“Jordan confirms no movement on the security feeds, boss. They left the place wide open,” Elvo confirmed.
I shook off my disordered thoughts. I didn’t have time to consider the cost right then either because Horn of Glory was our biggest client, and I owed it to them—and to my team—to get us through this job successfully and safely.
“Good. Okay, we’re going to do a full sweep of the basement. If we loop the security feeds, Yolanda won’t be able to warn us if anyone’s coming, so we all need to be on the alert. If any of the Drakes return early and find us there, I’ll tell them I invited you back for a drink.”
We spent the rest of the drive talking through details of how to get in and out of the place as quickly as possible. Time was running out to find this Horn. The wedding was in two weeks, but there would be rehearsals and welcome dinners beginning several days in advance. Once that happened, I’d no longer have the same access to Tommy Drakes’s farm.
When we pulled up, I focused on the mission. We moved quickly through disarming all security measures and looping the camera feeds before making our way methodically through the house. This was the first time we’d been able to use additional tech in the search, so Hux and Elvo worked together to slide the borescope under locked closet doors and into locked drawers. Even Hercules seemed to understand the seriousness of the moment, because he scampered along after us but didn’t bark or interfere.
As I suspected, we found nothing in the main areas of the house and soon found ourselves in Tommy Drakes’s study in the basement.
“Why doesn’t he have an office on the main floor?” Elvo asked, looking around at the unimpressive space. “This is… Lord.” He noticed the garish framed poster of Tommy Drakes running down the beach in a Speedo.
“Can we focus, please?” I asked. “I managed to get into the closet, but there’s nothing there.”
Riggs ran his hands along the spines of the books in the built-in shelving unit along one wall. “I’ve never seen so many collectible handbooks in one place,” he murmured. The books were interspersed with display cases holding various items of indeterminate value. Model cars, trains, and airplanes. Old wooden toys. Unique tobacco pipes and antique snuffboxes. It was a mishmash of stuff that screamed clutter to me but clearly meant something to Tommy Drakes.
It took my brain a minute to register footsteps in the hallway, but before I could alert the team, Kev came racing into the room, chest heaving and cheeks pink with exertion.
“Guys, guys!”
Riggs stared at him. “Kev, what the fuck? Why are you here?”
“They’re coming back! Right after you left, I overheard that guy, the one from the commercial, say he had a headache and was going to head back to his farm. That’s where we are, right?”
Elvo nodded. “Tommy Drakes. But fuck, Kev, how did you know where we were? And how’d you get here so fast?”
“Motorcycle.”
The four of us stared at him, but it was Hux who asked the question. “You ride a motorcycle?”
Kev flapped his hand in the air like it was no big deal. He was still struggling to catch his breath. “Confederate B120 Wraith. Killer bike with kick-ass aesthetics. Kinda… steampunky?” He shrugged and leaned against the built-in, resting his elbows on the shelf behind him.
Hux blinked in disbelief. “You own a Wraith? That’s a hundred-thousand-dollar bike.”
Kev shrugged. When he shifted his weight, his elbow knocked over a pottery jar, which bumped into a metal puzzle toy and sent it skittering across the shelf. He turned with a sharp inhale and tried to set the items back to rights. In the clumsy attempt, he bumped a wooden bookend and sent two books tumbling to the floor.
“Oh God,” he breathed, clearly panicking. We all lunged forward to help him just as he reached out to push the bookend closer to the remaining books. It didn’t budge. In his confusion, he yanked it, which sent the entire shelving unit flying away from us…
Revealing an enormous hidden vault door that was, predictably, locked tight.
We all stood there and stared at it for a beat before Kev let out a whimper. “I didn’t mean to.”
Riggs squeezed his shoulder. “No, Kev. You did good. This is what we’ve been looking for. It has to be.”
I snapped back into action and turned to Hux. “Quick, take video so we can get specs. Elvo, take still pics. Riggs, figure out how to get this shelf thing to close again. We have to get out of here before Drakes returns.”
Hux muttered something about beginner’s luck. Elvo shot a million photos. Hux took video footage, and Riggs finally discovered the opposite bookend was the key to getting the shelf closed again. We raced out to the van, forcing Hux headfirst into the cargo area when he paused to stare at Kev’s killer bike for too long, and sped down the driveway after Kev as fast as we could.