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

a deferential nod to me. “I’ll keep working on the parents, and if we get ahold of Jackson, I’ll want to talk to him, too, straightaway. Until then, I think it’s probably best if you discuss the other details of the case with my colleague.”

10

Ethan

Holm and I went to update the detectives and police officers before doing anything else. They were predictably not pleased with what Curt and Annabelle had withheld from us all until now.

“You’ve got to be kiddin’ me!” Raskin exclaimed, shaking his head when we informed him and his men and women what we’d learned out by the whiteboard bearing all the details of the case. “This was vital time wasted when we could’ve been looking for the kid’s real dad.”

“Curt is his real dad,” I pointed out. “He just has two.”

“Three parents,” Raskin sighed, placing his hands on his hips. “Aren’t two bad enough?”

I chuckled, thinking that he might be right, in a way. If the bio father ended up not being the perp… well, I didn’t even want to go down that road yet. That would complicate things even more for everyone. There would be another terrified parent to deal with, and we’d be back to square one.

I shook my head to clear it. No, I thought it had to be the biological father. It was too perfect of a setup. A custody case, an overly protective mother and stepfather, a jilted father just potentially desperate enough to pull a stunt like this. As worried as Curt and Annabelle were about their custody case, and understandably so, I could never see a judge taking the boy away from the only loving parents he’d ever known full time.

After updating the police, Holm and I, realizing that the FBI agent wasn’t back from her survey of the town yet, decided to go look for a hotel while we had a few free moments. There was no telling when that would come next.

As we were making our way through the parking lot, a car pulled in, and I caught a glimpse of a familiar shock of spiky black hair as the short, skinny woman inside crawled out of the driver’s seat.

“Nina?” I called out to her, stunned.

“Hey, Marston, Holm, you made it!” Nina Gosse called back to us as she beamed and waved, making her way to where we stood by the station’s front doors.

“W-what are you doing here?” I stammered, unable to connect the dots, given my surprise.

“What do you mean what am I doing here?” she laughed, shaking her head at me as she pulled me in for a hug and then shook Holm’s hand. “I’m updating the chief about my afternoon, and then I was hoping to run into you guys. I guess I got the second one done first, though.”

She winked at me, and I couldn’t keep a grin from spreading across my face.

“Are you the agent on this case?” I asked her, though even as I said it, I knew that there wasn’t any other reason that she would be here.

“Who else do you think called you lazy bums in to work this case with me?” she asked, punching me playfully in the shoulder.

“Hey, who’re you calling lazy?” Holm asked, hands on his hips, with a fake indignant tone.

“You just get here?” she asked me, ignoring the question.

“About an hour or two ago,” I said. “We’ve been talking to everyone on the case, and we had an… um, interesting conversation with the boy’s parents.”

“Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “What’s going on?”

I checked my watch. It was getting on to be around time for an early dinner, considering that we’d skipped lunch. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since the diner that morning.

“We actually need to update you on a few things,” I said. “Maybe we can go grab a bite to eat and talk over the case.”

“Sounds like a great plan,” she said with a nod. “I can deal with Raskin later. You boys have a car with you?”

“No, an officer drove us here in his patrol car from the airport,” I explained, shaking my head.

“Alrighty then, I’ll drive,” Nina said, hopping back into her car and gesturing for us to climb in alongside her.

Holm made as if to take the passenger seat but then elbowed me playfully in the ribs and headed toward the backseat door.

“You just can’t go one mission without a little romance, can you, Marston?” he whispered in my ear, and I felt both of my ears go beet red as I ignored him and climbed into the car next to Nina.

It was good to see the FBI agent again, and not just because I’d been wondering what was going on with her end of the Holland case if she really was working on it. We’d connected in New Orleans, and I’d wanted to take the time to see her again ever since. I was hoping we could meet up and discuss the Hollands while I was in Virginia near the FBI headquarters, but this was the next best thing.

Besides, other than Holm and myself, Nina was probably the best agent I knew. I couldn’t think of anyone I would want to work with more on such a high stakes case. If anyone could bring Mikey home to his parents—no matter how many of them he ended up having when all was said and done—it was her.

“I noticed a little seafood place downtown earlier,” Nina said as she pulled us out of the parking lot. “You like that, right, guys? It’ll be just like old times down in NOLA. Well, maybe not quite. No one has food that good.”

“Sounds great,” I said, smiling over at her, and I tried to ignore Holm’s snickering in the back as Nina took us out onto the open road.

The downtown was almost as dead now as it had been earlier that day when Officer Hollister had taken us through there on the way