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

We’ll get him back, though, hopefully in one piece. All this goes to say that we’re probably the closest thing to friends you’ve got left in this world.”

“Look, your gang’s going down, with or without you,” Marston added. “Well, most likely without you, considering that they’re prepared to dump you just like they did the others. Do you really think they’ll protect you after this? And we’ll need a witness of our own against them, so we can help each other out. Just give us the boy.”

Charlie was still hesitant, his hands trembling around the gun. Nina and Marston both had their own weapons pointed right back at him.

“You did well not hurting him, and planning to bring him home,” Nina continued. “But you can’t have really thought you could make it to Atlanta without being arrested? This is all working out the best it could’ve for you. You just have to go with it.”

Charlie’s eyes darted around the cave. Though Marston had dropped his flashlight beam to the side so he could hold his gun with both hands, there was a dim light from a lamp on the stolen boat that illuminated the back of the cave. Dim enough so that the agents hadn’t been able to see it before, but bright enough that Nina was now able to make out most of what was happening in the cave without squinting now that she was in full view of the light.

Mikey was looking back and forth between his captor and the agents with wide, darting eyes, his knees trembling beneath the blanket.

“Mikey, why don’t you come over here with me?” Nina offered, holding out an arm for the boy.

“Don’t do that!” Charlie hollered, holding out his own arm to stop the kid.

This wasn’t going to happen the easy way, then.

Charlie took a step toward the agents, brandishing his weapon, and Marston quickly jumped down from the boat and moved between him and Mikey.

Nina, for her part, rushed for the boy, holding out her arm to him still while keeping a close eye on what was going on in the other corner of the cave.

A shot rang out, and she dropped down into the shallow water, motioning for Mikey, who remained huddled in the corner, to do the same.

“Get down, Mikey, get down,” she urged him, and he hesitantly looked up at Charlie and Marston and then ducked his head down between his knees.

More shots rang out, and Nina looked up to see Charlie falling into the water, blood pooling around him. Marston had shot him in the leg. She internally thanked him not for going for a fatal shot from the outset. If they didn’t find Justin, it was true that they would need Charlie to testify. They hadn’t been lying about that.

Nina watched with horror as Charlie tried one last-ditch attempt to cripple Marston with another errant shot, but it ended up hitting the stolen boat instead, right in the dent on the back left bumper that old Mr. Samuels had gone to such great pains to describe. Poor old Lucy. She’d been through a lot. Nina couldn’t even begin to understand all these guys’ obsessions with these boats, but she knew enough to gather that old Dan would not be happy about the state in which Lucy returned to him.

Mikey ran to Nina after Charlie was shot, and he wrapped his little arms around her waist and buried his face in her side as she rose from the water, covered in mud and dripping wet, with more than a few pebbles from the bottom of the water stuck in her shoes.

She looked over at Marston again. He was handcuffing Charlie, having confiscated the gangbanger’s gun.

It was all over. They’d found him.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Nina whispered to Mikey, and it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders.

28

Ethan

We were able to send up a flare from the Coast Guard boat at the mouth of the cave since our cell reception was still bad, and two helicopters soon arrived. One to take Nina, myself, and Mikey back to the police station, and the other to transport Charlie to the hospital for treatment.

There was a group of armed officers set to go with him, too. We weren’t taking any more risks with our suspects, not when we needed testimony to take the bigger guns down.

When we were flying in the helicopter, Mikey stuck close to Nina while we asked him some questions.

“Mikey, my name is Ethan,” I told him, ducking down so that I was eye level with him and holding out my hand to take his if he would let me. He did.

“Mikey,” he muttered, looking at me with the same wide, scared eyes he’d had since I first saw him.

“I know,” I said, giving him a warm smile. “I know your parents.”

“You do?” he asked, his eyes growing wider now, though not with fear this time, but with hope.

“Oh yes,” I said, making sure I looked very serious. “They miss you very, very much. They’ve been looking for you this whole time, and my friend Nina and I have been helping them. So have the police.”

I glanced up at Nina, and she nodded down at the boy to confirm. She still had her arms around him. She looked awkward but pleased with the way this had turned out.

“So, Mikey, can we ask you some questions about what happened to you?” Nina asked him, and he craned his neck to look up at her and nodded.

Though there were tear streaks on his muddy face, he hadn’t cried once since I’d first seen him. I wasn’t sure if he was in shock, or if he was all cried out, or if he was just brave. Probably a combination of the three.

“Alright, Mikey, thank you,” I said, flashing him another smile. “Why don’t you tell us everything you remember since your parents took you to the mall yesterday.”

“Well, I looked at the