Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

uickly. A moment later, he stopped moving.

Ed stood up, his hands covered with Trini’s blood. “I was fond of you,” he said to Holly. “I was going to make you a rich woman.”

“When, after Trini had finished with me? He’s been trying to kill me for some time, you know, and you’ve already said he does only what you want him to.”

Other men with shotguns were in the room now. Shine turned to one of them. “Take these two over to the admin building and put them into vault number two, the empty one, then set the security system to the emergency mode.”

Someone drew Holly’s hands behind her and she felt herself being handcuffed. Grant had begun to stir, and he was handcuffed as well. They were frogmarched out of the building and tossed into the rear of a Blood Orchid van. While one man sat in the rear seat, covering them with a shotgun, another drove rapidly toward the administration building, where a vault awaited them.

62

Grant shifted his body until he was lying close behind Holly, and he put his lips close to her ear. “Can you roll over and reach my cellphone?” he whispered. “It’s in my inside jacket pocket, down low. Your hands are near it now.”

Holly groped behind her and felt his belt buckle.

“To your left six inches,” Grant said.

Holly found the phone.

“Now, pry it open—it’s already turned on.”

Holly got the phone open.

“Press one and hold it down for a few seconds.”

Holly felt the keypad of the phone, located the number one, and held it down.

Grant waited a moment, then began shouting. “Now!” he yelled. “Do it now!”

“What?” Holly asked, as if he were talking to her.

“You two shut up,” the man with the shotgun said.

“Why now?” Holly asked, hoping to confuse the man.

“Now! Do it now!” Grant yelled again.

The man with the shotgun rapped him sharply on the top of the head with the barrel. “I told you to shut up.”

“Why do you want to lock us in a vault?” Grant asked the man loudly. “Why can’t you just shoot us?”

“Believe me, I’d just as soon shoot you, but the boss says to put you in the vault!” the man yelled back. “He didn’t say I couldn’t crack your skull first, though, and that’s what I’m going to do if you open your mouth again!”

The van stopped, and the driver got out and opened the rear doors. He dragged Holly and Grant to their feet, and the two men unlocked the front door and shoved them roughly into the building, then into the elevator.

Holly and Grant each stood in a corner of the elevator, looking at each other as they descended one floor.

“Don’t open your mouths,” one of the men said.

They were dragged off the elevator in the basement and taken down a hallway to a vault, the door of which stood open. The two men kicked them into the vault and then swung the foot-thick door slowly shut.

Holly heard the mechanical sound of the bolts closing. “Well, shit,” she said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Grant replied.

“Back in the van, who was on the other end of the cellphone?”

“I hope to God it was Harry,” he said. “He’s out there somewhere with forty or fifty men.”