I don't own any of this; it is the property of Sony Pictures and the brain child of Angela Robinson.

Chapter 6:

In frustration, I flung my reading glasses down on the drafting table. I dropped my elbows onto the table, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes.

"Lucy," Amy's voice called over from the tiny cot set up in the corner of the room. Just hearing it made me relax a little.

"This is impossible," I muttered. "I can get us into the building. I can even get us to the cage, maybe. I can even get you to the door of the vault, but all that is pointless if I can't open the damn thing." I let out a long breath, "they may well have made a vault here that's impossible to break into."

"I've read your file," Amy pointed out, "you've never failed in a heist before."

"I've never tried to steal from a customs vault. There's a reason why nobody's pulled it off before," I replied. "I don't know. Maybe if I had a year to get ready; six months, maybe; I might be able to come up with something. But two weeks?"

"You're not going to accomplish anything if you're tiring yourself out," Amy told me. She'd be a great mother someday. "Why don't you go home and get some sleep?"

"And leave you alone with him? You're seriously delusional if you think that's gonna happen," I replied.

"Then come here," she replied, "there's room on the cot."

I gotta admit that was a pretty tempting offer. Too tempting, it turns out. I wasn't accomplishing much at the drafting table anyway.

The cot was cramped with both of us on it, but it was comfortable enough. The company definitely made it a lot more comfortable.

Amy snuggled close to me, I could feel her breathing against the back of my neck. I closed my eyes, almost forgetting that a monster was probably planning on killing both of us in the next two weeks.

"So, tell me about this problem," Amy started.

I let out an exasperated breath. "This is the perfect safe. You the only way in is to know the passcode. You try to cut the power, and it goes into lockdown. You try to bypass the keypad, and it goes into lockdown. Everything I've tried will set it off, and I'm running out of ideas."

"How about when it goes off by accident? I mean, there must be some way of resetting it, right?" Amy asked.

I nodded, "yeah, but not by us. Tippmann sends a technician who resets the system and sets a completely new passcode."

"So how does he do it?"

I shook my head, "I already thought of that. You need their equipment to do it, and they keep it under possibly even more strict security than the vault we're trying to break into."

"A vault?"

I shook my head, "nope, even better. Nobody knows where they are. All the necessary electronics to reset the system are kept at a secret location known to exactly two people. And there's no way we can reach them in time."

"Pretty tough nut to crack," Amy commented.

"Yeah," I replied. I tried to twist my head to see her, but I could only see some of her blond hair out of the corner of my eye, "just so you know, I'm sorry I got you into this."

"You didn't get me into this," she insisted. "I knew what I was getting into the minute I tried to arrest you."

"I just wish I knew how I was gonna get us out of this," I added.

"Tell you what," I she replied, "you pull that off, and I'm yours forever."

"Do I get anything if I get us halfway out of this?"

"Half of forever work for you?"

I smiled, "I can live with that."

"So, all you have to do is get us into the vault, right?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"Well, maybe it's like the SAT."

I frowned, "okay, need just a little more to make that connection."

"You know, Student Aptitude Test. Kids write it just before they go away to univ—," Amy began.

"I know what the SAT is. What does it have to do with this?" I interrupted.

"Well, when you get a question wrong, it's usually because you made an assumption that wasn't actually written in the question," Amy explained, "it's usually subconscious. So what have you assumed?"

"Not much," I said, wryly, "just that the vault can be opened. Not much more than that. I mean, we want to open it without setting it off. There isn't much room for assumption there."

"Okay, then try this: how do you get the code? Who has it?" Amy pressed.

"One man, at customs. Nobody else has access to the vault."

"How about the man at Tippmann? Can he be bought?" Amy asked.

"Not a chance. If someone got the code, they'd know immediately who gave it to them, and he'd be facing felony charges. That'll make him awfully hard to buy."

"So what happens when he changes the code?" Amy asked.

"He hands the appropriate person a piece of paper with the code written on it; who memorizes it and immediately shreds it while the technician watches," I told her. "The security is airtight. Besides which, the odds of the technician remembering a 9-digit code of the thousands of clients that Tippmann has are pretty slim. And on top of that, he'd have to set off the alarm which is something that doesn't happen very…" I stopped. It couldn't be that simple, could it?

I leapt up from the bed, rushing over to the drafting table.

"What is it?" Amy asked.

I spun around to face her, "Amy, I could kiss you."

"Well, if you absolutely must…" Amy gave me a one-sided smile. I rushed forward, taking her head in my hands and kissing her deeply. "You're a genius," I said simply.

"I'm a genius?" Amy shook her head in her adorably clueless way. "What are you talking about?"

I ran to the door, pounding on the hard metal, "let us out!" I yelled.

A small observation slot slid opened to show a very angry pair of eyes, "Ronnie says that you can't leave."

"Tell Ronnie I know how we're going to open the vault," I countered. "Does he want to know now, or should I wait until he wakes up?"

-x-

I spread out the technical plans of the vault on the table and looked at the three very tired faces looking back at me.

"Okay, here's the vault. We can't fool the security system, so we're going to have to get into it relatively honestly. We're going to get the code." I announced.

"How?" Scud asked. "We can't pump the guy at customs for information; the technician at Tippmann won't know or won't tell, and there's no record of the passcode."

"Who picks up the customs office's confidential stuff?" I asked Scud, "the stuff they shred."

"Um, Howlet Confidentials," Scud answered.

"When's their next scheduled pickup?"

"Every Friday at eleven… three days from now," Scud checked his notes.

I turned to Ronnie, "I need one of their uniforms."

"I can do that," Ronnie replied, "but I don't understand, what do we want with their shredded documents?"

"We don't. We just want one of them, the vault's passcode," I told them, "Scud, if I give you two weeks to put it back together, can you do it?"

"Easily," Scud replied, "but the last time they changed the passcode was eight months ago, it's long gone."

"Tell me about the time lock," I told him, "how does the vault know what time it is?"

"It's plugged into the power grid. The power oscillates at a frequency of 120 cycles per second," Scud rattled off, "it's like the ticking of a clock. So if the power's cut, the safe immediately knows and goes into lockdown. It uses the power grid's own natural frequency to figure out what time it is."

"What if we could speed up the ticking?" I asked. "Could you design something that could do that?"

Scud frowned, "I guess if we had a frequency oscillator which set the frequency to something we decided on, at exactly the same RMS voltage as the input signal, yeah, I think we could do it. But that still doesn't get us the passcode."

"How much time do you need?" I asked.

"You can buy the parts you need at Radio Shack," He replied, "and a few hours to assemble them. But Lucy…"

"Fine, have it ready for tomorrow night at midnight. We're going in," I announced.

Ronnie looked at me, "Lucinda, we're after the diamond, and it won't be there for another two weeks."

I shook my head, putting on my best disappointed face, "too short-sighted, Ronnie. That was always your problem. I'm not going after the diamond. Actually, I don't even plan on taking anything from the vault."

"Then… why?" Amy asked.

I smiled, "I'm gonna set it off."