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

all out before I had a chance to interrupt again. “He had a gun, and he tried to shoot us, but we fended him off, and he ran.”

“Are you serious?!” I cried, and the dog walker nearly jumped out of his skin.

I mouthed sorry to him and pointed to the phone pressed to my ear. He gave me another strange look and continued on his way.

“Are you serious?” I repeated, whispering now, though still in an intense tone. “You should’ve called me, Holm. I don’t care what else you had going on.”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” he said, though he didn’t sound sorry at all.

“Did you catch the guy? What’d he say?” I asked.

“No, that’s the worst part,” Holm sighed. “We didn’t catch him. And believe me, we’ve looked everywhere. The guy’s long gone. The police are still scoping out the whole city, and Diane let Birn and Muñoz leave desk duty to help them for the day. But nothing.”

“Do you have a description at least?” I asked, my stomach sinking at this news.

“No, he was wearing a ski mask,” Holm explained. “He was white, and male, and average height. And Diane thinks he had brown eyes. I’m not sure one way or the other on that. That’s pretty much all we know.”

“Alright, well, that’s better than nothing, I guess,” I said, shaking my head. “Were Bonnie and Clyde able to get anything off the note?”

Bonnie and Clyde were MBLIS’s trusty lab techs, and they could always be trusted to find something on any given piece of evidence if it was there to be found in the first place.

“They’re working on it, but no,” Holm said. “No prints or anything yet. The Miami Police Department and the FBI also have forensics teams working on it.”

“Okay… okay…” I said, turning around on my heels and trying to decide what to do. “Okay, I can be back pretty quick, I think. I’m out for a walk right now, but I’ll just head back to the bed-and-breakfast and get Tessa, and we’ll drive to the airport… that shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. Then I’ll be on the next flight to Miami.”

“No, no, no,” Holm said quickly. “This is what I was afraid of…”

“I knew you were avoiding calling me!” I said accusingly.

“No, I wasn’t, I swear!” he cried back. “I called you the first chance I got. Well, the first chance I got that wasn’t in the middle of the night. But still, I was afraid to call. There’s no reason for you to come back. Diane said so already, and she told me to tell you not to hop on a flight just yet, okay?”

“No, not okay,” I said angrily. “You guys were attacked! We need all hands on deck there. You can’t deny that.”

“We do have all hands on deck, minus you,” Holm argued. “We’ll have everyone except you back by this afternoon, and there’s not a lot to go off of. The FBI is here, and the police department has like half their force working on this. We’ve got it handled, Marston. We’re fine.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “This is exactly the kind of scenario I should come home for!”

“Look, Marston, don’t come back,” Holm said, a little impatiently now. “We’re fine. Stay there for a couple of days and then come back. We can use you then. You’ll just be sitting around twiddling your thumbs and doing pointless police interviews over and over again like the rest of us. It wouldn’t do anyone any good.”

I took a deep breath and held it as I considered this for a moment.

“Fine,” I breathed at long last, hating myself as I said it. “But the second anything else happens, you’d better call me. Even if it is the middle of the night.”

“Deal,” Holm said, before clicking away and leaving me to stroll back to the bed-and-breakfast in the fog, considering whether I had made the right decision.

14

Ethan

I walked around some more until it was time for breakfast, trying to clear my head, and mostly failing in that endeavor.

Tessa and I were already in Walldale, and there was no denying that something strange was going on here with the museum, especially after our experience the night before. I’d be lying to myself if I said I wasn’t dying to figure out what was up.

But at the same time, Holm and Diane had been attacked in the middle of what was probably the biggest case in MBLIS history. I didn’t want to miss that, and I was also protective of my colleagues. The idea that they could be hurt and I wouldn’t be there to help them was killing me, and it already killed me that I wasn’t there to help them the night before.

I was wracked with guilt, and I felt like I was being pulled in opposite directions. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was, and I felt like whatever I did, I would be wrong.

Suffice it to say that I wasn’t in the best mood when I got back to the bed-and-breakfast.

“There you are!” Tessa cried when I walked back into our room. “I was wondering where you’d gone off to. Didn’t do anything fun without me, I hope?”

She shot me a mischievous grin and a wink, and I couldn’t help but smile at her despite the unfortunate circumstances.

“No, nothing like that,” I chuckled, running a hand through my hair wearily.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her expression suddenly serious. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Do you have to go back to Miami?”

“Yeah, something’s happened, but Holm told me not to come back yet,” I sighed, sinking down onto the bed as Tessa pulled on a sweatshirt over her t-shirt. “He and Diane were attacked last night.”

“Attacked?” she asked, suddenly very still. “Oh my God, Ethan, are they alright?”

“Yes, they’re fine,” I assured her. “Holm sounded a little shaken up about it, but they’re okay.”

She sunk down onto the bed next to me, and I proceeded to