by Matt Lincoln
“Whoa, there, hold on,” I said, reaching out and gently pressing on Holm’s sternum to push him back into bed. “You’re not going anywhere until a doctor clears you to, understand?”
“Oh, come on, Marston, I’ve seen you walk out of situations like these all kinds of times!” he exclaimed, though he didn’t push against my effort to return him to his original position, possibly because he was too weak to do so. “You were running around down in Haiti after a bullet went into your arm with nothing but a field medic’s bandage to cover it up! And you had a concussion on top of that!”
This was all true enough, though I hadn’t technically seen a doctor who could’ve told me not to do any of this. I also didn’t sustain the concussion until Holm and I were already in the middle of tracking down our adversaries far away from where I could’ve gotten any medical assistance.
“That bullet barely grazed my skin,” I corrected him. “And the concussion came later, though not much later, I’ll give you that. And this is an entirely different situation. I know for a fact that if I looked anything like you do now that day, you would’ve sent me straight back to the Dominican Republic in a second flat.”
Holm bit his lip and narrowed his eyes as he considered this, trying to find a way to argue. But he came up short and settled deeper into his bed.
“Alright, alright,” he sighed, closing his eyes tightly. “But if you break this case without me, I’m never letting you live it down.”
“Noted,” I chuckled, knowing that if Holm gave up the good fight this fast, he really wasn’t feeling all that well. “You can yell at me as much as you want when you get better, but for now, I just want you to rest up and make sure you can crack the next case with me.”
“If you think I’m letting you get anywhere near the Hollands without me, you’ve got another think coming, buddy,” he said, reopening one of his eyes to peer at me with some disdain.
I glanced over at Nina despite myself, who was staring down at the floor and suddenly seemed very interested in her shoelaces.
We hadn’t talked much about the Holland case and Lafitte’s ship, given how much we’d been focused on Mikey the past two days, and rightly so. But I was still itching to figure out what Nina was working on for the FBI before she was put on this case, and perhaps more importantly, why she was so cagey about the whole thing. And I knew that as much as I was dying to find out, Holm was even more so.
“Come on, Gosse, you ever gonna tell us what you know?” Holm asked, peering with that one eye over at Nina now. “You can’t hold out on us forever.”
I didn’t mention that, technically, I was sure that Nina could hold out on us for however long she liked, especially if she had the full force of the FBI behind her. I did get the sense by her aversive body language whenever we discussed this, however, that she wished she could tell us what we wanted to know.
Nina just pursed her lips and peered back at him as if he hadn’t asked her a question at all. He just sighed and shrugged.
“In all seriousness, though,” he continued, reopening both of his eyes now. “You guys had better go out and find this kid tonight, with or without me. Don’t worry anymore about the Hollands or me or anything else. All that matters is that boy. He’s waiting for you.”
23
Ethan
We assured Holm that we would do everything we could to find the boy tonight, but his words brought that sinking feeling back to my stomach in full force. It’d been abating some now that we had some actual solid information about the case, but dread was starting to fill me all over again, though it was of a slightly different kind this time.
Before, I’d been most worried about all the endless possibilities of what might be happening to Mikey, who could’ve taken him, where he could be now. Now, it was the lack of possibilities that created that pit in my stomach. Our options were dwindling, as were Mikey’s right along with them. Either they were hiding out there somewhere, or they were dead at the bottom of the ocean floor. Those were the only truly plausible options at this stage in our investigation.
From the hospital, Nina and I drove back to the bay area, parking in a lot about a half-mile down from the boat rental shop. I wondered if Mr. Samuels and his nephew were still there. I doubted it.
It was dark out now, as the sun had set while we were talking to Holm. This was just yet another reminder of how fast time was passing and how little we had left before people started to give up on that little boy. I resolved not to be one of them.
Together, Nina and I walked down to the bay where a Coast Guard boat was coming into shore. Two men greeted us there in their uniforms.
“Are you Agent Gosse?” one of them asked Nina, and she nodded, holding out her hand to them each in turn.
“Nina Gosse,” she said. “And this is my colleague, Ethan Marston with MBLIS.”
I nodded to them and then shook their hands.
“Good to meet you, Agent Marston. We’re glad you’re here,” the second man said as I greeted him.
“You going to let us come out on your boat with you?” I asked, squinting at it in the dark. It wasn’t large, but it would do. Four would be a crowd aboard, though, so we might have to take them up on their offer to take it ourselves and let them wait for another one to arrive. We’d cover more ground that way, too.
“You can do whatever you want, Agent Marston,” the first man told me. “You’re in charge here, as far as we’re concerned.”
“I appreciate that,” I said, giving them each a grim smile. “Now, what are your names?”
“I’m Luke Prior, and this is Matt Andrews,” the first man said. Prior was blond, and Andrews had brown hair. Other than that, they could be brothers, with the same sleek, muscular swimmer’s build and broad shoulders. They looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties, the both of them.
“Hi, Luke, Matt,” Nina said. “Good to meet you. Find anything in those caves along the shore?”
Prior and Andrews exchanged a look.
“Well, actually,” Andrews said. “We did find something that we thought you might be interested in. Not the kid, obviously, but there were some food and wrappers and stuff.”
“Food and wrappers?” I asked, shaking my head in confusion. “You mean someone was there? I imagine a lot of people visit these caves. We ran into some college kids earlier who said as much.”
“Yeah, but the thing is, Luke recognized some wrappers,” Andrews said, pointing to his companion and waiting for him to finish the story.
“Yeah, so basically, I’ve lived in this town for a while now, and old Mr. Samuels has let me take one of his boats out now and then for a solo fishing trip on my days off,” Prior explained. “And this one time, one of the first times I did that, I got a little lost and didn’t have any food. So I had to dig into the emergency supplies on the boat.”
“You think the food was from one of Mr. Samuels’s boats?” I asked, jumping on this new piece of information. “What makes you think so? Is the food different from what you could buy in any supermarket around here somehow?”
“Yeah, well, Danny, Mr. Samuels’s nephew, he’s really on top of this sort of thing,” Prior said. “So he orders this stuff in bulk on the Internet, and it all comes in these little white packages without anything but the name of the food and basic ingredients in boldface black type. Not like anything you’d pick up at a supermarket. And that’s what we found in the cave.”
I exchanged a look with Nina.
“But you didn’t find this Charlie guy or Mikey?” Nina asked them, and they both shook their heads.
“We scoured every corner of those caves, I swear,” Andrews assured us. “And we sent another team in after us just to get another set of eyes on it. But there wasn’t anything else there.”
“Did you take the wrappers from the cave? Do you have them?” I asked, and they both shook their heads for a second time.
“We didn’t want to mess with the scene,” Prior explained almost apologetic
ally. “We’re not trained in doing that kind of stuff, like preserving it right or whatever. We didn’t want to make things harder on you guys.”
“But we left the second team there at the scene,” Andrews added quickly before I had a chance to say anything else. “We didn’t want someone else to come along and tamper with it accidentally, either, so we left them there until you can get a forensics team out to look at it or whatever. We also wanted someone there in case they came back. The guy and the kid, I mean.”
“Do you have any idea how long that stuff might’ve been sitting there?” Nina asked, her brow furrowed in deep thought. “Was there any food left over? How old was it?”
“No, nothing left over,” Prior said, shaking his head.
“I suppose if they’re on the run, they’re not going to want to waste any food,” I added. “They wouldn’t open anything they weren’t going to eat entirely.”
“That’s assuming this guy’s thinking straight, which he doesn’t seem to have been this whole time,” Nina pointed out.
“Fair enough,” I relented, though I certainly hoped that Charlie was thinking straighter now than he was before. Otherwise, what did that mean for Mikey?
“As for how old it was, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t tell you,” Andrews said apologetically. “Maybe the forensics guys will be more help, but it was all dry food and water, and all that was left were a couple of crumbs. The wrappers were kind of wet from the ocean spray coming into the cave, but that could mean anything. Minutes or hours, who knows?”
“We understand. Thank you for telling us all this,” I said, giving them each a strained but grateful smile. “And you did well calling in another team and leaving someone there to look after the scene and not messing with it yourselves. We’re going to have to call that forensics team in to excavate it right away.”
I looked to Nina at this, and she nodded and pulled out her phone.
“I’ll just be a minute,” she told us. “I’ll go call the station and get someone down here.” And with that, she walked several paces away so that we could continue talking without obstructing her call.
“How about you tell me where you’ve already covered and where you think we should look next?” I asked Prior and Andrews when she was out of earshot. “Are you two done for the night?”
“Oh, no, sir, none of us are stopping until this boy is found,” Prior assured me, his tone and expression very serious. “We were going to wait here for the forensics team and lead them out to the caves. Another boat is coming in soon.”
“Alright, that’s good, that’s good,” I said, nodding slowly. “Thank you guys for dedicating yourselves to this. How long have you been going?”
“In the search?” Andrews asked, and I nodded again. “Since late last night, around midnight, I’d say. But we took a couple of hours off this afternoon, and we’re good to go through the night again.”
“Lots of energy drinks, too,” Prior added for good measure, and we all chuckled.
“Well, we appreciate it,” I told them. “We know that everyone’s running on fumes here, ourselves included, but time is of the essence in cases like this one.”
They both nodded gravely, and all humor was wiped off their faces.
“As for your question, there are a few possibilities we think are pretty good,” Andrews said, pulling a folded map of the ocean out of his pocket. I looked over his shoulder at it to see that there were bright red markings along the coast in several places. A couple were crossed out.
“These are the caves that we were going to search through,” Prior explained, pointing at the red parts. “The crossed-out ones are the one’s we’ve already searched. See this star? Those are the ones where we found the wrappers.”
I followed his hand and saw that one of the markings I’d taken for a poorly-written “x” was actually a star.
“Now these are the caves nearest to there,” Andrews said, pointing to a few red spots to the right of the starred area. “The ones on the other side have already been searched. If they’re still in the area, I’d bet anything that they’re in one of these caves.”
I squinted closer at the map. It looked like there were four or five possibilities along the ocean.
“We’ve got three teams, including yours looking for them,” Prior explained, following my gaze. “But we’re both here, and the third is waiting for the forensics team. We tried to call another boat in, but they’re too far out. We’ve also got some ships looking for them further out in the ocean. We can call them back in if you’d like.”
“No, we should be able to cover this ourselves once we get a forensics team out there,” I said, shaking my head. “And we don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. That could’ve been someone else’s rescue supplies, or they could’ve gone back out into the open water. We just don’t know for sure.”
“Understood,” Andrews said, standing very straight. “That’s what we thought, sir.”
“You’ve done well,” I assured them both again. “If Mikey’s to be found, we’ll find him tonight. Let’s make sure of that. We all know how short on time we’re running, here.”
“Is it true?” Prior asked, leaning in close to me like he was afraid that someone else might hear. “Are we going to start looking for a body if we don’t find him tonight? That’s what people are whispering.”
“Let’s not go there yet,” I said, offering just the sort of non-answer that confirmed the men’s suspicions. “It’s important to stay positive, for Mikey’s sake and for our own.”
Both men nodded and hung their heads, showing that they knew exactly what I wasn’t saying. That if Mikey wasn’t found soon, he was probably dead, and even if he wasn’t, everyone would start assuming that he was.
It had to be tonight. It had to be.
Nina walked back over to us then, her face cloaked with worry.
“What’s going on?” I asked, taking a step toward her and furrowing up my own brow. “What’s wrong?”
“I… I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head in confusion and staring down at her phone. “I can’t get ahold of anyone.”
“No one?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.
“No one,” she confirmed. “Not a soul is answering at the station.”
24
Nina
Nina and Marston left the two Coast Guard men at the dock to watch the boat as they rushed back to the police station to see what was going on. There was never any question that that was what they had to do. It didn’t make sense that no one was answering. Chief Raskin, one of 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 ov
er 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.
