Shadows in Death (In Death #51) - J.D. Robb Page 0,101
weren’t on the specs, I’d say they’ve done some updating without permits.”
Eve followed her gut, tagged Reo.
The APA blocked video, groaned. “Oh, come on, Dallas!”
“I need a warrant, and now. Now.” She rattled off the address. “We believe Lorcan Cobbe is inside.”
“Give me five. We’ve already got a judge on tap for your op. He just has to fill in the address.”
“Get through the damn block,” Eve ordered as Peabody made way for Whitney to crowd into the back. “Van two, stand by. Baxter, True-heart, once they’re through, take the rear. Santiago, Carmichael, the south; Jenkinson, Reineke, north. Officer Carmichael, mobilize your team. We cover every exit, doors, windows, rat holes. Feeney, Callendar, the second the warrants clear, start on the security. If we’re wrong, we put everything back where it was, move on.”
But they weren’t wrong, she thought.
“We’ve got Privet,” Abernathy announced. “That is to say, we turned him about three months ago—the gambling debts, trouble with a competitor. I’ve just spoken with the inspector in charge of that matter. He’s never spoken of Amazonian, nor that we can find, tapped into its considerable resources to dig himself out of the hole he’s in.”
“The resources might not actually exist,” Whitney put in.
“No, they do.” Roarke paused in the work. “It’s a good, hard shell, and funds are funneled in and out. Smuggling’s its real purpose—people, goods, weapons, illegals. Ah, fuck me, it’s not his, it’s hers. Alicia’s. She put his name on it.”
Abernathy nodded. “He might not be aware of its existence. I’m assured he’s babbled like a brook.”
“He’s weak,” Roarke said. “She knows it, and love him or not, she’s canny enough to keep him out of certain areas of the business. She might know Cobbe. He’s her type, isn’t he? Professionally, personally.”
“Warrant’s coming through,” Eve said, just as McNab let out a hoot.
“Broke the block. Scanning.”
“Wait!” But Roarke’s warning came an instant too late.
As the scan penetrated, lights flashed on inside the house. Three quick pulses, before it all went dark.
“Fail-safe alert. Bugger it.”
“We’re go!” Eve shouted. “Go, go! Find him,” she ordered McNab and pushed open the cargo doors of the van. “Move, move. I don’t want a cockroach getting out of the building. Move! Get that security down. Get it down.”
She held by the front entrance, weapon drawn, as Peabody scrambled out to stand beside her.
“Second floor!” McNab shouted. “Single heat signal. On the move. Moving fast.”
“Battering ram!” Eve ordered. “Callendar, scan this door for explosives. Roarke! Get out here and get us in or I’m breaking the door down.”
Roarke jumped out of the van.
“Clear on boomers, Dallas, but the scan shows those doors are steel behind a wood veneer. We’d have to blow it.”
“Give me a bloody minute,” Roarke muttered as he worked. “A bloody minute.”
“Still moving, LT,” McNab called out. “On the main floor now.”
“Keep on him.”
“Five layers.” Roarke set his teeth. “I’m through two.”
Eve pulled the mini blaster out of his pocket, shifted, aimed at one of the windows.
It barely rattled, but alarms began to shriek, and the lights pulsed and pulsed again.
“Fucking fortress. Get me in.”
“Three down, and there’s four. Don’t rush me.”
“Moving fast, down to basement level, southwest corner.”
“What the hell for?” Eve rolled heel to toe, heel to toe, ready to move. “Secure room? He’s trapped anyway. He’s trapped in there.”
“And there’s the last.” Roarke shoved open the door and was in a step ahead of her.
Lights flashed, white, then black, white, then black. Alarms screamed.
“Clear it,” she ordered Peabody and the uniforms with her. “Cover the front. Kill those damn alarms, Feeney!” She snapped other orders to the rest while she bolted for the southwest corner, and another secured steel door.
“Son of a bitching bitch!”
“I’ll have it.” Roarke pushed her aside. “I’ll have it.”
“Scan it first. I don’t want to get blown up here.”
Steel door on the basement level, she thought. Secure area? But why go down instead of out? Why—
“Smuggler?” she said to Roarke.
“Yes, bloody buggering hell. She’d have a way out. A way in, a way out.”
“Dallas!” McNab yelled in her earpiece. “He’s gone. He’s just freaking gone. Poof. He’s nowhere. I swear to Jesus, it’s like he ran through a goddamn wall.”
Roarke yanked open the doors.
The alarms died. The lights went off again, then came back and held steady.
Halfway down, she saw the next door fit into a wall that should have led nowhere.
“I’ll have it,” Roarke told her. “But I’ll tell you it’s the way out. The way of getting things in and out