by Matt Lincoln
“Sounds kind of nice, actually,” I replied. “A small team, I mean. I imagine the sense of camaraderie must be pretty strong.” Back when Holm and I were in the SEALS, I’d learned just how close-knit one could become with their comrades. When you depended on someone to have your back in a life-or-death situation, it was inevitable that you’d form bonds and friendships.
“Yeah.” Chapman smiled. “We really are, actually. Even Charlie, who’s not exactly a social butterfly.”
“I’d noticed,” I replied vaguely. Honestly, I couldn’t get a feel for the guy. He either seemed annoyed or just… absent, like he really didn’t care where he was or what was going on. The most emotion I’d seen out of him was during the interrogation, and then he’d gone wildly into the other end of the spectrum as he tore into the suspect.
“He’s a nice guy,” Chapman insisted as he glanced over at his partner. “I know he seems kind of… aloof. But that’s honestly just the way his face is. He has the same expression no matter what he’s feeling.”
“Is that right?” I replied. The guy was strange, that was for sure, but his partner was here vouching for him, and they seemed to have a pretty good rapport with each other, so maybe the kid was right. He’d certainly know him longer than I had.
“Your branch is pretty new, right?” I asked as I reached for the water bottle I’d placed into the cupholder on the arm of the seat.
“Yeah,” Chapman replied. “A little over two years, although Charlie and I have only been with MBLIS for a year and a half.”
“You joined right out of the academy?” I guessed.
“Oh, no, I was a federal agent for three years before I joined MBLIS,” he replied, to my surprise. You had to be at least twenty-three to become a federal agent. The kid didn’t even look old enough to have joined yet, let alone to have been one for going on five years now.
“Charlie’s the newbie,” he continued. “He was a cop before joining MBLIS.”
“Las Vegas PD?” I asked curiously.
“No,” Chapman replied. “Somewhere in Colorado, I think? Or California? I don’t remember, but I know it was ‘some boring as hell town where nothing ever happened. I don’t even know why there was a police station. No one ever broke the law or did anything even remotely interesting,’ at least according to Charlie.”
He spoke the last part of that sentence robotically, as though it was something he’d heard several times.
A beat of silence passed between us before Chapman spoke up again.
“What about you two?” he asked as he looked between Holm and me. “What’s it like working in Miami?”
“Hot,” Holm replied.
“Sunny,” I countered. “And, yeah, hot. A lot of drugs. Florida’s a major intake port for illegal drug smuggling, especially from Central and South America. Probably two-thirds of the cases we deal with have to do with drugs.”
“Weather’s awesome, though,” Holm replied. “What about Vegas? What kind of crimes do you get down in Sin City?”
“We get a lot of drugs too,” he replied after a moment of pensive hesitation. “A lot of sex trafficking, too. To be honest, though, we don’t actually investigate a lot of crimes in Vegas. Most of what we do happens abroad. The most exciting thing that’s ever happened to us was the time someone bombed our office.”
“They bombed your office?” Holm gasped. “How? Like planted a bomb?”
“In a bouquet of flowers.” Chapman nodded. “Oh, I guess there was also the time one of our agents climbed the outside of the High Roller.”
“What’s that?” I asked as I took a sip of my water.
“That giant Ferris wheel in the middle of Las Vegas,” Chapman replied.
“An agent climbed the outside of it?” Holm stared at him in shock. “Why?”
“A guy was dangling off the edge of one of the cabin cars threatening the people inside,” he replied simply. “I mean, I get that it was necessary, but I think she was also just trying to show off.”
“Wow,” I replied blankly. “And all this within two years?”
“One year, actually,” Chapman replied sheepishly. He was starting to look a little embarrassed. “All those things happened last year, right after I joined MBLIS. The past year’s been a lot calmer, thankfully, ever since we finally managed to track down and apprehend this criminal group we’d been chasing after for months.”
“Sounds like the Hollands,” Holm remarked.
“Who are the Hollands?” Chapman asked as he sat up straighter in his chair, his eyes burning with curiosity.
“This married couple we spent months chasing after as well,” I replied. “They were a pair of drug kingpins that made our lives a massive pain. Even went as far as to sabotage our agency’s financial resources in an attempt to destroy us from within.”
“Whoa,” Chapman breathed in response. “That sounds insane.”
“You have no idea,” Holm snorted. “You want to talk about insane? They built an entire fake pirate ship and manufactured a phony historical journal just to mess with Marston’s head.”
“They didn’t technically build that ship just to mess with me—” I started to reply before Chapman interjected.
“Oh, right!” He leaned forward in his chair excitedly. “One of the other agents told us that you were looking for an old pirate ship, right? Her name was Bonnie, I think? Anyway, what’s that all about? Is it a real ship?”
“Careful,” Holm warned him seriously. “Get him started, and you might not be able to get him to stop.”
“Shut up,” I grunted as I elbowed him in the side.
“That’s okay,” Chapman replied. “We’ve still got like ten hours until we land in Naples. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you…” Holm teased, ducking away as I aimed another blow at him.
“As if you’re not as invested in the Dragon’s Rogue as I am,” I countered before turning back to Agent Chapman. “Anyway, it all started with my grandfather. Even since I was a kid, he’d been determined to find this old pirate ship. Well, it turned out…”
The hours melted away as I told Chapman everything that I’d managed to find out about the ship up to that point. We all decided to catch some sleep soon after, which was easier to do on this plane since the chairs were wide and reclinable.
I woke up with a start as the plane landed. I glanced out the window and noticed that the sky outside was dark and dotted with bright stars. I tried to calculate what time it must be, accounting for the difference in time zone. The flight from Miami to Naples had taken approximately twelve hours. We’d left at six AM sharp, and Italy was four hours ahead of Miami, which meant that it was currently ten in the evening.
The airport looked like any other one I’d been to during my travels. It was large and clean, and as we stepped outside, I felt a little disappointed that it was too dark for us to appreciate the surrounding scenery.
“I think we can rent cars over there,” Chapman muttered as he looked up from his phone and pointed toward a small building on the other side of the street. “Let’s do that before anything else.”
I agreed and followed him toward the building. As we walked, taxi drivers attempted to get our attention, but I pointedly ignored them. A few months ago, I’d been able to get by with Tessa in Nassau, relying only on the occasional taxi, but that was because Nassau was a small town on a small island in the Bahamas. Italy, by comparison, was huge, and we weren’t even sure yet exactly where we would have to go.
The attack had taken place off the western coast of the Italian Peninsula, closer to Naples than any other major city. For that reason, we’d chosen to book a hotel and fly directly there. However, we might need to move at a moment’s notice, depending on what we learned from the authorities and how the case ultimately played out.
The inside of the rental building was brightly lit, with plain white walls and a bright blue counter at the front. A large metal ceiling fan spun rapidly over
head, and from somewhere in the back, I could hear strains of some kind of folk music playing.
“Benvenuto,” the man standing behind the counter greeted us as we approached him. “You… speak English?”
“We do,” I replied.
“Good, good,” he replied with a short nod. He sounded fluent, with only a slight accent. I could imagine he probably saw many tourists working at a car rental shop across the street from an airport. “How many cars do you need?”
“Two,” I replied, looking at the other agents for confirmation.
“Good,” he replied again before reaching under the counter to grab something. A moment later, he produced a binder with a list of available cars to look through. Holm and I picked one, a simple but sturdy-looking SUV, and then handed the binder over to the Vegas agents, who chose something similar.
“Okay,” the man replied as he turned to type something into the computer. “I need a passport, driver’s license, and credit card.”
We spent a few more minutes going through the motions of getting everything sorted with the rentals. By the time everything was said and done, and we were on the road to the city center, it was already eleven.
“I’m glad people in Italy drive on the same side of the road,” Holm remarked as we made our way down the street. “I feel like the past few times we’ve traveled somewhere, that’s been an issue.”
“So am I,” I agreed as we made our way down to the hotel that MBLIS had booked for us. As we drove further from the airport and deeper into the heart of the city, I noticed the architecture changing around us. The buildings were a mix of historical and modern, with old, Roman-inspired architecture intermixed with lovely, brightly colored houses that towered high above the street level. Of course, it was difficult to make out many details in the dark, especially while driving, so I made a mental note to get a better look the next day once the sun was up and I could actually appreciate what I was looking at.
The hotel we pulled into was a tall blue building sandwiched between other similarly tall buildings, packed so closely together that there wasn’t actually any space between the wall of one building and the next. I parked the car on the street outside the hotel before stepping out of the car.
“Looks like we got the last spot,” Holm noted out loud as he looked down at our car. I looked around and realized that he was right. There was a very limited amount of parking spaces along the narrow street, and Holm and I had just managed to snag the last open spot. Several yards away, I could see the Vegas Agents’ car steadily moving further from the hotel as they searched for a place to park.
I chuckled as I watched them finally come to a stop so far in the distance that their car was little more than a black smudge against the darkness of the night.
“Lucky we were in front,” Holm muttered as we waited for them to make their way up the street and back to the entrance of the hotel. Even though the sun had already set, the air was warm, but not unpleasantly so. Naples was near the ocean, and in early fall, the temperature generally stayed within the seventies, or so I’d read on the flight over.
“Man, that sucked,” Chapman huffed as he finally caught up to us. He looked around at the crowded street before looking back at us. “Parking’s going to be a pain while we’re here.”
“Well, maybe we’ll move on to another location soon,” I replied as Hills caught up as well, a single bag slung over his shoulder. His face was completely passive, as though he didn’t care at all about having to park that far away from the hotel. I remembered what Chapman said about him having the exact same expression regardless of what he was feeling and wondered if maybe he really was upset about it. “The attack was actually a little south from here, so we might not stay in this hotel if the investigation leads us somewhere else.”
“That’d be a shame,” Chapman replied as he looked up at the quaint building in front of us. “Naples has some amazing architecture. I’d enjoy the opportunity to see a little more of it before we have to move on.”
“Well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Holm replied before yawning. “Let’s head inside.”
“How are you tired?” I asked him as the four of us stepped through the doors of the hotel. “Didn’t you sleep for like five hours on the plane?”
“Yeah,” Holm replied with a shrug as we walked toward the check-in desk. “Maybe it’s jetlag. Just feels like it’s time for bed since it’s almost midnight.”
I supposed that made sense, though I couldn’t relate. Honestly, I wasn’t tired at all. It had only been, in total, about fourteen hours since I’d woken up that morning. Plus, I’d gotten several hours of sleep during the flight. I probably could have kept going for several hours longer before I started to feel sleepy.
I knew it would be wise to try to get some sleep, though. If I didn’t, I’d be feeling groggy and tired by the morning, which could seriously affect my performance during the investigation. The last thing I needed was to make a crucial error in the heat of the moment because I was tired.
“Benvenuti all'Hotel Dei Mille,” the woman behind the desk greeted us with a smile.
“Buonasera,” Chapman replied immediately, though he stumbled slightly on the word. “Noi… um, checking in?”
“Check-in?” The woman repeated. “Bene, qual è il numero di prenotazione?”
“Oh, just a second,” Chapman muttered as he slipped his tablet out of his bag. “Here it is.”
He read out a long series of letters and numbers. As he did, the woman patiently typed the information into the computer on the desk in front of her.
“Perfetto! Sei al quarto piano,” the woman responded with a smile after looking at the computer screen for a moment. She pulled four plastic cards from the inside of her desk and scanned them against a machine next to the computer in quick succession. “Ecco le tue chiavi. Buona serata.”
“Grazie,” Chapman responded as he took the freshly made key cards from her and turned to look at us. “We’re on the fourth floor. Rooms four-ten to four-thirteen, if I’m not mistaken.”
He looked back down at the tablet as if to double-check as he distributed the keys around.
“I didn’t know you spoke Italian,” I remarked as the four of us walked away from the check-in desk and toward the elevator at the other end of the lobby.
“Oh, I don’t really,” Chapman replied sheepishly. “Not fluently, at least. I made it a point to pick up a few common phrases of as many languages as possible since I joined MBLIS. I especially try to study as much as possible as soon as we find out where a case requires us to go. I spent yesterday afternoon reading up in preparation.”
“Not bad for a day’s worth of practice,” Holm commended him as we stepped onto the elevator.
“Well, we realized fairly quickly it was a pretty big necessity,” Chapman muttered, his face falling into a frown. “It was pretty stressful having to travel around all the time and not being able to communicate. Dangerous, too. People could be plotting against you right in front of your eyes, and you’d have no idea.”
The tone of his voice dropped as he spoke that last sentence.
“You sound as though you speak from experience,” I noted as the elevator came to a stop on the fourth floor.
“Unfortunately, it’s happened on more than one occasion,” he replied bitterly before brightening back up again just as quickly. “But, hopefully, that won’t be the case this time around since I’ve done at least a little studying. Plus, about thirty percent of Italy’s population speak English, especially within the major cities. I think we’ll be okay.”
“Let’s hope so,” I replied as we split off toward our rooms.
“Okay, I’ll see you all tomorrow,” Holm called before letting out another yawn and trudging into his room.
I shook my head with mild disbelief as I turned around to head into my own room. I really wasn’t sleepy at all, and part of me was so jealous that Holm was apparently ready to tumble straight into bed.
The ro
om was pretty simple and small but in a cozy way. The bed encompassed most of the compact space and was decorated with dark green pillows and a thick, fluffy comforter adorned with small flowers. The only other furniture inside the room was a small, wooden bedside table with a flower-shaped lamp and a single chair. The walls were painted a muted beige and were bare aside from a television mounted across from the bed and a large painting of a cherub holding a rose hanging directly over the bed frame.
All in all, it wasn’t anything extremely exciting. What was noteworthy, however, was the small balcony attached to the room, encircled with a delicate, wrought-iron railing and overlooking the rest of the town. I could imagine that the view must be quite a thing to behold during the day.
Honestly, with all its rustic charm and floral motifs, it would have been quite the romantic spot had I been here with a woman instead of on a mission.
“No such luck,” I sighed to myself as I set my bag down on the floor at the edge of my bed.
Thinking about romance and women had caused my mind to drift back to Tessa and the thrilling two weeks we’d spent together just a month ago. It had been an intense time for many reasons, and in the end, our time together had seemed to slip away far too quickly. I hadn’t had a chance to see her since then, or even speak to her, for that matter. We’d gone off together to spend some time digging up clues about the Dragon’s Rogue, but we’d ultimately had to call off our adventure when we became entangled in the middle of a case. In the end, we’d barely made any progress before Tessa had to return to New York.
There was no point in getting all glum about it now, though. There’d be other opportunities to look for the Rogue. For the moment, I needed to refocus my attention on the case we were currently working on. To do that, though, I needed to try to get some sleep.
In the end, I decided to just work out until I felt physically tired. There wasn’t a lot of space in the small room, but I made do with what I had. I decided that a few sets of push-ups would be a good start and peeled off my shirt before getting down onto the ground at the foot of the bed.
