The service entrance in the back was quickly opened with the ElectroPick. An electric lockpick is basically an electric toothbrush with the brush head removed. Imagine the metal pin that holds the brush heads filed down into the form of a lockpick. When you stick it into the keyhole and turn it on, the oscillations of the metal pin transfer through the metal of the lock to the lock pins, causing them to vibrate until they eventually all line up perfectly and you can just turn the lock. It took Bill maybe eight seconds to open the door that way.
We made our way to the owner’s office, my heartbeat loud in my ears. I knew from the camera feed, before I shut it off, that nobody was left inside, but I was scared shitless someone might come back for some reason. Bill, on the other hand, was as calm as ever and made sure I didn’t freeze up unnecessarily.
“Where was the safe again?” Bill asked, and I pointed at the cabinet behind him.
“Hmm, Sentry Safe. What you gonna do now, Kid? Hack the thing with your phone? Pull out a neodymium magnet to bypass the mechanism?” he asked, smiling.
I just knelt down and punched the combination in, which he commented by grumbling a disappointed “Boring...”.
“He sets a new combination every time his guys put the money in. But I could clearly see him doing it on his fancy HD-camera over there.” I explained, pointing at the ceiling.
The safe opened and my breath caught in my throat as I saw the piles of money in it. I had never seen that much cash in person, probably even throughout my life. I moved it all into my duffle bag, closed the safe back up, and we got out through the back again. Despite my instincts screaming at me to just get the hell away from there, Bill made me wait. He knelt down and used the ElectroPick to lock the door back up.
“You said you wanted it to look like he stole it himself. We shouldn’t make it look like it was as easy as it was to get in here. Any clues for how someone could’ve come in, would make his robbery claim more believable.” he explained, before finally walking back to the car.
I was damn sure I would be hyperventilating without Bill around. After nothing happened for five minutes, I calmed down enough to get my Laptop out.
“What now?” Bill asked.
“First, I’m sending the request to my C&C-server to activate the malware on all the devices.”
“Now? Won’t that raise suspicions when he tries to figure out who stole from him?”
“If this works as we hope, it won’t matter. I’m sure he’ll notice the missing money before he notices the corrupted videos. And even if he somehow figures out what I did over the last few days, pointing it out to his accomplices after they started looking into it will only seem even more like a desperate attempt to shift the attention away from him. But more importantly, I want those videos gone before his buddies start tearing his hardware apart to look for clues to their money. If they find the videos and copy them, I’ll have to start all over again.”
“Good point.” he just said.
“All I need to do now is to turn the cameras back on at exactly four-thirty and place the prepared videos in the cloud storage. Whoever checks those tomorrow would see the owner emptying the safe himself. I don’t think he even knows about this cloud storage, he has his videos on a network drive in that building. So, I’ll also place the videos on there and delete them again.”
“Why delete them?” Bill asked, curious. His slightly amused tone gave me the impression he had way too much fun.
“If the people whose money we just took look into it, they’ll find the video of him taking the money in their cloud storage despite him claiming the money was stolen. If he really doesn’t know about the cloud storage, he’ll look into his network drive, telling them the camera was turned off by the thieves. But, if those guys have someone even slightly more capable than this dude, they’ll find the deleted video of him cleaning them out as soon as they take more than just a fleeting glance at his drive. It’ll make it look like he deleted them himself to support his lie.”
“Don’t take this as a compliment, but you do have a talent for this. Though, I’m not sure that’s enough. Your story’s lacking something important.”
“What’s that?” I asked nervously.
“Motive, Kid. Why did he suddenly decide to steal from people who are that dangerous? Typically, stuff like that happens either because they’ve had enough and want out, or because they need the money for something.”
“Well ... What if we don’t plant all the Bricks on him? Making it look like he had to use a sizable chunk of it? But if you think that isn’t enough, I can use his credit card to book a one-way ticket to Switzerland or something. He does actually steal from them. Just apparently not so much that it would raise any eyebrows. I know he stashes it in a garage he’s renting.” I explained.
“Garage? As in a rented storage unit?” he asked and I nodded. “Just to be sure ... how are you planning on dealing with that garage’s surveillance?”
