Stolen Child (Coastal Fury Book 13), Matt Lincoln [ebooks children's books free TXT] 📗

New Orleans list, and then I pulled out my laptop to sift through their social media accounts.

Most of them were still active since I started contacting them. This told me that they likely weren’t involved with the criminal side of the Hollands’ operations after all. They would’ve gone dark if they had been, just like Chester and Ashley themselves.

That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have something useful to tell me, even if they didn’t understand what it was they knew. Then there were those select few who had abandoned their digital footprint in recent weeks. Those interested me even more. That all made the fact that they weren’t forthcoming with me all the more annoying.

I’d gone to see several of them personally over the past several weeks if they were in Florida or any of the surrounding states. None of those had been able to tell me much, except for one guy from Tampa, who I hadn’t been able to find at all. He was one of the ones who had also gone dark online, so he was at the top of my list of people who were probably involved in the criminal side of things in some way.

What I’d learned from the contacts mostly corroborated what we already knew: that Chester and Ashley Holland were just one of several sets of carefully crafted personas that these two individuals had adopted over the years and that they mostly dabbled in real estate as a cover for their drug operations.

The corroboration was helpful in that it painted a clearer picture. But I was itching for something more immediately interesting, and I knew that everyone else was, too, regardless of the agency from which they came.

This is why when Diane came back out of her office, positioned herself at the front of the room, and clapped her hands loudly to get all of our attention, all chatter and sleepiness in the crowded room died down at once.

“Thanks,” she said with characteristic gruffness, nodding to us in thanks. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’ve just gotten off the phone with Interpol.”

“Interpol,” I heard Muñoz breathe, not exactly quietly, and just like that, the whole room was abuzz again, leaving Diane clearly annoyed that she’d thanked us so soon for being quiet.

“Interpol?” Birn asked, his characteristically booming voice carrying over all the chatter. “As in Europe?”

“Do you know of another Interpol, Agent Birn?” Diane asked coolly, rolling her eyes at him.

“I mean, no, but Europe? We haven’t dealt with them before, have we?” he explained.

“Not that I’m aware of, and certainly not in my tenure here,” Diane said, casting a wary glance in the direction of the FBI agents. “But that doesn’t mean that we aren’t more than capable of rising to the challenge.”

Birn immediately shut his mouth at this, realizing what he’d done. The last thing we wanted was to remind the FBI that we were a smaller agency with less experience and resources than they had. This was our case, and they were just helping—no reason to give them ammunition to steal it out from under us.

“We did know they could turn up anywhere,” I reminded everyone. “This isn’t entirely unexpected.”

“Did they turn up, though?” one of the FBI agents, a surly guy named Smith who was the one who spilled coffee on Holm when they first arrived, asked. “What did Interpol say?”

“We don’t know anything for sure, yet,” Diane said cautiously, giving a deferential nod to Smith, which I could tell even from the opposite desk made my partner’s blood boil. “We’re right not to get ahead of ourselves.”

“But what do we know?” Muñoz asked.

“We think they were spotted in Scotland,” she said, pursing her lips as this news sent the room abuzz all over again. Then, holding up both her arms and motioning downward with her hands, “Settle down, settle down. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Scotland?” Holm repeated over the chatter, which was now abating for the third time in as many minutes. “What the hell are they doing in Scotland?”

He shook his head and looked over at me in disbelief. This was interesting. I’d give him that. I knew theoretically that the Hollands could be anywhere, but for some reason, I’d always assumed they would turn up camped out on some island somewhere, not in Europe.

“That’s what we don’t know yet, though it’s not out of the question that they own property there, too, under aliases we haven’t uncovered,” Diane explained with a shrug.

“More aliases?” Birn asked. “How can there be more aliases? These people have going on twenty identities apiece already!”

“They’re sophisticated operatives,” an FBI agent named Dobbs pointed out in a suitably pompous tone. “This kind of thing isn’t unheard of in our line of work.”

Holm rolled his eyes and made a gagging motion in my direction, but I motioned for him to stop. The FBI agents were facing us, after all, given that Diane was standing in front of our desks. We didn’t need them hating us even more than they already did.

“This is all of our lines of work,” Diane said, giving Dobbs a pointed look, and he shut his mouth. As much as the other agents liked to mess with us, they seemed terrified of Diane. With good reason, too. She was nothing if not intimidating. And she knew her stuff to boot. There was no messing with her, and while she was watching, there was no messing with her agents, either.

“How do we know this isn’t just another dead end like everything else we’ve been working on?” Muñoz asked, and she had a point. I reminded myself not to get too excited about this too quickly. Otherwise, we might be in for a letdown. We were all itching for a big break, but looking for one where it wasn’t would just waste valuable time.

“Good question,” Diane said, nodding approvingly to her. “Apparently, Interpol’s had this lead for a while and is just now bringing it to us since they’re pretty sure it’s not