by Matt Lincoln
“Right, sorry,” I said sheepishly, pocketing my phone without responding to Holm’s last message. The Hollands would have to wait.
And given my promise to Holm, so would the Dragon’s Rogue. This time, I leaned back and closed my eyes for real, soon drifting into that pleasant haze between awake and asleep, enjoying a brief reprieve from all the chaos going on around me.
8
Ethan
I indeed landed about ninety minutes before Tessa, and I scoped out the restaurants near her gate after checking to make sure that her own flight was still on track to land at the listed time. It was.
I had ended up spending my flight, short as it was, resting. I could hardly believe it myself. But it had been well needed, and I had to admit that I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, worried as I was about everything that had been going on with work and otherwise.
I checked my phone again as I walked past a Mexican restaurant near Tessa’s gate and went to check out an Italian one. No new messages from Holm.
“Anything new?” I sent him.
“No,” he shot back quickly. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
I sighed and turned my phone off silent, so I would hear it if Tessa, Holm, or Diane tried to contact me, and focused on examining the Italian restaurant’s menu. I decided it would do, and it was the closest to Tessa’s gate.
After that, I pulled out my tablet and sent a quick email to Nina Gosse, the FBI agent that Holm and I had teamed up with down in New Orleans, to ask her if she knew anything about the Holland case and inform her that I was going to be in Virginia for the next several days. I doubted we would be able to meet up, but it couldn’t hurt to check, especially with our respective agencies working so closely together on this case. That said, I doubted that she knew anything about the Hollands. The FBI was huge, and she was probably on some other assignment or would be soon.
I then sat and waited for Tessa, not pulling out my tablet again but rather reading a mystery I’d bought at the gift shop nearby. I decided I liked this whole relaxing thing, but it wasn’t something I was going to make a habit of any time soon.
When Tessa came off her flight, I was standing there waiting for her, and I called and waved her over as soon as I saw her.
“Tessa!” I called, waving my hands up a little too eagerly. “I’m over here.”
When she saw me, her face broke out into a wide smile, and I felt my own features do the same despite myself.
She was dressed comfortably for her flight, in jeans and a t-shirt, and her hair and clothes were a bit disheveled from a long day’s travel. Her wavy brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her green eyes sparkled as she ran to greet me.
“Ethan!” she cried, reaching up and kissing me on the cheek. “It’s so good to see you again! I was beginning to think that that flight would never end.”
“Were you direct from LAX?” I asked as I took her bag from her and gestured for her to follow me toward the Italian restaurant I had selected for our dinner.
“Oh no, I had another layover at O’Hare in Chicago,” she groaned, rolling her eyes at the memory.
“Another bad airport,” I chuckled. “Though it’s a kind of landmark in and of itself, from what I remember.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t so bad,” Tessa sighed. “And I like Chicagoans more than I like those LA types. It was just a long day. Anyway, I don’t want to think about it anymore. What are our plans for this evening?”
“Well, I thought we could have dinner here, then rent a car and head to Newport News,” I suggested. “We can find a place to stay once we get there. Maybe scope out the area a bit.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Tessa said, smiling up at me as we rounded a corner and arrived at the little Italian restaurant in question.
There were only about eight booths and a couple of tables in the place, and about half of them were occupied. The lighting was low, and the walls and ceiling were painted black. Candles on the tables added to the already romantic and calming atmosphere.
We slid into one of the booths, and a waiter quickly brought us water and a basket of bread with olive oil, parmesan, and pepper to snack on while we decided what to order.
“It all looks so good,” Tessa said, looking over the menu. “At least for airport fare. And honestly, everything sounds good after the day I’ve had.”
“I’d bet,” I chuckled, thinking of how far she’d traveled in just a day or two. “And I’m glad you approve.”
I ended up ordering a seafood pasta dish and Tessa something with squash. The waiter hurried away to deliver our orders to the kitchen staff.
“So,” I said once he was gone, focusing all of my attention on Tessa and giving her my warmest smile. “Why don’t you tell me all about your trips to Nova Scotia and the Yukon?”
I got lost in her green eyes as she detailed everything that she’d been doing for work since we last talked when I was in New York. She’d gone on two big assignments for the National Geographic since then, both to Canada, detailing a strange geological phenomenon in Nova Scotia, and then chasing after that species long thought extinct in the Yukon.
The topics were interesting, to be sure, but there was more than that that made me want to listen to her for hours. It was Tessa herself, and her mesmerizing voice and infectious excitement and curiosity about her work.
My meal was pretty good, as far as airport food was concerned, at least. The seafood wasn’t exactly fresh, but it was decent enough, and it paired with the wine I ordered nicely.
The company was the real highlight, though.
“So,” Tessa said when we were done talking about all her exploits across Canada. “What’s the plan for this whole museum thing? Are we going to go down there and give that little old lady a piece of our minds? Oh, please tell me that that’s what we’re going to do.”
“I don’t know about that,” I chuckled, giving her a bemused look. “But we do have to figure out what drove her to threaten me like that. It’s such strange behavior, especially coming from someone like her.”
“I don’t know, you live in New York long enough, and you find out that little old ladies are sometimes the most threatening people out there,” Tessa pointed out, flashing me a grin, and I chuckled again.
“I’ll have to take your word for it,” I said. “Though you have to admit that she doesn’t really seem like the type to freak out like that. Does your friend George know her, do you know?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Tessa said, shaking her head. “He called you this morning, right? He told me that he would call you.”
“Yes, he did,” I confirmed. “He basically just told me that his friend Henry at the museum’s been ducking his calls. Did you get a Henry any of the times you contacted the museum? Or someone who sounded like an old man?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Tessa said, her expression one of deep thought. “I got the old woman loads of times, and she’s always a real hoot. And that poor kid who works for her, the intern. I got him a lot. I can’t remember his name.”
“Pierce Leal,” I said instinctively, having memorized the about section of the museum’s website handily by then. “And yeah, I got him a couple of times myself. Not that he was ever any help. He just hung up most of the time.”
“I felt bad for him,” Tessa sighed. “He didn’t strike me as too bright, at least not when it came to this. I got him to talk to me once, and he seemed really confused about why he was being asked to avoid us, but kind of scared, too.”
“Scared?” I asked, leaning forward over what remained of my dinner. “How so?”
“Oh, nothing like you’re thinking,” she said quickly, seeing my expression and no doubt assuming, rightly of course, that I was leaping to the worst-case scenario. “I think the manager… what’s her name again?”
“Martha,” I said with a small smile. “An unassuming old ladies’ name, of course.”
“Right, Martha,” Tessa laughed. “I think he was afrai
d of her. She controls his internship. I think he’s a college or grad student or something and needs the credit. I don’t think he even gets paid or anything.”
“Probably not,” I chuckled. “Poor kid. Just trying to get his credit hours in and stumbles into this whole mess. Whatever this is.”
“What do you think?” Tessa asked, interlinking her hands under her chin and peering into my eyes. “I mean, you must have some theories sloshing around that head of yours. Who’s behind all this?”
“I couldn’t even begin to tell you,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “I’ve turned it over in my head dozens of times, but it just doesn’t add up. I’ve decided that whoever sent the fake journal must’ve done so to get me to think the real one was destroyed so I would stop looking for it, and maybe even the Dragon’s Rogue itself, which means that someone else is looking for it. But I couldn’t begin to say who.”
“You’ve never run into anyone else on all your adventures looking for it?” Tessa asked. “Maybe someone else with a connection to the ship? Your grandfather spent a lot of time looking for it, after all.”
“That’s true,” I murmured, thinking back to all the times I’d talked about the Dragon’s Rogue with him. “But no, I’ve racked my brain for all of that and come up empty. Whoever’s doing this has managed to stay under the radar for a long time or only started looking for the ship very recently.”
“If that’s the case, they’ve gained a lot of ground in a short time,” Tessa remarked, furrowing her brows together in thought. “To get ahead of you, when you’ve been at this for so long and have so many connections and leads already? And they seem to know an awful lot about you, too. Enough to know that you’re looking for the ship and how to get you to stop, at least.”
“And they know I work for MBLIS,” I said with a nod. “They sent the package to my office there. Not to my home address, though. Neither the houseboat nor my official residence on file. So maybe they don’t know that, at least.”
“I hadn’t even considered that,” Tessa said, her face stricken. “That’s a kind of scary thought.”
“That scares you, but the manager threatening us doesn’t?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at her.
“She’s just a little old lady,” Tessa scoffed, waving her hand dismissively at this notion.
“I thought you said that little old ladies could be more deadly than they appear,” I reminded her playfully.
She just winked at me in response as the waiter came to drop off the check.
“Come on,” I said as I slipped my card into the little black folder and handed it off to him. “We’d better get going.”
“Thank you for dinner,” she said, smiling at me.
“It was the least I could do after you agreed to join me on this trip,” I said, returning the gesture.
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she assured me.
9
Holm
I stayed late at the office that night, even though Diane didn’t ask me to. She’d sent both Birn and Muñoz home early, despite their loud protestations, and I didn’t want to leave her alone in case anything came up with the Holland case.
Plus, despite what I’d promised Marston, I wasn’t exactly upset that he was gone. I’d have liked to get my hands on any new information before anyone else. As much as I liked my partner and appreciated all the times he’d had my back, I was getting a little tired of him getting all the glory around here. I wasn’t just any old sidekick. Breaking the Holland case would go a long way toward proving that to myself and everyone else.
Muñoz had come in early that afternoon, still looking a little tired and haggard, but enthusiastic as ever to get going on her next case. Even more than Birn, she was a workaholic, a lot like Marston. The word ‘vacation’ was barely even in her vocabulary, and since her partner had been abducted, she’d been even more furious in her pursuit of the bad guys than usual.
You could say that for the four of us who had been involved in the case down in the Keys, the Holland case was personal. We didn’t want the FBI breaking this one, though we were thankful for their help. Chester and Ashley were ours, and we wanted to be the ones to find them.
When Diane came out of her office to pour herself some more coffee around eight in the evening, I started pestering her about Atlanta again, just as I had all day, no doubt to her chagrin.
“Why can’t we just…?” I started to ask, but he held up a hand to stop me as she sipped what must’ve been lukewarm coffee by then.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it, Robbie,” she said sharply. “I’m not sending you to Atlanta. There're no ifs, ands, or buts about it. No more. I have better places to put my energy than going round in circles with you for hours on end. Got it?”
“Okay, okay,” I muttered, staring down at my desk, which bore the Holland file that I’d inherited by default when Marston left for Virginia. “I’m just saying. They could come back there. Or there could be clues about where they went.”
“And the FBI will do their job and figure that out,” Diane said shortly, just as she had at least half a dozen times before. “This isn’t our territory, Robbie, you know that. You see any oceanfront property the last time you were in Atlanta?”
“Okay, okay, you’ve gotten your point across. Again,” I reiterated. Then, before she could walk away and because I just couldn’t help myself, “But if they get a lead to somewhere that is in our jurisdiction, and we weren’t a part of it, they could steal the whole case right out from under us!”
“You’ve made this point several times already,” Diane said, giving me the death glare as I bit my lip, having regretted the words as I was saying them. “The FBI isn’t going to steal this case from us. I won’t let them. There’ll be hell to pay if they so much as try. We’re the ones who discovered the Hollands in the first place. This is our case.”
“We? That was Marston, Muñoz, and me,” I shot back. “And Birn, when he wasn’t zonked out in the woods on tranquilizers.”
“My point exactly,” Diane said cooly, and I knew that I was done. “Seriously, Robbie, sometimes I wonder about your priorities.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I complained as she turned to leave.
“What do you think?” she asked, heaving a sigh and swiveling on her heels to face me again. “The point should be that these horrible drug lords who’ve been messing with our country for God knows how long end up behind bars and facing justice, not who put them there.”
“Right,” I said, ashamed of myself again as I looked away from her. “But come on, you can’t say you don’t worry about our case count. You just said there would be hell to pay if the FBI tried to take this one away from us! And I know it bothers you that they got credit for the New Orleans case, probably even more than it bothered Marston and me.”
I bit my lip again. I really couldn’t keep my mouth shut, could I? But Diane broke out into a wide smile and laughed.
“You’ve got me there, Robbie,” she admitted, shaking her head in wonder at me. “But still, it’s a good reminder for all of us. The important thing is that these guys get caught, not who puts them there. Even though you’re right, it’d better be us. Otherwise, I don’t know what I’ll do to those guys at the FBI…”
She narrowed her eyes and grimaced, as if the individuals in question were standing right there in front of her, waiting for her to rip them a new one for messing with her agency.
“I thought you said they’ve been nice and cooperative lately,” I pointed out. “After Marston and I worked with that Nina Gosse woman and helped take down Solomon.”
“Yes, they have been cooperative since they stole our own case out from under us,” Diane admitted, practically growling the last words. “Like they’re trying to appease us little guys when they know they wronged us.”
“I don’t know that they wronged us,” I said, thinking that the tables had quickly turned in this conversation. “I mean, Nina had been undercover there for
months when we got there. She just didn’t know about the zombie drug yet.”
“Whatever,” Diane said, rolling her eyes. “I still don’t have to like it, even if Marston manages to make googly eyes with every woman you run into on your missions.”
“I guess he does do that,” I chuckled, as it hadn’t escaped my notice either that every woman we ran into seemed to take a special interest in my partner. Tessa, Alejandra, Nina, Penny, and countless others had crossed our paths over the years. Sometimes it bothered me, but most of the time, I just found it amusing, and I loved to tease him about it. Mercilessly.
Diane rolled her eyes.
“Anything new show up in that file?” she asked wryly, gesturing at the thick manila folder sitting between my elbows on my desk, opened to a page detailing the Hollands’ many real estate dealing across the eastern coast of the country, and a couple on foreign islands in the area to add some flavor to the list.
“Uh, no,” I said dryly. “It’s just the same as it was a few hours ago, and this morning, and yesterday, and the day before that. Still, maybe something will turn up.”
I thought it would be nice if I could discover some small detail that broke a case for once, instead of Marston. Usually, you could say I was more of the bigger picture guy. The obsession over tiny details was his forte. But in my partner’s absence, I would have to take on that role, too.
“Well, good luck with that,” Diane sighed, not sounding particularly optimistic that anything would come of my late in the day reading. To be honest, neither was I, but I figured that it couldn’t hurt, and it made me feel better than sitting around doing nothing while the FBI pulled this case out from under us in Atlanta. Or at least it felt like that was what was happening, anyway.
“Thanks,” I muttered. Then, because I didn’t really want to go back to the dry reading that Marston left behind for me just yet, “Hey, so why did you let Marston go, anyway? This is a kind of crazy time for the agency.”
