“You know what they’ll do to Claire, Ava, Danielle, and Maggie if I don’t do this.”
He watched me intently for a while. I felt like he was trying to gauge my resolve. Then he spoke again.
“How you gonna do it?” he asked as he moved closer to me, looking at my monitor.
“From the camera, I got the login data for the cloud storage where it saves the surveillance videos to. I found videos from a few months back, when the owner emptied the safe wearing the very same clothes as today. The rest of the office also looks the same ... luckily, the office has no windows, the camera angle doesn’t show any clocks, and the guy cleans up after himself. I copied those videos and also the videos showing him walking in and out through the hallway. All I have to do now is manipulate the time stamps to make it look like these videos are actually from tonight, and place them on the drives after I took the money. Since the timestamp in the feed itself is displayed on a thick black background, even I can change them without knowing much about video editing. And changing the timestamps and the reference to the editing software in the file’s meta data isn’t a problem for me.”
He thought about that for a moment, then nodded.
“How are you going to get into the building?”
Instead of answering, I opened my desk’s bottom drawer and pulled out the ElectroPick I got a while back through work, because ... well, because I thought it was cool. I had picked it up from my apartment when this plan had begun to take form in my head. He took one glance and smiled.
“Fine. But I’ll come with you.” That caught me off guard.
“Why?” I asked incredulously.
“I’m bored. And you may know about that computer crap, but this? I know a little more about this kinda stuff than you, kid.” he just said.
“Yeah ... but why are you helping me so much?”
He thought about that for a moment, then sighed.
“John and I go way back, you know? This is about his little sister, so I feel obligated to help him. Besides, I’ve known you since you were this small and still all pudgy.” he said, holding his palm at waist height, causing me to snort a short laugh before he continued in a serious tone. “We all need someone to look out for us from time to time, Kid. With the ... home situation you have ... I’d feel like an ass if I just walked away knowing what you’re gonna do.”
I was fucking thankful for that man. He was more of a father figure to me than Aaron had been. When Aaron demanded I’d get a job, Bill had taken me seriously and given me that chance to prove myself. When Aaron refused to lift a finger to help with the bullying, Bill had taught me how to end it. When I had to trick Aaron into signing the application for my license, Bill had given me driving lessons. And when Tess died, he showed me more concern than my entire family combined. I was just about to comment something sappy, when he spoke again and ruined this sentimental thought process.
“Especially since you saved me a shitload of money ever since I graciously took you in. I mean, I never told you, but the firm I paid for the IT-shit before you? Ninety Bucks an hour! So, with me helping you through this, you can’t use that knowledge to demand a raise without looking like an ungrateful ass yourself. Just let me tell the Missus I won’t be back tonight.”
With that, he pulled out his phone, turned his back to me, and only chuckled when I threw a crumpled up piece of paper at the back of his head. I didn’t feel like listening in on his private conversations, so I decided to get us something to drink before we needed to go.
As I stepped through the door into the hallway, though, I heard the front door close. When I made my way downstairs and looked through the door’s peephole, I could just see the parents and grandparents pull out of the driveway. So much for hiding what I was about to do.
At eleven in the evening we got into Bill’s car and drove to the office, where we switched into a pickup to make the drive to Austin, arriving around 2:30 AM. Bill had us change into blue work-overalls, talking about how most break-ins happened in bright daylight by people looking like craftspeople. People seeing you fiddle with a lock, dressed like this and sporting fashionable tool belts, tend to automatically assume you’re a locksmith or something similar and simply forget about it.
We waited another hour before the owner’s and his last remaining goon’s phones’ GPS showed them at their homes. Then we had to wait another half hour so the timestamp of my prepared fake video would fit into the gap created by turning off the camera, and combining them into one continuous feed was easier.
“All right, time to turn off the cameras, then we have exactly thirty minutes to pull this off and turn them back on.” I told Bill, as I opened my laptop.
The service entrance in the back was quickly opened with the ElectroPick. An electric lockpick is basically an electric toothbrush with the brush head removed. Imagine the metal pin that holds the brush heads filed down into the form of a lockpick. When you stick it into the keyhole and turn it on, the oscillations of the metal pin transfer through the metal of the lock to the lock pins, causing them to vibrate until they eventually all line up perfectly and you can just turn the lock. It took Bill maybe eight seconds to open the door that way.
We made our way to the owner’s office, my heartbeat loud in my ears. I knew from the camera feed, before I shut it off, that nobody was left inside, but I was scared shitless someone might come back for some reason. Bill, on the other hand, was as calm as ever and made sure I didn’t freeze up unnecessarily.
“Where was the safe again?” Bill asked, and I pointed at the cabinet behind him.
“Hmm, Sentry Safe. What you gonna do now, Kid? Hack the thing with your phone? Pull out a neodymium magnet to bypass the mechanism?” he asked, smiling.
I just knelt down and punched the combination in, which he commented by grumbling a disappointed “Boring...”.
“He sets a new combination every time his guys put the money in. But I could clearly see him doing it on his fancy HD-camera over there.” I explained, pointing at the ceiling.
The safe opened and my breath caught in my throat as I saw the piles of money in it. I had never seen that much cash in person, probably even throughout my life. I moved it all into my duffle bag, closed the safe back up, and we got out through the back again. Despite my instincts screaming at me to just get the hell away from there, Bill made me wait. He knelt down and used the ElectroPick to lock the door back up.
“You said you wanted it to look like he stole it himself. We shouldn’t make it look like it was as easy as it was to get in here. Any clues for how someone could’ve come in, would make his robbery claim more believable.” he explained, before finally walking back to the car.
I was damn sure I would be hyperventilating without Bill around. After nothing happened for five minutes, I calmed down enough to get my Laptop out.
“What now?” Bill asked.
“First, I’m sending the request to my C&C-server to activate the malware on all the devices.”
“Now? Won’t that raise suspicions when he tries to figure out who stole from him?”
“If this works as we hope, it won’t matter. I’m sure he’ll notice the missing money before he notices the corrupted videos. And even if he somehow figures out what I did over the last few days, pointing it out to his accomplices after they started looking into it will only seem even more like a desperate attempt to shift the attention away from him. But more importantly, I want those videos gone before his buddies start tearing his hardware apart to look for clues to their money. If they find the videos and copy them, I’ll have to start all over again.”