Crossover Read Online Free PDF Page A

than impressed. But hey, it's your
funeral.'
    'Were
you even listening? I said it was your funeral.'
    'Figure of speech.'
Idly, Ash wondered if there would be any other mourners to upset.
Her father, her school librarian and Hammond Buckland would
probably die before she did. Benjamin might be the only
attendee.
    'Anyway, shut up,' she
said. 'I'm trying to concentrate.'
    She scanned the variety
of black instrument cases, some hard, some soft, scattered around
the room like the shadows of the instruments they were designed to
carry. They were shaped like guitars, double basses, tubas,
xylophones – and violins.
    It didn't take her long
to spot the case she was looking for. She had studied it at length
the last time she slipped backstage at one of Tognetti's
performances.
    'Found it,' she told
Benjamin.
    'Work fast. Six minutes
until he comes back.'
    Tognetti's violin was
two centuries old and worth $11 million. It was never separated
from him by more than a metre – when he boarded a plane, he
wouldn't even put it in the overhead locker, and kept it on his lap
instead.
    But whenever he was on
stage, he was more than a metre away from his case.
    Ash opened the case and
tipped some handwritten sheet music and a spare block of rosin onto
the floor. Then she took it over to the giant nylon bag which had
held her kick drum.
    When she unzipped the
bag, she found a steel box, roughly forty centimetres tall with a
lid which was about eighty centimetres square. A violin case,
exactly like Tognetti's, was fixed to the top of it at a slight
angle.
    She put the real violin
case into her bag and closed it. Then she placed the box on the
floor where the real case had been. She opened the fake case on
top, put the rosin and sheet music inside, and closed it again.
    She stepped back to
examine her handiwork. When Tognetti entered the green room, he
would see that someone had placed his violin case on top of a box.
He would open it, see his rosin and sheet music, and put the $11
million dollar violin inside. Then he would close the lid and lock
the case.
    When he engaged the
lock, the bottom of the fake case would open, dropping the violin
through the hole Benjamin had cut into the lid of the steel box.
When he picked up the fake case, it would detach itself from the
box, closing both the hole in the box and the underside of the
case. Then Tognetti would leave, carrying the weighted but empty
case under his arm, and leaving the expensive violin in Benjamin's
box where Ash could later fetch it.
    There were several ways
the plan could go wrong. The box was padded, so Tognetti was
unlikely to hear the violin falling, but he might hear the
mechanism which opened the bottom of the case. Or he could attempt
to move the fake case before he opened it. Or he could decide that
he wanted his sheet music after all, and open the case to find that
the violin was gone.
    But this was the best
plan Ash had been able to come up with. And Benjamin's box
functioned so beautifully that she was feeling very confident.
    'Hey Ash,' Benjamin
said. 'If something really bad happened, and there was nothing you
could do about it, would you want to know?'
    'Yes,' Ash said
immediately. 'Why?'
    'Really?' Benjamin
sounded surprised. 'I wouldn't. Ignorance is bliss, I say.'
    'What's happened? Tell
me.'
    'You know that party at
the building next door? It turns out to be the State Police
Christmas Party. Half the cops in the city are within two hundred
metres of you right now.'
    Ash's stomach lurched.
'Well,' she said. 'Nothing we can do about that.'
    'Exactly. That's why I
thought you might not want to know.'
    'Doesn't matter,' Ash
said. 'I'm all done here.'
    She turned to walk
toward the green room door–
    And bumped into
somebody.
    Ash squeaked and
stumbled backwards, dropping the phone. It felt like she'd hit a
stone wall. The boy – a pale, dark-haired youth of about sixteen –
didn't react to the impact.
    'Sorry!' Ash stammered,
wondering how he'd gotten so close