Hothouse Orchid (Holly Barker 6)

Holly stood in the living room for a moment. Then she saw a flashing light on a black box on the desk in Jack’s study. There was an alarm system, and now it began making a chiming noise. She walked to the desk, picked up the phone and listened. All she got was a dial tone, so she knew the alarm system wasn’t calling a security service or Jack’s cell phone.

She didn’t know how much time she had, so she worked quickly. She went into Jack’s bedroom and rifled all the drawers and the closet, careful to leave no trace of her unauthorized presence. Then she went back into the study and switched on Jack’s computer. All she got was a window requiring a password, and she didn’t have time to work on that, so she shut it down again. She found no papers of any interest in the desk, only a few utility bills, already paid. She got up and opened what appeared to be a closet door, and it was, but it contained something very interesting: a Fort Knox safe with a digital lock. The thing was five feet high, and she reckoned it weighed six or seven hundred pounds.

Now why would Jack Smithson need such a large safe? Did he have a camera collection or, more likely, a gun collection? Or maybe a lot of cash? She would like to know, but she would need specialized equipment to get the safe opened, and she would have to get that from her house in McLean, Virginia.

She let herself out of the house and locked the door behind her. The alarm would reset itself after a few minutes, and she doubted if it recorded to a computer log, so Jack wouldn’t know she had been there.

She got her shoes on again, then took a couple of palm fronds from under a nearby tree and swept her path clean of hers and Daisy’s footprints all the way to the high-water mark. Then she jogged back to her house, arriving sweaty and tired.

She still had her suspicions, but she couldn’t back them up.

53

The following morning, Lauren knocked on Hurd’s office door with some trepidation.

“Come in,” he called out.

Lauren walked in and sat down. “Okay,” she said, “I have a better plan.”

Hurd sat back in his chair. “I’m all ears,” he said.

Lauren explained her plan to conceal video and audio bugs in Jimmy Weathers’s car, along with a GPS locator.

“I’ll need a surveillance van, two chase cars and a helicopter,” she said.

“Wait a minute,” Hurd said. “We can’t requisition all that equipment on the off chance that some night he might go after another woman. He might take weeks to do that.”

“I still plan to be the woman,” she said.

“Lauren, I’ve already ordered you not to do that.”

“Listen to me, Hurd. We’ll have the two chase cars just far enough away to be out of sight, and the helicopter maybe a mile away. All I’ll have to do is speak a code word, and they’ll be all over Jimmy.”

“All right, suppose it takes them a minute or two to arrive. How are you going to handle Jimmy?”

“I’ll have two weapons concealed in the car.” Hurd started to speak again, but she interrupted. “And I have some fighting skills.”

Hurd leaned forward and rested his elbows on his desk. “Lauren, I apologize for having to say this, but you weren’t able to fight off Jim Bruno when he…”

“That’s true,” Lauren admitted, “but if I had had help to call for, the rape would never have happened. All I have to do is hold Jimmy off for a minute or two, and it will be that part of the video that will be valuable in court.”

Hurd just looked at her and said nothing.

“Hurd, if this were a drug bust, you’d let me do it.”

“If it were a drug bust, you wouldn’t have to provoke a violent response to make an arrest.”

“That’s true, but you’re underestimating me. I’m tougher and better trained than I was with Bruno; I could hurt Jimmy, if I had to, and I’ll still have two weapons to fall back on: one under the dash and one under the seat.”

“Something else,” Hurd said. “Even if this worked, we’d only have Jimmy on one count of attempted rape.”

“I think I can get him to confess beforehand,” Lauren said. “I think when he gets excited, he’ll talk about it.”

“But he’ll know that if he did that, you could testify against him.”

“Of course, that’s the idea. Hurd, if Jimmy is the killer we think he is, he would plan not to leave me alive to testify.”

“And you think that notion is the way to talk me into this?”