Chapter 3

“Not important.”

He stepped forward, holding the black box right in front of her. It was two feet from her face. She saw it closely in the dim light, it was not a gun. Was it a needle? A syringe? Tracy took a step backwards, anything to get a little farther away from him. Who could it be? Someone who knew her real name, where she would be at that exact moment, and had a key like hers to get in. She didn’t know someone like that existed.

“Open. The. Safe.”

“I..uh…”

“NOW!”

She turned to face the safe, then paused. She turned to face him.

“You won’t kill me. You CAN’T kill me. Or you won’t ever get into the safe. You NEED me.”

“I am not going to kill you. At least not right away. Inside this box I have a slow, eroding acid that eats away at you from the inside out. You won’t die immediately, It will take a few hours of searing pain.”

Tracy got out her dial receptor and leaned towards the safe. She dropped down on one knee. And dropped it, just far enough so that she had to take a step away to pick it up. She leaned away from him, turned, and kicked him in the groin, hard. She sprinted out of the room as fast as she could. She went running down the hall with only two things on her mind: make it out alive and don’t drop the bars of platinum. Up the stairs, around the corner, into the courtyard. The place was crowded with people, so if anything happened to her, people would see. Panting, she turned around. Tracy saw the man running towards her. He was getting closer. She took half of a second to get her breath back and took off again.

She had always been safe and completely discrete. For five years tracy was at her “boarding school” then she had a few weeks to go home before receiving her acceptance letter to University of Manchester in England; again it was just made up by the people she worked for, she was not really going to England. Tracy’s family thought she was an accountant. After her “boarding school” and “college”, Tracy’s family believes that she was immediately offered a job with an accounting firm. Once again, the people she worked for had taken care of everything, and they thought she would make a great fake accountant. It was the typical cover for safe crackers. Accountants deal with money and numbers, so it was easy to pretend to be an accountant. But one way or another, some underworld figure always discovered a flaw in her story. Every time her real job was compromised she was sent off to a new town, with a new name, and a new life. And a new job until her next assignment. Now she was twenty six years old and has been out of training and working in the field for four years.

It was her third day as a waitress when she got the phone call.

“It’s Arthur, Headquarters in 30.”

Tracy immediately went to the closest headquarters in her new town. She parked at the nearest bank parking lot and walked the rest of the way because that was how she was trained to get anywhere that has to do with her real job. Tracy walked in and immediately was escorted to Arthur’s office.

“I have a new assignment for you. It shouldn’t be hard, but it is more public than your previous assignments so you must be careful that you are not being followed or seen by anyone.”

“Where is it..?”

“The Pentagon.”

And with those two words, the conversation had ended. Tracy picked up her crisp new file for the assignment, carefully pressed it into the inside lining of her briefcase and headed out.

Not many people knew about the safe under the Pentagon. This made her job less dangerous than usual because no one would think to find a safe cracker at the Pentagon, but the area was very public and highly policed. Not even the police could know about her job so she had to make it past them undetected as well. Her assignment was to break in, somehow. With recent terrorist threats to Washington D.C., the FBI ensured that it was impossible for anyone to break in and steal the reserve of U.S. money.

It had all started the same way. Step one was always to find a way to the safe. Easy. The United States seemed like a very advanced nation but always used the same strategies with all federal secrets. There was always a placebo, something that was easy to spot but unidentifiable to the untrained human eye. In this case, there had been a sidewalk tile in the center of the Pentagon that was a slightly darker shade of gray than the others. That meant that either directly above it or directly below it, there was a safe. This was simply for reference between the workers. It made code names easier. The center of the Pentagon was an open field, so there was no way the safe would be anywhere but underground in case of attacks.

Now she had to find the basement. Federal banks never put the stairway or door behind a door that said “staff,” “private,” or “do not enter.” because staff liked to snoop around. As she walked around, Annie noticed a man in black pants and a gray button down shirt. He was holding a big duffle bag that looked somewhat empty. Tracy realized this could be suspicious but did not think twice about him until twenty minutes later when he was still about fifteen feet behind her. He was not following everywhere she went, but he seemed to always end up in the same room as she did. Every other time when she had to change her name and move, it was because she had accidentally dropped a hint to a neighbor or a friend of what her real job was; she never had to deal with someone actually trying to get into the safe before.

She remembered vividly her training. A large buff man in all black named Dameon had explained everything to her and the other trainees

“If you ever have a weird feeling that you are being followed, stop what you’re doing and lose the person before continuing with the plan.”

Tracy turned right, back into the building and immediately took a left. She didn’t know where she was going, but it didn’t matter. As long as she lost him, she could get back to work. “Think, think, think!!” She tried to recall everything Dameon had taught her. What had he said about how to lose someone when you’re inside a building?

“Never do what they would expect.”

But if someone already knew about the most discrete job in the world, what would they not be expecting? Maybe I’m just over reacting. Theres no way someone could figure out who she was, and get into the Pentagon without getting stopped by the police could they? Just to be safe, she took a few more turns before heading back outside.

Tracy took a lap around the center of the pentagon looking for a way to the basement. She came to a big metal door that required a security scanner to get in. She remembered all that they had given her in training: a pick lock set, a magnetic key card, a dial receptor (basically an enhanced stethoscope). She pulled out the magnetic key card and scanned the lock on the door. Just like always, the light went from red to green, and the door opened with ease. She made sure to close the door behind her just in case. It was a blank room, not white but more of a dirty gray, as though whoever was in charge of cleaning and painting, had taken the day off. Or a year off for that matter. The safe itself was build into the wall, two feet by two feet with an old fashion hand dial in the middle. She knew that safes this seem small most likely opened up to a room that was much bigger. Safes often appeared tiny on the outside so no one tried to break in. She pulled out her dial enhancer and attached it to the metal around the dial: one chord on the top, the bottom, and each side. Then she listened. Each click had the same beat. She turned the dial quietly, to her perfected rhythm, two seconds per click until she got to the number forty-two. The click was off beat, so she stopped. She did the same thing going the other way. This time it went until the number seventeen. Then back to the right, slowly, to the rhythm. She heard nothing. The third was always the faintest sound because the notch was furthest back. She started over, forty-two, seventeen then slowly and as silent as a cemetery she waited for the click that was off beat. She heard it at the number two. The safe slowly opened and she saw the shiny bars she knew she was looking for. Platinum. To the average eye, it looked the same as gold, scratched the same as gold, but weighed more and was worth twice as much as gold.

She only needed to prove she’d gotten in, so she took two bars, not all of it. Plus, Tracy wasn’t strong enough to hold all of it. Nor was able to hide it for that matter. Once she proved she’d got in the safe, her job was done. She closed the safe and turned around, proud that it was so simple. Then she saw the dark shadow in the corner.

“Who are you? I know you’re there.”

She said this every time she thought she heard or saw something, just in case it actually was someone, but was usually is not.

She never expected the shadow to move forward.

“I wouldn’t come any closer if I were you.”

Her training was only in cracking safes. She knew nothing about protecting herself. She had never needed to before.

He stepped into the dim light from the bulb hanging in the middle of the room. There was just enough light to make out the shape of his body and realize that whoever this was, had on a ski mask.

“Who are you?”

“What do you want from me?”

Tracy’s clear, consistent voice turned shaky as she spoke.

“You know what I want.”

He was right. There was only one reason he would be there. But in the moment she just needed to say something to try and provoke more words from him until she knew who it was.

“Well, you can’t have it. I already locked the safe and I won’t tell you the combination.”

“You’ll tell me if your life depends on it, because it does.”

He pulled out something that looked like a small black cube. She assumed it was some kind of explosive, but maybe there was something else inside?

“How did you even get in here without a key?”

“Just open the goddamn safe, Tracy!”

“Ohka…wait. How do you know me-my……real name…”

She woke up in the Hospital two days later thinking she was safe. But he was standing over her bed.

“How did you find me?” she winced.

“You can run all you want, but you know what will happen.”

She stared at the emotionless face. The pain in her leg was nothing compared to the knife that was his blank stare twisting in her stomach.

One Week Earlier

Tracie woke up just like she did every day, with a brief second of trying to remember what her name was now. Was it Mary in this town? No, Mary was the last town. This time it was Rachel. Right? Rachel sounded like a nice, quiet name. She really needed to start writing it down somewhere.

New home, no friends, no job, time to start over again. She needed to find a job. As she walked down the street, everyone that made eye contact with her made her wince and pull her fuzzy winter hat over her head. All Tracy wanted to do was call her parents, tell them that she was ok. But she knew that even one phone call could ruin everything.

Tracy finally saw a restaurant with a “Now Hiring! Apply Inside!” sign hanging in the run down window. Waitressing was something she could do. She imagined that she would be good at it, too. Tracy had so much background in numbers and working with money that making checks and figuring out tips was all too easy for her. It would be child’s play compared to what she had been doing. She wished more than anything that she could just go back in time and find a way to keep doing what she had clearly been born to do: cracking safes. But without all the secrets and lying. She had never done it illegally or for her personal gain. It had been a real job, just one that no one knew about because the FBI wouldn’t let anyone know.

Tracy had been only thirteen years old when she was pulled into the business. She had been on her way home from basketball practice. Her dad was driving, like every other night of the week. It was the same routine as always. They took a right out of Robert Frost Junior High, went straight past the the baseball field and took a left at the creepy old house that always had five inches of grass, and one broken lamp that was always turned on. They crossed the bridge and followed the winding road until the cul de sac. Tracy had ridden her bike to a from that school every day for two years.

But tonight was different. As they finished passing the bridge, they saw a car swerving its way towards them. The car swerved into the wrong lane, headed right at their car.

The two bright white lights swerved first to a tree, then to the shining road. They grew very large, very fast, as the car sped toward them.

Tracy felt like she had a million things to say. “Turn the wheel, get out of the way” she thought. But all that came out of her mouth was a scream of the first word she ever learned.

“Dad!”

Tracy’s dad turned the wheel, taking them straight off the road. It had all happened so fast. She felt like something had yanked her by her wrists out the window and thrown her against the floor just so she could watch her car, with her dad in it, roll down the hill and flat into a tree. Tracy slowly regained her balance and ran to her car.

Dad, she thought.

The hood of the car was smashed downwards, blocking all window openings with crunched metal. The radio was still faintly playing and all the doors were still locked. Tracy’s phone was locked in her car, the only way to call for help. She had to get into the car fast, before it was too late, but she couldn’t force her way in. In a desperate attempt to get into the car, Tracy grabbed a chunk of the sliced bumper and jabbed it between the chuck of metal where the window had once been, and the bent in door. She shoved the piece of metal back and forth until it hit the lock and she yanked it up. The next half hour consisted of calling 911 and trying to care for her dad while waiting for help to show up. As soon as the paramedics arrived, she was strapped to a gurnee and told to close her eyes. Tracy couldn’t sleep, but the anesthesia streaming into her nose made her eyelids feel heavier and heavier until she was in a deep sleep.  Tracy woke up in the hospital surrounded by people who she assumed would be her family. It was actually a large man wearing a dark gray suit and for some reason, two watches. He was encircled by a group of men wearing all black.

“Who are you? Where’s my dad?

“He’s safe; you’re safe. Do not worry.”

For some reason Tracy believed him.

“But, who are you?”

“My name is Arthur.” He sat down on the foot of her bed.

“Is my dad ok?”

“Your dad is perfectly fine thanks to you; he’s very lucky to have a daughter as smart as you. And that is why I am here. I believe that you can help me.”

Tracy learned not to talk to strange men. And Arthur was definitely strange. He was a large man in a suit that looked almost to perfect. Not a single wrinkle in his whole outfit, two shiny new watches on the same wrist, and a mustache that curled at the ends, perfectly symmetrical on each side.

“I’m just thirteen, how could I possibly help you?”

“You opened that door somehow. Tell me how you did it.”

“Umm.. I found a piece of metal and wedged it in the door.”

She had no idea why that mattered to anyone at all.

“Listen Tracy, I am about to tell you something very secret, and you can not tell anyone. Promise?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“I work for the government. And I am looking for someone like you for a very special job. You could protect this country. But you are not allowed to tell anyone. Even your father. And you must agree before I can tell you about it.”

“Would I get to miss school?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’m in.”

“The government designs safes for federal banks, like the federal reserve. We need people like you to try and crack them.”

“Why me?”

“Because, you are still young and have shown that you are capable. We can train you better than any agent before and by the time you are a little older, you will be amazing. After you break into the safes, they take what they designed and redesign the safe until it is uncrackable.”

“So, I am supposed to break into government banks?”

“Yes, and no one can know about this. Even your family. If everyone knew that people like you exist, you would be at risk of thieves and robbers using your abilities to crack safes and steal money, so it all has to be one big secret. Got it?”

“Yeah I guess so. But what if I accidentally tell someone?”

“Then you will be moved to a new town with a new name and a new life.”

“Okay.”

“You will start training immediately. Everything has already been put into place, your family thinks you were accepted into a prestigious boarding school. Acceptance letter, website, address, everything has been made so it seems real. We will take care of everything.”