Stolen Child (Coastal Fury Book 13) Matt Lincoln (chrysanthemum read aloud .txt) 📖

I tried to imagine the leathery-skinned Hollands with their puffy cheeks and spray tans trying to blend in with the local crowd, and the whole thing just seemed even more ridiculous.

“Maybe that’s why they’re there,” Birn suggested with a shrug, taking another sip from his coffee cup. “It’s the last place they think we’ll look for them or that they’ll be noticed.”

“They’d stick out like a sore thumb, though,” Muñoz said, resting her chin in her hand, her elbow propped up on the table. “They had to have known that someone would notice them, recognize them from the reports.”

“I don’t know. They seem to have gotten unlucky to me,” Holm reasoned, setting his own coffee back on the coaster. “I mean, how many news reports about them even reach all the way out there? Diane said it was a small town and that the fisherman guy doesn’t even own a TV. He saw the report in a bar of all places. Maybe he’s not that much of a crackpot, and that’s just the culture there. Everyone could be pretty disconnected from the rest of the world, in a remote place with an older population.”

“True, and they could be sticking to a remote location even within a remote location,” Birn added with a nod. “For all we know, they never leave wherever they’re staying except to go out on the water. And they probably own where they’re staying, knowing them. They don’t have to deal with neighbors or landlords or hotel owners or anything like that. I bet the water’s pretty calm, too. The fisherman could be the only person who even had a chance of noticing them.”

I had to admit that this all did make sense, but it didn’t quite sit right with me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “They’ll have to have food or something brought to them, at the very least. They don’t seem like the types to live off the land. And if they were just trying to lie low, why go out on the water at all? There’s no reason to risk it. There are other places they could’ve gone to escape detection more effectively.”

“I’m still with Marston,” Muñoz said, nodding to me. “What you say makes sense, but it doesn’t quite add up. The fisherman said that they’re out there looking for something. What is it, then? There has to be a reason they’re there other than just hiding out now that we know about them.”

Just then, Buddy and the waitress returned bearing plates galore. What felt like a hundred different gloriously greasy smells wafted my way, and my stomach grumbled so hard that I was afraid the others could hear it. They must not have, though, since Holm didn’t bother to tease me about it.

Buddy deposited three plates in front of me.

“I recommend everything, so I brought you a sampling of some of my favorite dishes,” he explained, beaming down at me. “Make sure to let me know what you think. Enjoy your meals, folks. I’ll be back to check on you later.”

He winked at me as he sped off, leaving me to try to decide what to sample first: the steaming hot buttermilk pancakes, the cheesy scrambled eggs tossed with healthy (or delightfully unhealthy) gobs of sausage and bacon, or the biscuits slathered in gravy.

“You got the works, Marston!” Birn exclaimed, looking longingly at my plates, which paled in comparison to his lone, though hefty, omelet dripping with what looked to be several kinds of cheese. “You guys are going to be crashing this place forever now. I made a mistake showing it to you.”

He didn’t look too perturbed by this thought, however, digging right into his own meal.

I could practically hear Holm licking his chops as he descended on his own plate, a stack of pancakes that stretched about a mile high, all drowning in chocolate. Muñoz, not to be left out, had two pieces of fat french toast next to a couple of runny fried eggs and sausage links.

I had a feeling we were all going to be crashing hard into a food coma in not too long and took a hefty gulp from my coffee mug. I would need that caffeine, after all. My blood pressure was already going to spike anyway with all this food.

It was worth it, though. It turns out that Birn wasn’t lying or biased when he called his cousin’s diner the best in the city. It really was, and I wasn’t more than a few bites into each of my samplings when I decided there was no way Holm and I weren’t coming back at least as much as Birn and Muñoz.

We ate in silence for quite some time, enough for the waitress to come back to check on us and refill our coffee mugs. The food was just too good to waste time talking instead of eating.

“What about the Hollands, though?” Holm managed when he was about halfway through his plate, the human vacuum cleaner that he was. “What do we think they’re looking for out there?”

“You’ve got some, well…” I gestured all around my own face as I gazed at my partner’s, which was pretty much covered in chocolate at that point.

“Whoops, sorry,” Holm said, grabbing his napkin and dabbing a bit at his face, though it didn’t help much. “Did I get it?”

“Sure,” I chuckled, realizing that he was probably a lost cause at that point, given that he still had half his plate left.

“Well, do we think it’s that ship of yours, Marston?” Muñoz asked, ignoring Holm and me. “We know they’re looking for it, right?”

My pulse quickened at the mere mention of the Dragon’s Rogue.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly, shaking my head. “The ship was originally built and commissioned in Europe, but I’ve been operating under the assumption all this time that it’s somewhere in the Americas’ waters, based on its last known location, and that stuff with the Searcher’s Chance.