Caribbean Rescue (Coastal Fury Book 16)

by Matt Lincoln

  Still, the cork board was so over the top that I couldn’t help but smile. It was covered in sheets of paper, photos, and post-it notes, all interconnected by bits of different colored string. It looked like one of those old-fashioned detective boards.

  “You’ve been really bored the past few days, huh?” I teased.

  “Painfully so,” he replied without missing a beat. “But it’s still cool, right?”

  He looked so proud of his work that I didn’t have the heart to bring him down. And it actually was pretty cool, now that I got a closer look at it. It wasn’t anything we didn’t already know, but at least now, everything was all summarized in one place.

  “Yeah,” I chuckled. “It’s not bad, actually. What do the different string colors represent, though?”

  “Oh, nothing really,” Holm replied as he walked over to my fridge to pull out a beer. “I just thought it looked cooler that way. You weren’t wrong when you’d accused me of being bored the past few days.”

  The truth was that things have been incredibly slow around the office as of late. Just a few weeks ago, we’d finally managed to capture the Hollands, the drug-kingpin couple that had been eluding us for months and who had gone out of their way to screw with me and my quest to track down the Dragon’s Rogue. It had been an amazing accomplishment, and one that we’d been extremely proud of.

  However, cases had basically dried up since then. It was a good thing since it meant people weren’t out committing crimes, but without anything to investigate and no drug lords to hunt down, the MBLIS office had become unsettlingly quiet, especially now that the FBI had cleared out. It had been a relief at first to have our office all to ourselves again, but these days, with nothing important to do, I found myself almost missing them.

  Our finances were finally starting to improve, so it wasn’t like we were at risk of losing our jobs anymore, but now, instead of being sent home because there wasn’t enough pay to go around, it was because there just weren’t any cases. There wasn’t much point in having us just sit around at the office doing nothing.

  It had been a welcome respite at first, a sort of mini-vacation after all the stress we’d been through. It didn’t take us that long to grow tired of it, though.

  We were federal agents, after all, and former SEALS. Action and adventure were in our blood, and neither Holm nor I were happy with spending every afternoon just sitting around. I couldn’t blame him for trying to alleviate some of that monotony with a little arts and crafts project.

  “Hey,” I called as I pulled my own beer from the fridge. “Why don’t you finally take that fishing trip? We’re basically on vacation right now anyway, and you’re always talking about how you’re going to do it.”

  “Nah,” Holm grumbled as he fell onto the couch before taking a sip of his beer. “It’s the middle of summer. Too many tourists out on the water. Plus, with my luck, we’d land a huge case the moment I left.”

  “Can’t argue with that.” I shrugged as I popped my beer open and took a swig. “Have you talked with Mariah lately?”

  I smirked as Holm sputtered and choked on his beer.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat clumsily. “We talk every now and again.”

  “That’s nice,” I replied, half teasing and half genuine. I really was happy for him, but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t going to joke around at his expense.

  “Yeah, it is,” he replied grumpily. “How are things with you? Talked with any of your ten girlfriends lately?”

  “I don’t have any girlfriends,” I retorted immediately. “Sure as hell not ten of them.”

  “Uh-huh,” he scoffed. “At this point, you’ve got so many I’m not surprised you’ve lost count.”

  I grabbed the nearest cushion off the couch and launched it at his head. I guessed I couldn’t be too mad, though, since I’d started it.

  “Seriously, though,” he snickered as he tossed the pillow back at me. “Has Tessa gotten back to you yet? Wasn’t she going to help you find someone who could open the chest?”

  He was, of course, talking about the antique pirate’s chest we’d found hidden inside an old shipwreck during our last mission. As usual, I’d been quick to share all the details of our most recent find with Tessa, a friend who was almost as invested in the search for the Dragon’s Rogue as I was. Since she had more connections than I did, at least when it came to the field of archeology and restoration, I had the chest shipped to her after she’d promised she’d find someone who could safely open it.

  Because it had been underwater for such a long time, just exposing it to open-air or harsh light could be enough to irreparably damage it and whatever might be inside. It would take an expert to be able to open it.

  “No,” I sighed with disappointment as I dropped onto the other end of the couch. “She hasn’t gotten back to me since I sent it out to her.”

  “That sucks.” Holm frowned before taking a sip of his beer. “I was hoping we could spend the day talking about the stuff we’d found in Scotland since it’s not like we have anything else to do right now.”

  “Well, I did get some information about the earring and the coin we found,” I replied.

  “What?” Holm snapped. “Since when? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “It kind of slipped my mind?” I replied sheepishly. “And I didn’t realize you were this invested, honestly.”

  “Seriously?” Holm frowned indignantly. “After everything we’ve gone through to find all this stuff? We almost died several times looking for this dang ship!”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” I replied placatingly. “Anyway, yeah, I took the stuff down to Coins and Things. Apparently, the coin isn’t actually a coin at all. It was a charm.”

  “Like, for good luck?” Holm asked.

  “Exactly like that.” I nodded. “Apparently, those kinds of charms were believed to bring good luck during long voyages. Same with the earring, actually. Gold hoop earrings were considered good luck.”

  “Obviously didn’t do the dead guy any good,” Holm remarked.

  “Yeah, I guess not,” I muttered. “This is just a theory, but Tessa thinks they might have been gifts from Grendel.”

  “Why does she think that?” he asked.

  “Well, Grendel’s journal did mention something about helping a ‘friend’ plan for a trip to Scotland, right?” I explained. “We can’t be sure since the entry was pretty vague, but it would make sense if part of his preparations had included giving the dead guy the charm and the earrings. It would have meant that he wished his friend a good voyage, and it would explain why the guy was keeping the charm safe inside the satchel and why we found that envelope with Grendel’s seal on it.”

  “That does sound plausible,” Holm replied thoughtfully as he took another sip of his beer.

  “Right?” I replied. “It’s all speculation, though, since we don’t even know if the dead guy was the ‘friend’ that Grendel was referring to.”

  “If it was,” Holm replied, “then Grendel must have been pretty pissed off about his friend’s death.”

  That was true. The skeleton we’d found had a bullet hole straight through his forehead, which meant that someone had executed the poor sucker. Based on what we currently knew about Grendel, I could only imagine that his reaction to his friend’s death would have been bloody.

  Just the thought of it got my blood pumping, and I felt a renewed determination to get to the bottom of whatever had really happened on board that sunken ship.

  4

  Olivia

  Agent Hastings bit her lip nervously as she prepared to contact the person their forensics team had managed to track down. This entire case was so unusual that it was setting her on edge. She preferred to always have a solid plan before she acted, as well as several contingencies in mind for whatever might happen. That just wasn’t possible in this case, though.

  They’d managed to track the woman down by cross-referencing the kid’s DNA against a database owned
by one of those ancestry tracking companies. Olivia had never been interested in that kind of stuff, so she’d never given it much thought. She had no idea that those companies stored their clients' information even after they’d sent out the results or that they would hand it over to the FBI so easily.

  Of course, she was glad they had since this bit of information was going to make locating Eddy’s family significantly easier. Still, she couldn’t shake the unsettling way the whole thing made her feel. Did the people who sent their DNA off to these companies realize that they were basically giving them permission to do whatever they wanted with it afterward? Personally, she didn’t much like the idea of some company handing her genetic information out like that, but this wasn’t the time or place to ruminate on that.

  The match was only partial, distinct enough that it might not actually be a relative, but close enough that it was better than anything they’d managed to dig up so far. What was peculiar was that the woman’s address was listed as being in Pennsylvania, several states away from Miami. If she was related to the kid, it meant that the boy had made quite the journey in getting here.

  She dialed the number they had on file, once again feeling chills at how easily the company had handed all the woman’s personal information over, even if it did benefit her.

  “Hello?” a confused-sounding voice answered after a few rings.

  “Hello,” Olivia began calmly. “My name is Olivia Hastings. I’m a federal agent with the Special Victims Miami Division of the FBI. Is this Christina Newark?”

  “Um, yes,” the woman replied stiltedly. “Wait, did you say FBI? Are you serious? Is this some kind of joke or something?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Olivia replied. She really hated doing this in such a sloppy manner, but this was the only lead they had so far. “Is it true that you submitted an ancestry search a few months ago?”

  “Umm… yeah?” the woman answered nervously. “Why? Am I related to a serial killer or something?”

  “It’s nothing like that,” Olivia assured her. “The fact is that we’re attempting to locate the relatives of the lost child. The DNA you submitted came up as a match for him.”

  “Whoa, really?” Christina asked. “Is he okay? I mean, do you think he’s like my cousin or something?”

  “It’s possible,” Olivia replied vaguely. If this woman, Christina, was the boy’s mother, then the DNA would have been a closer match. As it was, a cousin would make a lot more sense.

  “Wow, that’s crazy,” Christina sighed. “So, like, what did you want from me, exactly?”

  “Well, to be honest, I was hoping you could tell me more about him,” Olivia replied. Unfortunately, it sounded as though Christina was completely clueless about the boy. “As it is, we have no idea who he is or where he came from.”

  “Aw, that’s so sad,” Christina responded. “I don’t really know anything about a kid, though. I mean, no one in my family’s ever mentioned a--”

  She suddenly cut herself off with a gasp.

  “Ms. Newark?” Olivia called. “Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, crap,” Christina muttered. “Maybe my mom knows something about it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Olivia asked a little impatiently. She just didn’t have the same calm demeanor with adults that she could maintain when speaking with kids.

  “Well, I don’t really know,” Christina answered. “The thing is, I’m pretty sure my mom had another kid at some point. I found some old baby stuff in our attic a few years ago. I thought it was mine, but when I brought it down to show my parents, my mom freaked out. Like, completely lost it.”

  “Is that right?” Olivia muttered. That was certainly noteworthy.

  “Yeah,” Christina continued. “My dad ended up calming her down, and then he told me never to ask about it or bring it up again, and he took the box of stuff. I figured I must have had a brother or sister who died or something. I never brought it up again, like my dad said, but like, maybe he was actually just missing this whole time?”

  It was a pretty far-fetched theory, but it made about as much sense as anything else had so far.

  “How long ago was this?” Olivia asked.

  “Well, I think I was about fifteen,” Christina replied. “So about four or five years ago?”

  Olivia’s heart rate began to climb at that. It definitely matched the child’s estimated age. Maybe Christina was wrong about the exact circumstances of what had happened, but it definitely seemed like they were onto something.

  “Ms. Newark,” Olivia replied, “could you please give me your mother’s contact information?”

  “Yeah, yeah, for sure,” Christina replied.

  Olivia could hear her fumbling around on the other end of the line for a moment before she rattled off her mother’s name, number, and address.

  “Thank you, Christina,” Olivia told her once she finished taking all the information down. “You’ve been a huge help. Please don’t hesitate to call if you have any other comments or concerns.”

  After passing her contact information along to Christina, she ended the call and wasted no time in calling one of her contacts back at the department, Xavier. Agent Xavier Mills was a brilliant information tech who Olivia often turned to when she needed information fast.

  “Hello?” he answered immediately. “How’s my favorite crime-fighter?”

  “Hey, I need you to do a background search on someone,” Olivia replied.

  “Ooh, you’re in a hurry, huh?” he asked, his tone instantly several degrees more serious. “Alright, I got you. What do you need?”

  “Her name is Barbara Newark,” Olivia explained before giving him her address. “She might have given birth and/or given a child up for adoption around five years ago.”

  “Oof, that’s kind of a tall order.” Xavier hummed. “You know that stuff is super confidential. It might take me a minute.”

  “Okay,” Olivia sighed with disappointment. “Just let me know whenever you get something.”

  “Will do,” Xavier replied. “I’ll call you back as soon as I find anything. You better spend that time thinking of how you’re going to repay me for doing you such a huge favor.”

  “Really?” Olivia whined. “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are,” Xavier replied simply. “But I don’t barter in friendship. Cover the first round next time we go drinking, and I’ll call it good.”

  “Ugh, you’re so stingy,” Olivia grumbled, though she was smiling as she spoke. “Fine, first round’s on me.”

  “Excellent,” Xavier replied. Olivia could tell that he was grinning just from the sound of his voice. “Catch you later.”

  “Bye,” Olivia answered just before he ended the call.

  Olivia set her phone down while she thought about what to do next. She was sorely tempted to call the woman herself right now, but she knew that would be foolhardy. Until she had more solid information to work with, it would be better if she just waited.

  She was about to get up and see if this station had any vending machines anywhere when her phone suddenly went off.

  “I thought you said it would take a minute,” she scoffed as she answered Xavier’s call.

  “Don’t get too excited now,” Xavier responded. “I don’t really have good news for you.”

  “What do you mean?” Olivia asked warily.

  “Well, I found her,” Xavier replied. “She’s pretty active in her kid’s PTA chapter, and she volunteers at their town’s church, so she’s all over social media. I didn’t find anything about a kid, though.”

  “Nothing?” Olivia asked disbelievingly.

  “Zilch,” Xavier replied. “Didn’t have to try to crack any adoption records open because there are no adoption records to crack. No hospital stays, no mention of a pregnancy or baby anywhere that I can see.”

  “How is that possible?” Olivia grumbled. Everything had seemed to match up, so what were they missing?

  “I dunno,” Xavier shrugge
d. “Lady seems like your average small-town soccer mom, to be honest. Was that all you needed?”

  “For now, yeah,” Olivia replied, unable to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Thanks, Xavier.”

  “Anytime,” he replied before ending the call.

  As soon as he did, Olivia dialed the woman’s number into her phone. She guessed there was no other option now.

  “Hello?” a cheerful-sounding woman answered right away. “Is this Anne? I know Tammy said she was going to give you my number. I’m afraid the lemon squares aren’t quite ready yet.”

  “Mrs. Newark, my name is Olivia Hastings,” Olivia cut her off smoothly. “I’m a federal agent with the Special Victims Unit of the FBI’s Miami division.”

  “Oh!” the woman yelped, surprise evident in her voice. “What’s going on? Is Christina okay? Has something happened?”

  “She’s fine,” Olivia answered quickly. “I’m calling because we think you might have information about a missing child we currently have in our custody.”

  For a moment, the call went silent, and Olivia actually thought that the woman might have hung up on her.

  “What did you say?” she mumbled after a few long moments of tense quiet, all the earlier cheerfulness gone.

  “I actually spoke with your daughter Christina earlier,” Olivia explained. “She submitted an ancestry kit a few months ago. When we cross-referenced the DNA of the child in our custody, it came up as a match for hers.” Better to keep it vague and let her do the talking, as opposed to outright asking if she knew who the child was.

  Barbara Newark made a sound that was halfway between a gasp and a sob.

  “Are you serious?” she croaked. “Did you really find my baby?”