black eye. Her eyes flicked towards the gleaming vault, its winking light daring her to crack it open. She made up her mind.
‘How long do we have?’ she said.
Beth’s good eye lit up. ‘Forty minutes, maybe less.’
Harry whipped a standard contract out of her bag and filled in the blanks. As she watched Beth sign, her mind ran through a checklist of the tools she’d brought along: torch, pliers, plastic bags, screwdriver, bottled water and a packet of wine gums. She’d left her laptop on the back seat of her car. She could go back out if she needed it.
She tucked the signed contract into her bag, then turned her attention to the vault. Below the small screen on the security panel was an ATM-like slit. Below that was a recessed opening with a flat metal pad about the size of a large coin. And engraved in gold at the bottom of it all was a tiny padlock logo.
Beth shifted her feet. ‘Like I said on the phone, it’s got biometric access. Have you bypassed that kind of thing before?’
‘A few times.’
In truth, Harry had only done it twice. Hacking biometric security was an unpredictable science, and mostly it took time. She peered at the slit and the small metal pad. On the face of it, she’d need two things, neither of which she had: a digital keycard and one of Garvin’s fingers.
‘He always keeps the card on him,’ Beth said, as if reading her mind. ‘Even at night. There’s no way I can get hold of it.’
Harry nodded. In her experience, people kept a backup for something that important. She moved over to the desk, scrutinizing the items on its surface: phone, pens, notepad, some disconnected cables and a silver-framed photo.
She rummaged in her case and found her torch. Then she crouched down low, training the beam on the underside of the desk. She’d once known a target who’d taped an envelope to the bottom of his desk, a secret stash for all his bank accounts and passwords. Ever since then, she’d paid attention to nooks and crannies.
She craned her neck, squinting between the cross-planks and into all the corners. Nothing.
Harry straightened up and sank into the office chair, scooting in close to the desk. Most people kept notes to jog their memories, but this guy kept things clean. No doodles, no scraps of paper, no printed reports. Her own desk was a lot more topsy-turvy.
She opened the drawers. Paperclips, spare pens, boxes of staples. She hitched the drawers out of the desk, hoisting them around and checking every surface. Still nothing.
Beth prowled around the room, checking her watch at ten-second intervals.
‘Relax,’ Harry said. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘You don’t know what he’s like. The last time he came home and found someone unexpected in the house, he just threw her out.’ Beth waved a hand in the air. ‘Oh, he was very civil about it, but she must have known something was wrong. She still left, though.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘She was family, she should’ve known.’
Harry shot her a look. Beth was slumped against the vault, picking at her nails.
‘Known what?’ Harry said.
Beth shoved her hands into her pockets. ‘That he’d turn on me. The minute she’d gone, he smashed up a chair and used it to break my ribs.’
‘Jesus.’ Harry stared at her. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. There never has to be a reason.’
Harry blinked. She tried to imagine being tied to a man who made you feel afraid. Without warning, she flashed on a familiar face: someone she’d trusted, who’d later tried to kill her. Her heartbeat picked up, and she shook the thought away.
She drummed her fingers on the desk, trying to re-focus. Her gaze flicked over the silver-framed photo, and she reached out for a closer look. A young girl in a school uniform smiled up at her with Beth’s tilted eyes.
‘My little girl, Evie,’ Beth said. ‘She’s in boarding school. Safer there.’
Harry nodded, and turned the photo round in her hand. The glass seemed loose, the backing board not quite flush with the frame. She prised up the clips and tipped the photo out on to the desk. Tucked in against the backing board was a blue plastic swipe card, with a gold padlock logo in one corner.
Hairs rippled at the back of her neck. Beth strode towards her.
‘Don’t get too excited.’ Harry headed over to the vault. ‘We still need your husband’s fingerprint.’
She fed the card into the slot. The red light flipped to amber, and the screen prompted for her next move:
Please Scan Fingerprint
Beth fidgeted behind her. ‘What now?’
‘If we had more time, we could lift Garvin’s prints from around the house.’ Harry wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe make some kind of mould. Problem is, with ten fingers to choose from, it’s a bit hit and miss. We only get three shots before the vault locks us out for good.’
Beth groaned. ‘We’ve only twenty minutes left.’
Harry peered at the recessed opening. ‘When did your husband last open the vault?’
‘This morning. Why?’
‘Has anyone touched the finger sensor since?’
‘Not that I know of.’
Harry fetched her torch and shone it into the recess. The beam picked out a faint smudge of grease on the metal pad. She snapped off the light and ran through her options. She could hack the sensor in a few different ways, but the priority here was speed.
‘What are you going to do?’ Beth said.
Harry shrugged. ‘Use the only fingerprint we have. The one on the sensor.’ She saw Beth’s blank look and explained. ‘I’m going to try and reactivate it.’
Harry bent down low so that her mouth was on a level with the metal pad. It was a capacitive sensor that measured electrical changes across its surface when a human finger touched it. A high measurement meant a ridge in a fingerprint, and a low measurement meant a valley. The sensor put it all together to reconstruct a fingerprint pattern.
The trick now was to make it think that Garvin’s finger was still there.
Harry swallowed, and licked her lips. She needed to breathe on the surface of the sensor, letting the moisture from her breath gather between the lines in the grease stain. With luck, it’d be enough for the sensor to measure the capacitance and mistake it for an actual finger.
Gently, she breathed on to the surface of the pad, exhaling for three or four seconds. The screen beeped, and she glanced up at the message:
Access Denied: Finger Detection Failed.
Damn. Probably too much moisture. She must have exhaled for too long. She could try it again, but in her experience, tricking around with her breathing technique wasn’t going to help.
‘Now what?’ Beth’s voice was shrill.
Harry aimed for a confident tone. ‘Plan B.’
She reached for her case, but before she could open it the desk phone rang. Harry jumped. Beth’s hand flew to her throat and they both stared at the phone.
‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’ Harry said.
Beth shook her head. After four rings, the answering machine kicked in.
‘If you’re there, pick up the bloody phone.’ The man’s voice was gravelly, his accent clipped. New Zealand? He waited a beat before continuing. ‘Forget it. I’m nearly there, I’ll see you in two minutes.’