6

Once Scott had all the details, putting the job together wasn’t that hard. Scott was among the best in the world at removing things from houses without their owners knowing. Luis and Kurt and Dave were also good. As a team, they thought of themselves as the Avengers of burglars. So they figured out a plan, got their roles sorted out, and within a couple of days they were good to go. Dave was driving, Luis was handling communications, and Scott would be going into the millionaire’s house after the safe.

Kurt, as usual, was glued to his laptop, checking on the team’s preparations. “Landlines cut, cell signals jammed. No one will be making for distress call tonight,” he said.

“All check,” Scott said into the earbuds they were all using. Luis, Kurt, and Dave answered. They were all looped in.

“If the job goes bad, you know I got your back, right?” Luis said to Scott once the van was in position on the street outside the millionaire’s house. It was on a street of fancy houses on the hill near San Francisco’s famous Coit Tower.

“Don’t worry, it’s not gonna happen,” Scott said. He hopped out of the van and moved quickly toward the house.

“I love it when he gets cocky,” Luis said.

Scott vaulted the wall and climbed the outside of the house to a second-floor balcony. He attached an alarm bypass to the house’s power panel. “Alarm is dead,” Scott whispered through the comm channel. Ten seconds later he was inside. “All right, I’m moving through the house.” He found a set of keys on a table inside the front door and took them downstairs. The safe was supposed to be in the basement.

The keys got him through the first door, but inside was another. And this one didn’t just have a mechanical lock. “There’s a fingerprint lock on the door.”

“He’s got a what?” Luis said. “Ernesto didn’t tell me nothing about that. Aw, man, are we done?”

“Not necessarily,” Scott said.

People left fingerprints all over their houses. Often you could lift one if you had the right stuff. A piece of clear tape to get it off a good surface, like a doorknob; then some glue to pour over the lifted print; then a little heat to make the glue set and keep the print firm for pressing against the scanner. After five minutes in the house’s kitchen, Scott had a rubbery circle of glue with a perfect print in the middle of it. He skipped back down the stairs and took a deep breath before pressing the print on the scanner.

It beeped and the light on the panel turned green. Scott opened the door. “I’m in.”

“No alarms have been triggered,” Kurt said. He was monitoring every electronic item in the house, courtesy of some custom surveillance gear he had built on Luis’s kitchen table. “He’s in like the Flynn.”

“Oh, man,” Scott said when he saw the safe.

“What is it?” Luis sounded nervous.

“Well, they weren’t kidding. This safe is serious.”

“How serious we talkin’, Scotty?”

“It’s a Carbondale. It’s from 1910. Made from the same steel as the Titanic .”

“Wow,” Luis said. “Can you crack it?”

“Well, here’s the thing. It doesn’t do so well in the cold. Remember what that iceberg did?”

“Yeah, man,” Luis said. “It killed DiCaprio.” He was referring to the movie, not actual history, but Scott let it go.

“Killed everybody,” Dave added.

“Man, not kill the old lady,” Kurt pointed out. “She still throw the jewel into the oceans.”

Improvising again, Scott dug around in his bag. Safecrackers never went anywhere without a drill and a bottle of liquid nitrogen. Those two things could get you into 99 percent of the safes ever made. He drilled a small hole into the housing of the safe’s main tumbler. Then he found a gallon jug of water and a funnel elsewhere in the basement. He poured the water in and then sprayed a good helping of liquid nitrogen in after it. Hiding around the corner behind an air mattress he had found on a nearby shelf, he waited, peeking at the safe every once in a while. Ice was forming on the outside of its door.

“What’re you doing?” Luis asked.

“I poured water in the locking mechanism and froze it with nitrogen,” Scott explained. “Ice expands, metal doesn’t.”

A minute later, Luis asked, “What are you doing now?”

“Waiting.” Groaning noises came from inside the safe. “Waiting...”

A bolt popped out of the safe and shot across the basement into the air mattress. In the next few seconds, ten or twelve others followed...and then the safe door tipped forward and crashed to the floor. “Nice,” Scott said. Just like he’d planned it. He might not be very good at real life, but he was very good at cracking safes.

He hopped over the fallen door and into the safe, which was the size of a walk-in closet. It was lined with shelves and a small table stood against its back wall. “What is it? Cash? Jewels?”

“There’s nothing here,” Scott said. Other than a couple of jars on the shelves and a strange-looking leather suit and helmet on the table... Who would want any of this stuff ? he wondered.

“What’d you say?” Luis sounded incredulous.

“It’s a suit.”

“What?”

Scott picked up the helmet. It had little antennae on it but otherwise looked just like a custom motorcycle helmet. The suit was silver and red and covered in dust. “It’s an old motorcycle suit,” he said, disgusted.

“There’s no cash, no jewelry, nothing?”

“No.” He slammed the helmet back down. “It’s a bust.”

“I’m really sorry, Scotty,” Luis said. “I know you needed a score.”

What the heck, he thought. He took the suit and helmet, just so he hadn’t come for nothing.