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Christie’s hands quivered as she attempted to unlock the front door of her apartment. Two hours had passed since she’d fled the subway and her fear had yet to abate. Adrenaline had kept her legs moving even as exhaustion and cramps threatened to send her crashing to the sidewalk.
She’d sprinted, jogged, and then walked through alleys and side streets until she finally arrived back at her apartment. After seeing what had transpired on the subway, Christie wanted no part of any public transportation.
There was no chance in hell she’d ride a bus or take a cab.
Even taking the fastest route home had seemed like a dangerous idea. What if one of the crazies was following her?
Christie knew the idea was ludicrous. They would have attacked if they were tailing her, but rationality had taken a detour after what she’d seen at the station. She’d taken a long, meandering path to get back to her apartment, hoping to ensure that no one from the subway could have tailed her.
The key finally slid home. Christie burst through the door and slammed it shut behind her.
She worked all three locks.
Placed her back against the door, slid down it.
Sobs shook her body. The keys and small cylinder the man had given her fell to the linoleum floor. She held her face in her hands, finally letting out a flood of emotion that had built inside her for the past two hours.
The memory of the blood, the screams, and the death—they all overwhelmed her. The worst thing she’d ever witnessed in person before tonight had been a handful of fistfights at the bar. Those were scary, but they’d also had a trace of humor running through them. Watching two drunks wrestle around on a beer-soaked floor usually made her chuckle after it was over.
There would be no laughing tomorrow as she recalled the horror of what she’d just experienced. Christie had read dozens of articles chronicling the PTSD problems that soldiers returning from war struggled with. She’d always sympathized with those poor men, but she did so at a distance.
It was one thing to acknowledge an issue and something else entirely to live it.
Wondering whether she would be struggling with that experience for the rest of her life made Christie cry even harder. How long she sat on the floor, tears coursing down her cheeks, she didn’t know. After a while, her sobs eased, the tears washing away much of her fear.
She’d made it home. She was safe.
After wiping at her face with the back of her hand, Christie’s eyes settled on the small cylinder on the floor. The temptation to toss it down a storm drain had remained strong for the long trek home, but she’d refrained.
The man had given his life to ensure that whatever it was would get out of that damn subway. She picked it up, twisted it around in front of her face. It looked like a cheap lipstick tube.
Get this to Detective Andrew Lloyd, she thought. That’s what the man told me to do.
Christie cupped the cylinder in her hand and pushed herself off the floor. She staggered into the kitchen, downing a glass of water.
The bloody visage of the bearded man on the floor of the platform popped into her mind. She heard his screams, smelled his blood.
She turned on the faucet, splashed water on the face.
Forced herself to breathe.
After standing in front of the sink for nearly a minute, Christie abruptly spun on her heels and marched into the living room. Though her furnishings were meager, they were clean and decent looking. She took great care of the few possessions she had, knowing she couldn’t replace anything that was broken or worn out. The coffee table, sofa, chair, and crummy entertainment center all came from a secondhand store, but she felt a modicum of pride at how well she’d maintained them.
A small, flat-panel television sat atop the cheap entertainment center. Christie grabbed the remote and turned it on. The local news stations were going batshit crazy.
Christie flipped through a handful before settling on the local CBS affiliate.
A short-haired brunette woman sat in front of a backdrop of the Capitol building, staring intently into the camera. “—are still coming in, but initial reports are indicating the death toll could be in the dozens. As we learned earlier, the signal does not appear to have come through a cell phone. The incident is contained, and there is no reason for panic. I repeat, there is—”
“My ass.” Christie dropped the remote to the aged coffee table in the middle of the room. “There are a million reasons to panic.”
Even though it had taken Christie nearly two hours to get home after fleeing the subway, the idea that the men in the suits had used a different mode of transmission for the signal hadn’t occurred to her. They’d used some form of device to broadcast the crazy into everyone.
Everyone had looked at cell phones as if they were poisonous snakes after Arthur’s Creek. They thought staying away from the airwaves would keep them safe.
But now...
Christie shivered.
“—subway is temporarily shut down.” The newscaster brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “A state of emergency is in effect for—”
Christie held the small cylinder up again, rolling it between her fingers.
Her old, slow-as-hell laptop sat on the floor beside the coffee table. A power cable snaked from the side of the computer to an outlet to the left of the television. The battery had kicked the bucket over a year ago, and Christie had barely scraped together the money to get a new one. Even though she’d finally saved enough cash and popped the battery in a few months prior, Christie struggled to break the habit of always keeping the laptop plugged in.
She reached down, grunting from the small effort. Exhaustion had come, gone, and returned again.
After setting the computer in her lap and opening the lid, she waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time for the operating system to wake up. As she did every time she used it, Christie considered slinging the piece of crap across the room. If only she could afford an upgrade.
Christie went to Google, searched for Detective Andrew Lloyd.
A handful of news stories popped up, most from several months ago.
The title of one read Detective Tracks Down Serial Killer Andrew Phillips. A handful of pictures of teenage girls lined the top of the article. Christie felt her throat tighten as she read the first few sentences. Phillips had kidnapped, raped, and murdered young teens for years.
The vast majority of the other articles described the attempted assassination of President Thomas. Detective Lloyd had discovered the plot and helped to stop the assassin.
Christie vividly remembered that day. It had the same emotional impact on her as 9/11 had, as Arthur’s Creek had. Some days were etched in her mind by their associated horrors. She could remember where she was when the Twin Towers fell, and she could recall what she’d been eating when the Secret Service attempted to kill the president.
She scrolled through the list of articles, hoping to find an interview with the detective, but couldn’t find much. He’d given a small statement after the assassination attempt, but that had been it. He didn’t seem to address the media much.
That was a far cry from some of the detectives Christie had seen on shows like 48 Hours Mystery and 20/20. Some of those men basked in the glory of the catch. That didn’t appear to be the case with Lloyd.
No profiles came up on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
One of the articles about the serial killer mentioned the station where Lloyd worked in Baltimore. Christie typed the department name into Google, found a phone number.
She fished her cell phone from her purse and tapped it in.
Her pulse quickened as the phone rang in her ear. She hadn’t done anything wrong, but knowing that her involvement in whatever had happened in the subway was about to get even deeper made her anxious.
An automated system answered her call.
It took her an obnoxious amount of time to ring through to the homicide department. Christie wasn’t even sure if that was the department where Lloyd worked, but she assumed that to be the case if he was tracking down serial killers.
The phone rang several times.
A man eventually picked up. “Homicide. Detective Johns.”
Christie’s mouth popped open, but no words came out.
“Hello?” Johns had a gravelly voice, as if he’d smoked cigarettes since a young age. “I can hear you breathing. Say what you gotta say or hang up. I don’t have time for—”
“I’m looking for Detective Andrew Lloyd,” Christie blurted.
Johns paused. “Who is this?”
“I’d... rather not say. I need to talk to Detective Lloyd.”
“He’s on a leave of absence. I’m handling his caseload until he comes back. If you have information on any—”
“When will he be back?” Christie spoke quickly, her words crowding one another. “I have to talk to him.”
“I don’t know when he’ll be back. But miss, you can tell me whatever is. I’ve worked with Detective Lloyd for years. He trusts me.”
Christie chewed on her lower lip. She considered spilling everything she knew to the man on the other end of the call, but fear held her tongue. What exactly was she getting herself into? Could she trust a random detective that she called on the phone? The Baltimore police didn’t have the best reputation lately.
As she sat there and thought about it, she realized she didn’t even know why she’d called. Some guy had shoved an object in her hand while he was dying and told her to pass it along. And for some unknown reason, she’d decided to comply.
She didn’t ask for any of this.
“Miss?” the man asked. “Are you still there?”
“Never mind.”
“But—”
Christie ended the call, tossed the phone onto the cushion beside her.
She glared at the cylinder. “Time to go bye-bye.”
Feeling better about her decision to step away from the craziness of the morning, Christie got up and quickly walked into the kitchen.
She opened the cabinet door under her sink and threw the object into the trash can.
It bounced off the side with a thunk before tumbling to the bottom.
Christie was about to slam the door shut when she noticed something had changed with the cylinder. Before, it had been a solid silver color.
Now there was a small, black line running around the curved surface at one end.
She reached down, picked it up.
As she inspected it, she noticed that the line wasn’t a color, but a gap. She grabbed the top and pulled it off.
It was a cap.
A USB connector stuck out of the top.
The man had given her a thumb drive.