Safecracker

Dave McOmie opens vaults for a living. His jobs take him across the country: bank vaults, jewelry store safes, and codes locked away inside government facilities. Though he spends his career on the wrong side of locks, he has never been arrested or charged, because this is simply his profession. He comes across like a figure from a Hitchcock film.

The book follows him through one demanding week. It begins with a Las Vegas vault that must be opened before a midnight deadline and ends in the basement of Paisley Park, where Prince kept his heavily secured music vault. In between are accounts that read almost like fiction. He drills the same model of ATM seen in a notorious Breaking Bad episode. He meets a mysterious contact from the Department of Defense at a remote site to crack two high-security safes. He traces the corruption and incompetence that plagued the effort to build the first electronic safe lock to protect the nation's secrets. He also takes on a century-old antique bank vault in downtown Salt Lake City, along with many other jobs.

The contents of these safes and vaults are as varied as the locations: gold and silver, drugs and cash, firearms and ammunition, family heirlooms, and adult material. Some of them also hold a few secrets that were never meant to come out.