“You’re getting all of that just by looking at it?” Jesse whispered.
“Yes. If I try to drill, it’ll lock me out. Shit.” I took a deep breath and pulled my hair off my face. “There’re four wheels, too. Four numbers in the combination.”
“How many possible combina—?” Roux started to ask.
“A hundred million,” I said.
Jesse muttered something unrepeatable under his breath.
“I’ve opened this kind of safe a few times before just in practice, but not under pressure. Well, here goes nothing.”
I started with the most basic combinations first, the ones that the manufacturer sets. I knew Colton would have changed them, but it was always the first thing I tried. 50-25-50-25. 10-20-30-40. 20-40-60-80. None of them worked.
Jesse and Roux were absolutely silent as I started to turn the knob, waiting to feel the clicks against my fingertips. Angelo had trained me for this, putting toothpicks, feathers, Post-it notes on the gears of my practice combination locks, letting me find the tiniest whisper of a click.
“What—?” Jesse started to say.
“Ssshh,” I hissed at him. “I need to hear and feel everything right now.”
The first number clicked in: thirty-eight. I could feel the wheel click into place, just a whisper of a sensation that my fingertips had been trained to find. “One down,” I whispered. “Three more to go.”
Two minutes later, I had the second number. “Twenty-six,” I said. “Thirty-eight, twenty-six.”
“You’re doing great,” Roux said. I could feel their collective nervous energy washing over me like waves, which only powered me forward. My legs were shaking from squatting in front of the safe, but I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want anything to ruin my zone.
“Just so you know,” Jesse whispered, “this is a huge turn-on right now.”
“Well, I try.” I spun the lock, feeling again and again for the third click. I used to get tired at this point, but Angelo never let me quit. All the clicks started to feel the same and I couldn’t tell if it was an important number or just a nerve twitch after twisting the dial nonstop for so long. “When it matters,” Angelo used to say, “you can’t quit.”
Fifty-nine.
“Shit, do you hear that?” Jesse whispered. “There’s footsteps.”
Roux and I both looked up at him and the three of us listened. There were footsteps, heavy ones, like a man’s shoes. “It might be a neighbor,” Roux said.
“It’s not a neighbor,” I told her. “He’s here.” I’ll never know how I knew that the mole was coming back to his burrow. I just did. It was instinctual, the way a deer senses a hunter. I turned back to the lock, desperate for that fourth number.
“He’s here?” Roux gasped. “Are we going to die?”
“Not today,” I told her. “Just get ready to run.” I was close, I could tell, so close to feeling that fourth click. “Come on,” I whispered. “Where are you?”
“Maggie.” Jesse’s breathing was ragged. “He could have a gun.”
Roux let out a whimper. “Maggie,” she whispered.
A key was starting to turn in the front door.
Eighty-two.
The safe popped open and I let out a breath as I pried open the door. It looked just as I had remembered it, an old banker’s safe with several compartments and a locked drawer. The files were lying on the bottom and I grabbed one and opened it up. My picture smiled back up at me.
I took all of them, leaping to my feet and shoving everything in my duffel bag, leaving the drill and scope behind. “Run,” I said to Jesse and Roux, and the three of us turned and bolted out of the bedroom.
A man was standing in the foyer, tall and muscular and younger than I had imagined him being, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on his face when he saw the three of us come dashing down the hall and past him toward the front door. He was so surprised that he just gaped at first, but then he yelled “Maggie!” and the voice hit me like icy water.
I was right. It was Colton Hooper.
Roux flew past him, and he grabbed her wrist, wrenching her backward.
“Roux!” I screamed. What had I been thinking, involving her and Jesse? They weren’t professionals, they weren’t trained for any of this, they were completely innocent and—
“Let go of me!” Roux yelled, and even though she was half Colton’s size, she raised her other arm and brought the heel of her hand down directly on the bridge of his nose.
The pop was loud, and he cried out and staggered back as blood started to gush down his face. His grip on Roux lost, she turned and ran out the front door. “Come on!” she cried. Colton hadn’t lost his footing, though, and started to follow us as we raced down the hall.
“No elevators!” I cried. “Stairs, stairs, stairs!” We shoved the door open and started dashing down, two at a time, Jesse leading the way. “Roux, you okay?” he yelled as we flew past the tenth floor.
“I’m amazing!” she yelled.
She certainly was.
He clattered above us, going down the spiral with only a floor or so to spare between us, and at one point I almost lost my footing, but Jesse righted me and we made it out into the lobby, shoving through the doors and out onto the sidewalk. I didn’t know where I was going, but I ran north, Jesse and Roux close on my heels, and Colton close on theirs. “Maggie!” I heard him scream at one point, his voice garbled from pain and blood, and hearing him say my name only made me run faster.