That’s when she smelled it. Not the smell of piss, but the unmistakable smoky whiff of a campfire, riding a quick turn of the wind and blowing light flecks of ash up into the air.
She had reached the edge of the Bohemian Grove.
Haylie shuffled to hide behind a neighboring tree, one without urine pooling at the roots, and crouched against the base of the trunk, knees bent and her back straight against the bark. She removed her phone from her pocket, clutching the screen close to her chest to keep the light from traveling, and brought up the drone controller app. She tapped the button labeled ‘activate flight plan 1.’
Haylie sat firm, huddled in the darkness. Waiting.
C’mon BusyBee. Fly fast.
> > > > >
The wind whipped the curtain of Walter’s dimly lit motel room as the Sterling brothers sat side-by-side on the lumpy mattress, peering out through the screen and into the California dusk. Walter looked back across his shoulder, checking the door for any surprises. All he saw was what the room had to offer: dated furniture, carbon-copy artwork in dented brass frames, and a bedspread that held more secrets than he cared to think about.
They had a front row seat to the twisting two-lane road that cut the small town of Monte Rio in half. The darkness was taking over, but Walter could still make out the lines of a rickety white picket fence that lined the opposite side of the road; power lines perched above, slicing the sky. The tree line began about fifty feet behind a gravel parking lot littered with a few odd vehicles.
“We need to tell Haylie what’s going on,” Walter whispered, his eyes following the headlights as they ran right to left across the window. “This isn’t good.”
“You really think that’s a good idea?” Benjamin asked, stepping back away from the window.
For the past twenty minutes, the brothers had seen a constant flow of headlights heading in the direction of the Bohemian Grove. Most were black town cars, all with tinted windows; many of them were flanked at the front and back by larger SUVs, presumably holding security. One after another, every thirty seconds. A parade of vehicles heading right towards the camp.
This wasn’t part of the plan.
“We must have seen a hundred cars heading to the Grove just in the past hour,” Walter said, his eyes following each approaching pair of headlights. “There’s something going on in there. We need to let Haylie know what she’s walking into—this is bad. Let’s text her.”
“Text her. Text her? Great idea, Walter. I love this idea.” Benjamin glared at his brother. “Let’s see … when she’s caught tonight while performing surveillance on some of the most powerful people in the world, I’m sure they won’t check her phone, right? Why would they? It’s only the first thing they’ll do.”
Walter backed away from the window and moved to the other side of the bed as Benjamin continued to lecture him. “And whose number will be the first one they find on that phone?” Benjamin said. “Oh good, it’s the Sterlings. Now we’ve got a conspiracy. Now we’ve got a story that press around the world will run with.”
“There has to be a way,” Walter said. “We can’t just leave her out there on her own. She’s heading right into trouble. This is no good for any of us. If she gets caught, we don’t solve Raven. We need to solve Raven, and we can’t do it on our own. The clock is ticking. If Haylie gets caught, it’s all for nothing.”
“There’s nothing we can do here, Walter. It’s up to her now.”
Walter walked back to the window, pulling the curtain to the side, catching the scents of mildew and cigarettes that would live in this room long after they left. Three more pairs of headlights flew by, right to left. Night had fallen, and as the beams of light crossed the picket fence along the road, they carried moving, living, breathing crisscross patterns along with them.
Teeth clenched, all Walter could do was stare out the window and wait.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Monte Rio, CA
March 8th, 8:10PM
Hands trembling, eyes darting back and forth across the shadows of the landscape, Haylie tried her best to focus. She hadn’t been able to make out anything in the darkness for at least ten minutes now. She concentrated on her breathing—deep, slow breaths—a futile attempt to bring calm to her racing pulse. Where is that stupid drone? Fixed in her crouched position, she patted her pocket gently to make sure her phone was where she had left it.
She looked to the sky, trying to catch a glimpse of BusyBee through the trees and darkness overhead, but there was only black, gray, and green. The drone was programmed to text her “I’m watching u now” when it arrived at its assigned position, whenever that happened. Haylie’s phone was on mute, so she’d have to trust that she’d feel the vibration; the last thing she wanted to do was unlock the screen and unleash a wave of LED light into the darkness, giving away her position to anyone in the area. She leaned back against the thick trunk and exhaled, scanning the woods.
I seriously have zero idea what I’m doing right now. And I hate the woods.
She reached to her backpack’s side pocket for water, stopping as she felt the empty crinkle of the bottle and remembering that it was bone dry.
From her left side came a noise—a twig or a branch, something snapped—and Haylie twisted her head. Her eyes searched for something, anything in the darkness.
I need to get moving.
Haylie walked carefully away from the noise, roughly following the path her drunken visitor had taken. She concentrated on her steps—light feet, light feet, light feet—creeping deeper into the forest, nice and slow. Her thighs began to burn from her crouched position. Branches, leaves, and colossal ferns flowed across her shins and shoulders; vegetation of all sorts pushed into her face and hair as she slogged forward into the darkness.
The smell of the campfire grew thick as she crept closer. After fifty more feet of slow, grinding progress, she peered up to see a halo of flickering light in the clearing ahead.
Approaching from the left side, Haylie fell to the ground, lying flat and crawling towards the orange glow. Moving close to the ground was surprisingly effective in this terrain, but forced her to spit soil from her mouth every few feet and occasionally scrape spiders, or God-knows-what, off her neck. The leaves and twigs slid off her glasses as she pushed forward.
She felt a ping in her pocket as her eyes reflexively looked to the sky for any sign of the drone. She reached for her phone, drawing it close to her eyes to see a message.
VECTOR:> oi Crash, what’s up.
She shook her head and crept up to the edge of the clearing, close enough to hear the cracking of the fire and to see a storm of sparks flying into the air. She squinted to make out a structure off to the left of the fire pit; it was a large, solid wooden cabin, its face illuminated by the campfire. Haylie edged closer on her elbows to get a better look.
The entire scene looked like something out of an old mining camp. Tinted in sepia, the one-windowed cabin was hand-crafted and sturdy, directly facing the center of the clearing. Strong beams framed a chunky door that swung open into the dark interior. The lines running across the cabin’s façade led her eyes up to the pediment holding a curved arch over the doorway. Carved inside the arch was a peculiar wooden owl, its face was fat and bulbous, with huge eyes looking equal parts all-seeing and surprised. The eyes of the owl looked down on the fire, its mouth frozen open and ready to squawk. Under the owl and across one of the beams rested a poorly-hung, hand-burned sign that read ‘UTUKURU.’
Surrounding the cabin were a collection of wooden chairs, unlit oil lamps nailed to trees, and a hand-carved table. The tabletop was a thick four-foot-wide cross-section of what must have been a massive redwood at one time, supported by stocky wooden legs. The feet pushed deep into the dirt, presumably from decades of use. Haylie brushed aside a fern to check the perimeter, but could see nothing more.
Nobody’s here.
As the fire continued to burn, Haylie stood and walked slowly into the camp. Her poc
ket buzzed again, freezing her in the light of the campfire. She reached down to check the screen, hoping for a ping from BusyBee, telling her the drone was ready to go.
MOM:> Hey honey, I just landed in Singapore. What are you doing? Did you get some dinner?
Rolling her eyes, Haylie stood frozen at the middle of the camp, typing out a text back to her mom, shaking her head.
HAYLIE:> I’m good, I’m good. Talk to you in a bit.
Mom would completely freak out if she could see me right now.
Haylie made her way into the cabin, inching slowly through the doorway and activating the flashlight app on her phone. Other than two cots nestled flush to each side, a small wood-burning stove in the corner, and a few rugs and trinkets, the cabin was empty. Find the next step behind the founding father. She quickly checked the walls of the cabin for pictures of old members or anything else that might hold a clue inside. There was nothing.
Walking out and turning off her flashlight, she could make out the beginnings of a worn path heading down a slope and out of the clearing. She left the camp behind, entering the forest directly parallel to the path. As she stepped foot over foot, the light from the campfire dimmed with each push of progress, pulling her back into the darkness.
From what she had uncovered in her research, the Bohemian Grove consisted of a series of camps and cabins all loosely connected to a central meeting location, complete with larger buildings meant for group activities. She figured that she must have stumbled on one of the smaller camps—a spoke on the outside of a large wheel. If she could find the main path, it might lead her to the center of the Grove.
She saw a faint light twinkling off the leaves in front of her, this one brighter than the campfire. Haylie followed the glow, still taking care and effort to creep as silently as the brush would allow. The light was growing in intensity, now bright enough to make out small details of the terrain around her; the backlit silhouettes of crisscrossed trees and mossy stumps now helped to guide her way. She stopped to listen as distant sounds began to grow in the night. What the hell is that?
Haylie’s pocket buzzed, surprising her, causing her to lose her footing, falling to one side. Could everyone just stop texting me right now, please? She took a knee on the soft earth, one hand hitting the dirt to keep her balance. With a quick curse, she scrambled in her pocket to retrieve the vibrating phone. She unlocked the screen, shielding the light with her free hand; it was BusyBee.
She flipped over to her drone app and could see that her drone was now obediently perched overhead in a holding pattern.
Finally.
The main screen in the app was the Dashboard; it displayed the drone’s current location, system status, and a quick count of the devices within BusyBee’s current range of sight. As the app loaded onto her screen, Haylie’s face turned from anticipation to scowl. She was expecting a device count of around fifteen. The Dashboard read: ‘132.’
This stupid thing is broken.
Quickly toggling over to the live infrared camera, Haylie squinted as her face was bathed in the screen’s light. It showed hundreds of white, blue and red dots, each representing a different contact. If the drone’s view was correct, there was a huge collection of something assembled about two hundred feet in front of her. Some of the blobs stayed in place; others moved towards the larger group from surrounding structures. Haylie stared down at the screen in disbelief.
“I’ve only seen one other person in here,” she whispered to herself. “I must have screwed up the code. Nice work, Haylie.”
She walked slowly to the west, aiming her path towards the light, as the thumping beat grew louder and louder. She froze as her feet found a sudden slope in the ground. She crouched down into a squatting position, staying low.
She was on the edge of a cliff, perched above a huge clearing, about the same size as a Texas high school football stadium. The entire rim of the small canyon was illuminated with the pulsing light of torches and bonfires, with the sound of drums echoing off the rocky canyon walls.
What Haylie saw before her she still couldn’t believe—a tall, looming oval-shaped structure of some sort. It was massive; it must have been forty feet tall and looked to be chipped out of solid rock. After craning her neck to either side a few times, Haylie still couldn’t make out the shape. She crept along the rim of the cliff, angling to get a better view. Fighting her way past a family of vines, she found the edge once again and pulled back the vegetation to get a better view.
At the center of the clearing stood a serene mountain lake, lit by a mix of hand-held and fixed torches. A collection of men clad in light gray robes lined the edge of the shore. There were hundreds of them, and the crowd continued to grow, flowing in from the surrounding structures. A handful of boats rested at a dock, lit with torches and draped in white cloth, adorned with gold symbols.
From her new angle, Haylie could now see the large structure that stood over the lake, facing the ceremony and lit on either side with enormous fire pits; it was a gigantic freestanding stone owl with one shoulder covered by thick green moss. With strong shoulders and a knowing, downward glance, the owl dwarfed the men standing at its base, lined in formation on a row of gray stone stairs. The men stood at attention, wrapped around the statue all the way down to the lake’s shore.
The drums, beating louder now, were joined by a low, growing chorus of human voices. Singing, chanting.
“Behold, the effigy of this, our enemy, is carried hither for our ancient rites.”
Haylie clutched her phone, pulling back away from the edge of the cliff. She looked to the dome of forest cover hundreds of feet above her but could see no stars, no sky.
I am so screwed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monte Rio, CA
March 8th, 9:15PM
The hiss of the gurgling river mixed with a chorus of crickets and frogs, creeping through the motel’s window. Cool air swept in from the west, pushing the faded curtains back towards the bed in ripples and waves. The sounds of nature were washed out every few seconds by the rush of tires on asphalt flying through the window, headed north. Walter pulled back the curtain and saw an unbroken line of black SUVs speeding past the window.
“We must have seen a hundred so far,” Walter said, peering back out to the road. “At least we haven’t see any police … but still, this can’t be good.” He sighed and checked his watch, swiveling back towards Benjamin with a worried brow. “Where could they all be going?”
“It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think?” Benjamin replied.
“I think she’ll be all right,” Walter said, nodding to himself. “She should know how to stay out of sight.”
Benjamin, sitting with his legs crossed at the middle of the queen-sized bed, laughed. With each chuckle, he sunk lower into the mushy center of the worn mattress.
“There’s a pretty good chance she’s toast,” Benjamin snorted. He flipped channels on the plastic, square-tube television, not even watching as he clicked. “We shouldn’t even be here right now. We should just head back to the jet and meet up with our team back in New York. Regroup. Think about our plan B.”
“We’re not leaving her out there,” Walter snapped, turning back to the window. He drummed his fingers on the cold, aluminum window frame, feeling a coating of grit and dust with each touch.
“This was a dumb idea. We’re wasting time,” Benjamin said. “She’s in the forest surrounded by guards, cameras, and what looks like hundreds of Bohemian Grove members. Listen, she’s great with a laptop, but she’s not cut out for anything like this. She’s a teenager for chrissakes.”
“A teenager?” Walter shot back. “Really, Benjamin? She’s not that much younger than we are.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Benjamin said. “We’ll figure out another way.”
“And leave her in the forest? In the middle of nowhere, a few thousand miles from home?”
“Don’t be so dramatic.” Benjamin waved off Walter’s retort with a sl
ight flutter of his fingers. “We’ll send her an airline ticket or something.”
“Where? To prison? I don’t think so,” Walter muttered.
Benjamin clicked off the TV. He sat for a few seconds and watched as the light from the old tube faded to black. He cracked a smile. “Oh my … I see the problem, now. Why didn’t I see it before?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t have a solution here, either. You agree with me. You think I’m right—one hundred percent.” Benjamin chuckled as he tossed the remote onto the foot of the bed. He turned to face his brother. “You just can’t admit it.”
Walter shook his head, stomping towards the door and out into the night. After a few steps across the porch his boots found soft earth, sloping downwards towards the river bank. The sound of rushing water grew louder as he approached the shore. A gust of wind pushed him back as he shifted, taking a breath. Sparkles of moonlight flashed off the small rapids flowing with gravity and time, flowing to the sea.
> > > > >
Haylie made a quick check of the drone’s summary stats. The battery level was down to around 65%; it was time to get moving. She switched over to BusyBee’s infrared camera and searched for her best path.
I need to get to the center of the camp.
She toggled off the heat signatures in the app, leaving only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth device locations peppered across the screen. She saw a number of contact points showing slight movement, probably phones belonging to the group of robed weirdos below her. It was the stationary points—and there were around twenty-five of those—that were her priority right now. Those points represented laptops or other hardware in buildings around the compound.
Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1) Page 11