Page 22 of Protector Unmatched

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Daphne unlocked the door to her apartment and rushed inside, flicking the light switch on the way in. She didn’t have much time. Guido had been very specific about what he wanted her to do and when. As if a job like this didn’t need any preparation on her side. As if she were a miracle worker. And Guido and his gang wouldn’t even be there to help. They’d decided that she could do it all on her own. She was the only one who was risking something, while Guido sat back and watched. And of that she was sure: he, or somebody associated with him, watched her to make sure she didn’t go to the police at the last minute.

As if she could go to the police! Her brother’s life was at stake, and since she hadn’t been able to get any actionable information from Pearce the night before, she had to follow Guido’s orders. Tracing her brother’s cell phone hadn’t been successful either. It had been switched off until the moment Guido had called her from it.

It took her less than two minutes to change into black pants, a black turtleneck sweater, and black tennis shoes. Gloves completed her cat burglar look. She emptied her messenger bag and placed the few tools she needed inside: an assortment of screwdrivers, steel-cutting pliers, clamps, cables, a small flashlight, and her computer. During an unguarded moment at work, she’d printed the instructions Guido had emailed her from Tim’s email account. She folded those, stuffed them in her pants pocket, and snatched her darkest jacket from her closet. With her messenger bag slung across her body, she left the apartment less than ten minutes after she’d entered it.

She’d memorized the address Guido had given her. It was in a good part of town—in fact, in a very good part. Knowing she couldn’t leave any trace of where she was going, an Uber was out of the question. Instead, she took the bus as far as she could, then got off and walked the rest of the way. A few times, she looked over her shoulder, unable to shake the feeling that somebody was following her. But she saw nobody. It appeared that Guido’s people were skilled at shadowing their victims.

The address turned out to be a fancy two-story house with a pristine front yard and iron fences surrounding it. One outside light illuminated the driveway, but otherwise the property was dark. Daphne looked at her watch. She was right on time, and just like Guido had said, nobody was home. And it was too early for people to be in bed already.

Daphne walked to the other side of the property, the tradesmen entrance, which was used mainly to move trash cans from the house to the street. Two of said trash cans stood at the curb, and a third one stood just inside the gate. The light shining on the driveway didn’t reach here. The path was dark, and one of the streetlights that should have illuminated the tradesmen entrance had burned out, though she suspected that this was no accident.

After looking up and down the street, Daphne pulled one of the trash cans closer to the gate. Then she lifted herself up onto it, glad that the can was filled to the top, so the plastic lid supported her weight without caving in. With her gloved hands, she held on to the iron spikes of the gate, then climbed over it. Still holding on to the spikes, she swung to the side, so her feet touched the trash can on the other side of the gate. Slowly, she lowered herself onto it. It was empty, which was probably why it had been left inside the property. The lid started giving, but she managed to jump off and land on the ground before breaking it.

“Phew.”

Before getting up, she looked over her shoulder, making sure nobody had seen her acrobatics. She wasn’t used to this kind of exercise anymore. True, as a hacker there’d been a few incidents where she and her fellow computer geeks had had to vacate a place rather abruptly, often in the middle of the night, but she’d always had to leave a property, not break into one. This was different, even for her.

After verifying that she was still alone, Daphne stalked toward the house. She walked along the narrow path that led around the left of it and turned when she reached the corner of the house. She peered around it. The backyard was large and just as meticulously kept as the front yard. It bordered a similar property behind it, though the fence between the two properties was older and lower than in the front and on the sides. The large deck, which took up at least a third of the backyard, was furnished with a table and chairs as well as a supersized BBQ that looked like it cost more than the average American car.

On the back wall of the house, she found what she was looking for: a control panel. Several cables encased in steel tubes led into the panel, making it virtually impossible to cut the cables from there. The steel panel itself was locked. She could see it clearly, because the moon was just coming out from behind a cloud, providing sufficient light to make out the lock. It wasn’t hard to open it. Her steel-cutting pliers and a little elbow grease took care of the lock. Her heart was already beating faster. Shit, she’d just graduated from hacker to burglar. Even a lenient judge wouldn’t look past that.

In for a penny, in for a pound. It was real now. She was committing a crime. A crime that could get her five to eight in a state prison. Her brother had better be grateful for the rest of his life, considering what she was risking for him.

She wiped the perspiration off her brow, placed the pliers back in the messenger bag, pulled out her flashlight, and inspected the interior of the panel closely. Guido’s instructions had been vague about what she would find there, but he’d given her the name of the security system the house was protected with. It helped. The control panel had the right connectors inside to hook up a computer.

Knowing how to proceed, Daphne pulled out her laptop and booted it up. Once logged in, she opened a program. With a firewire, she connected her computer to the control panel, waited for her computer to recognize the connection, then started typing commands.

Several lines of code appeared. She read them, knew what they meant, then reacted with code of her own. A flood of lines filled the window, falling like green raindrops on the dark background. The program was trying millions of different combinations to disable the security system.

“Come on, come on,” she whispered to herself. Patience had never been her forte.

Finally, the lines of codes stopped. A last line with only one word appeared: Disabled.

Bingo!

She still had it. Still had the skills that she’d nearly gone to prison for. And that could land her there even now if she wasn’t careful. But she couldn’t think about that now. She had to finish the job before the residents returned.

Entering the property was the easiest of her tasks: one of the windows looking out over the deck had been left unlocked. How Guido had known that, she wasn’t sure, but she suspected that somehow he had access to the house. Which raised the question why he wasn’t doing the job himself.

Daphne slid the sash window up and crawled through the opening. When she got up and looked around, she noted that she was in the living room. The elegantly furnished room confirmed that the people here had money, and whatever was in that safe she was supposed to clean out—and Guido was very specific about taking everything out of it, no matter what it was—had to be valuable.

Orienting herself, she left the living room and headed into the hallway. There were several doors, and again she followed the instructions Guido had given her and found the study. It was masculine, furnished with lots of black leather and modern rugs and lamps. And an abstract painting, behind which she would find the safe.

More sweat collected on her nape and forehead. She wasn’t made for this. At any point, the homeowners could return and find her with her hand in the cookie jar. And then it would be over. Her plea deal would be voided, her brother would be hurt further, most likely killed, and she would go to prison.

With shaking hands, she pulled the painting to the side and noticed it was mounted on a hinge, so it could be pulled away from the wall to grant access to the safe. The safe had a keypad. She pulled out the sheet of information on which Guido had listed several combinations. They all looked similar and were only a few digits off, which made her suspect that he’d stood behind the person who’d entered the code, but hadn’t seen the exact combination. Those were his best guesses, and there were over thirty of them. Well, wasn’t that just great?

Wiping the sweat off her forehead once more with her gloved hand, she entered the first six-number combination. The keypad flashed, and a beep sounded. Incorrect code, the display advised. She fared no better with the second combination. She shined her light on the piece of paper to try the third combination, then heard a sound from behind her.

Panicked, she spun around. Shock paralyzed her. There, on the other side of the large desk, stood a dark figure. A man.

A gasp escaped her. Fight or flight? Flight!

Her legs were already moving, but the man was faster. He cut off her escape route and grabbed her by her arm, yanking her back.

“Let go!” she screamed, but instantly his hand landed on her mouth, silencing her.