Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(75)
She got out and stood looking at the house. The windows were covered with some kind of reflective film, so they couldn’t see in. Peter walked very carefully around the building, finding three more cameras and touching them up with spray paint as he went. The man’s perimeter defenses made him nervous. He didn’t figure there were claymores on tripwires, but Peter was finding his life more valuable by the minute.
He’d feel pretty stupid if he got himself killed due to a basic lack of attention.
The only thing out of the ordinary was the garage, which was bigger than it looked from the front. It was only two cars wide, but it was also two cars deep. Twin white pipes poked through the roof at the back, looking like the exhaust and air intake for a sealed-combustion furnace. So the garage was heated. There was also a big sheet metal vent, eight feet off the ground, with a chemical smell. A spray hood. The master sergeant was fabricating something in there.
When Peter got back to the deep front porch, the door was open and June was gone.
He ran up the steps and inside, the truck driver’s gun still in the tool bag. “June!”
He found her wandering through the house, blue gloves on her hands, turning on the lights. “He had a fake rock with his key inside,” she said, almost apologetically. “I have the same one by my front door.” She spread her arms with a flourish. “Surprise!”
The first floor of the house was immaculate, especially if you considered that it was being used primarily as a warehouse for motorcycle parts.
Heavy-duty steel shelves lined the walls of the living and dining rooms, with brightly painted gas tanks and fenders and fairings neatly arranged with manila tags noting the make and model and sometimes a name and phone number. The wall-to-wall carpeting was gone, the old plywood floors covered with gray epoxy paint. The house was full but didn’t feel like it, because the light shone through the open shelves. The elaborately renovated kitchen, breakfast nook, and den appeared to be fully occupied. They were spotless. Only the small bank of video monitors linked to the security cameras seemed out of place. Peter smiled to see the miniature motorcycles on shelves and windowsills and at the center of the round dining table. A teddy bear sat atop a cabinet, as if waiting for supper.
Maybe the master sergeant wasn’t paranoid. Maybe he was just looking after his investment in motorcycle parts.
Up the stairs, the bedroom was equally immaculate with T-shirts on hangers, organized by color. Personal photos on the dresser and walls, mostly guys and their bikes. There were two other bedrooms, one made up as a guest room, the other used as an office. June sat on an old wooden chair to work her way through the shelves and filing cabinet and the old desktop computer while Peter walked down through a mudroom to the giant garage, which was set up as a complete motorcycle repair shop.
The guy seemed to specialize in the big bikes, mostly Harleys but also a few old Indians and Nortons in various stages of repair or renovation. Peter saw a pair of bike lifts, multiple heavy workbenches, a giant rolling steel Snap-on toolbox, and a welding rig. Everything was clean and orderly, as if the maid had just been through to tidy up. Engines and engine sections sat on stained cardboard pads, and a small plastic booth with a paint hood took up half of the back wall. That was the sheet metal vent he’d seen outside.
The other half of the back wall looked like a big walk-in closet. A heavy-duty steel door was locked with three commercial deadbolts, at the top, middle, and bottom. The walls had metal plates bolted to the studs, with each bolt head spot-welded to the steel.
Peter was back to the paranoia hypothesis. His little pry bar wouldn’t do shit here. He went back to the van for the sledgehammer.
As it turned out, when you hit a serious deadbolt with a twelve-pound sledge a few times, it opens right up.
The walk-in closet was not where the master sergeant kept his off-season clothes.
One wall held a rack for long guns, mostly empty but still holding two of the Heckler & Koch assault rifles he’d seen the men with in the redwoods, the 416 with the short barrel. There was a very nice Browning sniper rig in a carry case, a few pump-action shotguns, and a pair of M4s that had seen better days. The long back wall held shelves with a half-dozen Glock 21s, excellent tactical-grade body armor, and night-vision goggles in their padded cases. A workbench held repair tools and a comprehensive gun cleaning kit.
The cops might think he was just a gun nut with a few illegal firearms. But to Peter, the master sergeant was the unit’s armorer, maintaining the gear. No heavy equipment, no SAWs or RPGs, but enough for small clandestine operations.
Like trying to kidnap a female journalist.
Or kill her mother.
“Nothing on that computer but the motorcycle business,” said June, walking into the garage. “There’s also a docking station, but the laptop’s gone.” She peered into the walk-in and saw the guns. “Holy shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Peter. But something else was nagging at him.
Something he’d seen somewhere else in the house, but it hadn’t quite registered.
Under the static, he felt a familiar prickling sensation.
Like he was being watched.
“Did you see . . . ?”
He left the garage at a run, back to the kitchen.
The teddy bear in the kitchen, sitting on an upper cabinet, facing the length of the room.
“What are you doing?” June was right behind him.