Orchid Beach (Holly Barker 1)

“And call the coast guard and ask them to stop anything moving on the river. Check every boat for Noble.”

“I’m on it.”

Holly broke the connection. She had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. Barney Noble was gone, and the chances of catching him were growing slimmer by the minute.

Harry Crisp toured the entire com center building, once the lights had come back on, and he finished up at the huge steel door. “Anybody got an opinion on how to deal with that?”

Bill stood next to him and examined the door. “We could blow it, but God knows what it would do to the computer equipment in the building. I think what we need here is a first-rate criminal.”

“Everything here is electronic,” Harry said. “The keypad and the palm reader. Get a couple of our electronics people in here and see if they can jump-start that thing.”

Holly got out of the van at the com center, and it drove away. Teams of agents were conducting a house-to-house search, armed with warrants, and the agents in her group went off to join them. She met Harry Crisp on his way out the door.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“Perfectly. But there’s a steel door in there that we’ve got to deal with before we can find out what’s downstairs. I’ve got two men on it, and I’ll have a report soon.”

“Where’s Ham?”

“He’s around here somewhere. He and his group did brilliantly. I don’t know what we’d have done without him.”

Jackson stepped up. “Did you arrest Barney Noble?”

Holly shook her head. “He got out, probably by way of the marina.”

“Shit,” Jackson said.

A man came out of the com center. “Harry,” he said, “the steel door is open. It was a piece of cake.”

Harry rushed back inside, followed closely by Holly and Jackson. The door was, indeed, open. A stairway led down from it.

“Let me clear the area, first, Harry,” a man called out. Two men with automatic weapons went down the well-lighted stairs. “Okay,” one of them called out, “all clear.”

Harry and his entourage walked down the stairs and emerged into a large room containing only a desk and a huge steel door.

Holly’s mouth dropped open. “Holy shit,” she said under her breath.

“What the hell is that?” Harry asked.

Jackson spoke up. “Looks like a bank vault, Harry.”

“I know that, but what the hell is it doing down here?”

“Looks like these people don’t want you to know what’s behind it,” Jackson said. “Looks like there’s a time lock, too,” he said, pointing, “set for nine A.M. Even with the combination, you wouldn’t get it open until then.”

“It’s a Friedrich,” an agent said. “German. I think they’ve got an office in New York. Maybe Miami, too.”

“Call them first thing in the morning and get an expert down here to open it,” Harry said. “Jesus, I hate waiting.”

Ham joined them and slipped an arm around Holly. “Wasn’t this fun?” he said.

CHAPTER

60

H olly sat in the dining room of the Palmetto Gardens Country Club at seven A.M. and finished a large breakfast. Harry had ordered the staff to work as usual, except the dining room was full of federal agents instead of members. The staff had cleaned up the mess from the ruined ceiling. Harry Crisp sat down beside her with a cup of coffee.

“So, who have we got here, Harry?”