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

forensics guys yet, but hopefully, they would be there soon, and others would meet the body at the morgue.

I looked around for Nina, but it took me a moment to find her. She was by her car, talking with Officer Hollister, the young man who had picked Holm and me up from the airport. The surviving goon was stuffed in the backseat of her rental, his eyes gloomy beneath his dark ski mask.

Nina had a water bottle of her own dangling in her hand at her side, half-empty, and she looked reinvigorated herself.

Hollister turned to watch as I approached, and he winced at the sight of me.

“Damn,” he cursed, shaking his head. “Tell me you’re not as bad as you look, man.”

“I’m not,” I assured him with a chuckle. “You should see the other guy.”

“He the dead one?” Hollister asked.

“Yep,” I confirmed with a nod.

“I’ll pass, then,” he said, flashing me a wide grin. “Would’ve loved to see you in action, though. Both of you.” He looked from me to Nina and back again.

“I’m sure you would,” Nina said, returning the sly gesture.

“We think this is the one who was in the security footage?” I asked, jerking my chin in the direction of the man in the backseat. We were standing a few paces enough away that I was confident he couldn’t hear us, and the windows were rolled up. Nina had at least left the air conditioner on for him, though.

“Oh, he is,” Nina said with a knowing nod. “Told me himself when I caught him. The other guy was standing lookout outside at the mall, I guess. We don’t have any footage of him. I don’t know much else. There wasn’t a lot of time to talk to him before everyone showed up.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as a lot of the tension I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding left my body, and that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach ebbed some. Finally, we were getting somewhere. Now we could work on getting to the bottom of whatever this mess was and getting Mikey back to his parents. All three of them.

“Good,” I murmured. “That’s really, really good.”

“Let’s hope so,” Nina said, pursing her lips, and I could tell that she was still thinking the worst.

I supposed that one of us had to, but I was going to try to stay hopeful now that we had a real, honest to goodness lead. I wanted to believe that Mikey was still out there somewhere, alive and well. I had to if I was going to keep working this thing. Part of me was afraid to interview the surviving goon, should he dash away these hopes and confirm my worst fears about the boy’s wellbeing.

“Do you two need to wash up before heading back to the station?” Hollister asked, looking me up and down again, and I realized that I really must have been a sight to behold. “I can take the guy in if you want.”

“No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. “There’s no time left to waste. We need to talk to this guy, now.”

17

Ethan

When Nina and I walked into the police station, flanking the handcuffed, masked goon on either side, every eye in the room turned straight to us. I got the sense that everyone there had been waiting for us with bated breath, watching the door for our return.

There were gasps when they saw us, however, confirming my suspicion that I looked even worse than I felt, though some of those gasps could’ve been at the sight of the goon who looked like he was pulled straight out of that security footage.

“Agent Grosse, Agent Marston,” Chief Raskin huffed as he moved over to us as quickly as he could manage. “Are you both alright?”

His eyes lingered on my right side, the one that was covered in the dead perp’s blood.

“We’re fine,” I said, waving him away. “We’ll just need an interrogation room.”

“Sure thing,” Raskin said, sounding a little surprised. “Take any one you’d like.”

We settled on the one closest to the front room of the station, not wanting the perp to be too close to where Curt, Annabelle, Jackson, and Dr. Osborne were no doubt still waiting in the lounge area at the end of the hall. Not only were Curt and Annabelle witnesses who may need to pick our perp out of a lineup, even though they barely saw him at the mall, but sticking a suspect in a room with not only two but three parents whose child he was accused of stealing out from under their noses sounded like a recipe for disaster to me.

Once inside the interrogation room, Nina roughly deposited the goon in a chair and handcuffed him to the table as I took a seat across from him. This was an impressive feat, considering how large he was and how petite she was in comparison.

Once he was all locked up, she pulled the ski mask off his face, dragging some of his hair along with it and causing him to cry out in pain. She smirked at this.

“Thanks for finally letting me take that off,” the man grumbled, giving her a sour look, and I realized that the reason she probably hadn’t taken it off before was that she wanted him to stew some in the summer heat.

“No problem,” Nina sneered as she sat down next to me. “Now, how about we have a little chat? As I said when I arrested you, I’m Agent Grosse with the FBI. This is my colleague, Agent Marston with MBLIS. And you are?”

“Embell-a-what?” the man asked, scrunching his face up in confusion as he gazed at me.

“M-B-L-I-S,” I spelled out for him. “It stands for the Military Border Liaison Investigative Services.”

“Ooh,” the man breathed, his eyes widening at this in alarm. “Did—did you say military?”

“Sure did,” I said, giving him a small smile, and I heard Nina huff with a combination of humor and satisfaction at this