph and the girls were close.
I signaled the camera’s location to Adams and Dominguez. They nodded and we each tried skirting around its line of sight, deeper into the building.
“Welcome, welcome,” the conductor said, his voice seemingly coming from every direction.
We pressed our backs to the hallway and froze, covering each other in a tight triangle.
“Markus Haas, once again here against all odds—and you even recruited some buddies, much to their horrific peril. You’re such an adventure, a knot so curiously tangled.”
Adams and Dominguez both looked at me, faces pallid and shoulders tigh
t.
“Making friends. That’s the origin of beautiful music, you know. One musician goes rogue, disrupts the melody so much that he creates a sound entirely new. But it comes at a price, always comes at a price. Nobody in the orchestra likes the disrupter, eager to hear his own notes with no regard for the symphony. Others turn on him without so much as a cue from the conductor. And who would blame them? Each of us must do what we must to survive. Take Adams and Dominguez, for instance.”
I could see the tendons standing out in the officers’ necks and their pulses pounding.
“Their families are in precarious situations, much like your Steph and chickpeas,” the conductor continued. “Except nothing terrible has happened to their loved ones, not yet anyway. But because these two fine men of Trenton followed the disrupter, they’re just as guilty as him, as you. Now, since the rest of the orchestra isn’t here to keep you in line, I’m going to have to step in and bring order back for the sake of the symphony. Here’s the rub for Dominguez and Adams: the first one to kill the other lives, and so does his family. Not true for the other, or the other’s family.”
Dominguez and Adams fixed their gazes on me, then each other, eyes looking as though they could drill holes through cement.
The silence and severity of the moment hung in the air like pin-pulled grenades. I held out an open hand, fingers spread, trying to slow down their minds before they arrived at a disastrous conclusion.
Just a twitch. That’s all it took.
Adams’s hand, which happened to be gripping his pistol, twitched.
And that caused Dominguez to raise his weapon level with Adams’s head.
“Put it down. This is what he wants,” I said. “We can save your families.”
“Shut up!” Dominguez’s hand shook. He backed up a couple of steps, making it harder for me to make a move to disarm him.
Adams tucked his chin into his sternum and tilted his eyes up. “Come on, Dom. Listen to Haas.”
“Tell me you wouldn’t do the same if you’d drawn first,” Dominguez said.
“Dom . . .” Adams said.
I raised my hands. “You pull that trigger, your family is worse off than if you help us stop him. Think about it. Murder one. You’d be lucky to get out of prison in time for hospice.” I took a step toward Dominguez. “He’s got my girls too, here, right in this building.”
Dominguez scoffed. “That’s why we’re here? Not to stop him, but to help you get your girlfriend?” He pointed at me as if his finger were a pistol. “Our families could die because of you.” He looked at Adams, then at the ceiling, as if speaking to the conductor. “Hey, our families for Haas. He’s the disrupter, not us. We’ll catch up with Mitchell right now, finish everything you told us. Everything.”
I dropped my hands to my sides, feeling the shift of allegiance like an arctic chill. “Listen, this is our only chance at him before he commits mass murder. This isn’t about us choosing who lives and dies—it’s about stopping the puppet master.”
Silence filled the corridor.
The conductor cleared his throat, then slow-clapped. “A speech to be reckoned with, Mr. Haas.” I could hear him smile over the speakers. “My deal stands.”
I looked to Dominguez, Dominguez looked to Adams, and Adams looked to me.
Dominguez snarled painfully and fired, placing a bullet directly in the middle of Adams’s forehead. He dropped to his knees, eyes wide, then collapsed onto the dirty floor.
I crouched and closed my eyes, letting my gun hand dangle.
“I had to do it,” Dominguez said. “You heard what he was going to do.”
I stared at Adams, face trembling. It was as if everything I meant for good had morphed into death. How could I stop the killing?
“Bravo,” the conductor said. “You win, Dominguez. Bask in the feeling. You saved your family, came out on top, won the lottery.” His voice deepened. “The problem with winning is the fine print, the details that come after. Like mail-in rebates, yes? You’d think you were applying for diplomatic immunity with the hoops they make you jump through. It’s like a train crossing—a necessary annoyance we put up with to keep things moving. So, if I may: here comes the train.”
I looked at Dominguez, who returned my gaze. Don’t do anything stupid, I wanted to say.
“Pretty simple, Haas,” the conductor said. “Kill Dominguez and your girls live. He kills you and—”
Dominguez swung his pistol toward me and fired.
I’d prepared for it, already rolling to my left. The moment I spun off my back and into a crouch, it was over.
Dominguez’s gun was pointed at where I’d been, while my pistol was instinctively zeroed in on his chest.
I tilted my aim and pulled the trigger, hoping to avoid the kill shot. Dominguez jerked backward, landing on his backside.
Shoving a fist to my mouth, I strode to his side and forced myself to look at the man’s eyes. There was no way I’d be able to give him the medical attention he needed, and the way he was looking at me, it seemed he knew this as well. He was going to die here unless . . .
I pulled out my phone and punched in 911.
“Oh, Haas, you wouldn’t want to spoil your victory just like that, would you?”
“Stop this!” My lungs hurt from shouting so loud.
Several moments passed.
“Put away your phone,” the conductor said.
“Do it.” Dominguez had trouble speaking. “Don’t let him . . . my family.”
“I won’t.”
Clapping boomed over the speakers. “Congratulations, Haas, your girls live.”
I stood and immediately worked my way deeper into the building, sweeping my weapon from doorway to doorway. “I’m going to make you feel every one of your murders.”
“Rules are rules, and you’ve been breaking them like thrift store wine glasses. Had I not chosen you, I’d already be feeding your eyeballs to my fish. You really think the tough-guy routine is your best play, Markus?”
“Why me?” I spoke through gritted teeth, continuing to clear rooms, hallways. I needed to keep my cool, come up with a plan, OODA . . . but inside I could feel myself losing it. Every plan was leading to pain. What was left for me to do? To end the conductor I needed information—something, anything. “You hide behind makeup, have no regard for human life—tell me the rest of the story. Someone beat you and now you’re out for blood? School rejected you and you’re making it pay? Now’s your chance, conductor. Who’s behind the mask?”
Nothing but silence. Was I getting close to him, or had I triggered him?
“The verbose one, quiet? Why don’t you lay it out? You’ve been ahead every step—what do you have to lose?”
I could only hear the beat of my own heart.
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
“Mama?” a little girl’s voice said groggily, shocking me out of my state of rage.
“Isabella.” I looked at the ceilings until I spotted another camera. “Leave them out of this. You’ve got me.” I put my gun down. “Unarmed.”
Heavy breathing came over the speakers. “You’re becoming less interesting with every word,” the conductor said with a far more guttural voice. “Your code is proving more pedestrian than I’d credited you with.”
“Tell me where you are.” I slammed my fist into the wall. “Let’s play your game.”
“Game? No, no, far too fanciful for our purposes.” The conductor took a drag of breath. “Take a right, pass seven doors, then a left into the room that smells of death. Out the other end, descend the stairs. We’ll be waiting.”
I ran as fast as I could, only slowing down around blind spots and corners, just in case the conductor had another iron fist and gas waiting for me.
Finally, I reached the stairs and descended them. I no longer had my gun, but my knife was safely within reach.
Stepping down the final stair, I entered a room with an aged leather chair that looked as though it had se
rved as a seat for the first practicing dentists—if said dentists had made a habit of tying down their patients. A lone mirror overlooked the room from above—definitely two-way.
“Stephanie, are you there?”
A crackle came through speakers mounted in the corners of the high-ceilinged room. “Of course she’s here, Markus. Exhausted, bloodied, and bruised from fighting her restraints, but here nonetheless. She and I have been getting to know each other. Most importantly, we’ve been getting to know about you.”
Scenarios raced through my mind. How could I get an advantage without endangering Steph and the girls? The conductor had me cornered the same way he’d had Dominguez and Adams.
A projected screen flashed to life on one side of the room. “Have a seat, Markus.”
I sat on the chair, realizing that the straps and shackles were for me.
“Good, good. Now hold tight as I come strap you down.”
My body tensed, sensing the opportunity about to present itself. I pulled my knife from its sheath and concealed it by my side.
Thirty seconds later, footsteps started down the staircase behind me.
I needed to wait until the conductor was close enough to strike, yet far enough away that I could strike first. I pictured every step on the staircase—sixteen—and had already counted thirteen steps.
But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but think that this plan, too, would lead to pain. I couldn’t do it. But I had to do it. The conductor wasn’t going to let Steph and the girls go unharmed whether I played along or not. Even if he did, what of the guns? Who would those be used on—and what if I could have prevented it from happening?
The conductor was now in the same room as me, just as he’d been in the communications building, just as he’d been at Stephanie’s house. A mere few feet behind me. I could hear every light step. The question was whether or not he was armed.
I rubbed the handle of my knife with my index finger. It helped give rhythm to my thoughts and keep my hands steady.
The steps drew within striking distance. This time I wouldn’t let him live.
The String Page 15