Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1)

by Christopher Kerns

  “I don’t know,” she stammered back, “it’s been a few days. Sometimes we go awhile without chatting, but not usually this long.”

  “Now, there’s no reason to be alarmed,” Walter said, still hushed, “but we haven’t seen him in over a week.”

  Over a week? No no no. This can’t be happening.

  She reached down to her bag and retrieved her phone, pulling it up in front of her with both hands, and unlocking the screen.

  “Haylie,” Benjamin said, sliding his chair around the side of table in her direction. “Please don’t text your parents … or anyone … about this. Not yet. We can handle this—we’re sure he’s fine.”

  Her mind raced as the questions began to pile up, building on top of each other as her imagination went to work. She gripped her phone, tighter and tighter, as she fought for the right question to start with.

  “But why….” Haylie stuttered, cradling her phone back towards her chest. “Why can’t I just tell my mom? She can help, I’m sure she and my dad can–”

  “It’s only going to worry them,” Walter said. “We think we know where he is, or at least where he was trying to go. Your parents can’t help find him.”

  “But we think you can,” Benjamin added.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Houndstooth Coffee House

  Austin, TX

  March 6th, 5:27PM

  The jingle of porcelain mugs against saucers broke the silence as the barista placed a fresh round of coffee on the table. All three sat quietly until the server made his way back behind the front counter.

  “He does this sometimes, you know?” Haylie said as she cupped her mug in the curve of her hand, feeling the warmth run through her fingers. “He calls it ‘rat-holing’—where he’ll start looking into a problem and just lose track of the rest of the world for awhile.”

  Walter chuckled. “Absolutely. He does the same thing at Brux all the time, a day here or there. Other engineers try to keep up with him during his sprints, but they all give up eventually. They all say it’s best to just leave him alone, let him finish his process. But he’s never done it for this long before.”

  “I do the same thing sometimes,” Haylie said, her eyes squinting as she adjusted her glasses. “Just a few months ago, I was working on getting access to a system—getting past a firewall. I was sitting in that booth right over there. One minute you put your head down and start working through the steps and the next thing you know, hours have gone by,” Haylie stopped, staring blankly over at the booth for a few moments. “It’s a funny feeling, you know, when you come back out of it. When you realize the whole world has been turning, and you’ve been in a different place.”

  “And we’re sure that’s all this is,” Benjamin added. “We have some systems in place that will help. We’ve been diving into his communication patterns, looking at the past few months.”

  “Wait,” Haylie said, pushing back from the table. “You monitor his communications? His messaging, his email—that sort of thing? He would never agree to that.”

  “He did,” Walter said. “Everyone that works for us does. It’s part of the Brux employee contract to grant access to hardware and personal accounts, only in the case of emergency. For big lawsuits or corporate spying, that sort of extreme event. Even Benjamin and I have signed those agreements. To be honest, we’ve never actually had to use them before now.”

  “But you said you weren’t worried,” Haylie said. She stared down at her coffee as the wheels turned in her head. This doesn’t make sense … these guys aren’t telling me something.

  “We’re not worried, we’re just being careful,” Walter said. “We want him to be safe, which again, we’re sure is the case. But we also have some pressure–”

  “We have a business to run,” Benjamin blurted out. Walter crossed his arms, staring him down, but it bounced right off his brother. “Caesar’s a friend, but we have a big product launch coming up, and it won’t happen without him. Plain and simple—we need him back within the next five days. We need to stay on the good side of our investors and if he’s not back leading the effort, we’ll risk missing our next milestone.”

  “As you might have read, we’ve never had a failure in any of our lines of business,” Benjamin continued. “We’re trying to make sure it stays that way. The press has been very vocal about that fact, which is great when things are working. But the first time we make a mistake, the tech press will have a field day.”

  “Well, I’d hate for my brother’s disappearance to make you any less of a billionaire,” Haylie said, shaking her head.

  “Caesar’s safety is the priority here, obviously,” Walter interjected. “There are business impacts as well, but we all just want to find him, right?”

  Haylie took another sip of coffee, followed by a long breath. “You said you guys went into his computer. What did you find?”

  Walter nudged Benjamin to respond.

  “Sure,” Benjamin said. “Two things, really. First, our security team pieced together all recent browsing history across his devices. It looks like he was trying to solve an Internet puzzle. Something called Raven 2309.”

  Haylie’s eyes grew wide as she sat up straight in her chair.

  Raven? Caesar was trying to solve Raven? No wonder he got sucked into a rat hole—no one has solved that thing. I’m not even sure it CAN be solved. But why the hell would he–

  “Do you know anything about it?” Walter asked.

  “Of course,” Haylie said. “I mean, everyone’s heard of Raven. It’s been around for years.” Staring back at two blank faces, she took a few moments to put together a description that would make sense to civilians.

  “It’s a puzzle—an Internet puzzle, like you said,” Haylie said. “It appeared one day, a few years ago. Some anonymous account posted the first clue on a message board. People have solved a few steps using code breaking techniques, file analysis, all different types of stuff. But no one’s made it to the end, not even close.”

  “So who made it?” Benjamin said. “It sounds weird—just some random puzzle that came out of nowhere. It must be there for a reason.”

  “Well, sure,” Haylie said. “That’s why hackers and code-breakers have been trying to solve it … to figure out why it’s there in the first place, you know? The rumors are wild—that it might have been created by the NSA or CIA or a big company trying to recruit hotshot programmers. You guys really haven’t heard of it?”

  Shaking heads welcomed her from the other side of the table. “Like I said,” Walter replied, “we tend to focus on the business side of things.”

  “It’s been all over the press,” Haylie said, bringing up the results of a news search on her laptop. “Rolling Stone, the Washington Post. It goes on and on. They call it ‘The Most Mysterious Puzzle on the Internet.’” She did another search and brought up the front page of an online forum called “Raven’s Keepers,” with posts on everything about Raven 2309.

  “There are tons of message boards like this one dedicated to Raven,” she said. “They have all sorts of discussions about the puzzle and theories about where it might have come from. There are teams of people that are working together to try and solve it. The steps they’ve solved so far—only, like, four or five—have involved code-breaking and hacking into systems, but also some crazier stuff. Literature, art, history. Rumors that at some point, the puzzle moves from online to finding clues in physical locations. It’s pretty weird.”

  “So what step is everyone stuck on right now?” Benjamin asked, craning his neck to see the screen.

  “It’s a message, but written in Anglo-Saxon runes,” Haylie said as she scrolled and read the latest from the group. “See—that’s what I’m talking about. The puzzle isn’t just coding challenges, it’s all sorts of stuff. Problem solving.” She pulled the computer back in front of her and clicked into a few of the message threads, checking the post headlines.

  I can’t believe this. Caesar got himself caught up in try
ing to solve Raven. He’s probably in a library somewhere, looking up everything he can find on runes. I bet he hasn’t showered in, like, a week.

  Haylie looked up to see Benjamin and Walter exchanging whispers across the table.

  “What’s up over there, guys?” she asked over her laptop’s lid.

  The brothers looked back and forth, as if each was hinting, “no, you say it” to the other.

  “Here’s what we’re thinking,” Benjamin finally said. “Caesar is somewhere out there, trying to solve this puzzle. If we walk through the same steps as he has, we should find him wherever he might be stuck. It just makes sense, right?”

  Haylie broke into laughter. “You guys are out of your minds. You’re not going to just jump in and solve Raven.” She pointed down to her screen. “Teams of really smart people have been working on this thing for months. Hackers, professors, all sorts of people. They’re all stuck.”

  “Well,” Walter said, “I don’t think we have to solve the whole thing. If what you’re saying is true, I doubt Caesar has found the end. He’s probably just caught on a step. Once we find that step, we’ll know where to find him.”

  “This is your idea?” Haylie said. “My brother is missing, and you want to solve an unsolvable Internet puzzle? Maybe he’ll be sitting there at the end waiting for you?” She snatched her phone off the table, unlocking the screen. “We need to call the cops. Or my parents. They’ll know what to do.”

  “Stop—please stop, Haylie,” Benjamin said with an outstretched arm. “We have a private security team that is ten times more capable than the police. They are investigating all the traditional channels, that’s happening as we speak. This idea—it’s a wildcard, but it might work.”

  Haylie rested her head in her hands, as she thought. I hope he’s okay. I just want him to be okay. He has to be, right? He has to be. But what if he’s not? What if this is something else? She cleared her throat, sniffing and fighting back the building tears. She wiped her eyes with her shirt sleeve, keeping her head hung low and her view away from the brothers.

  “What’s the second thing?” Haylie said, working the words around a series of sniffles. “You said when you went into Caesar’s files, you found two things. What else was in there?”

  “Let me ask you, Haylie,” Walter said. “The last message that Caesar sent you, it wasn’t just any message, was it?”

  “No,” she replied, thinking back to his last chat message.

  The code. That stupid code. I should have just figured it out and sent him the solution—then maybe I could have caught him before he ran off.

  “It was one of the puzzles he sends sometimes,” she said. “But I’m not sure what it says, I haven’t had time to solve it.”

  “Well, we think,” Walter paused before continuing. “We think the message might hold a clue to the puzzle. There’s a chance he’s gotten farther than anyone else, and this clue may help us catch up with his progress.”

  Haylie looked up, her eyes filling with hope. “What makes you say that?”

  “It was sent from a different device,” Benjamin said, checking over his right shoulder to make sure that no one was eavesdropping. “It wasn’t from his laptop or phone. We think he might have sent it to you from out in the field, as he was solving the puzzle. It could be—it could totally be the clue we need to get ahead here; to find your brother.”

  “So go solve it,” she said. “Why haven’t you just decoded the message yourselves?”

  “We tried,” Walter said. “We threw it over to our team. They did everything they could think of to break the code and got nothing. To be honest, they had a hard time even trying to figure out where to start. ‘Shelf 3, take out book 2’—they tried the library, bookstores near Caesar’s house, his apartment—and found nothing.”

  “But he sent the note to you,” Benjamin said. “So you must know how to solve it, right? And once you do, the three of us can just jump into the puzzle, solve the next few clues, and find him.”

  “Wait a minute,” Haylie said, standing and backing away from the table. “I thought you guys were nuts for wanting to try and solve Raven, but that’s not why you’re here. You want me to solve it?”

  She pointed a shaking finger over at Benjamin. “I knew it … I totally knew it. You’re the crazy kind of rich people, aren’t you?”

  “We can’t do this on our own,” Walter said, gesturing for Haylie to sit back down. “But you, you and Caesar trade puzzles like this all the time, plus nobody knows him like you do, it’s almost like you two share a brain. If the three of us work together–”

  “No, no, no way,” she said, shaking her head and crossing her arms firmly across her chest. “I can’t solve this thing. I’m just a teenager. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

  “Sure you can,” Walter said. “And plus, Benjamin and I will get to watch you work along the way. I can’t think of a better job interview than working on a puzzle like this together.”

  Haylie stood solid, her mind racing, as she pushed her hair back behind each ear, trying to figure out if this was really happening. There’s no way this is happening—the Sterling brothers, Caesar, Raven. An hour ago I was just sitting down for coffee, finishing up my homework. This is nuts.

  “Haylie,” Walter said, standing and walking over to her side of the table. “Caesar’s fine. We know it, you know it. Once we find him, we’re all going to laugh about it and make fun of him for getting … I don’t know … locked in some back room of a library without a phone charger. We might as well do this, the three of us, together. What do you say?”

  “I … I’d need to skip school,” Haylie said, thinking through what would need to be done.

  “Yeah, do you need like a note or something?” Benjamin asked. “We can do that.”

  Haylie shot him an annoyed look. “You’re like four years older than me; you don’t get to write notes to high schools yet.”

  “We’ll figure out the school thing,” Walter said. “The tricky part will be your parents.”

  Haylie quickly checked the calendar on her phone. She scrolled all entries for the next week, day after day. “Dad’s in Boston all week at some conference; he left this morning,” she said. “And Mom heads to Singapore tomorrow for some meetings … I’ll be alone at home for the next five days.”

  Benjamin looked over at Walter with relief, turning back to Haylie. “Well that was easy.”

  Walter slid a business card onto the table, spinning it towards Haylie. “Think about it and text me tonight with your answer,” he said. “We’ve built a temporary office at a hangar at the airport. We can meet there in the morning if you’re up for it.”

  Haylie grabbed her bag in one hand and Walter’s business card in the other. She folded the thick paper between her fingers, flexing and bowing its shape. She nodded, walking out the door without looking back. She shuffled her feet across the gravel and into the darkness as she crossed the parking lot.

  Her mind was already churning, working to solve Caesar’s puzzle.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  10 Downing Street - London

  March 6th, 11:47PM

  The black iron gates opened as the armored Jaguar XJ glided into the private driveway. Flanked by four motorcycles, the car rolled slowly past the checkpoint and out of the public’s reach.

  Prime Minister John Crowne could see two guards’ faces—one staring past the top of the car, the other keeping his view beyond the gate—through the rain-painted back windows. They stood at attention, searching the fog for anything that looked out of the ordinary. As the vehicle veered slightly to the right and safely in front of 10 Downing Street, he heard the gates squeaking closed behind them. They were home, at least until the next trip. Thank God.

  Over the past two years, the Prime Minister had grown tired of these pointless excursions. Today was a day trip—a few hours west to Bristol, then north to Derby, a quick jot over to Newark, and then back home. He traveled in a surprisingly light entour
age for one of the most powerful leaders in the world. You could count on one hand the number of handlers and aides that flanked him for the trip.

  Years ago, he would have embraced the opportunity to have a drive out into the country, but things were different now. Every minute of every trip, especially the time spent in the back of the car, was carefully coordinated. One and a half hours to Bristol meant one and a half hours of policy decisions, political planning, and phone calls. It was all kept to a tight schedule by his Chief Secretary, changing and morphing to chase any breaking news. All the time, it seemed, playing defense. Putting out fires as opportunity flew by.

  At each stop, Crowne endured a series of pre-planned moments to gain political favor. He slugged through factory tours, radio interviews, and meetings with local groups and officials. With every conversation, he struggled to remember which candidate or issue he was supposed to name-check to keep special-interest groups from issuing angry statements.

  But it was the unplanned events, or more accurately “planned unplanned” events, that really got under his skin. These outings, designed to resemble daily life, were completely out of his control. Walking across the threshold of every shop was no longer a personal moment. It was a moment that belonged to everyone else. A story each person would tell for years.

  Every bite of every meal was now an Instagram moment. Have you ever tried to look photogenic while you eat? It’s impossible. Every preference he showed, especially with food for some reason, was analyzed by patrons and newspapers. Did he stop for an Indian lunch because he was actually in support of the legislative reform being discussed over at the UN?

  No, I just wanted some curry.

  But Crowne knew the reality of what politicians—no, leaders—had been reduced to in our modern times. Poster boys. Spokesmodels. Politics had morphed into sound bites to justify prior-held beliefs and top-ten lists to convince mothers that they shouldn’t vaccinate their children, all based on celebrity opinion. In the past, someone standing at a podium had, at least in some way, earned the authority to have their voice heard. Today, anyone with a smartphone could tell you that was no longer the case.