Brotherhood in Death (In Death 42)

“From this morning,” Eve said.

“Yeah. Copied to an Ethan MacNamee. Marked urgent. ‘My brothers,’” he quoted, “‘beware. Contact me immediately. Seek safety. Come home.’”

“‘Come home,’” Eve murmured.

“Got your field kit.” McNab brought it in, set it beside the box. “We could scan that thing and work on getting it open back at Central.”

“Give me a minute.”

From the field kit, Eve took a small leather wallet (a gift from Roarke), opened it, and selected lock picks.

“Extra frosted,” was McNab’s opinion.

“We’ll see about that.” She went to work and, as Roarke had taught her, used her ears, her instincts as much as the feel.

“Step back.”

Annoyed, she rolled her shoulders. “You’re crowding me. Just stop breathing all over me.”

Maybe Roarke would have had it open in a finger snap, but she felt enormous satisfaction when after three struggling minutes, the lock fell.

“New skills,” Peabody said.

“I’ve been practicing.” Eve opened the lid, looked at the two large, old-fashioned keys and the two twenty-first-century key swipes resting on dark blue velvet.

“Little hidey-hole to hold the keys to bigger ones. Old doors,” Eve decided. “Those are too big for anything but doors—I think. And new doors.”

She used tweezers to pick up one of the swipes, turned it. “No logo, no name or code. Probably a code buried in it, right? Can you get that out, Feeney?”

“I’d have to turn in my bars if I couldn’t.”

McNab pulled a scanner out of one of the dozen pockets in his neon orange baggies, offered it to Feeney.

“Let’s have a look.”

Feeney ran it, frowned. “Got a shield, and we can break that down. This kind of code and protection? It’s probably a bank box or a secured area. He’s a chem guy, right? So maybe a secured area, lab deal. Let’s see the other.”

He repeated the process. “Shielded, but thinner—this isn’t the high-security level.”

He did something to McNab’s scanner that made it whine, picked up and put on Eve’s goggles. He scanned the first swipe again.

“Security code for the swiper. And . . . Can just make it out. LNB. FKB. Ah . . . 842.”

“FKB—Franklin Kyle Betz. LNB. That’s not the name of his company. Maybe a bank?”

Feeney nodded. “More likely. Too simple below the shield for a high security area. So, bank box, I’m thinking. Liberty National’s my best guess. They got branches everywhere.”

“And the number, that would be the box.” Eve nodded, looked ahead. “We’re going to need another warrant. Peabody, tag Reo. We need authorization, enough to pry out whether or not Betz has a box in the branches we’re going to be contacting. And the authorization to go into said box when we locate it. What about the other one?” she asked Feeney.

“Back up once. We take this in, we maybe can ID the branch. It’s too deep an embed for a handheld. Save you making half a million contacts.”

“Do that,” Eve agreed.

“And this one.” He repeated the process. “Got his initials again, and numbers: 5206.”

“Just that? But not another bank?”

“Doesn’t read bank to me. Maybe a mail drop or a locker. Or an address. People lose their swipe, they cancel, get another. What you don’t want is data embedded that leads somebody where it goes so they can use it before you cancel. We’ll take them back to the shop, see what else we can dig out.”