Stolen Child (Coastal Fury Book 13)

by Matt Lincoln

  I exchanged a knowing look with Holm.

  “Told you she’d have our backs,” I said, and I felt a swell of pride that we were Diane’s agents and warmth toward her for going to bat for us even when it might not be in her own best interest.

  “Yeah, but if she carries on like this, she might find herself without a job,” Muñoz remarked, her eyes wide with worry. “It’s one thing yelling at Sheldon the ridiculous pencil pusher, but Interpol? That might come back to bite her in the ass.”

  “It might bite us even more not to be in Scotland when they break this case,” Holm pointed out, and Muñoz gave him a grudging nod of agreement.

  “How long has she been talking to Interpol?” I asked the FBI agents.

  “Oh, that was a while ago,” Dobbs said with a wave of his hand. “I think this is something else. She came out and saw you guys had gone, and we told her you went to lunch or breakfast or whatever, but then she got another call. No yelling on this one, though.”

  I exchanged another look with Holm. Could there be another break in the Holland case? If so, wouldn’t she be yelling some more about getting us out there?

  “How long ago was that?” Birn asked.

  “About forty-five minutes, I’d say,” Dobbs said, checking his watch to be sure. “We’re dying to find out what it’s all about.”

  “Hopefully, we do get sent out there now,” Holm said hopefully, voicing some of my own thoughts. “Man, wouldn’t it be great to be a part of that investigation…”

  I agreed, but I didn’t think we could get that lucky, not so soon.

  “Could be another case,” Muñoz offered. “I know we haven’t been taking many with the Hollands being our top priority, but we’re due for some emergency to come up, aren’t we?”

  She wasn’t wrong. There was a certain point at which pawning cases off to other agencies and local law enforcement wouldn’t work anymore. Something too big and too important would come along to distract us from breaking the Holland case, eventually.

  “Man, that would suck,” Holm muttered, shaking his head at the thought. “To get pulled off on some other case while Interpol’s breaking the Holland case without us?”

  “We don’t know they’re breaking it,” I pointed out. “And I, for one, would prefer to be doing something other than sitting around here all day. I’d take a new case.”

  I knew it wasn’t going to happen, though. We all did. In order for us to get called out on another case right now, something really high profile would have to happen. Like, national news, “someone had better get out here quick before things get ugly” kind of high profile.

  I sat down at my desk across from Holm and began to rummage through my stack of files again. I abandoned them quickly and checked my tablet to see whether the Maine lady had responded to any of my inquiries. Nope, still nothing. Predictable.

  It was another half hour of this before Diane exited her office, her hair looking slightly disheveled and her eyes blinking more than they should.

  “Oh, good,” she said, her voice slightly weak when she saw us. “You’re back. Robbie, Ethan, can I see you in my office, please?”

  Holm and I exchanged a look. Usually, Diane just told the group what was going on. It had to be something important for us to be pulled aside like this.

  I was all too happy to abandon my fruitless search for anything useful to do, so I cast aside the Maine lady’s file and my tablet and followed Holm into Diane’s office, the eyes of Birn, Muñoz, and all the FBI agents searing into my back as I did so.

  I shut the door to Diane’s office behind me when I entered. There was only one chair across from her desk, and Holm was already sitting in it, so I propped myself against the closed door and surveyed the room.

  I hadn’t been in Diane’s office for a while, and it was mostly as I remembered, except that her usual pristine desk was covered in disheveled files much like our own were outside. Piles were spilling over, individual pages were sticking out every which way, and she generally just seemed to have lost control of the whole endeavor.

  This, more than anything, I took to be a sign of just how crazy and out of sorts things had been at MBLIS in recent weeks. I’d never seen Diane so stressed, and this was the biggest sign of it. While she usually appeared pretty well put together, except for the now ever-present bags under her eyes, this was indicative of what was actually going on.

  “Uh, do you need any help to clean this up?” I asked her, trying to be helpful. “If you want, I could…”

  “No, Marston, I’m fine,” she snapped, giving me a look that told me to shut up right now or else.

  “Right, sorry,” I muttered, silently vowing never to bring the matter up again.

  “What’s going on?” Holm asked excitedly, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms of his chair as all hints of fatigue left his own face, replaced by the eagerness that I was trying to prevent myself from feeling, as well. “Did Interpol come to their senses? Are we going to Scotland?”

  Diane sighed, and I could see on her face that this wasn’t the case. She probably would’ve announced it to the group if it was, and I knew then that I was right not to get my own hopes up.

  “No,” she said, pursing her lips. “I’m afraid that it’s nothing like that.”

  Holm’s face fell just as quickly as it had risen, his body slumping back into the chair in defeat.

  “Seriously?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “You can’t be surprised?” I said, shaking my head at him. “It’s only been a couple of hours. Something big would have to happen for them to change their minds so quickly.”

  I glanced over at Diane again as I said this, and I realized that there was a glimmer of hope left in me that something big had actually happened. I searched her face for any sign that there was news about the Hollands, that the Interpol guy had caught them red-handed, even that this case was done and over with and Scotland was stealing our perps right out from under us. But her face was unreadable, aside from the tiredness that was still there.

  “No, nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head weakly.

  “What, then?” I asked, a sense of foreboding building in my stomach.

  “Dammit, the lead fell through!” Holm exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air in frustration. “The fisherman guy was full of it, and it wasn’t the Hollands after all. We’re back to square one. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  My eyes widened, and I stared at Diane, searching for any hint that he was right.

  “No, it’s not that either,” she snapped, giving him a fierce look. “And it would serve you well not to go jumping to conclusions so often, Agent Holm.”

  “Right, sorry,” he muttered, just like I had moments before, staring down at his knees.

  Everyone in that office knew that more often than not, Holm’s gut served him and MBLIS well. But I shared her exasperation at that moment. I just wanted her to get to the point, and Holm was slowing things down.

  “Look, it doesn’t have anything to do with the Hollands at all,” Diane said, wincing as she said the words as if she was anticipating us to respond poorly to this. “I’m going to have to send you two out on another assignment.”

  Holm’s jaw dropped open, and he just gaped at her, for once at a loss for words. I was not, however.

  “What? A new case?” I asked, floored.

  Muñoz had been right after all. There was another case for us to work, and that meant that it had to be big. Big enough for Diane to look even more tired than she was already and for Holm and me to get sent away from Miami when they needed us here more than ever.

  “Yes,” she said, pursing her lips. “And it’s a big one.”

  “Come on, why can’t Birn and Muñoz go?” Holm complained. “We’re the ones who’ve been working the Holland case since the beginning. We shouldn’t be sent off when we’re in the middle of it.”

  I didn’t disagree, but I was also e
ager to hear what this new case was. It had to be big for Diane to pull us right now. I hadn’t been lying when I said that I would prefer a real case to looking through files all day, though I did wish it had come at another time, and not on the day when there was finally some movement with the Hollands, even if it was on the other side of the ocean.

  “That would’ve been my first choice, as well, but the two of you were requested personally by the FBI,” Diane said, wincing again as she said it. She didn’t like this any more than Holm, I realized. She didn’t want us to leave her alone with the FBI agents in the middle of the Holland case, but this was more important than what she wanted.

  “The FBI?” I repeated. “But it doesn’t have to do with the Hollands? How does that work?”

  “Annoying coincidence,” Diane sighed. “More than annoying. It’s dangerous and upsetting. A government employee’s child has been abducted.”

  There was silence in the room then. We all knew that none of our concerns about the Hollands, about the FBI, about Interpol, or anything else mattered when it came to a kid.

  “Was it a stranger kidnapping?” I asked at long last, my stomach sinking all the way to the floor.

  “Looks that way,” Diane confirmed.

  “When?” Holm asked, leaning forward again in his chair now, his eyes no longer excited but still highly attentive.

  “Early this morning,” she said. “At a mall in North Carolina. The FBI was originally put on the case because the family is from out of state, and the mother works for the CDC. The whole thing’s a mess.”

  “So how does MBLIS come into it?” I asked, shaking my head in confusion. North Carolina was a coastal state, sure, but the perp would have to be foreign, or the kid would have to be taken out of the country somehow for this to fall under our jurisdiction.

  “That’s what I’ve just been on the phone about,” Diane explained. “A Coast Guard ship thinks they spotted the kid and the perps who took him out on the ocean, headed into international waters.”

  “Wait, did you just say perps?” Holm asked, his face turning white. “As in more than one?”

  “That’s right,” Diane said with a nod. “It’s kind of a weird case. I don’t know the full details yet, but there are indications that it was a lone-wolf situation, but also that it was more coordinated, and it can’t be both.”

  I pressed my back against the door, mulling this over. That didn’t make a lot of sense. But then again, they wouldn’t call us if it wasn’t a tough case. Not right now, anyway.

  “I’m guessing it’s all over the news?” I asked.

  “All over it,” Diane confirmed darkly with a curt nod. “Local, national, you name it, this kid’s face is on it, which is one good thing, at least. It’ll make it easier to find him in theory, anyway.”

  “There’s no indication of who these people are that took him?” Holm asked. “Or why? Do we have descriptions?”

  “We have some security footage from the mall,” Diane explained. “Got a good look at one of the perps, a profile from the side. The other guy was dressed up in a ski mask and gloves and the whole deal. Had a gun, too.”

  “That… doesn’t make any sense,” I said, furrowing my brow at this. “That sounds like…”

  “Both a lone-wolf and an organized operation?” Diane finished for me. “Yeah, exactly. Even more puzzling is that the first guy showed back up at the mall while an FBI agent was looking around. There was a shootout, a lot of commotion in a crowded area, and he got away again. No sign of the kid, though. Then, about an hour later, there was the sighting on the water.”

  “Is the agent alright?” Holm asked, and Diane nodded again.

  “Yes, you’ll meet him—or her, I actually don’t know, I guess—when you get there,” she said. “And you’ll be glad to hear you’re done with commercial flights. That’s all been cleared up after your recent successes.”

  “Well, there’s some good news, at least,” I muttered, thinking about how Holm and I had endured a screaming child for hours on our flight to New Orleans.

  “Why did the FBI request us, though?” Holm asked, more curious than complaining now. “Why can’t Birn and Muñoz just go?”

  Diane shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The guy just told me that they know about you two now, and they like your work. Your reputations precede you, I suppose.”

  “Well, that’s no surprise,” Holm grinned, leaning back in his chair with his hands interlocked behind his head now, a look of gloating etched across his face.

  “What, now you’re happy about it?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at him.

  “Hey, who am I to deny the people what they want?” he asked with a shrug.

  “The people?” I repeated, blinking at him. “What people? One guy at the FBI who has Diane’s number?”

  “Come on, let me enjoy the moment at least, Marston, sheesh,” he said, waving a hand at me as if to shut me up.

  I simply ignored him and turned my attention back to Diane.

  “When do we leave?” I asked her.

  “As soon as you’re ready,” she said. “You know how these cases are. You’re on a ticking clock.”

  7

  Ethan

  When we exited Diane’s office, leaving her behind, no one was working, and everyone was staring at us expectantly.

  I exchanged a look with Holm. Diane probably didn’t want to tell us about this mission in front of everyone because it would prompt all kinds of complaining that we’d be gone during the Holland case, as well as complaining from Birn and Muñoz that they hadn’t been sent instead, considering how bored they were.

  “Well?” Muñoz asked, bugging her eyes out at us. “What was that all about?”

  Holm didn’t say anything, so I figured this just had to be on me.

  “We caught a case,” I said shortly, swiftly walking over to my desk and beginning to gather up my things amongst all the piles of files and other documents about the Hollands and their associates.

  “What case?” Birn asked. His tone was a weird combination of whining and disbelieving, like he was suspicious of what we were saying.

  “I guess it’s all over the news,” I said without turning to face him. “Missing kid.”

  “The one in North Carolina?” Agent Forrester asked, incredulous. “That’s an FBI case. My buddies back in Virginia have been talking about it in the Slack all day.”

  “Huh?” I asked, shaking my head uncomprehendingly at him.

  “It’s a group chat thing,” Muñoz smirked. “We don’t use it.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Smith muttered sardonically.

  “Okay, whatever, well, it is an FBI case, but they asked us to come help,” I said, as Holm began to pack up his own things to get ready to go.

  “Do you know who the agent is on the case?” Holm asked, turning to face the other agents. “They requested us personally, for some reason.”

  “No idea,” Forrester said with a shrug. “We just know it’s a big deal. Hey, how come it’s your case now? You’re not going to steal this one out from under us, too, are you?”

  I blinked at him, registering what he was saying. I realized that until the whole mess in the Florida Keys, technically, the Holland case had been under the FBI’s purview because of everything Nina Gosse had gone through in New Orleans. They just didn’t know that the Hollands had anything to do with it yet.

  It was weird, thinking that the FBI thought of us as the ones sweeping in on their territory here. No wonder they’d been sour since they arrived. Not only were we stealing a case from them, but they were being forced to work on it for us, on our turf, no less.

  I felt a bit better about the whole thing with this realization. At least we weren’t the only ones who saw ourselves as being antagonized here.

  “It is an FBI case. We’re just going to help them out,” I explained. I almost added “like with New Orleans,” but figured that would just hit on another sore spot with the FBI age
nts.

  “I guess the Coast Guard spotted the kid and one of the perps heading into international waters,” Holm added. “So they called us in.”

  “You?” Birn asked, an almost hurt look on his face, and I silently cursed Diane for making us break the news to them all by ourselves. “Why you? Shouldn’t you be working this case?”

  “We wish,” Holm muttered bitterly, and I rolled my eyes. Of course, the people who wanted to go on this mission were staying behind, and the ones who wanted to stay behind were going. I would expect nothing less, given how things were going for us lately.

  “I don’t know why, but we don’t really get a say in it, do we?” I said, in a tone that I hoped had some finality in it. “Besides, that’s not what matters. Who’s going, which agency’s case it is. A little kid is missing, having God knows what done to him, and somebody needs to find him. Who cares who?”

  Everyone was quiet after this until Muñoz gave me a deferential nod.

  “Of course, Marston’s right,” she said. “It doesn’t really matter. We’re all itching to get somewhere with this case or another one, but we shouldn’t lose sight of our priorities. Go ahead, get that kid back to his parents. We’ll try not to break this case without you.”

  She gave me a wry grin at this, and I chuckled, though I secretly prayed that they wouldn’t. As much as I wanted more movement on the Holland case, I also didn’t want to miss out. Although maybe that meant that I needed to get my priorities straight, too.

  “Ready to go?” I asked Holm, and he nodded.

  We both waved on our way out the door.

  “Bring us back a postcard,” Birn called after us.

  I dropped Holm off at his place briefly, and I ran home to my houseboat to pack some clothes and other items before heading to the airport to board our flight, a private MBLIS plane.

  Thankfully, there were no screaming children to greet us this time around, given that this plane wasn’t open to the public. I sipped on seltzer water, my tablet propped up on the small desk between Holm and me as we floated through the clouds toward North Carolina.