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

make a lot of sound decisions. Do they even have any food or anything? When’s the last time he ate or drank?”

“Well, most of those boats come stashed with some food and water in case of emergencies,” I pointed out. “And the younger Daniel Samuels doesn’t seem like the type to forget to restock.”

“So it seems like they have to still be out there somewhere, hiding out and biding their time until this Charlie fellow can figure out what to do next,” Holm said, setting his jaw hard as he made this decision. “That has to be it. The other scenario is just too unlikely, or…”

We all knew what he was going to say but didn’t. That the most likely scenario was probably that Mikey was dead, and Charlie was probably dead, too. But we weren’t there yet. As Nina said, it was important to keep faith at this hour, believe that the search could still yield something. We all knew that, too, including Holm.

“Yes, that’s what we’re thinking, too,” I agreed, nodding to him as I leaned back against the nearby windowsill. Nina had taken a seat in the lone chair by the door.

“We’re going out on the water as soon as a Coast Guard ship comes back into the bay,” Nina explained. “We’re just biding our time until then. They’re a little late because they have a set of caves they want to check out on their way in.”

Holm’s eyes widened at this, and I groaned internally. There was a reason I hadn’t brought this up myself. I knew my partner far too well at that point in our careers. Come hell or high water, he was going to want to come with us.

“You’re going out to look on the water!” he cried, predictably and true to form. “Hold on, let me just get this crap off me, and I’ll come with you. Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

My partner moved to begin taking off his IV and other monitors, but I noticed how he winced as he sat up in the bed. There was no way this was happening. Clearly, the doctors thought he needed to be watched overnight in case he needed a third blood transfusion or had some kind of reaction to the first two. I’d been in this business long enough to know when doctors were just being overcautious or not, too, and Holm looked fragile enough compared to his normal state to convince me that he needed to be right where he was for the time being.

“Whoa, there, hold on,” I said, reaching out and gently pressing on Holm’s sternum to push him back into bed. “You’re not going anywhere until a doctor clears you to, understand?”

“Oh, come on, Marston, I’ve seen you walk out of situations like these all kinds of times!” he exclaimed, though he didn’t push against my effort to return him to his original position, possibly because he was too weak to do so. “You were running around down in Haiti after a bullet went into your arm with nothing but a field medic’s bandage to cover it up! And you had a concussion on top of that!”

This was all true enough, though I hadn’t technically seen a doctor who could’ve told me not to do any of this. I also didn’t sustain the concussion until Holm and I were already in the middle of tracking down our adversaries far away from where I could’ve gotten any medical assistance.

“That bullet barely grazed my skin,” I corrected him. “And the concussion came later, though not much later, I’ll give you that. And this is an entirely different situation. I know for a fact that if I looked anything like you do now that day, you would’ve sent me straight back to the Dominican Republic in a second flat.”

Holm bit his lip and narrowed his eyes as he considered this, trying to find a way to argue. But he came up short and settled deeper into his bed.

“Alright, alright,” he sighed, closing his eyes tightly. “But if you break this case without me, I’m never letting you live it down.”

“Noted,” I chuckled, knowing that if Holm gave up the good fight this fast, he really wasn’t feeling all that well. “You can yell at me as much as you want when you get better, but for now, I just want you to rest up and make sure you can crack the next case with me.”

“If you think I’m letting you get anywhere near the Hollands without me, you’ve got another think coming, buddy,” he said, reopening one of his eyes to peer at me with some disdain.

I glanced over at Nina despite myself, who was staring down at the floor and suddenly seemed very interested in her shoelaces.

We hadn’t talked much about the Holland case and Lafitte’s ship, given how much we’d been focused on Mikey the past two days, and rightly so. But I was still itching to figure out what Nina was working on for the FBI before she was put on this case, and perhaps more importantly, why she was so cagey about the whole thing. And I knew that as much as I was dying to find out, Holm was even more so.

“Come on, Gosse, you ever gonna tell us what you know?” Holm asked, peering with that one eye over at Nina now. “You can’t hold out on us forever.”

I didn’t mention that, technically, I was sure that Nina could hold out on us for however long she liked, especially if she had the full force of the FBI behind her. I did get the sense by her aversive body language whenever we discussed this, however, that she wished she could tell us what we wanted to know.

Nina just pursed her lips and peered back at him as if he hadn’t asked her a question at all. He just sighed and shrugged.

“In all seriousness, though,” he continued, reopening both of his eyes now. “You guys had