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

fine,” she pressed, rolling her eyes at my hesitance as I took my exit onto one of the main roads of the city. “And it’ll be good to scope out the place before we go back in the morning.”

Well, I couldn’t exactly argue with that now, could I?

“Alright, then, we’ll see what we can find,” I relented, turning on my turn signal and moving into the right lane to head down to the shore where I knew the museum was located. “I doubt they’re still open, though. It’s getting up there.”

I nodded to the rental car’s clock, which said it was getting close to eight in the evening.

“But someone might still be there,” Tessa pointed out excitedly. “And it might be even better to catch them at night when the manager might be gone and less able to look over their shoulders while we talk.”

Well, I couldn’t exactly argue with that, either. It was good reasoning.

“Maybe you should be the MBLIS agent,” I chuckled, and she laughed and shook her head.

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “But my job does call for a fair amount of investigating itself, albeit of a different kind.”

I thought that we did have a fair amount in common and realized that I was glad that she was there, even if I did have an uneasy feeling about this whole thing.

The museum didn’t have a parking lot of its own as it was in a downtown area, so we had to park in a tourist lot down the street from there.

We could see the ocean from the area, and when I climbed out of our rental car, I could smell the crisp scent of saltwater in the air. I grinned despite myself. This was where I was most at home: right by the water.

Tessa was grinning right back at me when she climbed out of the car.

“Man is it good to be here,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and staring out at the whole area.

The downtown area was on a downward slope toward the ocean, and we could see a smattering of people hanging out around the water on the small beachfront area at the end of the slope.

It was a nice, sleepy little area. The museum was by far the largest attraction on the street, stretching along at the length of several normal shops, and we could see it from the parking lot for this reason. There were a few other places, however, including a coffee shop, what looked like a closed taco stand in front of the museum, a pizza place, and a bookshop that sported numerous nautical titles in the front window. Almost everything was closed already.

“See?” Tessa asked me, pointing to the selection on display at the bookshop. “I told you you should write a book. You might even get it on display in places like this.”

“I don’t know about that,” I chuckled, shaking my head and rejecting the idea once again. I could only imagine Diane’s horror if she found out I was spilling MBLIS’s secrets to the masses, even if I did take care to edit out any classified information. Even so, I had to laugh internally at the thought. Diane’s reaction might make the whole thing worth it in a twisted way. I knew that Holm and the other agents would probably pay to see her have a go at me in that scenario.

“Come on,” Tessa said, motioning for me to follow her. “Let’s check the place out.”

I followed her down the sloping street and toward the museum, which was in the middle left-hand side of the downtown area.

The sun was setting over the ocean down in front of us, and it was a sight to behold. The sky was various shades of red, purple, and black, overlooking the calm water as waves came in gently along the shore. The sounds of children laughing echoed up from the area.

The museum itself was a long, two-story building sitting between the pizzeria and a bait and tackle place at the very end of the shopping area. There were numerous fliers in the windows advertising all kinds of events at the museum: readings, discussion groups, new exhibits, and even a community theater production of the maritime musical South Pacific.

I chuckled as I read the fliers.

“Seems like a normal place to me,” I remarked. “Very boring.”

“Told you there was nothing to worry about,” Tessa repeated.

“I don’t know…” I said cautiously, glancing at the predicted Closed sign hanging on the door. “Sometimes, it’s the most unassuming places that are fronts for the strangest stuff.”

“Noted,” Tessa laughed, placing her hand above her eyes and pressing her forehead to the glass between some fliers to try to peer inside. I quickly followed her to do the same a couple of feet to her left.

It was dark inside, just as it was outside, and I could barely see anything except the outline of a front desk close to the door. It didn’t look to me like there was much else in the immediate area, just an enclosed area for visitors to purchase their tickets.

Tessa moved back from the window and strolled past me to try the door, to no avail. I gave her a puzzled look, and she shrugged.

“I figured it was worth a shot,” she reasoned. “When I was in college, I worked in this lazy little shop, and some nights the manager forgot to lock it. You know how it is sometimes in small towns.”

“I guess so,” I laughed. “Though this isn’t exactly small. Technically, I think it’s a small city.”

“Same difference,” she chuckled with a second shrug. “Less than two-hundred-thousand people live here? That’s a small town to me.”

“I guess everything is small compared to New York City,” I mused.

“Exactly my point,” Tessa quipped, grinning at me, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

Together, we walked up and down the length of the museum, peering inside and trying to make out anything we could see through the darkness.

In addition to