I rolled to my left, coming up with a right-hand jab.
But my knife flew out of my fingertips, which had suddenly become lifeless.
My mind and body had locked up, triggered by an inner alarm. The knife, still airborne with forward momentum, slid through Stephanie’s hair, just over her left shoulder.
The blade hit the stairwell behind her and clattered to the ground.
My knees nearly gave way. “I’m sorry, Steph, I’m so sorry.” I wanted to hug her and kiss her and tell her it was almost over. That I was going to do whatever it took to keep her and the girls safe.
But something else was wrong. She was looking at me as if the blade had sunk into her.
“The girls,” I breathed. “What’s he done?”
The conductor scoffed over the intercom. “You think I’ve done something, Markus? You think I’ve caused some irreversible harm? Oh, do you feel that? Do you hear the unbreakable breaking?”
“Where are they—”
“Close your protective piehole and let’s get to the truth of the chickpeas’ suffering.”
“Steph, is he in there? Armed? What about the girls?”
She shook her head. Her silence must be the conductor’s doing.
I stepped to the mirror and slammed it with my fist. “Where are they!”
“Markus,” Stephanie pleaded in a whisper.
I turned around to find her eyes filled with tears.
“Let me tell you a story, a story about two chickpeas,” the conductor said. “These chickpeas loved life, exuded character, and had the most wonderful parents. But something happened.” The conductor snapped his fingers. “Daddy snapped. The life he’d created, crushed. So he gave up on the chickpeas. It haunted their souls as they wondered, day after day, ‘Where’s that man who used to be here, reading to me in bed? Where’s . . . Daddy?’”
Tears flowed from Stephanie’s eyes.
“Stop it, just end this.” I swung my arms wide and tilted my head down, my throat tightening. I couldn’t think of any way to protect the girls I loved. “I’m right here. Please. Me for them.”
But the conductor kept going like he hadn’t heard a word. “The chickpeas powered through on the strength of a woman who packed the strength of ten women. They survived, moved on, regrouped. Then you came into the picture, Markus, bringing even more hope, breathing fresh air into Stephanie’s lungs. You made the chickpeas smile again. It was so familiar.” The conductor let his words linger. “As if they’d found the very person they thought they’d lost forever.”
The projector awakened, showing a photo of me with girls hanging off my arms. Not the girls, Isabella and Tilly. But women. I knew the exact time and place the photo had been taken, and I glanced at the floor in disgust.
The photos kept flipping, each one seemingly more incriminating than the last. The final shot was of me with two girls—maybe even underage—heading upstairs to a bedroom at the Ward estate. I wanted to vomit, thinking of what Steph must be assuming.
But did this mean the conductor knew all about me? I couldn’t say anything until I knew what he knew about my past.
I looked at Steph and struggled for the right words. “I know this seems impossible—but there’s an explanation.”
“There always is for people like you, Markus,” the conductor said. “We’re not going to venture that path. We know how it ends. We’re going to use our time together in a much more productive way. So many possibilities, so much going through my mind—like Mozart composing in inspiration’s heat. I like the thought of that.” There was a pause, then the speakers started blaring Mozart’s Requiem. “Doesn’t it just tickle your toes?”
I couldn’t see the conductor through the mirror but could picture him nonetheless. And he was smiling, always smiling, in a way that made me feel like he knew something I didn’t.
“Time for you two to switch places,” the conductor said. “Stephanie, get in the chair.”
My heart sank as Steph looked at the chair’s restraints.
I turned to the mirror and pounded the chair with my fist. “No! You twisted—”
“The stallion gallops on,” the conductor snipped. “But he seems to have forgotten about the chickpeas so calmly asleep, each within arm’s reach, each a simple injection away from sleeping much, much longer.”
“Markus, get away from the mirror.” Steph seated herself and fiddled with the chair straps with shaking hands. She then directed her words to the conductor. “Look. Do your worst. Leave my girls alone. They don’t belong here. Please.”
I stepped away from the glass, moved toward the chair, and grabbed Stephanie’s hand.
She seemed reluctant, then squeezed my fingers like a vise. “Keep them safe. Do what it takes.”
I eyed the staircase I’d descended into the room. The girls and the conductor were merely a room away . . . and there was nothing I could do about it. I glanced back at the mirror.
The conductor’s voice lowered to its stern volume. “Tie her down.”
Stephanie nodded at me, but I couldn’t move. My mind was trying to leap ahead to wherever this was heading and if there were any scenarios—any at all—that offered an escape for Steph and the girls.
Taking on a tone she’d never used with me before, Stephanie yelled, “Do it! Stop thinking and do it!”
“This is why relationships are out of the question,” the conductor said. “So much this, not enough that. Conflict to the chin. No thanks.”
I tied Stephanie to the chair, shackling first her wrists, then her ankles, then pulling a harness over her stomach. She couldn’t move now if she tried.
“There, that wasn’t so hard. Now it’s time we get to the real reason we’re here: the full confession of Markus Haas.”
Morning songbirds chirped at the light of dawn. Cody, flat on his stomach next to the base of an evergreen, squinted at the thick slab of lumber that served as the back door of the armory. Now he understood why some officers always had a pair of binoculars handy. He couldn’t see any cameras or high-tech sensors anywhere. But he was looking with his naked eyes.
They’d taken an excruciating amount of time making their way from the front of the building to the back, as Alec had made it clear that the conductor was obsessed with surveillance. If they were spotted before Haas was able to make contact, their element of surprise would be blown. The conductor would feel trapped. And trapped animals attacked.
“Nothing, zilch.” Cody rolled back behind the tree, next to Alec.
“But we can’t be sure,” Alec said.
If surveillance was used on the back door, then it was most certainly used on the front. The conductor knew Markus was coming. And since the lunatic hadn’t exited the back, either he didn’t feel threatened or he was hunting Haas. Neither scenario made Cody’s position easy. He needed to help his friend.
Cody checked his phone. Had he given Haas enough time? He looked at Alec. “Be ready to move. You know how to handle a weapon?”
Alec wet his lips. “Already? You sure? I haven’t before. I don’t think—”
“What’s the matter? Thought you were here to help.”
“I am. I just—I think we should stick to the plan, wait for Haas to flush him out, then make a move.”
“It’s been too long. Either Haas has him or he has Haas. Maybe something in between. Either means Haas could use help. I wouldn’t ask this in any other circumstance, but I’m already suspended, so . . . watch my back, got it?”
Alec’s brows furrowed and he tucked his chin. “I can’t. I’m not trained.”
Was he shaking? Now the kid had all of Cody’s attention. “What’s the matter with you?”
Alec jumped to his feet and a notebook fell out of his pocket. He snatched it up quickly.
Cody stood as well and stared at him, concern for the back door suddenly fading. The kid was afraid of the conductor, but that wasn’t the whole story here. Alec knew something that Cody and Haas didn’t. And it was eating at him, which could only
mean one thing: whatever he was hiding was dangerous to himself, Cody, or Haas.
His instincts screamed it was the latter two. “You’ve got an empathetic side, don’t you, journalist? Can step into the shoes of others and feel their thoughts, pains, fears. Am I right?”
Alec said nothing.
“Look at you. Shaking uncontrollably.”
He wasn’t, but Cody wanted to put him more on edge. The kid was refusing to look him in the eye, and his shoulders were a tad more hunched.
“If I were to venture a guess, I’d say you’re feeling fear not for one person but for two, or maybe five, if you give a lick about Stephanie, Isabella, and Tilly.” He put extra emphasis on each name. “And I didn’t even mention Markus or myself.” Cody stepped into Alec’s personal space. “I won’t let anyone hurt them. Do you understand me?”
“I’m here to help. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Great.” Cody extended his hand. “Give me the notebook.”
“Why?”
“Proof that you’re on our side. Right now your words are telling me that you’re my friend, while your body language is telling me something else. Know what that is, Alec? An agenda. That true?”
“I’ve got nothing—”
“Then give it to me.”
Alec stared at Cody for several moments, glanced at the notebook. Then he took off running.
“Great.” Cody broke into a sprint after him. He was sure the kid excelled in journalism, but he certainly hadn’t played Division I football.
Cody launched himself into a tackle and Alec collapsed underneath him. Cody shoved his knee into Alec’s back, pinning him down as he withdrew the notebook from the kid’s back pocket. Flipped it open.
Most of it was shorthand, but Cody quickly deduced what the scribbles meant. “You’re collecting notes for a story? About the conductor?” He put more pressure into Alec’s back, and he cried out.
Cody flipped to the most recently penned pages of the notebook, where a time was jotted down along with a note: He contacts me.
“Who’s contacting you, Alec? Kind of cryptic, don’t you think?” He twisted his knee into the student’s spine.
“You’re going to break my back.”
“No, no, Alec—that’s what you do to mothers when you step on a crack. I’m going to do far worse.” Cody leaned down and gripped Alec’s neck.
“You’re a sheriff!”
“Wrong. I’m a sheriff’s detective, and I’m defending myself and those I love against a violent attacker and must subdue him before he kills me first!”
“Okay!”
“Okay what?”
“He made me a deal.”
“What deal?”
“I tell him when we arrive at the armory, and I keep you and Haas separated once we get here. He said no one would be—”
“Hurt? Man, the fact that he put it that way, wow, I’m convinced. Who wouldn’t take that deal for . . . ?” Cody let the question linger.
“The story, everything he’s doing,” Alec said. “He was going to get his way whether I helped or not.”
“Personal interviews, huh. Valuable.” Cody cuffed him to a large root. “You two will have a great time telling tales across your cells.” He stood.
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I can still help you.”
“Like you have a choice. Tell me—that talk of surveillance, was that just to stall me?”
“It could be true,” Alec said. “But yes.”
“You said you knew a way in.”
“Follow the back wall to the right, grab the barrel, then hoist yourself up to the window. Bars look solid, but they’ve been cut.”
Cody turned and ran to the armory.
The conductor, standing between the slumbering Isabella and Tilly and gazing intently into the observatory glass, slowly rubbed the hair of the sleeping chickpeas.
Every symphony was composed of so much more than the climax. The final moment may be what drew people to their feet, but it was the buildup, the tease, that turned weary legs into spring-loaded awe and wonder. That’s what he had set out to accomplish with Haas. He would break the man he had deemed most unbreakable, and it would be a show to remember.
This moment with Haas and Stephanie, so unpredictable yet wonderfully planned, was the conductor’s buildup to the finale. She was going to see Haas for who he was until disgust had ransacked her soul, and then she was going to hate him for what was about to happen to her girls.
Markus Haas, this man with the “unbreakable” code, was about to experience an utter crushing of his will.
“Okay, Haas, this is simple. I want your confession. Stephanie’s seen the evidence, so no need to dance around details. But first things first—grab the gag underneath the chair.”
Haas peeked under the chair and lingered for a moment, taking in the spring-loaded blade the conductor had crafted to thrust into the chair at a click of a button.
“We understand ourselves? Gag her.”
Haas’s body language softened. The relenting of the strong-hearted university cop had begun. He proceeded to gag Stephanie, who stared at him with watery eyes.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the conductor said. “Your audience of one awaits.”
Haas stood beside the chair, eyes downcast. The conductor grinned and pressed his hands onto the two-way mirror, leaning in so close he could kiss the glass. This was going to be exquisite.
“I haven’t told you everything about me,” Haas said. “Those pictures, they’re real.”
Stephanie tried curling her legs to her chest, but the shackles restrained her. Her leaking eyes were locked in a place of pain, and she wouldn’t look at Haas, either by choice or by sheer torment. The conductor exhaled hot air onto the glass. It was getting so good.
Haas put his hand on Stephanie’s head, leaned down, and kissed her. But he’d turned his head away from the conductor, whispered something.
“Got something to say, it better be loud enough for the girls and me to hear,” the conductor said.
Haas looked at the two-way mirror. “I told her I love her—can I not have one unruined moment?” He turned back to Stephanie. “I’ve broken your trust.” He shook his head. “Hurt you . . . didn’t trust you with the truth. But I love you and the girls, and that will never change.”
The music seemed off for a moment, as if there’d been a glitch, the conductor noticed. But it wasn’t the music itself. It was another sound.
He turned away from the observatory room window to see Cody Caulkins bull-rushing him.
The impact blew both of them through the glass and into the chamber below.
Glass exploded behind me, and I instinctively shielded Stephanie from the broken shards. Shavings chimed against the ground as I turned to see Cody stumbling to his feet and—
The conductor. Right here. Black holes around his eyes and mouth, with wormy black veins sewn across his white-caked face. His Von Boch had flown off his head, and he was frantically pulling his raincoat over his nose and mouth with one hand and reaching into his pocket with the other. Fishnet trapped his dark hair under a cap.
I spun off of Stephanie.
“Tut, tut!” the conductor said, showing me a device. “You know what this triggers.” He tilted the switch toward Cody. “Tell your friend.”
I kept my eyes on the conductor but spoke to Cody. “Under the chair. Look.”
He did.
Stephanie, staring straight ahead into the observatory where her daughters still sat slouched in chairs, yelled into her gag.
The conductor slithered along the room’s wall, body pressed against splotches of black sludge, making his way toward the staircase that would lead him into the labyrinth of passages. “You can have me, Markus. I’m all yours. Feeling like a trade?” He tossed the device up and caught it with the same hand. “Haven’t been loyal to her yet—why start now? Come get me.”
“Get out of here.” I scowled at him while
moving toward Stephanie. Then I eyed Cody. “Help me, waist first!” I grabbed the harness over Steph’s stomach while Cody got the straps at her waist.
I heard the conductor’s footsteps pounding up the stairs.
The flaps swung off and I pushed Steph’s entire body—
A blade shrieked up through the chair, grazing my arm and spilling blood onto the floor.
I winced and undid the straps around Stephanie’s feet, then picked her up. For a split second, I stared at the blade that would have gone straight through her heart and, without thinking, kissed her forehead.
She recoiled and ripped off her gag. “Get the girls!”
Cody was already climbing the stairs, and Stephanie and I followed, circling back around to the observatory room.
The girls remained in their chairs, breathing. Bloodstains marked the floor, but it hadn’t come from Steph or the girls. What had he put them through?
Steph fell on her knees between Isabella and Tilly, pulled them into an embrace, and began sobbing.
Cody nudged me to the corner of the room. He’d suffered cuts to his face and arms. “Alec helped him, told him when we arrived, got us split up.” He nearly spit the words. “For his career.”
Only one word came to mind. “Where.”
“Cuffed out back.”
“Look,” I whispered, grabbing his shoulder, “I need you to be there for Steph and the girls. She doesn’t want me close. Understand?”
A confused Cody nodded.
I wanted to tell Steph everything right now, but we needed to get somewhere safe first.
“Take me to Alec,” I said.
Cody led us through the armory’s maze, holding a sleeping Isabella while Stephanie carried Tilly. I stayed a few steps behind them.
When we exited through the back door, Cody stopped abruptly.
“What?” I said.
“That root. The cuffs. They’re gone—Alec is gone.”
16
SUNDAY, 9:10 A.M.
Alec thought he’d made the right choice. He’d tried to walk a line of being in the story while writing the story. It had made so much sense in his mind as he thought through all that could go right and all that could go wrong by making a deal with the conductor.
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