“Ladies and gentlemen. I have some unfortunate news, but it’s something that our nation needs to know. It seems that a mere two days before this historic election, the current administration’s levels of ignorance and deception have risen to an even higher level, if that is possible.”
“What’s he talking about?” Vector whispered, leaning in.
“My sources inside the government tell me that the plane that went down a few hours ago outside of San Antonio was, in fact, a government operation carrying an NSA informant. We don’t know the name of the individual, but we do know they were targeted by a hacker who took control of the plane’s systems.”
Haylie felt the world turn around her as the words echoed through her head. It can’t be. It can’t be. She looked over to Vector to see if he had heard the same thing.
“Did he … did he just …”
An NSA informant. From San Antonio. It’s Mary. Oh my God it’s Mary.
Vector just looked back with full eyes, searching for words.
“That’s correct—this was an act of cyber terrorism, and one that the current administration refuses to discuss. Their lies and deceit are putting the entire country at risk.”
Haylie stared into the screen, her eyes glazed over. The tears welled up as she pictured Mary on the plane, falling towards the ground, helpless. Alone.
“But that’s not all. My sources are telling me that they believe this was an act of retaliation against the government by none other than Caesar Black, the man that Senator Hancock and I had identified as a threat to our country just days ago.”
The air was knocked clear out of her as she slumped down on the counter, feeling the cold shock of the stainless steel against her skin. She buried her head in her hands and wished it all away.
>>>>>
I can’t believe she’s gone.
Haylie could make out a pair of sympathetic eyes next to her as she stared out the window, her index finger tracing across the chrome of the counter’s edge. She couldn’t stop thinking about Mary. Mary had known the right thing to say, known how to set Haylie on the right path.
She saved us, back in the hotel. She didn’t have to do that, but she did it anyway.
“I can’t believe that Caesar would…” She knew the words, but couldn’t bring herself to say them out loud. “He wouldn’t do this. He couldn’t.” She felt herself floating through the glass and out into the mist. To another world, away from Frankfurt. Away from here.
“We don’t know it was him,” Vector said. “This could just be Hancock trying to justify his actions. We can’t know for sure.”
She wasted most of her life behind bars. She never got back out to see the world. Tugging at her jacket sleeve, Haylie inched it up to her cheek to wipe away a tear. She never asked for anything. All she did was help.
“It was him,” she said. “They killed his friend, and he’s pushing back. This thing he’s doing, it’s changed him. I never saw anything like this coming.” She stared out into the rain as it fell down onto the faded awning with more force, sending ripples across the fabric. “But why did it have to be her?”
I only knew her for a few days, but she made such a difference. She made me a better person.
“Anger doesn’t always make sense,” Vector said. “I’m sorry, Crash.”
“You were right before,” she said between sniffles. “We need to get off the grid. Get away from all this, try to find some sense of normality. Maybe find a small town somewhere—a place where they don’t read headlines. Fall off the map, stay offline, stay out of sight.”
“I don’t think—”
“Fine, it doesn’t have to be a small town,” she said. “We can go anywhere you want. I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
“What I was trying to say,” Vector said, “is that I don’t think we can run from this. I think you’re the only person in the world who can stop your brother.”
“You want to end up like Mary?” Haylie said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Caesar’s gone crazy. This is too much—and besides, you were right, it’s not our fight. Let him do what he wants. Dig his own grave. Why do you care?”
“You made me care. You have a way of doing that, you know.”
Haylie refused to make eye contact, pulling her hair back and tossing her glasses on the counter with her last ounce of energy. Her pulse raced against her sinking heart. She wanted to go to sleep—go to sleep and drift off.
“You never wanted any of this,” Vector said. “The spotlight, the attention. I know that. Everybody knows that. But it’s here. And you can make a difference.”
Haylie turned back to face her friend—her only friend. She looked into his eyes and saw a man who would always be there. A man who had always been at her side, no matter what she had dragged him through.
“You were miserable back in Austin, being offline,” Vector said. “I’ve never seen you more miserable since we’ve know each other. And that’s the life you want?”
“It’s the only life I can have right now,” she said. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Oh, shut up,” he said. “This is more than what you can do, we’re way beyond that. This is about what you need to do. You know right from wrong. Every time I’ve wanted to take the easy way, you’ve always shown me the right way. I don’t know where you get it from, and it’s really annoying, but that’s you. That’s Haylie. That’s Crash.”
Haylie looked on, speechless.
“Sure, we could run—but we can always run,” Vector said. “We can run tomorrow. Or the next day. But today, we should do what’s right.”
Haylie nodded, wringing her hands around her coffee. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and sat up straight on her barstool.
“We’re not a bad lot, you and I,” Vector said. “I’m sorry Mary’s gone, but maybe this is a chance to show what we’re made of. This time, maybe instead of wondering ‘why me,’ we lean into it. Maybe, just maybe, we’re in the right place at the right time. Maybe this feels impossible because no one else in the world could do what we’re about to do. Nobody except you and me.”
Haylie leaned over, her hands reaching up to touch Vector’s cheeks, and kissed him. A kiss that had been too long in the waiting. She soaked in the moment—even if was only for a few seconds—opening her eyes to see him staring at her in utter disbelief.
“Right,” he said, clearing his throat. “Enough of that for now. We have work to do. Plus, you need to blow your nose, girl.”
She laughed, sitting back up on the stool and tucking her hair back behind each ear, one side at a time. As the blush wore off her face, she pieced together what they needed to do next.
“So now that we’ve got that settled, what the hell are we going to do?” Vector said, looking back out into the rainy haze.
Haylie shrugged. “Well, we can’t track him. We don’t know where he is. We don’t even have the name he’s using.” Suddenly, Mary’s words began to spin into her head, mixing with the caffeine and the adrenaline to form … something.
Don’t limit yourself.
Sometimes the right answer is right in front of you, even if you don’t want to see it.
“Maybe we head back to the hotel,” Vector said. “Find someone that Caesar spoke to there. Maybe he let something slip. But that’s going to be tricky without being discovered, the place is probably crawling with police by now.”
Reconsider your boundaries.
Find someone that Caesar spoke to.
“No,” Haylie said, sitting up and looking over to Vector. “There’s another way. Someone that Caesar spoke to—I know what do to.”
“Right,” Vector said with a raised eyebrow. “So who is it?”
Haylie worked out the steps in her head one more time, nodding to herself. This is the only way.
“This is going to sound crazy,” she said. “But I need your phone.”
>>>>>
Grand Palace Hotel, Rome
Caesar watched the press conference video
feed come to an end, the frame snapping over to black as his jaw dropped.
Mince is alive. An NSA informant was on the plane? How is that possible?
He brought up a browser, checking news sites, looking for any piece of information that he could find. But there was nothing else to go on—no more information.
What did I do? Who was on that plane?
He rested his head in his hands, fingers at his temples, hunched over and rocking gently back and forth as his wooden desk chair creaked under his weight.
A guest account at the NSA.
A hacker working with them.
San Antonio.
Caesar shot up, a look of shock smeared across his face.
No. It can’t be.
He scrambled for his phone, pressing fingers against the screen, fumbling to unlock the screen. He brought up his location tracking app, the one he hadn’t checked in a few days. The one that told him the location of his sister’s ankle bracelet.
The app showed a spinning circle icon as it tried to connect to the hotel’s WiFi. Caesar grasped the phone with both hands, hovering inches from the screen.
It can’t be. It can’t be.
The screen popped to life, displaying a full view of the globe with the bracelet’s ID at the top. A message scrolled across the top on a red banner.
NODE NO LONGER ON NETWORK
He fell to the floor, pulling his forearms over his eyes, straining against his own skull.
I couldn’t have done this. She has to be okay. She has to be.
He screamed at the top of his lungs, a cry like he’d never shouted before, the sounds coming from places inside that he’d never known. His heart pounded, he couldn’t breathe. The room began to spin as he extended an arm to the desk to stop himself from falling. He heard his phone hit the floor as his world collapsed around him.
Caesar pushed his fists against his closed eyelids, with scenes from the past few weeks flying through his mind. Anything but this. Anything.
His mind scrambled for anything else to think of, anyplace to hide. He found himself back to that beautiful morning in Sydney Harbor where everything had changed. The carousel turning and the organ music churning in the background. Children scrambling, laughing, mouths full of cotton candy and eyes full of hope. But now their faces turned—stared him down. Their fingers raised and pointed straight at his chest.
Thoughts of Haylie crawled back in as he wept, pulling his shirt collar in closer to cover himself with any inch of fabric he could find. She had so much left to do. She was a good person—so much better than you. She was all you had left, and now she’s gone. And it’s all because of you.
Haylie’s image in his mind suddenly morphed over to a vision of Char, standing on the rooftop above Skull and Bones. She mouthed words—words he couldn’t hear. He paced forward, trying to calm his crying so he could hear, pushing his ear towards her. Suddenly, the room went quiet and he heard Char’s voice ringing in his mind, like a ghost.
Nothing scares me more than a man with nothing left to lose.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
NSA Texas Cryptologic Center
San Antonio, TX
November 4th, 11:56AM
Ah, wonderful. A new room today. A new room but the same old script, I’m guessing. These guys really need some new material.
Anthony scoured the room, his eyes desperate for fresh input, but all he got was the same, carbon-copy government template for an interrogation room: stark white walls, a single LCD screen attached to the wall, and a single camera pointed down, perched above, looking at him like a hungry hawk.
Lunch today will be lasagna, but this time with broccoli.
It had only been a few days, but Anthony had already managed to figure out the meal pattern—a rotating mix of main courses and sides that was way too easy to reverse engineer. It was the only puzzle he could find inside these walls, the only one worth solving so far.
What’ll it be today? They’re going to walk in here and threaten you. Tell you they just found something—a new development they’ll call it—that’s going to break this case wide open. And that this is your last chance to come clean. And then the good cop will jump in, pull the other one aside, try to hold him back.
He took a deep breath, leaning back into his chair, feeling the hard plastic fight against his spine. He lazily counted the ceiling tiles, revolving his pattern around the one with water stains, two over from the north wall, ignoring the flicker of light from the fluorescents on the other side of the room.
I gave them too much credit. I was hoping for an equal on their side—someone who could actually figure me out. But all I’ve seen is government work at government pay rates. Maybe I’ve been watching too many movies.
He looked down, twisting his wrists, searching for flaws in his cuffs, squinting as the lights magnified across the stainless steel and shot right back into his eyes.
“Miss me?” a voice rang out from the other side of the room.
Anthony kept still as a corpse, his body frozen, as his eyes traveled up and over to the monitor on the wall. The screen had come to life, now showing a feed of a young woman in a dark green field jacket, her hair pulled back, flecks of light reflecting off the lenses of her glasses. A girl who looked very familiar.
Well, it seems like today’s going to be different after all.
“Hello, Crash,” he said with a cocked grin. “I have to say, it’s actually quite nice to see you. Not the same old, same old today, it seems. I thought I had everything figured out in the place but I’ll admit, I did not—did not—expect to see you today.”
“What can I say?” she said. “I missed our long talks. You never write.”
He swallowed back his laughter. Sitting up, he angled himself towards the TV, the chains rattling across the table top.
“Where … in the world … are you?” he said with a sing-song tone. “If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve been a busy girl. They’ve tried everything with me—everything but sending you in here again. That tells me that something about this game has changed. If I had to guess, I’d say you went out for a long walk and never walked back.”
“They were getting in my way,” she said.
“Doesn’t surprise me. The red tape, the manila folders. They can wear away at you, that’s for sure. And I’d guess that you have a bit of a fire under you right now—isn’t that right? I’d guess that you have people after you and you can feel the time running out. Nothing worse than time, hanging over your head like a pile of bricks waiting to fall and crack your skull. Nothing like a ticking clock to cloud a girl’s judgment.”
“How’s my judgment right now? Do you think this is smart—talking to you?”
“I’m not sure yet. You’re taking a risk, that’s obvious. Hacking in here, finding me. Until you tell me why, it’s hard for me to say if you’re on the right track, or just being plain stupid. Let me guess—you checked the room reservation system for my name, and then just—”
“Hacked into the smart TV interface,” she said, nodding. “All the new sets have cameras and audio capability for voice commands.”
“But why?” he asked. “Why light up the NSA’s security system like a Christmas tree when you don’t have to? You’re out of options, aren’t you? Just a few days on your own and you’re already out of ideas.”
“Still waiting on your deal?” she asked with a mocking tone. “The deal that’s never going to come?”
“They’ll figure it out,” he said. “I know they will. They’re not smart, but I can lead them where they need to go. The clock’s ticking for them as well.”
“So that’s your big plan?” Haylie asked. “To trust the fact that you’re smarter than everyone else?”
He sat up, raising an eyebrow, and skimmed the tabletop with his finger, cleaning off a smudge as he hummed quietly.
“I have a plan,” he said. “It’s going to work—it will just take time. Time will eat away at them. That’s the one advantage I hav
e—I have all the time in the world.”
“Smart,” Haylie said, nodding and leaning in to the camera. “You should see their file on you—it’s all about ego and delusions of grandeur. It’s a psychiatrist’s dream in there, and I’m not sure they’re that far off base.”
He rubbed his palms together, feeling skin slide across skin. He winced as he thought back to his sessions as a child, the models, and smell of glue.
“But what they’re missing is that you are better than them,” she continued. “Smarter. You could work on your people skills a bit, sure, but that doesn’t change what you’re capable of.”
Don’t fall for it—she’s trying to get inside your head. She’s the good cop today.
“Kind words coming from such a celebrity,” he said with a laugh. “The smartest girl in the world, or whatever they’re calling you this week. I’m still getting better. I have a lot to learn, but all I ever wanted was a chance. And sometimes—sometimes, it’s way too hard to get a chance in this world.”
“I got you a deal.” Haylie voice rang through the room.
He laughed out loud. “C’mon, Crash. Let’s not get carried away. If you think you still have pull around here, then you’re dumber than I thought. Do I need to spell it out for you? You’re on the run. You snuck out of custody—hell, you’re hacking into the NSA right now—and now you think you can get me a deal?”
“I think we can help each other out,” she said. “I can get into almost any system in the world if I put my mind to it, but I’m pretty sure the information I need right now doesn’t live in a computer. I think it’s right there in your head.”
Anthony rubbed his chin, the handcuffs clinking, cold against his skin.
“You’re waiting on a deal,” she said. “But you wouldn’t be waiting if you didn’t know something. You planned for this. He was sending you instructions, but you must have grabbed something—an insurance policy. A get out of jail free card. If you didn’t have something, you wouldn’t be expecting something.”
Crash Into Pieces (The Haylie Black Series Book 2) Page 26