The Lock Box: A Novel

by Parker Adams

Genres: Financial Thrillers; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

When an army-vet-turned-safecracker is forcibly recruited to be part of a dangerous heist, she’ll need all her skills to get out alive in this fast-paced thriller perfect for fans of Jeffery Deaver and P. J. Tracy.

Nearly a decade after getting chased out of the Army for fighting back against abuse, Monna Locke’s skill and discretion have made her the go-to safecracker for Los Angeles clients who need vaults opened and no questions asked. When a lawyer hires her to retrieve a box from his client’s mansion, it seems like an easy payday—until she opens the safe and is immediately attacked by heavily-armed men.

Locke barely escapes and returns to her isolated cabin only to find the client waiting in her home, threatening what she holds most dear: her son, Evan. After being knocked unconscious, she wakes up across the country, trapped in her own personal nightmare: she and Evan will be held captive until she helps a seedy crew pull off a seemingly impossible heist.

Forced to practice breaking into the most impenetrable safe ever designed, Locke bides her time and eyes her escape routes. She knows there’s no way to finish the job she’s been forced into, but it’s either crack the lock, or lose everything.

 

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Release date: March 19, 2024

Publisher: Crooked Lane Books

Print pages: 325

Sample

CHAPTER1

ALTHOUGH NEITHER COP had drawn his gun yet, Monna Locke figured that’d be coming soon. That’s how shit usually went down when police learned what she did for a living.

She’d been speeding when they pulled her. State Route 27, known by most as Topanga Canyon Boulevard, was a tight, twisty mess of blind curves and cutbacks that wound for fifteen miles through the Santa Monica mountains before making a final, graceful descent to the Pacific. Whenever she had to commute to Malibu, Topanga Canyon was the worst part—the most Locke could ever hope to average was twenty-five through the bends. This morning, despite knowing traffic wouldn’t be an issue, she’d left home late out of habit. Once she reached the ocean, Locke still faced another twenty minutes on Pacific Coast Highway before she could start the job.

And Malibu jobs always took longer than you thought.

So she’d pushed it. Between flooring the accelerator and gravity’s helping hand, she’d gotten the van flying down the home stretch. When the flashers lit up her side mirror, she’d been cruising at sixty-five easy.

Maybe seventy.

Locke released a heavy sigh as she pulled to the dusty shoulder. Then a groan when she saw both a motorcycle and a cruiser. The month was nearly up—quota time. With everyone locked in their houses the past few weeks, she imagined the Highway Patrol’s collections were running a little light.

Mr. Motorcycle came to her window. His badge and helmet gleamed in the sun, forcing her to squint. While mirrored shades and a surgical mask combined to obscure his face, his name tag said Choi. Any hopes for sympathy seemed slim, as the heavy starch on his CHP uniform creases suggested he wasn’t the just-a-warning type.

Locke passed him her license and registration, then rested her hands at twelve o’clock on the wheel. Just to show she could be a good girl when she wanted.

“How do you say this? Moh-na?”

“Mon-na. Like Donna with an M.”

Although she could feel Cruiser lurking at the passenger’s window in her peripheral vision, Locke kept her eyes trained on Mr. Motorcycle. Glancing over would look suspicious, and these two were already giving her the serial-killer treatment.

“You know you’re supposed to be sheltered at home, right? Governor’s orders.”

“I’ve got a job to get to.”

Mr. Motorcycle raised an eyebrow over his shades. “That why you’re in such a hurry?”

“I don’t want to be late.” Locke smiled—the meekest, sweetest, please-teacher-I-didn’t-mean-it smile she could muster. Then she remembered he couldn’t see it behind her own mask. She supposed the gaping shark teeth printed on it, Jaws-style, didn’t send quite the right message either.

“Who’s the job for?”

“Dunno exactly,” she said. “A lawyer hired me.”

“You often do jobs where you don’t know who you’re working for?”

“All the time.” Rich folks rarely dialed her themselves.

“Why don’t you step down out of there, miss. Real slow.”

Locke nodded. With exaggerated movements she extended her arm out the window, then used the outside handle to open the van door. The soles of her Wolverines hit the pebbled asphalt with a crunch. Seeing she had Choi beaten by nearly half a foot, even with his shiny leather riding boots, gave her a bit of a smile.

“Hands up, miss. Move to the other side of the vehicle, please.”

Locke’s coverall sleeves sagged against her shoulders as she raised her arms. She took deliberate steps rounding the front bumper.

When she reached the passenger’s side, Cruiser was waiting. A young, powerful-looking Black dude, Cruiser had Popeye forearms and hands that threatened to split open his gloves if he made a fist. “Up against the van.”

“Guys, I’m just going to work.” The van’s navy paint, blistered and rusted, scraped at her palms when she pressed her hands against it. The beat-up look helped camouflage her in certain neighborhoods, but out here it was a liability.

Mr. Motorcycle joined them now. “Exactly what essential function do you provide people in these troubled times, Monna?”

Locke took a deep breath, knowing what was coming next. “I open up safes.”

Both officers’ hands flew back to their pistols. Cruiser said something into the radio clipped to his uniform shirt.

Locke looked to the sky. “Legally, guys. Legally. I’m licensed and bonded.”

“Riiight,” Cruiser said. “Like those guys in Ocean’s Eleven.” He stepped behind her and kicked her feet farther apart before starting to frisk her roughly.

“People lock up their important stuff,” she said. “Then they can’t get to it when they need it, so they call me. I’m basically a glorified locksmith.”

Mr. Motorcycle grunted. “That’s the thing. Nobody’s locked out right now, everybody’s locked in. This flu’s got folks stuck at home watching Netflix.”

Locke didn’t really want to do it, but this was getting out of hand. If she didn’t act now, she’d never make it to the job. “Check the glove compartment.”

“Why?”

“My license is in there.” That, and something else she wanted him to see.

Mr. Motorcycle glanced to the passenger side door, then back again.

“It’s not booby-trapped or anything. Besides”—she nodded back toward Cruiser—“he’ll shoot me if it is.”

Mr. Motorcycle hesitated another moment. Then he stepped to the passenger door, opened it, and leaned inside. Locke heard a click and a clunk as he opened up the glove box.

“Holeeeeey shit!”

Locke smiled.

“Jimmy, you’re not gonna believe this.”

“Whatcha got?” Cruiser asked.

Mr. Motorcycle popped back out of the van, holding up a glossy eight-by-ten. “She knows the Terminator!”

In the picture, Arnold Schwarzenegger had his thick python of an arm wrapped tightly around Locke’s neck and shoulders. His spiky hair was still dark back then, and he sported the sly grin and thumbs-up he’d flash in the movies right before killing someone. Unlike most actors Locke had met, Schwarzenegger was legitimately huge. At six two, he had only an inch on her, but even slimmed down from his bodybuilder days, he made Locke look petite and feminine. Hell, Cruiser would have looked small next to Arnold.

“Read what’s clipped to the back,” she said.

Mr. Motorcycle removed the envelope, then withdrew the single sheet of California governor's

stationery from inside. He read the note aloud in a thick Austrian accent—they always did that, Locke noticed. By the time he’d finished, Choi had his sunglasses off and was smiling so wide it crinkled the skin around his eyes into crow’s feet.

He jabbed the earpiece of the glasses at her. “You’re a regular public servant, Monna. Helping out the governor like that.”

She nodded at her hands, still flattened against the van. “Does that mean I can, uh …”

“Yeah, sure. Sure,” Choi said. “I’m Dave. This is Jimmy.”

Locke wiped her hands down her coveralls before taking back the photo and letter. As she tucked them away, she stole a quick glance at her younger self, fresh out of the army. The effects of daily PT showed in her face—her features had rounded, softened since then. But what she loved about that photo was her expression. Ballsy. Barely old enough to drink, yet standing next to one of the most powerful men in the world as if it were nothing.

It was a total act, of course. Her heart had been pounding like a stopwatch standing next to him, her hands trembling. But asking for the letter was one of the smartest things she’d ever done. Not least of all for moments like this.

As Locke closed the passenger door, Jimmy—Cruiser—removed his black Oakleys. “So, you’re headed to open up a safe? Right now?”

“That’s the plan. I just gotta get there.”

The cops exchanged looks.

“C’mon,” Dave said.

Locke figured the escort—sirens wailing, flashers blinking—saved her ten minutes. By the time Dave and Jimmy left her at the entrance to Serra Road, saluting as they U-turned back onto the highway, her dashboard clock read 11:22.

Serra Road looked small and nondescript, more driveway than street. A dozen yards in, though, a white guard shack hinted at something worth protecting over the rise. She pulled up to the little structure and found it uninhabited.

Apparently, even rich people’s security got to quarantine.

The lawyer who’d called this morning had given her a gate code among his other instructions. Facing the keypad, Locke figured this was the moment she’d learn if he was on the level.

She’d been lured into wild-goose chases before—jilted spouses digging up dirt for their divorces, greedy grandkids hoping to get a jump on the family inheritance. In her profession, you never quite knew who’d hired you, or why, until you actually popped the box. But the prospect of eight thousand bucks—twice her normal rate—more than justified the drive.

She punched in six digits. After a moment, the system beeped and the wooden arm rose to let her pass.

Although she’d done dozens of jobs around Malibu, Locke had never been summoned to this particular … what was the word for a gated group of mansions, anyway? Community was what she guessed the real estate agents would call it. Cresting the hill, she saw this one was fancier than most. The first few houses were multi-wing affairs, built around pools with

adjacent tennis courts.

As she continued inward, driveways lengthened and the houses became tucked out of sight. Locke checked her phone and saw its GPS had stopped working—you had to be pretty rich to switch off the satellites, right? That left her searching for street numbers, old-school-style.

After two miles of twisting and climbing, she figured she’d missed it. She followed a blind curve up and over a final ridge, hoping for a spot wide enough to three-point-turn the van.

That’s when she spotted the house.

Locke batted her eyes.

This place put the man in mansion.

Carved into the cliff, it gazed out over its neighbors toward a thick blue line of ocean. Built almost entirely from rounded panes of glass, the house looked a bit like a UFO that had crashed into the hillside.

Locke double-checked the number on a gatepost at the street and found it matched the one she’d scribbled down during her call with the lawyer. Another keycode he’d provided caused the metal gate to slide open. She followed the snaking concrete driveway up to the house and parked at the base of the front steps.

After sliding down from the van with her tool bag, she paused and glanced to either side. Quarantine had forced everyone to become more comfortable alone—freeways stood empty, offices were shuttered—but the absence of people here raised the hair on her arms.

Part of it was the elevation. The house stood several hundred feet above its nearest neighbor, allowing cool, salty air to wash across the drive and spill up over the rounded structure on its way to the desert. With her raven hair tousled by the wind, Locke’s exposed neck felt a chilly prickle in the breeze.

It was more than that, though. Locke had done plenty of jobs solo; like busted pipes, locked safes were most often discovered after hours. But the solitude here was … unsettling. She didn’t know why. Only that her insides were clenching the same way as when she arrived at the dentist’s office.

Maybe it was all the surveillance. Large cameras were mounted on the edges of the house, and instead of a bell, a smaller camera protruded from a panel next to the front door. Locke waved at the little lens in case someone was watching her from the other end of the internet.

The door—a dark, polished slab of metal that seemed extra imposing compared to the glass framing it—bore an electronic lock, one of those fancy ones that allowed owners to program one-time codes for workers and guests. Locke punched yet a third set of numbers and heard another beep. When she tried the chrome handle, the door swung open with a whispered swish.

Inside, there weren’t rooms so much as spaces. The two-story entryway spilled into a living area to Locke’s left and a dining area to her right. Both contained uncomfortable-looking, minimalist furniture and various pieces of East Asian art. The floors were some kind of shiny, off-white stone that caused her boot soles to make tiny squeaks. Sunlight streaming in had warmed the air significantly, and Locke switched the bag from one hand to another while pushing her coverall sleeves up over her elbows.

She didn’t bother calling out. The lawyer had warned her the house would be empty, its residents

having fled to Montana or Wyoming or something. The safe was supposedly waiting in an office on the second floor.

A glance upward showed a balcony overlooking the place, but no stairs to reach it.

Locke proceeded inward until she reached a large, open-style kitchen. Metal cabinets and counters matched the front door, while dark accents in the flooring led off to either side. Her eyes naturally wandered left, following the inlays to a set of open risers that spiraled upward.

A closed set of double doors greeted her at the top of the stairs. Figuring they marked the master bedroom, she avoided them and proceeded through an archway to the balcony.

Between the clear railing and views out the glass exterior, crossing the balcony felt a bit like traversing a narrow mountain ledge. Although Locke spotted a hallway with additional sets of doors at the far end of the balcony, a single open door awaited her midway along the expanse.

Poking her head inside, she found a squarish room: the office.

With four solid walls, most of the light filtered down from a vaulted skylight overhead. A rectangular, glass-topped desk and a black leather rolling chair dominated the middle of the room. Behind them, two sets of bookshelves bracketed a six-foot-tall framed painting. Like the rest of the house, the shelves contained various East Asian pieces, ranging from a samurai sword to ceramic urns and figurines. Locke didn’t know much about art, but to her the stuff seemed mismatched from all over the region—China, Japan, maybe other countries.

Gradually, her eyes moved to the painting. Locke didn’t care for modern, splotchy art, but this—this she liked. The tall, narrow image showed some kind of samurai warrior posed with his sword up over his head. No background, no scenery, just the figure. Different sections of the warrior’s robes were portrayed in varied but vibrant colors and patterns, while his face was rendered solely in black and white. The warrior’s expression was simultaneously calm and aggressive. But what really caught Locke’s eye was how the painting had been created. Underneath the glass, the image looked like it was painted on silky, iridescent fabric instead of canvas. Even the paint itself had a unique sheen that reflected the light as you caught it from different angles.

After a second taking in the art, Locke spun on her heel and glanced around the room. No safe stood anywhere in sight. She replayed the lawyer’s instructions in her mind—he’d clearly said the safe was in the office.

For a moment, her heartbeat accelerated, echoing her goosebumps on the way in. Her immediate thought was the crowbar buried in her bag—if she needed a weapon, that was her surest bet. She’d never liked guns, even in the army. Something she could swing, though …

Swing.

Locke turned back to the painting. Ever so gently, she tugged at the edge of the frame.

It swung back at her like a door.

She smiled. Mounted within a rectangular cutout in the wall was one of the sexiest safes she'd

seen in a long time.

The face of the black metal box was buffed to a high shine. Fancy golden filigree was stenciled at each corner, while matching script letters spelled out American Fortress along its upper edge. A fat combination dial sat squarely in the middle of the door, just above the three-pronged wheel that served as a handle.

The lawyer had said the residents couldn’t remember the combination. Locke heard that all the time. If you only opened a box once or twice a year, it was easy to forget. Plus, people felt paranoid writing the digits down.

The dial went from 0 to 100. With a three-number combination, that meant literally a million possibilities. The fastest way to open a mechanical lock like this would be to drill a hole and thread a scope inside, one that allowed you to see the tumblers—the wheels behind the dial. Each wheel represented one piece of the combination, and each had a notch cut into it. When you lined up the notches, a bar called the fence would drop down into them, releasing the bolt that held the door closed.

But everyone understood that trick, including the safe makers, who worked to make drilling the hole extraordinarily painful. They barricaded the wheels behind so-called “hard plates,” of reinforced metal. They added “relockers,” mechanisms that would sense tampering and deploy extra bolts to secure the door. In the end, the idea wasn’t so much to stop a thief completely as to slow them down. If opening a safe took too long, no one would bother trying.

Locke knew this particular model included a glass sheet that would shatter on contact and snap six extra bolts into place. The safe’s hard plate also featured a layer of ball bearings sandwiched between two sheets of tungsten steel that would snap even the hardest commercial drill bit. And, intentionally or not, whoever installed the box had made it even harder to attack by mounting it between the bookshelves. Built from solid oak, they were secured to the wall, probably to withstand an earthquake. Unless you tore them down, drilling in from either side would be impossible.

Eyeing all this, Locke needed less than thirty seconds to identify the path virtually every safe technician in the country would take. Anyone rational—anybody who valued their time—would throw up their hands, cut away drywall above the box, then drill a one- or two-foot hole in the top of the safe and pull the goods out that way. “Sorry about the mess,” they’d tell the owner, who’d be left to clean a room coated in metal dust in addition to needing a new safe and a new wall.

But a small handful of guys would approach it differently. Guys like Jeff Sitar in New Jersey, Dave LaBarge in upstate New York, Scott Gray in Toronto. Legends. Rock stars. All had won the Harry C. Miller contest, the world championship of safecracking. Hell, Sitar had won it eight times.

Those guys wouldn’t have cut this box. They were “manipulators,” professionals who cracked safes with their bare hands by feeling the way the tumblers spun behind the dial. Those guys would decipher the combination and open the door without so much as a scratch. Those guys—all guys, mind you—had their profiles written up in newspapers and magazines. Television shows timed them breaking into bank vaults. One online video tested Sitar to see if he could feel a Post-it note attached to a particular tumbler.

No female safecracker—and you could count all of those nationwide on two hands—had ever garnered that kind of attention. No woman had ever won the Harry C. Miller contest either.

Of course, Locke knew, that was because she’d never bothered to enter.

Contests, newspaper articles, even social media—she imagined they all helped generate a certain amount of business. For the rest of their lives, Sitar and LaBarge and Gray would have World Champion Safecracker emblazoned on their websites.

But Locke didn’t care about accolades like that. She’d learned early: when it came to cracking safes in LA, discretion mattered as much as skill.

When a Rodeo Drive jeweler accidentally reset its time lock on Oscar morning, trapping a ruby choker bound for the red carpet that night, they needed their rocks freed fast without word hitting the Hollywood Reporter. When a prominent producer’s children worried what kinds of pictures were lurking in his office safe after he passed, they wanted no questions asked. When the world’s most popular porn star planned to ditch her director husband, she couldn’t risk losing the videos they’d made together. Locke had helped them all.

Locke had cracked safes for cops, crooks, and corporations. She didn’t have a website; you couldn’t Google her. If you were important enough, you likely had an equally important friend who had her number. That was how she got business, and she preferred it that way.

This morning’s lawyer, a guy named Oscar Sakamoto, hadn’t mentioned how he’d found her. Frankly, that was fine. She liked lawyers because they said no more than necessary and paid up front. Sakamoto had wired her half her fee during the three minutes they’d talked on the phone.

Locke rolled the desk chair over to the safe, eased herself into it, and set the bag between her feet. Although it contained the crowbar, a stethoscope, and several other tools, all she extracted from it was a small notepad and a pen. The lawyer had said the combination contained three numbers—that meant three wheels behind the dial. Several turns to the right cleared the lock, then she placed the dial at 0. From there, she started spinning to the left, one turn, a second turn, a third. With each turn, she could feel another wheel engage until all were spinning behind the dial. Locke continued the turn until she felt the slightest change in pressure against the dial. That marked one edge of one notch on one wheel.

She made a note and returned to the start.

Over the course of five minutes, Locke’s fingers spun the dial several hundred times. This was what movies never showed about safecracking—the constant, back-and-forth testing of the wheels to learn where their notches started and stopped. There was no sound, no ticking. Just her fingertips against the dial, sensing how it spun.

Eventually, Locke had circled three numbers on her pad, 12, 48, and 97. Those were the components of the combination, she was convinced. She tried them

lowest to highest, then highest to lowest. When she put 48 first, then 12, and finally 97, the three-pronged handle spun.

Jackpot.

Inside, the safe was divided into numerous compartments, but Locke only needed one item. Sakamoto had asked her to retrieve a small box from the lowest drawer. When she slid that open, a white wooden cube sat alone on the green velvet cushion. The size of a coffee mug and weight of a soda can, the only unique thing about the box was markings along its sides, Mandarin characters Locke couldn’t read.

Although a pang of curiosity echoed in her chest, Locke didn’t open the wooden box. Discretion—and besides, she had no idea how many cameras were watching her every move inside the house. Instead, she wedged the box down into her bag, resting the pad and pen on top. Then she closed the safe, spinning the dial several times to clear it, before replacing the painting and chair.

A glance back over the room from the doorway confirmed it looked identical to when she’d arrived.

Locke emerged from the office with more spring in her step than her Wolverines provided. She’d just manipulated a major-league lock in under ten minutes. Even if you counted her commute and the trip downtown to deliver the box to the lawyer, she’d still be pulling down eight grand for four hours’ work.

Not a bad day, quarantine or not.

Smiling, Locke paused on the balcony. She inhaled deeply, letting the trace of salt tickle her nostrils as she gazed out toward the ocean.

They said this virus took your sense of smell, your sense of taste. She considered for a moment how weird that must be, then pushed it from her mind. Thankfully, she was healthy. They said this thing didn’t affect younger people, or if it did, not as badly. Kids didn’t get it at all, apparently. All Locke needed to do was make it downtown for a five-minute meeting, then she could head back to Val Verde and ride this thing out.

Hell, if the lawyer Sakamoto paid the second half in cash, she wouldn’t need to visit the bank for weeks.

She turned for the stairs. As she took a step, her eyes dropped instinctively to the narrow balcony. Her footing was fine, but her peripheral vision ended up catching something else. Outside, a panel truck was easing up alongside her van. Painted white, with a toilet bowl and plunger painted on the side.

Made sense for the owners: get all the maintenance done while you were away. Especially these days, when you had no idea who might be sick. In the back of her mind, Locke wondered if the plumber had gotten half his fee up front. Probably not—they charged by the hour.

A driver slid down from the cab. Young guy. Taking his quarantine seriously, as he wore both a plain white face mask and rubber gloves. Even in baggy coveralls, though, you could tell he was a bruiser.

Then she noticed a second guy. Equally buff, circling round the back of the panel truck from the passenger’s side.

She supposed a mansion this size must be a big job. Bring two guys, finish in half the time. ...