The text scared me none the less. I didn’t want my friends becoming consumed by all this like I was.
But, maybe that’s why the note didn’t sound like Mady. Maybe she’d created some kind of code and that’s why it sounded like it was scripted? Hopefully, I’d find out more when I met with Metrix.
I called Kent, assuming Jason would still be asleep, and Kent always got up to go to the gym. It was a quick conversation. He agreed to be at my place by 11 o’clock, no questions asked.
Jessica was sceptical at first, but when I said Kent was coming, she agreed to come.
I tried to call Jason after I hung up with Jessica. He didn’t pick up, in fact, he didn’t pick up for another three hours. It was around ten in the morning when he finally picked up. He must have still been sleepin because his voice was groggy and disoriented.
“Yeah?” There was some shuffling and I assumed he was rolling over in bed.
“Hey, you need to be here at eleven. We’re meeting Metrix.” That was all it took.
“I’ll see you at eleven.” The line went dead.
Jessica and Kent showed up on my doorstep right on time. Jason strolled in ten minutes later. We sat by the pool until 11:45.
When it was time to go we headed out the door. Kent opted to drive since he was convinced if we pulled up in a beaten-up truck, the guy would be more forthcoming than if we showed up in my Mercedes. We drove down Main Street looking at the tourists who had descended like a pack of wolves now summer was officially here.
The city park was more of a greenspace right by the center of town. There as a fountain in the middle that served as the center piece. Scattered around it were walking paths. When we pulled up, the park was packed. Not only did people come down to their summer houses this time of year, but we always got a flood of people spending the day in town. There were kids running all over the place. Their parents brought them here to burn off some energy before they headed down to the city beach. When we arrived at the park, I received a text from Metrix.
‘Bench across from the playground. Be there in 5.’
I grew up here so I knew exactly what bench he was talking about. The four of us walked across the green grass towards the children’s section of the park.
It seemed like such a strange location, but it was good for us. It was a public setting and if anything did end up happening we would be fine. We reached the playground, the bench in question was unoccupied so we crowded around it.
The bench had a green double-sided back to back configuration. Jason and I sat on the bench facing the play area, Kent and Jessica sat on the one facing the other way. My plan was for Metrix to sit in between Jason and me so Kent and Jessica could listen from behind. I worried Metrix had no idea there was more than one of us involved. Maybe when he realized there were four of us, he would run and never look back.
Moments later a man approached us. He looked like a likely candidate for our guy, but just as I was about to ask if he was Metrix, the man kept walking, and picked his son up from the park. We waited another fifteen minutes, before I pulled out my phone and texted him.
‘Where R U?’ I stared at the phone waiting for a response, frowning when Jason nudged my arm.
I looked up with angry words on my lips when I had an overwhelming feeling of being watched. A man stood in front of me staring at us. He was tall and I assumed he was just some dad looking for his kid. His hair was spiked up and his large jawline flexed inside the black hood as if he was stressed out. His hoodie fitted his muscular frame. I met his gaze.
“Metrix?”
He nodded, and Jason and I slid over to make room. The spicy scent of his aftershave tickled my nose when he sat down. He was nothing like I expected. I didn’t know where to start the conversation. It all just seemed so strange. I thought I would be intimidated, but to my surprise I wasn’t. The guy seemed just as confused and worried as us, so I kept it simple.
“So, what do you know?”
“It all started when I stumbled across the blog. I was intrigued and I’ve always had a problem with secrets. I hacked into the computer just to find out who she was. When I got in there were signs someone else had been there. The intruder left their tag all over the place, and I recognized it.”
“Their tag?” Jason interrupted. Metrix swivelled around in shock. I realized up until that point, he probably thought Jason was a stranger.
“Yeah. Every hacker has their own tag, kind of like a name. Mine is Metrix, but this other one was just NL. I recognized it since it has been popping up on the dark web for the past couple of months. He was on all the hacker forums, and had a lot of power, which is hard to do unless you’re friends with the people who run them, or you bribe them. Anyways, I never wanted to do anything with the data I found, or expose her in the first place, and hearing about how she had been abducted, I knew how bad it might be if people found out where she lived. I sent her an email telling her what happened. At first, she didn’t trust me, but I think she realized she needed an ally, so she started relying on me to keep her computer safe. I added the security code at the login and then locked the blog posts. I hid the entire website from anyone within state, and it was only accessible from that computer.” He kept his eyes forward as he spoke, making me feel like we were in some sort of spy movie and he would drop a briefcase and leave any minute.
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain how you got caught up in this,” I spoke to the side of his head.
“Well about two months after I found the blog, it started getting more attention. The first post had over five hundred thousand hits, and the website was getting thousands of visitors a day. She told me someone from her past life in Florida found her and sent her an email. She said she felt like she was in danger and needed a plan to escape, and she needed my help. Things like that happen on the dark web all the time. You can hire people to erase everything from your past life for a price. The person being hired doesn’t ask too many questions, and the customer has a clean slate. I told her the only way she could escape was if she had some money, so I put ads onto the website, and she got paid every time somebody visited it, which was a lot. Then, one day a couple months ago, she said she’d planned everything and was ready to go. She explained my role, and left me with a bunch of clues in a specific order. The clues are aimed at you, Brian. That way she would be sure it was someone she trusted who would find her in the end. The plan was, once you figured things out you’d explain everything to her parents. Then you’d go and find her so the two of you could work together to figure out who the person harassing her was.”
“So Mady’s still out there?” I asked, maybe too loudly. My heart skipped a beat and I turned to face Metrix completely.
“Well she was supposed to be, but I lost contact with her a little while ago, and now I have no way of finding her.”
“Why didn’t she just call the cops?” Jessica turned around and kneeled on the bench. He didn’t seem surprised by so he must have figured out everyone on the bench was with me.
“She said when she was abducted the first time the cops were ready to write her off as dead. The only reason they didn’t was because her parents persisted, and so she doesn’t trust cops anymore. Anyways, she left me a series of instructions stipulating when to unlock the next blog posts, and said if I didn’t do them in order the person following her might find her. Anyone outside of Idaho has access to the website, but it looks the same as it did on that computer. The blog posts are blacked out. Once I unlock them for you, everyone sees them. I don’t actually know the answers. She just set me up with the next clues and full access of the website to unlock the posts at the right time. She left me a good chunk of money to do this.”
“Are you in contact with her? You must have a way to get in touch.”
“I was. I had no idea where she was going, and she told me not to worry about it, because following her would put us both in danger. She gave me Brian’s IP address and told me to let her know when he had accessed the blog
for the first time. Before you got the laptop, I checked in with her a couple times, just making sure that she was alright. I mean, she’s just a kid and I’m worried about her. I would have called the cops but I have done some things that wouldn’t be good to have out in the open if you see what I’m saying, and if I told them I helped an underage girl run away I would be in a lot of trouble. I contacted her a week before you found the blog, and I haven’t received a response. The last time I texted her was when you visited the website for the first time, and I still haven’t heard back from her.”
“She hasn’t responded in over two weeks, and you didn’t do anything about it?” Kent was outraged. He sounded like he wanted to hit the guy.
“I thought maybe she had changed her mind and come back. She never told me how she was leaving; just that she was getting out of town. I didn’t even know which town that was until you reached out to me.”
“Didn’t you find that out when you hacked into her computer?” The question still nagged me from earlier.
“No. NL did some strange stuff to her laptop. The hacker encrypted it to make it seem like the laptop was in Europe, but I knew that wasn’t true. It was almost like they were trying to protect her, which is what I thought they were doing at first. Maybe she paid NL to protect her computer so she couldn’t be found, but something about the way it was done seemed off. Like NL hacked into the computer, not like Mady had let them in. It was why I reached out to her in the first place. I need some answers. I’m involved more than I originally intended, and I still don’t know what the real story is and how I fit into it.”
“What do you want to know?” Jason asked. He stared at his feet.
“Everything. Where this all started, how you guys got involved. It wasn’t like we were friends. I didn’t even know her name when this all started, and I still don’t know what her name used to be before she moved.”
I brought him up to speed, and how all of the pieces of information led us to him.
“I’m shocked. I had no idea she was going to tell everyone she killed herself. I had no idea I played such a key role. I was just supposed to send you specific texts whenever you contacted me. She even sent me a burner phone to be your point of contact.”
“Do you think that she could still be alive? Maybe she had someone else watching us, too?” Jessica looked behind her. Even if Mady didn’t have someone watching us, the person who was after her probably was. A frown creased her pretty forehead.
“I doubt it. You guys were her closest friends, so if you four aren’t helping her, then I have a feeling she’s going it alone. I really do hope she is still alive. It’s only been two weeks since I heard from her. This all started as a way to get paid for doing next to no work, but now I’m really worried about her.” Metrix seemed like he felt as if he were part of the group now.
“Can you just give us the last clue so we can find her?” I almost begged him. If he just gave us the last clue we could save so much time. Just go find Mady now. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.
“Before she left, she told me not to do that. I don’t have access to the next bit of information until the blog is unlocked. I would unlock them all now but she warned me before she left that if I went right to the end, the person stalking her might see it and be able to find where she was staying before we can follow the trail to whoever is after her. I don’t know if she ever intended to be found. I think she wanted to come back when she was ready, after you discovered who was after her.”
“So, what now then?” Kent sounded frustrated.
“I guess you guys have to follow the trail she’s laid and keep me updated. It’s how she wanted it to unfold. Hopefully, we can find out who’s after her and be sure it’s safe for her to come back.”
“How are we supposed to do that? I don’t have the laptop anymore.”
Metrix pulled a black backpack off of his shoulder.
“Here. This is the only laptop that can reach it in Idaho. Don’t let this one get stolen. I shut the other one down, so whoever has it can’t access the blog. Be careful, guys.” He handed the laptop to me, stood up and left. That was it. The stakes just got bigger and more serious.
Not even Metrix knew what was really going on. Mady was the one holding all the cards, and for all we knew, the stalker could have killed her already. I vowed not to let that happen. If there was even a slight chance Mady was still alive I had to find her, and fast. Mady probably hadn’t expected the police to take her laptop which meant she thought I’d have it two months earlier than when I actually received it. We were already two months behind, and the longer we waited, the higher the chances were we’d be too late. I couldn’t waste another minute.
Chapter 11
We rushed back to my house, set on the idea of figuring out the next step so we could move on. We hurried up to my bedroom. I pulled up the text from Metrix and copied it onto a piece of paper. I dug the suicide note out of my desk and started to try deciphering it. I was sure Jason was onto something with his theory, and was determined to prove him right. After fifteen minutes of fiddling with the numbers and dashes and going nowhere, I handed everything to Jason, and went to research this more.
I found what I was looking for, and snagged the note out of Jason’s hand. I found an article on the net about Russian spies during the first world war sending long intricate notes with messages hidden within them. Working with a key of numbers, they pulled certain words from the notes to create smaller sentences detailing attack plans. In this way, they were able to avoid capture since the people screening the letters didn’t have the key. I was convinced it was what Mady did with the suicide note. It didn’t sound like her, and maybe that was because she was more focused on the code than the letter itself.
The only examples I could find online had two numbers, representing a line and a word. The issue arose when I realized Mady’s code had three numbers, not two. I tried my best to decipher it, but when I started stringing the words together they didn’t make sense. I shared what I thought was the answer with my friends. It only took a second for Kent to read deeper into the code, and realize the third number was the letter I needed, not the word. That explained commas and dashes. The dashes represented new letters, and the three numbers with apostrophes in between were telling me the location of the letter I needed. The spaces were new words, and once we figured all of that out, we flew through the letter, counting lines and words until we had something that almost made sense.
“What does it mean?” Jason stared at the notepad with the rest of us.
The note pad read: ‘Library S Two R One’. What did it mean? Obviously, it was a row and a shelf in the library, but which ones? In all honesty, I’d never actually been to the library before. Everything I needed was online. I figured we’d need to know the name of a book to be able to find it, and as far as I could tell, there was no title. Even if the library was organized into rows and shelves like I assumed, we wouldn’t be able to find the actual book Mady wanted us to find.
I opened the new laptop and booted it up. Metrix said we needed to figure out what Mady wanted us to find in all these posts and the new ones would unlock for us. Maybe another one would lead us to the book she wanted us to find. The new laptop smelled like it was fresh out of the box. I started to wonder if Metrix had bought this himself, or if he used Mady’s money. I typed in the familiar website address, and unlike on my phone and IPad, the webpage actually popped up. Instead of the usual three posts, there were now four.
Respect
Today was a rough one to say the least. It’s starting to seem like I come on here and reach out when I have things to rant about, but I guess that’s why I created this website in the first place. Obviously, I didn’t think it would gain the kind of attention that it has, and of course, that’s not what I was searching for when I created it. That being said, though this page has received hundreds of thousands of views, it doesn’t change the fact this is a place for me to express my deepest darkest secrets. That
brings us to today. I guess I had to expect when the new girl started dating one of the most popular guys in school, there was going to be some backlash. Before I moved here, I didn’t have that many friends, and I guess I wasn’t used to people being jealous of me. In my eyes, my boyfriend was just a guy who was paying attention to me for who I was. He is the sweetest person I have ever met, and it made sense to date him. I never have, and I won’t ever regret that decision, but it gets hard sometimes. Today I was reading some romance book by John Green in the hallway during the last block of classes. I have a spare last block, and usually I go out for food with some friends, but today I wasn’t feeling like it. I was waiting for the day to end so my boyfriend and I could go to my house, when a group of three girls came up to me. They were my friends, or so I thought. We went to parties together and hung out a couple times on the weekends. I started talking to them and before I knew it I was getting up and going to the cafeteria with them. On the way, one of them turned around and said ‘I never understood why he started dating such a slut’ I was shocked. I stood there for a second staring at her. Her words stung, but the worse part was I just didn’t know how to react. I guess she didn’t like the way I just kind of looked at her as if she had a second head, because all of a sudden, my face started to burn. She slapped me, and the three of them started to walk away like nothing happened. I blamed myself right away. I always blame myself when something goes wrong. These were my friends and I had obviously done something to warrant this kind of behaviour. I went to the bathroom and cleaned off my makeup. My eye was watering from the slap, and then the bell rang, signalling the end of the day. I never told anyone about it. Those girls are popular. If I told my boyfriend there would have been drama. I guess it just goes to show not to get too close to people. I trusted these girls, and look what happened.
Dangerous Past Page 10