She picked up her phone and typed a message to a boy she'd never met, stared at the blinking cursor for a long time, and deleted it, unsent.
Not yet. Soon. When she knew what to say.
Outside, the tower's windows lit up one by one, and forty million people kept watching a twelve-year-old boy open the unopenable thing, over and over.
Chapter 8: Grant's Problem
Wallace Grant had never, in fifty-eight years, had a problem he could not buy his way around, shout his way through, or turn into a press release. He sat at the head of the war-room table and waited for one of the three people facing him to produce the solution, the way a king waits for tribute.
Paige Donovan went first, because she always went first. "PR disaster either way," she said, "so here's the clean version. Refuse the boy, and every network runs the same chyron for a week: BILLIONAIRE AFRAID OF TWELVE-YEAR-OLD. The late-night hosts are already writing it. Say yes, and it's a television event you control β the stage, the lighting, the cameras. The boy fails adorably, the Obsidian's legend grows, and you look magnanimous. That's the win."
Howard Finch, Grant's lawyer, cleared his throat the way lawyers do when they're about to bill someone for a sentence. "The contract says 'any person,'" he said, sliding a folder across the glass. "I wrote it. There's no age floor, no credential requirement. A refusal would be β" he selected the word with care β "actionable in the court of public opinion, and possibly in an actual court."
Grant stared at him. "He's a child, Howard."
"He's a person," Finch said. "That's the problem."
Cole Mercer hadn't moved from his position by the window. When Grant finally looked at him, Mercer spoke low and level, like a man reading an instrument panel.
"I'll vet him β background, family, the shop he practices in. If there's a trick, I'll find it before he touches the dial. But sir β" his voice dropped half a register β "I'd advise against assuming there's a trick. I've watched the footage eleven times. No device. No accomplice. A boy who listens to steel the way other people listen to music."
Grant waved a hand. "Eleven minutes on a retired bank box. The Obsidian has twelve wheels, a hundred numbers each. That's a hundred to the twelfth power, Mercer. A number with more zeros than your pension."
"Yes, sir. And nobody has ever beaten it. I just don't want you surprised on live television."
Grant turned to the river shining below, and let the silence stretch. In the silence he could hear the faint hum of his own certainty. He had built an empire on knowing the odds better than everyone else in the room. The odds said a twelve-year-old could not open the Obsidian. The odds were scripture.
"Fine," he said at last. "A special exhibition. One attempt, sixty minutes, the whole circus. I'll shake the kid's hand for the cameras." He smiled, and the smile reached his eyes for the first time all morning. "It'll be adorable. The whole country will watch a little boy fail. Paige β call the networks. Howard β draft whatever paper makes the mother comfortable. Mercer β" he pointed β "pat that kid down like he's carrying a thunderstorm. No electronics. I want sixty million people to watch him realize he's in over his head."
The room emptied. Grant stayed, poured a drink he didn't usually pour before noon, and raised it to the black monolith under its dust cover in the corner β the display twin of the Obsidian.
"To you," he murmured. "Unopenable."
---
Dinner was sea bass and silence, the way it had been since Chloe was eleven and started reading the news before her father did. Grant announced the exhibition with the bright, brittle cheer of a man announcing a parade.
"A special exhibition," he said. "For the little locksmith. Sixty minutes, one attempt, all the cameras. Good television."
Chloe cut her fish into precise squares. "Scared, Dad?"
Grant laughed. "Of a twelve-year-old? Chloe."
"Then why'd it take you all day to say yes?" She didn't look up. "If you're not scared, you could've said yes at breakfast. You waited until Paige told you what saying no would cost. That's not confidence. That's arithmetic."
The silence that followed had weight. Grant set down his fork. "Careful."
Chloe looked up, and her eyes were the same color as his, which had never helped either of them. "I'm always careful," she said. "You're the one putting a kid on television to fail. I just hope, for your sake, that's what happens."
She carried her plate to the kitchen herself β a small rebellion; the Grant house had staff β and left her father alone at the long table with the sea bass going cold.
That night, Grant stood at his office window and looked down at the city, and for the first time in weeks he did not think about the safe at all. He thought about his daughter's face, and about the boy in the video, who had never once looked at the camera β as if the whole world watching was nothing compared to whatever he was hearing in the steel.