Caribbean Rescue (Coastal Fury Book 16) - Matt Lincoln (reading tree .TXT) 📗

torch onto me. In all fairness, Holm had played a pretty big part in finding a lot of the clues so far, so I supposed it was only fair that he felt it was his quest now too. In any case, it was nice having my best friend along for the journey.

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