by Matt Lincoln
“A resort town would be nice,” Holm said, chewing on his lip and seeming to take this very rhetorical question seriously. “Something small and on the beach where we can get some sunshine.”
“When’s the last time you got to relax on a mission?” I asked, giving him a pointed look. “Heck, even a couple of our missions that were supposed to be vacations turned into actual missions in not too long.”
This was true. There was one particular occasion I was thinking of where Diane had sent Holm and me on a trip to destress, and we ended up in the middle of several gunfights and more while we were there, getting almost no rest at all. I’d almost needed a vacation from that vacation.
“Fair point,” he said, lowering his hands from the back of his head and giving me a shrug. “But we could stay on for a few days after it’s over, soak up the sun. We’ve done that before. That would be really nice, wouldn’t it?”
Holm stared wistfully off at the opposite wall as if imagining himself on a beach in a fancy resort down in the Keys somewhere.
I had to laugh again as I snapped my fingers in front of his face.
“Earth to Holm,” I said as I did so. “Earth to Holm. We’re in Miami, remember? And Diane won’t let us go on any vacations any time soon. I already asked about that.”
“Only because you have a habit of turning your vacations into free-for-alls with the mafia,” Holm said in a tone of mock bitterness, referring to my not-so-secret-anymore ‘vacation’ to New York City to take down that mafia that was messing with our funding a few months back.
“That might be true,” I chuckled, shaking my head at him. “But the fact remains that we’re not going to the Florida Keys anytime soon. We’ll put a pin in it and remember it for the next time we have some time off to kill.”
“The next time you get a vacation, you’re headed straight to Virginia to figure out that old book of yours,” Holm pointed out. My longtime partner knew all about my obsessive search for the Dragon’s Rogue at that point.
My hands twitched instinctively at the mention of the journal, and I opened and closed my fists to try to get rid of the unpleasant sensation. I had almost forgotten about Grendel’s fake journal for a few minutes there, but now it all came rushing back to me in due course.
“Yes, well, it’s not my journal,” I corrected him. “Not yet, anyway. I’m going to have to wait for the real thing.”
“My point exactly,” Holm laughed, oblivious to my obvious discomfort with the subject.
When I first found out that the journal wasn’t real, it hadn’t bothered me so much right away. After all, that was in the middle of one our Holm and my craziest missions ever, and that very night he, Agent Nina Gosse, and I had tracked down Lafitte’s long lost ship and taken out Clifton Beck and Solomon, the escaped leader of the Haitian drug cartel who had left my partner and me for dead in the middle of the ocean back in his home country.
But now that I was back home and had time to breathe, I found myself lingering on it more and more. The real journal had been so close. I had thought that I felt it on my fingertips, held it in my hands. The book that Tessa’s friend George thought would no doubt lead me straight to the Dragon’s Rogue when all was said and done.
Having all of that ripped away from me in an instant turned out to be more agonizing than I had originally thought in the middle of such an eventful mission, even though that meant that the real journal might still be out there somewhere, with none of the crucial information it contained redacted.
Right then, I heard a muffled voice coming from behind Diane’s office door.
“Is she in there?” I asked with some surprise, jerking my thumb in the direction of the door in question.
“Yeah, she was in here earlier, but then she got a call about half an hour ago, and I haven’t seen her since,” Holm said with a small nod. “She was cheery at first—you know what a good mood she’s been in since those pencil pushers stopped giving her so much trouble—but now I just keep hearing her on the phone, and she sounds worried. I can’t make out what she’s talking about, though. At least she’s not screaming like she was when she locked herself in there a couple of weeks ago.”
Diane had been doing a lot of yelling the past month or so, and I had to admit that I contributed to the problem at the end there, when I screamed at the bureaucrat Sheldon on the phone about letting Holm and me go to New Orleans. He had really been a pain, that guy. I wasn’t sure if he’d been fired or changed positions since we got back from our last mission or had just been told to play nice by his superiors after our little agency saved the whole country from a massive crisis.
“It sounds bad then?” I asked, equal parts concerned and interested. “Does it sound like we’ll be headed out on another assignment soon?”
I had thought I was enjoying resting up, but I realized at that moment that I was eager for this to happen. I’d had enough downtime over the past several days, and I really needed something to get my mind off that journal while Tessa was holed up in the Yukon.
“I don’t know,” Holm said, shaking his head and speaking in a low voice as if he was afraid Diane would hear us and come thundering out to slap him upside the head for talking about her. “But she’s been in there a while, and she’s not yelling, so something other than bureaucratic nonsense must be going on.”
“Huh,” I said, staring at Diane’s closed office door as if willing it to open. “Do you think it has anything to do with New Orleans?”
There were still a few loose ends to do with our New Orleans trip. Because of Clifton Beck’s untimely death due to an underlying condition after I hit him over the head with the barrel of his own gun, we still didn’t know how his gang had gotten their hands on Lafitte’s long lost ship and treasure. And unfortunately, either no one else knew anything about it, or no one else was talking.
Then there was the matter of all that treasure Holm and I had found locked up in the old fire room behind the captain’s quarters of the ship, and all the old nautical relics to go along with it. I’d asked Diane incessantly since we got back what was going to happen with all that stuff and the ship itself, but she still didn’t know. And I got the sense that Diane wasn’t as enamored with nautical history as I was.
“I don’t know,” Holm said with a shrug. “I can’t think of anything that would make Diane hole up in there for so long about New Orleans unless the zombie drug’s back, and we worked like hell to make sure that didn’t happen.”
It was true. After finding Lafitte’s ship and taking down Solomon and Beck, Holm and I had stayed behind along with Nina Gosse to make sure that the New Orleans Police Department had things covered from there. By the time we headed home and parted ways with Nina, the drug was all but eradicated from the streets of New Orleans.
“Should we ask her?” I asked, my eyes drifting back over to Diane’s office door, though I already very well knew the answer to this question.
“Are you kidding me?” Holm asked, throwing his arms up in the air in a gesture of exaggerated incredulity. “She’d bite our heads off.”
“That’s true enough,” I chuckled, abandoning the idea. No matter how much I was itching to find out what was going on and if Holm and I were going back out on assignment any time soon, it wasn’t worth angering the boss. We all loved Diane at MBLIS, but she could get kind of irritable at times, especially when interrupted, so we liked to save those moments for when it was really necessary.
“Come on,” Holm said, getting up and grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. “It’s getting toward noon anyway, and Diane’s probably not coming out of there anytime soon. We might as well get some lunch.”
“I really did come in late, didn’t I?” I asked, surprised despite the fact that I’d checked my watch several times that morning and very well knew what time it was the whole time. Clearly, it hadn’t registered.
“You did,” Holm chuckled with a nod. “Buried in that book again, I’d bet?”
“That would be
a safe bet,” I said wearily, running a hand through my hair and then getting up to join my partner. “We might as well stop by Mike’s. He’s been wanting us to come by and fill him in on everything that happened in New Orleans.”
4
Ethan
Holm and I drove to Mike’s bar together in my car, and when we got there, there were no other cars in the parking lot, which wasn’t surprising considering how early in the day it was. Mike’s Tropical Tango Hut wasn’t exactly a hot spot for tourists, either, and Mike preferred it that way. The former law enforcement officer liked to keep things local, and I had to respect him for it.
I had less respect, however, for the bar’s decor. I’d fantasized about ripping out all the Hawaiian tiki decor more than a few times myself, but even I had to admit that it had its charm, even the coconuts. Mike loved it, and that had to be enough for me.
Mike was sitting behind the bar when we came in, inspecting one of those God-forsaken coconuts. It looked to be cracked.
“How’s it going there, Mike?” Holm hollered out to him, and the bar owner looked up at us with a startled but pleased expression on his face.
“Holm, Marston!” he called excitedly, waving us over as he abandoned the coconut, throwing it off to the side of the bar. “I was wondering when you boys would show back up to fill me in on the second half of your little zombie adventure.”
“I don’t know that there was anything little about it,” I chuckled as Holm and I climbed on to two of the bar stools across from Mike.
“Oh, I remember,” Mike laughed. “That story you told me the last time you were in here, I still don’t know that I believe it. I’ve been checking the news every day to see if anything about zombies in the bayou shows up on there.”
“Heh, that was smart,” I laughed. “And the story almost made it to prime time, too, but we managed to put a stop to the whole thing just in time.”
“Oh?” Mike asked, raising his eyebrows at us. “How’s that, exactly?”
And so Holm and I launched into the second half of our not-so-little zombie story, the American portion, and Mike leaned forward on the bar the whole time, hanging on to our every word.
When we were finished with our story, he just let out a long, low whistle, not seeming to know what else to say. Then he turned around and filled himself a beer glass.
“Don’t judge me, boys,” he said, shaking his head as he sipped the foam off the top of his drink. “I know it’s early, but that story of yours has driven me to drink!”
Holm and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Want anything?” Mike asked, gesturing at the list of beers he had on tap, but I shook my head and held up a hand to stop him.
“We’ll just have something to eat, if you have anything,” I told him. “We don’t know what work has in store for us today yet.”
“Sure thing, guys. Anything interesting going on at the office?” Mike asked as he pulled some chips and salsa out from under the bar, placing them in front of us and handing us each our own plate. “Other than what you’ve already told me, of course, as if that isn’t enough.”
Mike, a former federal officer himself, always loved to keep up on the goings-on at MBLIS, and his knowledge and knack for the line of work had been invaluable to us more than once over the years, even going so far as to let us use his bar to organize for our trip to New York about getting back our funding. Though he’d never shown as much interest as he had in these zombie drug cases, not that I blamed him for it.
“Well, Diane’s got something cooking,” Holm said with a shrug, taking a chip and lobbing a hefty chunk of salsa onto it. “She’s been holed up in her office for a while, muttering with someone on the phone about something. Two of our agents are already out on assignment, so we’re hoping we get something related to whatever it is.”
“Already?” Mike asked, throwing his arms up in the air in surprise. “When did you get back from New Orleans? A week ago?”
“Almost,” I confirmed with a chuckle. “But Diane won’t let us take any vacation time since things are starting to pick up again, and we’re getting a little restless.”
“Ah, things starting to pick up?” Mike repeated, nodding in a satisfied manner. “I’m very glad to hear that. I know how much trouble you guys have had over there as of late. As always, anything I can do to help, all you have to do is say the word.”
“We appreciate that, Mike,” I said, nodding to him. “But you’ve been more than helpful enough already. That advice you gave us before we left New Orleans to work with other agencies since we’d been having so much trouble with the case logistically just might’ve saved our skins.”
“The woman FBI agent,” Mike said, shooting me a knowing grin. “I didn’t forget. How could I? It just might’ve been the best part of your story.”
I couldn’t help it. My face flushed just a bit at the mention of Nina. Now she, even more than Lafitte’s ship and treasure, I was sorry to leave behind in New Orleans, though I had a strong feeling that wasn’t the last I would see of her.
“Uh, yes,” I said, clearing my throat and all of a sudden focusing all of my attention on the chip bowl in front of me. “She proved to be very useful, as annoying as it was to have to share a case with another agency. It was the right call in the end. You were right on point about that.”
I scooped some chips and a portion of the salsa onto my plate. Mike gave a knowing chuckle.
“Useful,” he repeated, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “That’s what she was to you. Right.”
He exchanged a look with Holm, and they both burst out laughing. I was definitely flushed now, but I ignored it, shoveling some chips and salsa into my mouth and then clearing my throat again.
“Right,” I said. “So anyway, thanks for all the advice. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the rest of the story.”
“The rest of it?” Mike repeated, continuing to laugh as he took another swig from his beer glass. “It was all pretty unbelievable. I’ll tell you that much, Marston. But I trust the two of you more than most, so I’ll believe every word you said.”
“We appreciate that, Mike,” Holm chuckled, shoveling more of the food onto his plate as he spoke. “It is one hell of a story, isn’t it? I swear I’ll be telling it for years.”
“Not to too many people, though,” Mike warned, wagging a finger in Holm’s direction. “A story like that gets out to too many people, and they’ll panic just the same even if the whole thing happened twenty years ago.”
“Why are you pointing at me?” Holm asked, pretending to be offended.
“I don’t think Marston’s going to go blabbing about it to everyone he sees now, is he?” he asked, arching an eyebrow at Holm. He winked at me, and I laughed, grabbing another chip.
“So what do you think?” I asked again. “We’ve been trying to figure out for a while now what’s going on with the ship and the treasure and other items we found on it, but it doesn’t seem to be a big priority for Diane—which I do understand, by the way, not everyone can be as into this stuff as I am when it doesn’t directly relate to work—and I would hate to find out that they just locked it all away somewhere without studying it properly.”
“Ah, they’ll take the money, that’s for sure,” Mike said, shaking his head. “As for the rest, you just have to keep bugging ‘em. They’ll get back to you, eventually. But you’re right, Marston, that ship and everything in it belongs in a museum somewhere, or in some academic library, not hidden away in some government warehouse.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s the only thing I can do,” I sighed, pushing some salsa around on my plate with the chip in my hand. “It just bugs me… there was so much stuff in there, maybe… just maybe…”
“You’re thinking maybe something in there has to do with that other old pirate ship you’ve been looking for?” Mike finished for me, flashing me another grin. “I was wondering when that would come up.”
“You really do know everything,” I chuckle
d, chomping down on the chip.
“If anybody can harass them into doing what they want with that stuff, it’s you, Marston,” Mike assured me with another laugh.
“Ain’t that the truth!” Holm cried, clapping me on the shoulder. “Plus, didn’t Beck say he found the ship down in the Keys? What was I just telling you about taking a vacation?”
“There’s no time for a vacation,” I reiterated, shaking my head. “Diane wouldn’t let us, and when I do have time, I need to go to that museum in Virginia and see if I can get my hands on the real journal.”
“Ah, come on, you’re no fun,” Holm complained, but he was still smiling.
“The Keys,” Mike sighed, a wistful look in his eyes now. “Now, that’s the place to be. You’re not wrong about that, Holm. I wanted to retire down there, originally, you know.”
“Really?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “Why’s that?”
“Why not?” Mike chuckled, holding out his arms. “The beach, the sun, the clear night sky. All those thirsty tourists walking around. What’s not to love?”
“Why didn’t you do it, then?” Holm asked, more than a little interested in this topic. “I’ve been thinking about that myself.”
“About retiring?” Mike asked, arching an eyebrow at him. “I’m surprised at you, Holm. I thought you two were never planning to retire.”
“Eh, Marston’s more of a hardliner on that than I am,” Holm said with a shrug. “Even so, I’m not thinking of doing it any time soon. Just thinking about what I’ll do when I get around to it.”
“Not a bad thing to think about,” Mike said, nodding slowly and shooting me a pointed look. “Anyway, I wanted to stay closer to home. Plus, I got this bar, and it’s just perfect. And dealing with all those tourists… I just don’t know if that’s what I’d want to do all day.”