Maritime Caper (Coastal Fury Book 12), Matt Lincoln [good books to read for beginners TXT] 📗

to a page detailing the Hollands’ many real estate dealing across the eastern coast of the country, and a couple on foreign islands in the area to add some flavor to the list.

“Uh, no,” I said dryly. “It’s just the same as it was a few hours ago, and this morning, and yesterday, and the day before that. Still, maybe something will turn up.”

I thought it would be nice if I could discover some small detail that broke a case for once, instead of Marston. Usually, you could say I was more of the bigger picture guy. The obsession over tiny details was his forte. But in my partner’s absence, I would have to take on that role, too.

“Well, good luck with that,” Diane sighed, not sounding particularly optimistic that anything would come of my late in the day reading. To be honest, neither was I, but I figured that it couldn’t hurt, and it made me feel better than sitting around doing nothing while the FBI pulled this case out from under us in Atlanta. Or at least it felt like that was what was happening, anyway.

“Thanks,” I muttered. Then, because I didn’t really want to go back to the dry reading that Marston left behind for me just yet, “Hey, so why did you let Marston go, anyway? This is a kind of crazy time for the agency.”

Diane sighed again and shook her head.

“I know my agents well enough by now to know what makes them tick,” she explained with a wave of her hand. “And with Marston, it’s all this old pirate stuff. He’s good at compartmentalizing, but I don’t think even he could’ve focused on the task at hand when he got so close to taking this trip he’s been talking about so long just to have me pull it out from under him. He needs this right now, and we need him, so he gets to go. Besides, you all never put in for time off. Even if it’s not technically a vacation, I couldn’t refuse him. And maybe he’ll get a little rest while he’s at it.”

“Do you know Marston?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at her.

“Yeah, yeah, I can dream,” she said, rolling her eyes again and turning to leave.

But just as she was about to re-enter her office, cold coffee in hand, there was a knock on the front door.

We both just stayed still for a moment, staring at each other in surprise. It wasn’t exactly often that we got visitors. Usually, we were the ones doing the visiting.

Diane finally shook her head to clear it and set her coffee down on the corner of my desk before crossing over to open the door.

I craned my neck to see past her, but there was no one there.

“What’s that about?” I asked, scratching the back of my head.

“Whoever it was left a box,” Diane said, bending down to pick something up.

I got up and crossed over to her until we were both standing in the doorway, the door swiveled open to our side.

She handed it to me to examine for myself, and I turned the box over in my hands.

It wasn’t large, but it wasn’t small either. Brown and taped together with ordinary packing tape. There was no writing on it to speak of.

“Should we open it?” I asked.

Diane gave the box a wary look.

“I don’t know…” she said. “It’s not very heavy. I doubt it could be a bomb or anything like that.”

I held the box up to my ear and shook it. She was right. I might as well be holding a pillow. Something small rustled inside, like someone thumbing through the pages of a book.

My curiosity was piqued, and I held the box against my stomach and ripped it open before Diane had a chance to protest.

There was just a single piece of paper sitting inside, and it wasn’t even a full piece of paper, either. My first thought was that whoever left it could’ve used a much smaller box. Or just an envelope.

I reached inside and pulled out the piece of paper, letting the box fall to the floor between Diane and me.

“What does it say?” she asked eagerly, peering over my shoulder. Then, in a darker tone, “There’s not any weird powder or sticky stuff on there, is there?”

“No,” I chuckled, shaking my head. “No poison today.”

Then I peered down at the handwritten note. There was just one sentence, and a two-word sentence to boot, written in a sloppy scrawl that I didn’t recognize, in black ink.

“It says ‘watch out,’” I said, narrowing my eyes at the paper. “That’s it, that’s all it says.”

I looked over at Diane, and she blinked back at me.

“Let me see that,” she said finally, snatching the note from me and pressing it right up to her face as if that would help her to read it better. “You can’t be serious.”

“I know, right, what is this, some dumb cop show?” I laughed, shaking my head. “I’m surprised they didn’t cut all the letters out of old magazines and paste them on there.”

I joked, but a sense of foreboding was building in my stomach. This was unusual, that was for sure.

I stepped past Diane and peered out into the hallway, but all I saw was the elevator and the door leading to the staircase. Nothing else was there.

“I don’t recognize this handwriting,” Diane said, and I looked back to see her still examining the note closely. “We have samples of the Hollands’ handwriting, right? Both of them? And this isn’t it.”

I crossed back over to her and looked at the note again, gently touching her wrist so she would lower it down to where we both could see.

“No, that’s not either of their handwriting,” I said after a moment, shaking my head. “I’ve been looking at that file all day, so I would recognize it for sure. They wrote lots of stuff, notes on their real estate deals and stuff like that.”

Both of