Page 34 of Hacker Beloved

“This door is tied to the security system. If the alarm is triggered, it will close automatically and lock for forty-eight hours. When we are inside if at any time it does start to close, get out quickly. The vault is air tight and you wouldn’t have enough oxygen for more than five hours.”

I ducked as I crossed through the passageway. Inside, each wall was lined with at least forty safes. The bank manager led me over to the right wall and pointed to my father’s safe.

“Could I have some privacy?”

Mr. Kline nodded. “If you need me, I’ll be with the guard.”

I waited a while to make sure he wasn’t near. “Can you hear me?” My plea was met with silence. My fear was confirmed, the comm didn’t work.

There was nothing I could do to fix it. I turned my attention to the safe and typed in the eight-digit number, but the pin pad flashed red. My fingers wrapped around the scratched piece of paper, and I glanced at the letters again. The word on the paper referenced my sixth birthday, so I typed in the date again, and a loud beep echoed in the vault.

Dad had tried to put hidden tricks in his codes every so often. I stared at the letters and wheeled them to jump off the paper. That’s when I read it backward, and the code referenced the war movie we’d watched, and I had one more idea. It was a long shot, but I pushed the first seven numbers. Dad had told me never to forget that date, because it was the day we created a new language. I’d need to remember when someone wrote about it in history. I took a deep breath before I hit the eighth digit.

The safe made a grinding noise. When it stopped I grabbed the handle and twisted it to the right. A tape recorder and a stack of folders were lying inside. I pulled the recorder and slipped it into my back pocket. Next, I pulled out what everyone wanted, but there wasn’t a place I could set up to review the documents. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so my finger curled around the edge of the folder. When I was about to flip it open, an ear-piercing siren blared. The sound startled me, and the files in my hand scattered to the floor. I dropped to my knees to start picking them up. Out of the corner of my eye, the vault door started to close. My hands shook as I reached for the folders. One slid to the back of the room. I rushed to grab it. When I turned, the door was half closed. I jogged to make it out of the room. When I made it to the midsection, my heel slid, and I latched on to a safe near me to keep my balance.

I straightened myself and sprinted the last couple of feet only to barely fit through the closing gap. Mr. Kline ran down the hall. “We have to get back upstairs. One of the employees accidentally hit the alarm. I’m the only one who can turn it off.”

We both jogged down the hall, he jabbed the elevator button, and the doors opened. The alarm echoed even louder in the small metal enclosure. He was out the door before they even fully opened. In the halls, people screamed to talk over the constant alarm.

“Fuck you scared us, Zayla. Get your ass out of there!” CJ’s voice crackled through my earpiece.

“Can you hear me?”

“Where are you?” Asher yelled.

“In the hall about to come out. Is it safe?”

“Yes,” CJ said. “A teller bumped into another teller. When the woman fell forward, she hit a cart that flew into the panic button.”

I cradled the documents close as I stepped back into the lobby. Asher was next to me immediately with his hand resting on my lower back. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Okay,” I said. A sharp pain went through my pelvic area. For a moment, I thought it was the cramps I experienced during ovulation. I couldn’t hold back a scream as a second and more powerful jolt shot through my lower abdomen. My vision blurred and my legs felt like Jell-O. Asher's face came in and out of focus while his mouth opened and closed. I couldn’t hear him. No matter how hard I tried to keep the folders against my chest, I couldn’t. My arms went numb, and my legs gave out. Asher turned into a mash of colors before everything went dark.

14

CJ

Paolo’s shoulderbumped into my side as he moved closer to the screen. His muscular body wasn’t made for the tight, cramped space of this surveillance van. I’d become accustomed to small spaces and didn’t mind working from the van until this moment. My eyes were locked on the monitor in front of me. Zayla had walked into an elevator. The middle-aged bank manager followed her and a sense of dread washed over me as the doors closed.

“Zaya’s in the elevator,” I informed the rest of the crew.

The comms went silent as I waited for Zayla to say anything. Time ticked by, and nothing came across the channel, not even a word from the bank manager.

“I’m going to spank her ass the second we get her to safety,” Asher growled.

“What’s your position Kat?” Antonio asked.

Kat was supposed to work her way into the room with Zayla. Once they retrieved the documents from the box, Kat planned to climb back up into the ventilation system and bring them out to the van. If Kat couldn't make it to the basement, Zayla would have to walk out with everything.

“I had a perfect entrance into the safety deposit room. When he mentioned the basement, I crawled back to where the ducts split, but nothing goes down to the basement. You're going to need extra hands on the bank floor. I’ll work my way out of here,” Kat said. The entire day I’d monitored the main area of the bank and the back rooms. Every employee that clocked in, I ran through our background check software. What worried me was I hadn’t seen anyone use this elevator. I clicked the mouse and pulled up the floor plans of the bank. For this mission we’d worked off a later set of plans from when the building went through restoration.

What I needed were the original plans, which wouldn’t be hard to find since the building was considered a historical landmark. The New York City Information Services department had a hand-drawn copy. The pencil lines were hard to see against the blue paper. I just clicked on the basement drawing when an ear-piercing alarm blared into my comm link.

I glanced back at the security cameras. Customers and employees weren’t frazzled, but a few held hands over their ears. “What happened? I had the basement drawings up?”

“Check the tape from behind the cashier at the first counter,” Asher yelled.

My finger’s shook as I rewound the video and watched the incident play out. Paolo leaned in closer, the scent of his cigarette filled my nostrils.

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