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

the detectives or officers, Dr. Osborne—one of them should be answering their phones. But not a single one did.

Marston drove the rental car while Nina continued to call, hoping that she’d just had a bad signal by the water and that someone would answer her soon. But she knew that wasn’t it. The call would’ve dropped if she’d had a bad signal instead of going to voicemail every single time.

“Anything?” Marston asked her, glancing over as he rounded a corner to plow through the now deserted downtown area toward the station.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and pursing her lips. “Something must’ve happened.”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Marston said, glancing at the time on the car’s dashboard. “It’s getting late. They could’ve been transitioning in another team like they did last night. It’s around the same time.”

“What about Osborne?” Nina asked. “She would’ve answered.”

“She could have her phone off while she’s talking to the parents,” Marston mused, though his tone was slightly panicked like he was trying to rationalize away the silence. “There’s no rule that says they all have to stay in the station, either. It would do them all some good to get some fresh air, maybe check into a hotel and sleep in a real bed for a change.”

Nina supposed that this was all possible. But Osborne always answered her phone. So did the lead detective on the case. This was all too important to go silent over nothing.

When they arrived at the station, there were no other cars in the parking lot.

Nina and Marston looked at each other.

“I… I don’t know how to explain this one away,” Marston said as he parked, aghast at the sight of the empty lot. “At least we know they probably aren’t inside, I guess?”

Nina couldn’t make sense of it. Why would the station be abandoned at any time, let alone in the middle of a major case like this? Something must’ve happened. Something she and Marston didn’t know about yet.

She tried Osborne yet again before they went inside, but the psychologist didn’t pick up.

At the front doors, the two of them peered inside, trying to see. The front room’s lights were still on, but no one was there. Nina couldn’t detect any movement inside.

Marston opened the door. It was unlocked. Nina stared at it, and he followed her gaze.

“Something happened,” he said, shaking his head. “Something to make them clear out of here fast.”

Just like that, both of their weapons were drawn. The whole thing was eerie, and a chill ran up and down Nina’s spine.

They scoped out the whole front room, then Raskin’s office. No one was there, but there were files and donuts and whiteboards and cups of coffee abandoned as if right in the middle of everything.

“It’s like they just picked up and left in the middle of whatever they were doing,” Marston remarked in a low whisper as the two of them crept as silently as they could manage around the front room, not wanting to alert anyone who may be lurking where they shouldn’t be to the agents’ presence. The MBLIS agent examined a half-eaten donut, jelly squirting out onto the napkin on which it rested.

“I know,” Nina whispered as she considered the whiteboard in the center of the room. It looked like someone had stopped writing mid-word and dropped the marker onto the ground. She picked it up and placed it on the ledger.

There was a half-drunk cup of coffee on Raskin’s desk and a file open to a page in the middle. He was just gone. Everyone was.

“What about Dr. Osborne and the parents?” Marston asked as they surveyed the front room, their guns still held ready at their sides.

“I guess we can check, but I doubt they’re here if everybody else is gone,” Nina whispered with a shrug, and she covered Marston as he began to creep down the long hallway past the interrogation rooms.

The lounge area was predictably empty as well, nothing to indicate that anyone had been there at all except an empty chip bag sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“Where could they be?” Marston asked, shaking his head in wonder as he made sure no one was hiding back by the vending machines off to the side. But there wasn’t a soul there. There wasn’t a soul in the whole station that they could find.

“What about the perp?” Nina asked, suddenly remembering Justin. “Someone from Durham was interrogating him when we left, so he must still be in the interrogation room unless someone grabbed him before they left.”

Marston perked up at this, seemingly having forgotten the gangbanger, as well. But then he narrowed his eyes.

“I don’t remember seeing him when we passed through the hallway,” he murmured. “All the interrogation rooms have one-way windows, remember? We would’ve seen him.”

Nina deflated at this. It was true. If Justin had still been there, handcuffed to that chair, they would’ve noticed them, as high on alert as they had been.

“Let’s check anyway,” she whispered. “It can’t hurt. Hell, let’s check all the rooms, make sure nobody’s hiding in there away from the window.”

And so they both trekked back through the hallway, peeking one by one into the interrogation rooms. They each took turns going in to look while the other stood guard at the door in case anyone came up behind them. But they came up empty-handed time and again, one room after another.

When they reached the room where they had interrogated Justin what felt like a lifetime ago, Marston pushed the door open and pressed his back against the wall, inching inside while Nina waited in the doorway facing the hallway, her gun held at the ready in case anyone tried to sneak up on them.

“What do you see?” she hissed back at the MBLIS agent when he didn’t say anything.

“Nothing,” he breathed. “Well, nothing except a pair of broken handcuffs. He’s gone.”

Nina froze as that chill in her spine spread throughout her whole body.

“Broken handcuffs?”