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

1

Nina

Agent Nina Gosse of the FBI had been working on the Holland case before they pulled her on a run-of-the-mill criminal case. When she’d gotten the call from her supervisor, she hadn’t exactly been pleased. The Holland case was the biggest one she’d seen in a while, even if MBLIS was the agency on record. Besides, she had been on one of the related cases down in New Orleans before they knew that the Hollands had anything to do with the new drug circulating down there. MBLIS agents had even been on that case, too, which was how she’d met Ethan Marston and Robbie Holm, both of whom had since become friends.

All that went to say that she was more than just grumpy about being sent off to solve some petty crime, or so she thought. Then she’d learned that there was a missing kid involved, and she set all that aside. Cases like this were no laughing matter, and they were more important than some pissing contest about who got the most interesting work or high profile case files.

So this was how she found herself in the parking lot of a dingy old mall in a small colonial town along the coast of North Carolina. The place had its charm, she decided. Well, not the mall, but the surrounding town, at least. It had interesting architecture and a lot of history. Ethan Marston would love it, she thought. She found her thoughts drifting to him more than once in a while since their first meeting a few months back.

Nina sighed and headed into the mall. She didn’t expect to find much there, but it was where the boy was last seen, so it was a place to start. They were working on a time clock since it had been nearly five hours since his disappearance, and the kid’s mom was a government employee at some agency. Transportation, maybe? Nina didn’t remember. They were on vacation, staying in some cabin down here before it happened. The police barely existed in a small place like this, too. Between that, the family’s higher profile, and the fact that the kid was from across state lines, the FBI had been called.

They didn’t know much yet. Just that two men had been seen on security footage stealing the kid away after he wandered outside a shop while his parents were buying lunch at the food court. They’d only turned their backs for a moment, but sometimes that was all it took—still a healthy dose of bad luck.

Nina hadn’t met the parents yet. She was told they were hysterical, understandably, and freaking out about what was going to happen to their kid. She reviewed the security footage and opted to let the therapist who the FBI sent with her deal with the family. The people side of the job wasn’t exactly Nina’s strong suit, after all. Ethan was better at that kind of thing.

Nina groaned as she stepped over some police tape to walk through the large front doors into the food court area of the mall. The food court itself was empty but for several police officers, forensic techs, and a couple of mall security guards. But Nina was more concerned with the area beyond the security guards, a hallway lined by shops.

There was a throng of people there, way more than she would expect for a town with a population of five thousand. Most of them must be tourists, she realized based on their attire, there with the intent of enjoying the beach, some small-town charm, and the warming late spring weather.

But they weren’t on the beach now. In Nina’s experience, people responded to situations like this in one of two ways. The first was to retreat and isolate themselves, not wanting anything similar to happen to them or their families. The other was to flock to the scene out of some sick but altogether human sense of voyeurism, intent on finding some spectacle in addition to the sunny weather outside.

Clearly, the second impulse had won out for a fair portion of the town’s visitors, and no doubt a few locals, too. She did notice that there were no families in what she could only call the audience, though. Those tourists would be hiding away with their children.

“At least some of them are smart,” Nina muttered under her breath to herself as she shook her head, stood up a little straighter, and reluctantly made her way toward the crowd and the police officers, who stood near the security guards and seemed unsure what to do with the situation at hand.

“Hey, who are you?” one of the officers, a thirtyish guy with abnormally large ears, asked, eyeing her with wariness. “No one’s supposed to come in that way.”

“Sorry,” Nina grumbled, pulling out her FBI badge and flashing it at him. “Agent Gosse with the FBI. I was told you knew I was coming.”

“Oh, right,” the man said, the ears sticking out of either side of his head turning beet red in an instant. “Sorry.”

“No worries,” she said coolly. “What’s going on here?”

She eyed the crowd with some distaste. A teenager tried to hop the caution tape between the food court and the rest of the mall, but it didn’t exactly work. One of the security guards tackled him and carted him away in cheap mall handcuffs.

“Look, we tried to shut the place down, but there are just so many of them…” another officer, a balding redheaded man, explained with a pained expression on his face.

Great. These people weren’t all that competent, after all. Nina was willing to bet that the biggest crime they’d had here in the past year was some kids smoking pot. Still, there was a silver lining.

“It’s alright,” she assured him. “Might be for the best. Sometimes these guys come back to scope out the crime scene after the fact.”

“I’ve heard that,” the redheaded man said, scratching the back