NICK SAT IN his Audi, the Sig-Sauer in his hand, checking the safety and slamming in the clip before tucking it in his waistband at the small of his back. He had driven through the bustling town of Byram Hills, in the midst of its late-morning summer routine-mothers with strollers heading for an early lunch at the Country Kitchen; day laborers getting the first pie of the day from Broadway Pizza; landscapers filling their trucks with foliage at Mariani’s Garden Market; real estate brokers sipping coffee outside their offices while chatting about their latest listings as fathers ran into the local bank to grab cash for the long weekend at the shore.
Intersecting lives, hand waves and kisses, smiles and hugs, a town linked by its commonality of existence-lives that would be changed forever in less than one hour.
Nick turned into the Byram Hills Police Department. After all of his ideas, all of his brainstorming, he went back to the simplest of solutions. Nick wasn’t some superhero, he had never been in the military, and he had no illusions that he was some skilled crime fighter. He couldn’t arrive on the scene, guns blazing, killing everyone involved in the theft and think he could succeed, let alone live-and who knew the consequences? He was simply a man trying to save his wife.
And he realized there was one person he could not only trust but who had the skill and authority, he had seen his allegiance to the law when the man stood up to his corrupt cousin, his character in the face of disaster at the crash site, he had seen his sense of right and wrong. Nick felt it in his gut that he could trust this man to do the right thing.
SAM DREYFUS EXTENDED the small tripod legs and placed the six-inch microlaser firmly in the ground, aiming it straight at the lens of the east camera, which overlooked the parking lot, its beam filling the camera’s image with spectral noise. While it wouldn’t break the camera, it would interfere with its imaging capability, disabling it for fifteen minutes, at which point an alarm would sound, indicating a disturbance in the system that required investigation.
He repeated the process on both the west and north cameras, throwing a virtual blanket over any occurrence in the parking lot for the next quarter hour. He pulled the radio from his pocket and thumbed the talk button three times.
Sam Dreyfus was painfully thin but for a small beer gut that hung over his crocodile belt. He was dressed in a pair of tan chinos and a white oxford shirt, the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. His matching Crocs loafers completed an ensemble not worn by most thieves. His brown hair was parted to the side and had yet to see the onset of gray, while his eyes were bloodshot and tired, a fact currently hidden behind a pair of dark Ray-Ban sunglasses.
At forty-nine, Sam felt at once young and yet painfully old. Living life without a care, running off and doing as he pleased had been his habit, had been his reputation since he was a teenager, but it was a reputation in conflict with how he felt.
The shadow cast by his brother, Paul, was enormous. Most people forgot Sam’s name, referring to him only as Paul’s brother. He would grow particularly angry when people said, “Oh, I didn’t know the Dreyfuses had two sons.”
From a young age, Sam didn’t measure up-in their parents’ eyes or in those of the public-so he chose to run in the opposite direction of his brother.
Sam slipped in with a bad crowd and found drugs and alcohol, fighting and mischief to be more his speed. He enjoyed the high, the rebellious pleasure of the moment.
At the age of seventeen, Sam ran off to Canada, not so much because he was afraid of going to war but because he knew it would piss off his father. He became the proverbial black sheep, something that, at last, gave him his own identity.
Over the years, he dabbled in various business ventures-real estate, finance, marketing-always looking to be the man at the top but never lasting more than a year at the bottom. He knew he was smart, he was just never given a chance.
But despite his failings, Paul had always looked out for him. He gave him a job when he needed it. Kept him on the payroll in perpetuity. Even gave him a piece of the company so he had something to leave his kids. Paul never spoke a word about his mistakes. Despite the vitriol and disappointment from his father, Paul had never passed judgment on him.
And then, about a year ago, Sam had faced reality. Sam’s house, Sam’s life existed by the sheer grace of his brother. He finally admitted to himself what he had known all along: He was nothing more than a charity case. Paul had felt sorry for him and had looked out for him as a result of pity.
And it angered Sam, it enraged him, it focused him.
He called Paul, told him he wanted to work, truly work, and took a real job at his brother’s company. He showed up every day, worked a full eight hours, pulled in business, and for once actually accomplished something. He found himself tired, more tired than he had ever been, but it came with a sense of accomplishment.
And his drive continued for over six months, at which point Paul rewarded him. And this time, it was not out of pity but out of gratitude, out of pride for his accomplishments. Sam became more integrated in the company, his brother looking at him as a full partner, providing him with full access to the security company’s jobs, technologies, and strategies.
It was on a Wednesday evening in January, in the dark days of winter. Alone in his office after seven, he was educating himself, reading through the secure files, when he came upon the name of Shamus Hennicot, a name renowned for its wealth and generosity, a man whose worth was well into the billions of dollars.
Paul handled the account personally and not just on a relationship, transactional basis. He actually did the installation, designing the high-tech security system himself, something he usually left to underlings. And that piqued Sam’s curiosity. He dug deeper into Paul’s files, learning of the unique access systems, alarms, and surveillance designs that had created a vaultlike environment for Hennicot’s prized art collection.
With an even more focused eye, Sam uncovered the inventory of Hennicot’s minimuseum. Antique weapons, jewels, paintings, sculptures, with appraised values noted for each item, from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of millions. Paul had designed display cases for the antique weapons, humidity-controlled rooms for the artwork, pressure-sensitive stands for the sculptures, and a special octagonal key for the main vault door.
But what stopped Sam cold was the special box built personally by Paul in his home. Unlike every other security item in the secure sanctuary, this one had no plans, no specs. It simply said Mahogany Box. Size: two feet square, one foot high. Contents: personal & confidential. There was a special safe purchased for it, a special hidden room constructed for it, all without any indication of its contents.
Sam’s curiosity went through the roof. He searched every file, every cabinet, every drawer of his brother’s office until he finally came upon the handwritten note in Paul’s private shop. It was a crumpled-up five-by-seven piece of lined paper in his tool box. It wasn’t detailed. It seemed cryptic if one didn’t know what one was looking at.
And as Sam read the handwritten note, he found something that could change his life, that would give him the wealth, the power, but most of all, the respect he so desired to emerge from Paul’s shadow.
The case was designed to guard the family secrets, the knowledge that had been passed down from father to son to grandson.
Sam finally smiled, for he knew what was in the box.
Over the next four months, Sam secured copies of the floor plans and the camera positions. He found the special codes needed for obtaining keys and pass cards. He procured combinations and access codes, most of which were in Paul’s personal file, a file that Paul gave him access to, a file whose access he said was only worthy of a brother, of a partner.