Crash Alive (The Haylie Black Series Book 1)

by Christopher Kerns

  “Josh Wood, here for my nine o’clock appointment,” the man said as Haylie cracked the door open. He wore jeans, an out-of-style sweater, and an eager expression plastered to his face. “I’m right on time!”

  He was, in fact, two minutes early, but Haylie didn’t bother to correct him. “Sure, of course. Welcome,” Haylie said, not knowing the correct way to greet someone at a billionaire’s private museum, if there was a proper way at all. “Come on in.”

  As he waited for Haylie to open the door, the visitor bobbed up and down on his toes; a teakettle of excitement. He peered past her shoulders and into the waiting main Reading Room with hurried breath.

  “You know … these appointments are not easy to get. We’ve been talking, that is, a group of us that talk all about the Morgan Library on our graduate studies online forum, about a better system that might allow you to get more people—qualified people, of course—in the room on any given day. It’s–”

  Haylie held up her hand signaling that he should stop talking, enjoying her new sense of power as the guardian to the gate. She was willing to play the part of a helpful clerk, but only up to a point.

  As she turned back to face her desk, Haylie’s face dropped. She felt her knees lose their hold and struggled to regain her breath. She held out her palm to the wall—it was now the only thing keeping her from falling onto the floor.

  Across the room she saw William behind her desk, his eyes firmly locked on her search results. He stood with arms crossed, a crooked smile growing across his face, motionless.

  Her pulse raced as she felt the panic crawl up her spine. How could I have been so stupid?

  “Well, good morning, Josh,” William said, his eyes locked on Haylie. “Welcome to the Morgan Library.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Titanhurst - London

  March 10th, 3:02PM

  The engineering pit scurried with activity as the team scrambled to identify the man entering the Reading Room reception area.

  “Okay, the guy at the door just said his name. Josh … Wood,” Sean shouted out as he ran a series of searches across various data sources.

  “What do we know about him?” Caesar said, rolling over from his workstation.

  “Google searches are coming up with a good amount of information. He’s a graduate student at Columbia, doing his dissertation on The Canterbury Tales. He has a blog about it and everything,” an engineer recited from the research summary. “He’s single—shocker, there—and Instagram geolocation shows that he was in London a few months ago.”

  That got Caesar’s attention. “Tell me more about why he was here.”

  “He did a study program at Westminster Abbey, where Chaucer spent a good amount of time back in the day,” the engineer reported back. “It seems legit. Not seeing anything else on him that would point to any advanced computer knowledge or programming experience. He hasn’t even locked down the privacy settings on social media, so he’s not trying to hide anything, or even worse, he doesn’t know how to.”

  “Okay,” Caesar said. “He’s still a researcher, which could fit the profile of someone trying to solve the Raven puzzle. I want to keep a close eye on him.”

  Sean laughed. “Everyone coming in the library is going to be a researcher, dude. That’s what it’s there for.”

  > > > > >

  Morgan Library Reading Room - NYC

  March 10th, 10:05AM

  Haylie lifted one foot slowly towards the direction of her desk, but William didn’t flinch. Checking quickly back at the exit, Haylie knew she wouldn’t beat him in a footrace.

  Stick with the plan. You’re just a temp … just a temp working the desk.

  Haylie reached across William’s shoulder and snatched the clipboard from the wall. She ran her finger down the schedule, reading names without giving him as much as a second glance.

  “Josh Wood … here you are.” She scribbled her initials next to his name, trying her best to keep her hand from visibly shaking. “Let me walk you through–”

  “Good morning,” Ms. Lindon interrupted, standing with her arms stretched across both sides of the Reading Room entrance, excited to see her first researcher of the day. “Let’s get you started, shall we? William, won’t you be a dear and help this gentleman find the materials he’s interested in?”

  William’s face fought a scowl as he looked over to Haylie, then back down to her screen. A rush of relief hit Haylie as she smirked back in his direction. Yes, William, won’t you please help the man?

  “Yes, of course,” William said, stone-faced. “Mr. Wood, what are you looking for in the Reading Room this morning?”

  “Oh, this is exciting,” Josh said. “I’m doing my dissertation on The Canterbury Tales, and the original volume here in the Morgan is the last piece of the puzzle I need to fully document a good amount of the artwork. This is a very big day!”

  William nodded with more than a hint of apathy. “Okay. Canterbury….” William typed as he spoke, with Josh leaning over the desk to watch his query.

  “That’s just one ‘R’ at the end there,” Josh said, beaming and gazing into the Reading Room with awe.

  “Right, one ‘R.’ Of course,” William repeated back, writing the volume’s location down on a slip of paper.

  As Josh and William walked into the Reading Room, Ms. Lindon stopped their progress with an arm across the doorway and an audible “Tsk-tsk.”

  “Don’t forget, gentlemen,” she said. “No phones, no laptops, no cameras allowed. Please place them in these bins here. I’ll lock them up nice and safe and you’ll get them back when you exit the room.” She gestured over to a small side table, which held two sliding cabinet drawers in its base.

  William stared Haylie down as he tossed his phone into the bin with a clunk. She gave him a cheap smile in return. Don’t worry, William—we’ll keep them nice and safe. As the men made their way into the Reading Room, Haylie returned to her assigned desk. Ms. Lindon, speeding past with a fresh stack of folders, exited the room without giving Haylie a second look.

  Haylie turned back to her search results, scanning faster now, paging down as her eyes scoured each entry for notes from the Zodiac Club. She scrambled for paper as a series of entries finally appeared:

  -> Zodiac Club of New York, Meeting Minutes, December 1905

  -> Zodiac Club of New York, Meeting Notes, June, 1911

  -> Zodiac Club of New York, Meeting Notes and Menu, December, 1915

  “’Find Brother Libra’s last meal,’” Haylie whispered, clicking on the final Zodiac listing. “This must be it.” The listing’s detail view showed her nothing more than a location number: 1024.544387. She penciled the number onto a scrap of paper, cleared her screen of search results with a few quick clicks, and grabbed her backpack.

  Hustling out into the hallway, Haylie kept her head low as she passed under each security camera. She glided down the stairs and sped into the atrium, fighting her way through the initial trickle of visitors beginning to drift past the entrance. Making her way towards the old library, she eyed the uniformed security guards as she passed; each one slowly settling into their spot for the morning.

  She reached the far corner of the atrium, pulling at the cold steel handle of the library’s door with both hands. It gave way, sweeping open with slow, heavy movement. She sucked in the stale air as she jogged into the Rotunda and finally back into the private library. She walked to one side of the first floor’s bookcases, checking the numbers labeling each section.

  298.453778

  298.453867

  Nothing on that side was even close. She searched the opposite wall, kneeling in front of the center bookcase, running her fingers across the numbers.

  412.435879

  412.437890

  She crinkled the paper in her hand, double-checking the number she was looking for. I need to be in the 1000 section. She looked up at the two levels of scaffolding hanging around the edge of each wall, holding thousands of volumes of bo
oks behind ornate metal gates.

  It must be up there.

  Faint chatter drifted down the hallway, followed by the distant boom of a door slamming shut. Checking around frantically for any hint of how to access the upper levels, she pushed the panic out of her mind as best she could.

  Focus on the problem. Think. Think. Think.

  > > > > >

  W 30th St and 5th Ave - NYC

  March 10th, 10:12AM

  Walter stared helplessly out of the back window to see only a solid block of traffic at a standstill; they hadn’t moved an inch in the past two minutes. Horns honked, engines idled.

  “We need to get moving—why is this taking so damn long?” Benjamin yelled.

  “We can still make it,” Walter said.

  Benjamin unbuckled his seatbelt and got in his brother’s face. “You don’t get it, Walter. If she finds the next clue and takes off, we’re done. Done. We need to be there now!”

  Checking out the window to read the nearest street sign, Walter did some quick math. “We’re six blocks away. We can go on foot from here.” He opened the door, and both men quickly slid across the leather seats and on to the pavement of West 30th St.

  They jogged past a few taxis, making their way onto the crowded sidewalk. Pushing through a sea of shoulders and elbows—past tourists staring up at skyscrapers and young mothers holding their children’s hands—Benjamin and Walter Sterling turned towards Madison Avenue.

  They began to run.

  > > > > >

  Morgan Library Reading Room - NYC

  March 10th, 10:14AM

  William approached the Reading Room table holding an opaque plastic bin firmly in his hands. Placing the container on the table, he cracked the lid open to reveal a thick, leather-bound volume sitting on a bed of soft paper. Josh squealed in delight.

  “The original 15th-Century manuscript,” Josh beamed, standing from his chair to gain a bird’s-eye view. “It’s beautiful, it’s wonderful.”

  William rolled his eyes as he reached into the bin.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold it. Don’t move,” Ms. Lindon yelled, waving her arms at William. “Gloves. You both need gloves.”

  William nodded apologetically as she snapped her fingers in his face.

  “You need to pay better attention, William,” she said, pointing down at the book. “This is important.”

  A grimace crept across his face as he slid the gloves onto his hands, snugging down one finger at a time.

  > > > > >

  Morgan Private Library - NYC

  March 10th, 10:15AM

  Haylie’s pulse raced as she searched the library’s stacks. There weren’t any doors anywhere, just lines and lines of books locked behind a rolling lattice of metal, like a protective beehive keeping the volumes securely in place.

  There has to be a door in here somewhere—a way to get upstairs. You’re missing something. Think. Pacing back by the library’s entrance, she stopped in her tracks.

  That noise I heard when I was in here before … the thud … what was that?

  Haylie remembered the noise sounding like a stack of books hitting a hardwood floor, but she hadn’t seen anything out of place in the pristine room. It sounded almost like….

  Turning, she backtracked her last few steps, searching the wall and bookshelves for any clues. She followed the polished wood baseboards into the corner where two vertical lines broke the surface of the wood. She knelt down, pressing her hand against one of the edges, and felt a cold rush of air.

  No way.

  Footsteps and conversation echoed down the hallway as Haylie heard the door to the Rotunda slam again. She stood and pressed her hands onto the bookshelf above the carved edges. She pushed with all her might, digging her heels into the carpet; the wall resisted at first, but finally gave way behind her force.

  She tumbled through the hidden doorway and onto the floor of a grimy back room, the bookshelf quickly swinging shut behind her. Dusting herself off, she found herself at the base of a set of worn stairs, leading straight up. She caught her breath and began to climb with soft footsteps.

  At the top of the staircase, Haylie found a much-needed map affixed to the wall of the second floor landing. Checking the index, she finally saw the location she had been searching for.

  The 1000 range is on the upper deck, back in the Reading Room. The librarian said something about a doorway up here.

  She jogged down the hall and used her keycard on the door marked ‘Reading Room, Second Level.’ As the door snapped open with an electronic pop, Haylie peeked through the crack.

  She had made it back to the Reading Room, but now found herself on the landing that hung above the main floor. She was looking down from the narrow walkway that snaked around the edge of each wall and loomed over the tables below. The deck was only about four or five feet wide, anchored with a thin sheet of polished glass resting on a short wall of wood. Down in the center of the room and only about twenty feet away, she could see Josh and William sitting next to each other with their backs to her, inspecting The Canterbury Tales.

  Ok, you can do this … you can totally do this. No problemo, right?

  Haylie dropped to her knees, dragging herself across the floor and over the threshold, having to release her backpack from the door’s edge before making it clear through. She winced as she carefully released the door’s weight, easing it closed with a quiet, precise click.

  She pressed into the corner where the floor met the wood-paneled wall and crawled, arm over arm, staying low and hopefully hidden from the two men below. Slinking forward for what seemed like an hour, she looked up to realize that she had only made it halfway down the platform. She turned over on her back, looking up at the shelves above to gauge her progress, and saw ‘750.’

  Keep going.

  When she reached the shelf labeled ‘1000,’ she stopped and rolled over to sit with her backpack pinned against the wall, staring up at the books and bins towering above her. The framework of elegant metalwork encased a series of thick volumes and white plastic bins.

  She dug into her jacket pocket and retrieved the key, arranging it in her hand to fit the lock from her awkward angle. She slowly crept her hand up, scraping the metal cage lightly, tracing across the surface to help the key find its home. The key clicked into place and Haylie whispered a quick “Please” under her breath, turning her wrist clockwise. The bolt moved with it, and Haylie felt the door crack open against her arm.

  She rested back against the wall to make way for the swinging cage door, searching the shelves above for her number. She saw the container labeled ‘1024.544387’ eight bins up from the floor. Perched five long feet above her, the bin sat at the top of the stack.

  Oh super, it’s the top one. Of course it is.

  She took a deep breath, slowly reaching up as high as her arm would stretch while staying low and out of sight.

  > > > > >

  Titanhurst - London

  March 10th, 3:18PM

  Pouring new coffee into old, Caesar contemplated adding sugar and cream this time, but passed. Stirring his new brackish mix of lukewarm caffeine, he heard a shout from the other side of the room.

  “We’ve got a cage opening on the second level!” shouted an engineer, shifting the video surveillance camera of the Reading Room to the big screen. He stood and pointed to the black and white feed of a single cage door swinging, but without any hint of who or what might be opening it.

  Engineers throughout the room shouted and pointed at the screen as they saw a single hand crawl up the wall, slowly snaking its way up towards the top bin.

  “Get a message to Blue! Text him, call him, anything! This is happening!” Caesar shouted down to the team. “How did this guy get in?”

  > > > > >

  Vector’s Apartment - London

  March 10th, 3:19PM

  As Vector watched the cage slowly crack open, he shook his head in disbelief.

  “She did it,” he whispered. “Rig
ht, time to go dark.”

  Vector brought up the interface for the Morgan Library security system, quickly sending signals to the eight primary video cameras in and around the Reading Room to perform a full reboot. Each camera’s system began the restart process, which would leave every lens dark and blind until completing its full startup sequence.

  “You’ve ninety seconds, Crash,” Vector said. “Go get it.”

  > > > > >

  Titanhurst - London

  March 10th, 3:19PM

  The engineering pit erupted into chaos as the video feeds died out, each flickering to a flat black screen, one by one. The views of the Reading Room displayed only the status indicator ‘offline: rebooting.’ Caesar jumped down into the center of the pit and faced the team.

  “What happened? The other feeds are active; what happened to the primary cameras?” Caesar screamed.

  “We’re not sure … they’re all restarting,” Sean yelled, frantically switching between video feeds. “It’ll be a few minutes before we get them back.”

  “This guy must have hacked into the security system,” Caesar said. “Send in the backup agents. I don’t know how this guy got in, but he’s not getting out.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Morgan Library - NYC

  March 10th, 10:20AM

  The Sterling brothers ran at full speed around the wrought-iron fence framing the outside of the Morgan Library, the frantic pounding of their shoes echoing off the sidewalk. Their breath turned to steam as they slowed their pace to a hurried walk in front of the entrance.