KC felt her heart twist, just a little, at Kris’s philosophy. Love or fear. Simple.
“I’m in.”
“Ta! There’s someone already holding out her hand for my comm link thing. See you soon, love.”
“Four and a half minutes left. Let me have a look at what we’ve got.” Yardley’s voice had quieted. It made KC wonder if what Kris said about love and fear hit her, too.
KC approached the safe behind the panel that housed the computer. Its depth accounted for the pony wall. Its face was about twenty-four inches square. She was surprised to see a dial fit over another dial on its face. The first was a circle of tiny brass letters, while the bigger dial had numbers, one to ninety-nine.
Her insides went to buzzing, prickling static, and she felt a bead of sweat make its way to the small of her back. She’d been certain she’d be dealing with a digital lock of some kind. So had the team.
She had no hope of cracking a safe like this, absolutely not in a few minutes.
“No worries,” Yardley whispered, just like she did, sleepy and kind, when KC would wake up in the middle of the night from a bad dream. KC could almost imagine Yardley’s arm coming around her waist, gathering her close to her body. “I love these little puzzles. No one knows how to crack a good safe anymore. I used to check out the books from the library at Langley and mess around with that stuff they archive in the basement. Did you know safecrackers used to be called ‘yeggmen’?”
KC had not. But she felt a little calmer.
“There’s an international competition,” Yardley said. “Of the yeggmen. The same sonofabitch wins it every year, pardon my language. I have fantasized about entering. I would, and kick him off his throne, if I didn’t have to keep up my cover. Okay. This safe is French. Here’s where this is going to get strange. Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
“I want you to put the pad of your index finger on the numbered dial, the larger one. But very, very gently. Just enough to hold it in place. Then, with your other hand, spin the dial with the letters one full revolution, and try to mark the five places you feel something like a ball bearing rolling from one seat to another.”
Yardley’s voice had gentled, pulling in all the familiar vowels and cadence of North Carolina. It steadied KC the same way that her flirting over the comm link did—which Yardley must know, or she wouldn’t be doing it. KC placed her finger and started moving the dial. “Oh. I felt the first one.”
“There you go. What was it?”
“E.”
“That’s it. That’s all you do. Let me know what letters.”
KC moved the dial slowly, time losing meaning. “V. O. N. D. Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Devon. Mercy. Move the dial to each letter in order after you reset it to Z.”
KC did, and then, to her surprise, the lettered dial popped forward.
“So cool,” Yardley said. “Take off that dial. Now’s the hard part. You’re going to have to take out your comm link.”
“What?”
KC heard Atlas and Gramercy say it at the same time she did.
“I need her to stick it on the middle of the dial. It’s the only way I can hear what I need to in order to crack it. Atlas, Gramercy, buy me whatever time you can with tech or with a distraction, but this is it. Our team’s already determined what’s in the safe.”
“They have?” KC’s voice cracked.
“Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to tell you in case it messed up your game, but we’re inches away from, you know, mission complete. But I’m not even a little worried. It’s you. You can do anything. So you’ll have to pull out the comm and place it right in the middle of the dial. I’ll send you over your visual link what numbers to set the dial to. There will be five. Ready?”
KC took a deep breath. “Ready. Audio comm down.” She pulled out the lockpicks again and used the slimmest one to capture the comm, deep in her ear, the size of a screw in a pair of eyeglasses. The world of sound suddenly pressed in on her—the wind off the water kicking up settling noises from the carriage house, her breath, the creak of her leather boots. She pushed the comm into a little space in the middle of the dial and started turning it slowly.
The visual from Yardley appeared as a transparent blue box in her mid-vision. She made a full revolution of the dial, holding her breath, before the combination came up.
72, 3, 16, 35, 8.KC entered the numbers in.
She should’ve put the comm back in her ear right away.
She should’ve been watching her back.
