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

admitted, chewing on my lower lip. “And don’t get me wrong, I want you to be right. I just don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves, either. Our main focus now is making sure that Martha and everyone else in this town are safe from these people. Everything else is secondary, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Well, you have to say that, you’re a federal agent,” Tessa scoffed, her eyes gleaming at me again as she looked back up at me. “I, on the other hand, am an investigative journalist. I’m only concerned about where the story takes me.”

She bit a thick piece of lobster meat off of the end of her fork and winked at me again.

“That you are,” I sighed, shooting her a half-grin. “And it’s gotten you into trouble more times than one if I remember correctly.”

“Trouble is where the story is,” she pointed out, waggling her eyebrows at me again.

I wished, not for the first time, that this whole trip had actually worked out to be a vacation just for the two of us. I savored these moments together, and I wanted nothing more than to string more of them together than we were usually allotted. But alas, as Diane told Sergeant Wallace, trouble had a way of following me wherever I went. And Tessa had a way of chasing it down and looking for even more of it.

“Well, we’ll just have to see what the Carltons have to say about all this,” I said, slurping up the last of my soup. “I thought that we could head over there early this evening since Paulina said she would call ahead. I have their address.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” Tessa grinned. “And then, since they’re neighbors, maybe we can check out this haunted house for ourselves.”

“Hold on, I don’t know about that,” I said quickly, holding up my hands to stop this train of thought.

“Oh, Ethan, don’t go on about danger again,” Tessa complained, rolling her eyes. “You’re the lone agent on this case, so you need a partner, don’t you? Well, I’m it.”

I did not like the sound of that, and she knew it, hence the turn of her lip upward at the corner of her mouth as she said it.

“I don’t always need a partner,” I said simply, knowing better than to poke this beast directly again. “I’m good at working on my own.”

“Oh, please, not when you don’t have to,” Tessa said, rolling her eyes for a second time in short succession. “And it wasn’t exactly a suggestion.”

The waiter came back before I had a chance to say anything in response.

“Dessert this afternoon?” he asked us, looking between Tessa and me expectantly.

“Just the check, I think,” I said, pulling out my wallet, and he nodded and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared, carrying our empty dishes along with him.

“So, where is this house?” Tessa asked, leaning forward with her elbows on the table in anticipation.

“It’s not far from here, actually,” I remarked, squinting out over the water as I pulled my MBLIS bank card out of my wallet. Now that this was an official case, dinner could be on them.

“Maybe we could walk,” Tessa suggested, following my gaze across the water to where we could see the thin outline of a house in the distance. “It’s a nice day for it, and by the time we get there, it’ll be evening. It’s still kind of early.”

I checked my watch. It was early, only around 5:30. And it was a nice day, warm with a gentle breeze coming off the ocean to keep it from being too hot out.

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” I said, smiling brightly at Tessa as the waiter returned with our check. I handed over the card before he had a chance to leave again.

“Is that it?” Tessa asked, nodding in the direction of the outline of the house in the distance. “Or is that the Hawthorne house?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted, squinting at it again as the waiter rushed back to us yet again with my receipt. “I think it’s the Carltons, but who knows. I guess the houses are right across the bay from each other.”

“I guess we’ll find out then,” Tessa said, her eyes widening mischievously as I left the waiter a generous tip. “I can’t wait to catch a glimpse of this haunted house.”

22

Ethan

After our late lunch/early dinner, we left our rental car in the parking lot and made our way down to the beach, which was clear of people by then.

There had been a few scattered tourists when we’d first sat down at the restaurant, but now they had all gone home. As far as I was concerned, that proved the theory that they hadn’t heard about the shooting yet. Once they had, they cleared out of there as fast as they could. It wouldn’t surprise me if the tourists went home early to avoid any more trouble.

“Are you alright?” Tessa asked as we strolled arm in arm down the sandy beachfront.

I shook my head to clear it and glanced down at her, realizing that she was looking up at me in concern. My thoughts must have shown on my face.

“Oh, sorry,” I said quickly. “I was just thinking about something the police were worried about earlier. They’re afraid that what happened at the museum today will mess with the local economy, and, well, let’s just say that those people who were here earlier cleared out pretty fast.”

“Oh, yeah, Pierce was talking about that, as well,” Tessa said, her brow furrowed with worry now, too.

“Oh right,” I said, realizing that Tessa had been downstairs with the museum employees while I had been upstairs talking to the police. “What did they have to say while I was gone?”

“Well, we had to explain to most of them what was going on,” Tessa sighed. “Martha had kept everything from everyone for so long. Most of them knew that something was up because she’s been